‘The thing that puzzled us most about your son’s story,’ said Rushton, ‘because something was telling me he wasn’t lying, was how this intruder could get a small child into a hold-all without her yelling merry hell and waking the entire house up. It’s starting to make a bit more sense now.’
‘I still don’t see…’ Harry had moved as far as the door.
‘The principle component of these dry-cleaning pads is polyglycolether,’ said DI Neasden.
‘What?’ said Alice.
‘Miss off the fancy first bit,’ said Rushton. ‘Ether is what we’re talking about. Been used for donkeys’ years as a pretty crude anaesthetic. I’m sorry to say it, but it looks like someone held a pad soaked in ether against Millie’s face. It almost certainly wouldn’t have worked with an adult, probably not even on one of your lads, but given how small she is and the fact that she was sleeping anyway, it was probably just sufficient to keep her drowsy enough to put her in the bag.’
Alice gave a tiny cry and set off towards Harry.
‘I’m going,’ he muttered, and pulled open the kitchen door. Four strides took him to the door of the living room. He pulled it open, knowing that Alice was hot on his heels. Evi and the three children were sitting on the floor. Four faces, impossible to say which was the prettiest, turned to him. He was still trying to decide when Alice squeezed past him.
‘Um, um,’ called Millie, her little face lighting up, before squawking in annoyance as her mother scooped her up and pressed her against her chest.
Rushton and DI Neasden came into the room.
‘Right then,’ announced Rushton. ‘Schoolboy Superhero Tom and his trusty sidekick, Joe the Invincible, I think we need another word with you two.’
59
‘PERHAPS THEY’LL PUT A PLAQUE FOR US HERE AFTER we’re dead and gone,’ said Harry. ‘Are you cold?’
‘Why?’ asked Evi. Are you going to offer me your coat?’ Harry carried on staring straight ahead. ‘I’ll share it,’ he offered. Evi waited for him to turn towards her, to grin. He didn’t move.
‘You look tired,’ she said, although the truth was he didn’t just look tired. He looked thinner, older. The man she’d met in the hospital that morning hadn’t been the Harry she knew. Someone else had taken his place. Someone else was still there.
‘Yeah, well, I spent the first half of the night thinking about you,’ he said, still keeping his eyes fixed on the building across the street. ‘Then I got a phone call.’
Evi knew from the empty feeling in her stomach that it must be the middle of the day, but the sun hadn’t made it through the mist yet. So high on the moor, she could almost feel it, cold and clammy, stealing its way into her lungs.
‘I really need to see how Gillian is doing,’ she said, knowing the last thing she wanted to do was to go back into that flat. She pushed herself forward on the bench and looked down the hill. ‘Walk me to my car?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, leaning back against the wall, folding his arms.
‘No?’ Last night he’d kissed her, danced with her; now he couldn’t even be polite?
‘You need to take five minutes,’ he said, turning to look at her at last. ‘We both do. A tiny spot of reflection in a very unusual day.’
‘You’re not going to get all vicary on me, are you?’ risked Evi. ‘If you make me bow my head I’ll start giggling.’
‘How your patients take you seriously is beyond me.’ At least he was smiling again, she was getting through to him.
Movement down the hill caught her eye. She raised her head to look over Harry’s shoulder just as he turned. Alice’s car was reversing out of the driveway. In the back seat, a small face was watching them. A hand waved. Then the car began moving forwards, past the police cordon and down the hill. Rushton and DI Neasden climbed into a dark-blue estate car and set off after the Fletchers.
‘Will Millie be OK?’ asked Harry.
‘I’m sure she will,’ said Evi quickly. ‘The redness around her eyes and nostrils won’t last much beyond today. She might be a bit tired and grumpy for a couple of days, at worst.’
‘Will they find traces of ether in her bloodstream?’ asked Harry.
‘Almost certainly,’ said Evi.
Someone else was emerging from the Fletchers’ house. Hannah Wilson, the blonde social worker.
‘Miss Pissy down there was talking about something called an Emergency Protection Order,’ he said. ‘Do we need to worry?’
‘I’ll phone her boss when I get back,’ said Evi. ‘Make sure I’m kept informed about any applications to the court. Good job keeping your eyes away from her cleavage, by the way.’
‘Blondes don’t do it for me. Will you oppose one?’
Evi thought for a moment as Hannah Wilson climbed into a small red hatchback and drove away. ‘If I think it necessary, Harry, I’ll apply for one myself,’ she said. ‘No, don’t fly off the handle. Those children are at risk. Given the events of last night, I don’t think anyone can doubt that any more.’
‘But snatching them away from their mum and dad will-’
‘An EPO doesn’t mean taking them away from their parents, it just gives the local authority power to keep them from harm. Gareth Fletcher has parents living close by, is that right?’
Harry nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘In Burnley.’
‘Well, then a magistrate might decide that the children should go and stay with their grandparents for a while, with Alice and Gareth’s full consent and cooperation, of course.’
‘For how long?’
She shook her head. ‘Impossible to say. EPOs usually only last a few days but they’re often followed by a longer-term care order. Oh, stop glaring at me. I have never believed the children’s parents are part of the problem. But there is a problem.’
‘Rushton is going to have officers watching the house,’ said Harry.
‘And how long will that last? He won’t have the manpower to watch them indefinitely. And even if those children in the graveyard do turn out to have been murdered, if there is a psychopath up here preying on little girls, they’ve still been dead for years. They’re not likely to find the person responsible all that quickly.’
Harry said nothing. She was right.
‘And while they carry on looking, the Fletcher children remain at risk.’
She was still right. Reluctantly, Harry gave a faint nod.
‘I had a good long chat with Tom just now,’ said Evi. ‘He’s finally started talking to me about this little girl of his.’
‘And…’
‘Well, I’m pretty certain he’s not lying. Someone has been frightening him and I think, maybe, what you said last night was right. Someone is playing a rather mean practical joke. Maybe dressing up in some sort of Hallowe’en costume. She tends to appear at night, so he never gets a particularly good look at her. A lot of the time, he says, he doesn’t actually see her properly. Just catches glimpses, hears her calling things to him.’
‘Does he think she put Millie on the church balcony back in September?’
‘Yes, he’s convinced she did.’
‘And he thinks she took Millie last night?’
She turned back. Was it her imagination or had Harry moved closer on the bench?
‘At first he did,’ she said. ‘But when we talked about it, he realized it couldn’t have been her. The intruder he describes is just nothing like the little girl – much taller, for one thing, and wearing very different clothes. Miss Pissy Knickers, as you like to call her, was smart enough to spot that whoever kicked Tom did it with a booted foot.’
‘I said nothing about knickers. I have no interest in Miss Pissy’s undergarments. What’s going on here is something to do with the church. I’m sure of it.’
‘The church?’
‘We know for a fact that one of those children – Lucy Pickup – died in the church. Millie Fletcher almost did. I’ll bet the other two did as well. They’re taken up to the gallery and dropped.’