The Hornbeam Tree (55 page)

‘But they must have given you a reason for taking it.’

Katie took a breath, found she had no words and looked at Michelle.

‘What I think Mrs Kiernan is trying to say,’ Laurie came in, ‘is that if you want to see the computer at any stage, then it’s already been impounded.’

‘By us? In Chippenham?’

‘Actually, by the FBI, which might go some way towards convincing you of Molly’s lack of involvement.’

The WPC looked more baffled than ever and not a little dubious.

‘Tell her,’ Katie pressed. ‘Tell her what’s happening.’

Though clearly reluctant, Michelle explained as loosely as she could about the investigation they were involved in with Tom. ‘This,’ she concluded, ‘is obviously in no way connected to Molly and what’s happened this weekend.’

The WPC and her colleague both seemed to agree. ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I’ll get the chief to see if we can have the computer sent back so’s our forensics can give it a going-over – if,’ she added to Katie, ‘it even gets that far, which I strongly doubt.’

‘So what happens now?’ Laurie asked, as the WPC stood up.

‘We’re going to speak to the friends you’ve already spoken to,’ she answered. ‘You’d be surprised what different answers seem to come up when someone in uniform is asking the questions. CID has already been informed, so I expect one of the detectives will be around to see you, but honestly, Mrs Kiernan, judging by everything that’s been said, I’m pretty certain she’ll turn up any minute.’

As Michelle saw them out Katie looked at Laurie. ‘They always say that, don’t they? Even when they’re thinking the worst.’

‘No,’ Laurie replied. ‘She said it because it’s probably true. Molly was in shock last night, slightly traumatized even, she got drunk, maybe stoned, then had the dreadful humiliation of throwing up in front of everyone, even over this Brad – frankly, under those circumstances we’d all
want
to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come out again. But we do, eventually, and so will she.’

Katie wanted to believe her, she wanted it so desperately that for several minutes she was able to, but then the demons were back, tearing at the delicate fabric of reason until she was almost beside herself with dread. ‘What if,’ she began shakily, ‘what if this does have something to do with Tom?’

Michelle frowned. ‘But how?’ she asked.

Katie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. They could be holding her hostage … No, I know it doesn’t make any sense, it’s just with it all happening at the same time …’ She put her hands to her head. ‘I feel as though I’m going out of my mind, and if I weren’t so worried and guilty I’d be furious with her for putting me through this.’ She looked at Michelle again. ‘We have to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait. We should be out there looking for her.’

‘The police are doing that, and you’re not up to going out there yourself,’ Michelle said gently.

Katie looked at the clock. It was twenty to five.

At a quarter to seven the police came back in the form of two detectives, who introduced themselves simply as Wendy Ford and Clive Painter.

‘We’ve found something, Mrs Kiernan, that we’d like you to take a look at,’ Wendy Ford told her. ‘It could be nothing, but one of our constables stumbled upon it in a field next to the Fortescue-Bonds’ house.’ With a gloved hand she reached into a plastic bag and took out a black and white checked slingback shoe with a red bow on the toe.

Katie looked at it and felt the world rushing in on
her
. In those horrifying fragments of seconds she saw her precious girl being raped, murdered, torn apart and screaming for her mother …

Immediately Michelle was behind her, hands on her shoulders, willing her to hang on.

‘Is it Molly’s?’ Ford asked.

Katie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered in a dry, cracked voice. ‘Yes, it’s hers.’

‘Are they the shoes she was wearing when she went out last night?’

‘No, she had her trainers on, but I expect those were in her bag.’

‘Which means she could easily have dropped it without realizing,’ Ford assured her. ‘So let’s not start jumping to conclusions yet.’

Katie looked at her in disbelief. ‘It’s a shoe,’ she said croakily. ‘It belongs to Molly and she isn’t home, so what the hell do you expect me do?’

‘I understand how you’re feeling,’ Ford responded calmly, ‘and I assure you a thorough search of all the surrounding fields is already under way, and if you listen, you can hear the helicopters overhead.’

Yes, Katie could hear the clattering roar of the engines, but it did absolutely nothing to calm her. Instead it intensified her horror tenfold, for the reason they were up there was adding a terrible reality to the very worst nightmare of her life.

After reading the email from Laurie informing him of Molly’s disappearance, Elliot pushed his computer across to Tom so he could read it too, and went to stand at the window, gazing out at the windswept hills where the leaves were being
tossed
around like snow, and the sky glowered sinisterly overhead.

‘What do you make of it?’ he asked when Tom had finished.

‘It’s not connected,’ Tom said decisively. ‘It’s just not their MO, the losses would too far outweigh the gains.’

Elliot turned back into the room. ‘Laurie sent the email last night, so Molly could have turned up by now,’ he said.

Tom was turning on his cellphone, knowing he had to be fast, for the signal alone would pinpoint their location. ‘Any news on Molly?’ he pressed into a text, and after sending it to Michelle he quickly shut down again. ‘I’ll check in a couple of hours,’ he said, going back to the rest of Laurie’s email. ‘So still nothing from Nick and Max,’ he murmured.

Rejoining him at the table Elliot said, ‘They must have been pulled in for questioning, or they’ve been got at somehow.’

‘Do we start contacting editors ourselves?’ Tom wondered aloud.

Elliot pondered the question. ‘If we haven’t heard anything by tonight, I’m going to drive into town and call Chris,’ he said. ‘He should be able to find out what’s going on. He might even know if there’s any connection to this situation with Molly – though I’m with you, I just can’t see it.’

Katie was standing in Molly’s bedroom staring at all her treasured possessions – her glittery hair clips, beaded bracelets, the mauve bedspread and matching pillows rumpled from where she’d last
sat
on them … It was so easy to picture her there, to hear her chattering away on her mobile, or yelling downstairs. ‘Mum!
Mum!
’

Katie just couldn’t bear it. Another night had now passed without that prized iron-framed bed being slept in, hours and hours of darkness, endless torment, too much fear. In the early hours she’d woken suddenly, drenched in sweat and certain she’d heard Molly calling her. She’d lain very still, waiting, praying to hear it again, but there was only silence, and the terrible emptiness coming from this room, next to her own.

It was now late on Monday morning. For a while it had been possible to hope that Molly might turn up for school today, but that had been dashed by a phone call from DS Wendy Ford at nine thirty. Registration was complete, and there was no sign of Molly. Now everyone in Molly’s class was being questioned. If they got no joy there, they’d move on to the rest of the school. Meanwhile, the partygoers were still being interrogated, including Brad, whom they’d tracked down to his girlfriend’s family home in Berkshire. Apparently he hadn’t even known Molly’s name until Saturday night, so he had no idea why she’d been telling people she was his girlfriend.

Katie now knew how Molly had been cruelly set up by her so-called friends to believe that Brad Jenkins was interested in her, when all the time it was a boy Cecily was paying who’d been making the calls and sending the messages. Hearing that had virtually broken Katie’s heart. To think of her lovely little Molly being made the butt of those monstrous girls’ jokes could turn her to violence.
They’d
even formed some outrageous cult that involved all kinds of practices that the police were still trying to get to the bottom of, though so far there was nothing to say that some vile ritual, or evil hexing was behind Molly’s disappearance. What couldn’t be in any doubt, though, was the kind of mental state Molly must have been in when she’d run out of that party, and to think of it filled Katie with such anguish she just couldn’t bear it.

As she walked towards the sitting-room window she felt herself stiffen with resistance to see the police cars parked in the lane. ‘I should be out there, helping them to look,’ she said to Laurie who was in the kitchen. ‘I can’t stand being cooped up here, doing nothing.’

‘You’re waiting for her to call,’ Laurie reminded her.

Katie nodded, then struggled to subdue more impatience as she thought of Michelle, over there at the school, helping the police talk to the kids. Why the hell didn’t she ring to let them know what was happening? She knew how terrified Katie was, how every minute that passed was like an hour of pure hell, so what in God’s name was the matter with her?

Turning abruptly away from the window, she took a breath and forced back her frustration. Her control lasted only a moment before she suddenly erupted in a tirade that Laurie finally managed to stem by quickly dialling Michelle’s mobile.

Michelle answered almost straight away.

‘Where are you?’ Laurie asked.

‘On my way back. There are a couple of developments,
though
none of them good I’m afraid. How’s Katie bearing up?’

‘She’s frustrated, obviously, and worried sick, but she’s coping.’ Laurie turned to Katie and smiled.

‘Tell her we need to know what’s happening,’ Katie snapped, her temper on the rise again. ‘I mean, does anyone at the school know anything?’

‘Not exactly,’ Michelle said, obviously having heard. ‘DS Ford is with me, we’ll explain everything when we get there.’

A few minutes later Michelle and DS Wendy Ford walked into the kitchen. Michelle knew immediately from Katie’s white face that the only thing holding her together was anger, and that some of it was directed towards her. So refraining from embracing her, she merely suggested that they all sit down.

Finding it impossible not to read something horrendous into their apparent reluctance to begin, Katie shouted, ‘What is it? Just tell me what it is.’

‘It’s OK,’ DS Ford said soothingly. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’

‘How the hell do you know what I’m thinking? Are you a mother? Has this ever happened to you?’

DS Ford said, ‘There’s a boy in Molly’s year called Rusty Phillips. Do you know him?’

Katie took a moment to think. ‘Not very well,’ she answered, feeling more reasonable now there appeared to be some kind of lead. ‘I know he helps Molly with her homework sometimes. Why?’

‘Well, he claims Molly called him late on Saturday night and asked him to meet her at the old railway bridge near his home. She told him something had happened, but apparently didn’t go
into
any detail. He doesn’t know where she was calling from …’

‘But did he meet her? Does he know where she is now?’

‘He says she didn’t turn up. He waited for over an hour, and kept trying to ring her, but he never got an answer, so in the end he went home, presuming she’d just decided not to come.’

Katie’s expression showed total horror as she looked from the detective to Michelle and back again. ‘Do you believe him?’ she said. ‘Do you think he’s telling the truth?’

‘His phone log shows that she did call him on Saturday night,’ Ford answered. ‘Obviously we’ll be talking to him again, and several officers are over at the railway bridge now, taking a look around.’

‘Where is this bridge?’ Katie demanded. ‘I mean in relation to the Fortescue-Bonds’.’

‘It’s on the northern outskirts of Chippenham,’ Ford answered, ‘about two miles from the Fortescue-Bonds’ …’

‘Going in the opposite direction to here?’

Ford nodded. ‘That’s correct,’ she said. ‘The boy lives on the edge of a housing estate, actually in sight of the old railway line, so it would take him no time to get there. But without knowing where Molly was calling from we’ve no idea how close, or how far away she was when she asked him to meet her. What’s baffling us at the moment is that her friend Allison confirmed that Molly was wearing the black and white shoes during the party, so the one we found must have been dropped in the field after she left. The field, as you know, is between here and the
Fortescue-Bonds
’, which could suggest that she was on her way home when she lost it.’

Katie rose abruptly to her feet, as though to avoid what was coming next.

‘It’s not necessarily what you’re thinking,’ Michelle quickly told her. ‘Apparently there are no signs of a struggle in the field, so nothing to say that someone tried to stop her. It’s highly possible that she just changed her mind, and decided to call Rusty instead.’

‘Then where is she now? He says he doesn’t know, that she didn’t turn up …’

DS Ford flipped open her mobile as it started to ring. ‘Yes?’ she said into it. She listened for a few moments, then said, ‘Is someone on their way here?’ She listened again, and after telling the person at the other end to keep her posted, she rang off. ‘Apparently one of the search officers has found something close to the railway bridge,’ she told them. ‘He should be here any minute.’

‘What is it?’ Katie demanded, almost wild-eyed with panic.

DS Ford’s face showed her reluctance to answer. ‘An item of clothing, I’m told,’ she said softly. Her eyes came to Katie’s. ‘A red top.’

Katie immediately started to fight for air.

Michelle shot to her feet, and grabbed her. ‘Breathe! Just breathe!’ she urged. ‘Come on, you can do it. In … out … In … out … It’s OK. I’ve got you. Just breathe …’

Half an hour later Michelle came back down the stairs, leaving Katie lying down with Trotty. As she started to speak her voice caught on a sob, but she
managed
to push past it. ‘Not what we need right now, me falling apart,’ she chided herself.

‘They’ll find her. She’ll be all right,’ Laurie told her.