‘It’s OK, I’ve got her.’ Harry’s hand touched Evi’s for a split second, then he was lifting Gillian up and taking the empty urn from her hand. She relaxed instantly and turned to face him, sobbing against his shoulder. God in heaven, what had he started?
‘Don’t touch that please, Dr Oliver,’ Rushton was saying. Harry turned his head, aware of Gillian’s hair clinging to his face. Evi, still kneeling on the floor, had picked up the urn and looked as though she were about to sweep the ashes back inside it. ‘I’ll do it,’ Rushton said, taking the urn from her.
Four heads turned as they heard the front door opening and footsteps climbing the stairs. Taking a firm hold on Gillian, Harry managed to coax her back to the sofa. He pushed her gently down and then turned back to Evi. She was still kneeling on the carpet. Not waiting for permission, he put his hands on her waist, lifted her and helped her back to the armchair she’d been sitting in.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered. Her bottom lip seemed to be shaking. Behind her, he saw Gwen Bannister, Gillian’s mother, standing in the doorway, taking in the scene. Rushton had begun clearing away the ashes. Gillian was sobbing again, her head on her knees, her blonde hair trailing to the floor. Evi had picked up her bag and was fumbling inside it. Harry half expected the newcomer to turn and leave.
‘Detective Rushton, I’d like to give Gillian something to make her feel better,’ said Evi. ‘Have you any more questions for her?’
‘Not for now,’ replied Rushton. ‘I’m going to take these ashes away with me, have them re-tested. From what I can gather, three years ago the tests just confirmed they were human bones. I think we need a bit more certainty than that.’
‘Perhaps Gillian can rest for a while,’ suggested Evi, who was trying to stand up again.
Gwen crossed the room and took hold of her daughter’s hand. ‘Come on, love,’ she said, pulling Gillian to her feet. ‘Come and have a lie down.’
As the two women disappeared into Gillian’s bedroom, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Do you need Gillian to identify the pyjama top?’ he asked. He knew it was in Rushton’s briefcase, bagged and labelled.
Rushton shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’s a reliable witness, do you? What about the woman who made them? Did you say it was Christiana, Sinclair’s eldest?’
Harry nodded. ‘So Jenny told me. The pyjamas were made for Lucy. She thought they were too good to throw away and a few years after Lucy died she gave them to Gillian for her daughter.’ Harry stopped. Clothes made for one dead child had been given to another. Both had ended up in the same grave.
‘What a ruddy mess,’ said Rushton, who seemed to be sharing Harry’s thoughts. ‘Right, I’d better get up to the Abbot’s House. See if I can find someone there who’s still coherent enough to talk sense.’
‘I’ll come too,’ said Harry. ‘At least to the church. I need to find out exactly what state the churchyard’s in. My archdeacon is going to need a report. What about you, Evi?’
Evi glanced towards the bedroom door. ‘I really should stay for a bit,’ she said.
‘Will you phone me when you’re done?’ asked Harry. He gave her a quick smile and turned to leave. Rushton followed him out, with the remains of a dead human in his arms.
55
‘HAVE YOU BEEN IN TOUCH WITH MEGAN CONNOR’S parents?’ asked Harry, as he and Rushton walked towards the Fletchers’ house. At the top of the hill, the mist was thicker. It almost seemed to be seeping out of the stone, hanging in corners and under roof gables. It carried the scents of the moor with it; he could smell wet earth and, in spite of all the rain, a trace of wood smoke from the previous night.
‘Aye, they’re on their way,’ nodded Rushton. ‘Live in Accrington now, moved away a couple of years after it happened. I’m seeing them in an hour. Wish I had more answers to give them.’
Harry could remember seeing news coverage of the Connors’ tearful appeal for their daughter’s safe return. It had been the lead story on the evening news for several days. The police search had spread the breadth of the country and sightings of Megan had been reported as far afield as Wales and the south coast. And yet she’d been not half a mile from where she went missing.
‘What I’m struggling with,’ said Harry, ‘is that the pathologist was so positive the two girls we think were Megan and Hayley couldn’t have been in the ground for more than a few months. So their bodies were kept somewhere – for six years in Megan’s case, three years in Hayley’s. They were both local children; common sense would suggest it was somewhere round here.’
On the Fletchers’ driveway were several police officers, and a short distance away was another, more casually dressed group that Harry realized with a sinking heart were journalists.
‘Be with you in a second, people,’ called Rushton to the police team. ‘You’re asking me if we carried out a proper search when Megan went missing, is that right, Reverend?’
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to…’ The journalists had spotted them, were starting to edge around the police tape in their direction.
‘The answer is yes, we most certainly did,’ said Rushton in a low voice, glancing at the reporters. ‘We had over fifty officers here at one point, and most of the town turned out to help. We didn’t just search the town, we searched the entire moor. Every ruin, every water-pumping station, every bush and pile of rocks. We used cadaver dogs that are trained to home in only on decomposing flesh. They found two fresh corpses. One was a rabbit, up in that old cottage that belongs to the Renshaw family. The other was a domestic cat. They’re trained to leave animal remains alone, so it didn’t hold us up too much.’
‘So how…?’ Harry left the question hanging.
‘We also had a chopper fly over the whole area, with equipment that can detect the heat of a rotting body. It found us a badger, a deer, several more rabbits and a peregrine falcon missing one wing. No little girls.’
‘DCS Rushton…’ One of the reporters, a young man in his twenties, was peering around a woman constable, trying to get a better view of Harry and Rushton.
‘So I’m inclined to think that if the dogs and the chopper and half the county of Lancashire traipsing around the place didn’t find Megan, it’s because she wasn’t here when we did the search. Hayley, of course, we didn’t look for, because no one knew she was missing.’
Other than her mother, thought Harry. One of the detectives from the post-mortem was walking towards them. It was the older and more senior of the two, the one with thinning hair and invisible eyelashes. The one who was called something like Dave or Steve.
‘Give me two more seconds please, Jove,’ said Rushton.
Jove?
‘One of the questions I’ll be asking now is why no one spotted little Lucy’s grave being disturbed. Although until your friends the Fletchers built their house here, that particular part of the graveyard wasn’t directly overlooked. Someone working quietly, at night, being careful to cover their tracks, well, I can see how they might have got away with it. And if they were blessed with fog like this, they could probably have gone about their business in broad daylight.’ He turned back down the hill and faced the reporters.
‘Press conference at three, ladies and gents, I’ll be happy to talk to you then,’ he called. ‘Right, my lovely lads,’ he said, squaring his shoulders and addressing his colleagues. ‘What have you got for me?’
The thin-haired detective, whom Harry had just learned was named after a Roman god, took Harry’s place at Rushton’s side and indicated that they should walk back up the hill towards the churchyard. Harry and the sergeant he remembered from the postmortem followed. No longer in surgical scrubs, the sergeant’s powerful build was more evident. His trousers stretched tightly around his waist.