The Well (30 page)

A possible solution occurred to her. She stood and located one of Matt’s exercise books and tore out a page. She knelt in front of the smaller of the two holes and waited until the water she had disturbed became perfectly calm. Then she held her hand under water, vertically, at the entrance to the hole – and placed the paper against her palm. After a few moments, it floated away, but for a brief moment she was positive that she’d felt it pressing against her skin. She went to the other hole and tried again, but this time with her palm and paper facing the hole, to confirm if the water was flowing out rather than in. Briefly, but without any doubt, she felt the pressure of the water against the paper before it floated away.

Above her, the bird cawed, making her jump. Although she’d not heard the first bird land, she did hear the flapping of wings as several others joined it, squawking and flapping their wings.

“Yes,” said Becca, loud enough for them to hear. “You’re worried now, aren’t you? Well screw you. I’m leaving.”

She knelt in front of the small hole and began to pull at the stones around it.

8

“He works for the school?” Sarah’s exclamation was somewhere between incredulity and outright rage.

“Sarah, please,” said Jim, placing his hand over Sarah’s.

Sarah yanked her hand away. “I think I have a right to be annoyed,” she snapped. “That’s my daughter he had pictures of.”

“I know,” responded Jim, sharply. “But you’re not the only one whose child is missing, Sarah.”

The hurt look in Jim’s eyes checked her anger. Ashamed, she settled back in her chair and put her hand back on the kitchen table. “I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.

Jim shot her a cold glance but took her hand again.
It was bad enough having to cope with the loss of the children
, he thought,
without having to manage Sarah’s bloody mood swings
. After a couple of days’ veiled friction, Jim thought that they’d finally managed to pull together. Not that he especially blamed Sarah – he felt the same way. But in Jim’s book there was nothing productive in losing your temper – it was a pointless drain of energy. He knew that Sarah was having a tough time coping – but so was he. And who did
he
have to lean on – and why didn’t Sarah understand that this was as tough for him as it was for her?

Jim looked Sarah firmly in the eye. “I’m honestly as annoyed as you, Sarah,” he said. “But this is progress. It doesn’t help if you take it out on me.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Sarah wasn’t used to Jim taking a hard line with her and it didn’t help that he was right. She nodded, and for what felt like the millionth time in the last two days, wiped the tears from her cheek.

Jim squeezed her hand and put his other arm around her shoulder.

Jenny waited until the moment passed. She’d never been liaison officer in a crime as serious as this, but she had dealt with stressed families enough times to know that the best thing was usually to simply wait and let the tension dissipate. The family’s anger had to go somewhere – sadly, as now, it was often directed at each other. Jenny felt sorry for Jim, who seemed to her to be a pretty decent guy. From what she’d seen, he’d been nothing but supportive to Sarah, who hadn’t seemed to notice how he was putting aside his own feelings to give her the help she badly needed.

If she’s annoyed now
, Jenny thought,
just wait until I tell them the rest.
She exchanged glances with Stephen Carter. Although Stephen was older and more experienced, they’d both agreed that the news would be better coming from Jenny, who had developed a stronger rapport with both Sarah and Jim.

“If I can tell you as much as I can,” said Jenny. “Some of what I tell you will be disturbing, but I have to stress that – at this moment – we have absolutely no reason to believe that any harm has come to either Rebecca or Matthew.” Jenny saw Sarah pale and bite her finger.

“There are a few things I can’t tell you,” she continued. “But only because we’re still investigating and we’re not sure of all the facts ourselves.”

“We understand,” said Jim. “Please. Tell us what you know, or at least what you can. This is killing us.”

“The person – the man – in question does work for the school. We believe that he’s been watching Rebecca – and quite a few other girls – for some time.”

“How long?” asked Sarah, the anger rising in her voice again.

Stephen interjected. “Sarah. We do know how hard this is. If you let Jenny tell you what we know, then we can answer any questions that you have.”

Sarah nodded, on the verge of breaking down again.

“One of our officers went to interview the man in question. The officer found clear evidence that the man had been observing Rebecca over a long period – along with a number of other girls. Unfortunately, the man became violent and attacked the officer – who is now in hospital, seriously injured – before escaping.” As she spoke, Jenny was painfully aware that her summary had provided a soulless, uncaring account of events.

“What sort of evidence?” asked Jim.

“Mainly photographs,” replied Stephen.

Sarah was openly crying. “What kind of photographs?”

“Actually, nothing obscene,” reassured Jenny. “They were taken mostly at school. In fact, in isolation, each photograph isn’t really incriminating. It’s just that there are a lot of them. Many of them have been catalogued.”

“He’s photographed lots of girls from the school,” said Stephen. “But he seems to have singled out Rebecca.”

“Just girls?” asked Jim. “What about boys – photos of Matt?”

Stephen shook his head. “So far, we’ve found nothing to connect this man with Matt.” He paused. “We’ve also found a few personal possessions, at least one of which we believe could have belonged to Rebecca.”

“Oh God,” moaned Sarah. She felt as though she was going to be physically sick, but managed to contain the nausea.

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” said Jenny. “We’re going to get as much of the evidence together for you to look at as we can. Hopefully tonight, although it might be late. I know this will be very tough on you both, but we really could do with your help.”

Sarah and Jim nodded in unison. “Of course,” said Jim. “Your officer, will he be OK?”

“He’s not good,” conceded Stephen. “He took a sustained beating. He’s in intensive care.” He glanced at Jenny. “You know him: he’s Hannah’s father, Ed Davis.”

“Shit,” said Jim. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do you think –” said Sarah. “The children? Would he hurt the children like that?”

“We don’t know for sure,” admitted Jenny. “But Officer Davis took the man by surprise and he was desperate to get away. There’s every reason to think that Rebecca and Matthew are still alright.”

Sarah shook her head. “You don’t know that.”

“No, we don’t,” said Jenny. “But his motive for hurting Ed was clear. It would be wrong to jump to conclusions about the children.”

Sarah snorted, clearly not convinced, but didn’t pursue it.

“And you can’t tell us who this man is?” asked Jim. “Is he a teacher?” Jim saw Jenny and Stephen’s eyes meet and wrongly assumed that this was an accidental affirmation.

“We can’t say right now,” said Stephen. “I’m sorry.”

“As soon as we can tell you, we will,” added Jenny. “And we have had some positive results from the appeal. We didn’t get many calls, but a couple of them have given us some leads. There was one call in particular. The caller placed Rebecca and Matthew – with someone else – between Hawksleigh and Manchester. We’ve already moved some of our search teams to the area to follow it up.”

“God, could it really be them?” Sarah’s eyes were beyond hopeful; they were almost pleading.

“We honestly don’t know,” said Jenny. “But it could be.”

Stephen Carter very seriously doubted it. From what he’d heard, the call had all the earmarks of being a time-waster. And as for the children being found unharmed, he doubted that too – Ed Davis’ face had been pounded out of shape.
Whoever did that isn’t just capable of hurting someone
, he thought,
he’s capable of killing them. And enjoying it. He’s on the run and knows he’s being hunted. God only knows what else he’s capable of.

9

Sammy had been withdrawn for most of the day and Abby was fretting anxiously, finding it impossible to read her daughter’s mood.

It had been a massive risk telling Sammy at such a young age, but Abby was confident that she would keep this to herself. Sammy didn’t have many close friends and – as far as Abby knew – she’d never exposed her gift for perception to any of them.
In any event
, thought Abby,
I had no choice. She had to know
–
and she had to know now.
But Abby’s main worry was Sammy herself: her ability to understand the thoughts of others made her old-headed, but at the end of the day she was only eight.
Can she handle what she’s been told? What does it do to her view of the world? Her trust in others?

Sammy had been accepting enough of what she’d been told. She’d listened, asked some surprisingly perceptive questions and ultimately understood all of what she’d been told. But there was one thing she couldn’t grasp.

“Why,” she had asked, “don’t we help the girl?”

So, Abby had explained everything again. “If the girl escapes,” Abby had said, avoiding using the word
lives
, “ten other children will die instead.”

“I get that, Mummy,” Sammy had said, impatiently. “You already said. But it’s not her fault. We
should
help her.”

“It wouldn’t be the other ten children’s faults either. And we couldn’t help them, either.”

Sammy hadn’t replied to that – but she clearly hadn’t been happy about it.

Abby watched her daughter, snuggled up against Helen on the sofa, drinking milk and watching television. Helen, much calmer now, stroked Sammy’s hair absently. Abby wondered what was going on in Sammy’s mind and wished – as she often did – she could read people as easily as her daughter could.

Every so often Sammy would cough, but her fever was clearly passing.

Sammy wasn’t concentrating on the television. She’d closed her mind to her mother, something she didn’t think her mother knew she could do. She was letting her mind wander – making connections from one person to another. The girl in the well was tired, a kind of tired that was beyond anything Sammy had experienced. Sammy felt the same exhaustion. That was the way it worked, at least for Sammy. The girl was digging in the dark, her mind filled with a deep hope that was somehow wrapped in fear. From the girl, it was easy to find her mother, whose mind was broadcasting like a distress beacon. She was so, so deeply upset that it physically hurt Sammy – as if she’d been cut inside. Her mind was a mess; difficult to look into. It was like peering into a swirling bowl of brightly coloured paints, where each of the colours hurt your eyes to look at – and they had mixed together so much that it was hard to work out the actual colours any more.

Even at eight, Sammy had learned the dangers of looking into other people’s minds – the experience could be overwhelming. Especially adults, who so often thought things that were the opposite of what they said. Adults also thought about
doing it/making love/sex
an awful lot – and sometimes not in a nice way. Her friends knew very little about what seemed to be a massive and often contradictory part of an adult’s life and her view of physical intimacy was more confused, not better informed, by the thoughts of those around her. When they were
together
her mother and Helen’s only thoughts were of love for each other, yet she knew that others felt that only men and women should
do it
and that two women
doing it
was
bad
. Sammy couldn’t figure out why something that was so right to one person was wrong to another – so she preferred not to look.

From the mother, she went to the boy’s father. His mind was different, with a calmer layer on top that covered what he was really feeling. Like the mother, he was deeply scared, but in a different way. He had less faith that they’d see their children again: he’d almost resigned himself to the loss and was brooding on the death of his wife, a pain that he normally hid deep within himself. From him, she couldn’t get back to the boy. It was as if he didn’t exist any more. She went back to the girl and then from her jumped through to several of her friends, most of whom were scared for both her and themselves, some of them even fearing the people around them.

One girl was especially missing her friend; a girl called Hannah. It was something of a relief to look into a younger mind; children’s thoughts – even older children – were a lot less dark than those of adults. But her loss was still desperate, the bond of friendship between them was far deeper than her parents suspected. The girl was upset about someone else too: her father, who was very badly hurt somewhere. She could tell from Hannah’s mind that her father was not a nice man, although he worked hard to pretend to be, at least to her. She tried to jump from Hannah’s mind to her father’s, but couldn’t – his thoughts were there, but Sammy had never felt anything like them. They were woolly and vague, filled with pain, drifting in and out of view as if he was physically moving closer and then further away. But she did feel, stronger than anything, a different common link between the father and daughter: another man. The
bad man
she had felt before. But now he was worse, grown angry like a cornered animal. She gasped at the sheer lust, hate and desire to inflict pain that radiated from the man.

“You OK, Sams?” asked Helen.

Sammy nodded and snuggled further into Helen. “Yes,” she replied.

The
bad man
was a strong link between the girls. He wasn’t just bad in the way that lots of people are – little lies, thinking bad things without meaning to do them – he was deeply bad, bad enough that it hurt to look into him. His thoughts were so dark: he was a man with no real friends, whose father had beaten him and whose mother had never expressed love for him. A man whose uncle had hurt him and done
bad things
to him for years until, when he was older, he’d turned on his uncle and – the memory was almost too horrific to look at. It wasn’t just the violence: it was the enjoyment that had come from it. The
bad man
believed that all of these thoughts were hidden and irrelevant, but in reality they were always,
always
with him.