‘There was one old lady who insisted there was someone. But we’ve dismissed it because she said it was Harper’s son and we know he doesn’t have one.’
Gow picks up his cup again. ‘I’d check that out again if I were you. The old buzzard might not be as gaga as you think.’
***
Challow gathers the forensics team together in the kitchen. ‘Looks like the to-do list just got rather longer so I hope no one has a hot date planned for later. CID, in their infinite wisdom, now suspect there could be a link between this house and the disappearance of Hannah Gardiner in 2015. So until we’ve completely eliminated that possibility we have to work on the basis that we could be standing in the middle of a murder scene. Or a burial site. Or, indeed, both.’
Nina takes a deep breath. She remembers the Hannah Gardiner case. She did the search on the car. The packet of mints in the glovebox, the juice stains on the child seat, the screwed-up petrol receipts. All the detritus of life that becomes so unbearable when someone has gone.
Challow is still talking. ‘If we’re looking for a grave, the cellar’s a non-starter. You couldn’t take up the concrete down there without some pretty hefty tools and there’s no sign of that sort of disturbance. So where next – the garden?’
‘Actually, I don’t think so,’ says Nina. ‘It’s too exposed – too dangerous. You couldn’t get away with digging a hole that big without risking one of the neighbours seeing.’
She walks over and pushes through the bead curtain to the conservatory. The glass inside is greened and the only thing alive is the creeper growing through the breaks in the windowpanes. The shelves of pots hold nothing but decay. Fossilized geraniums. Yellowed tomato plants. There’s a smell of damp and old earth. The rush matting on the floor is black with mildew and coming apart.
She goes up to the window and wipes a space in the murky glass, then stands there for a moment, looking down the garden.
‘What about that?’ she says, pointing. ‘That summerhouse or shed or whatever it is.’
The two men join her. The grass outside is knee-high, and thick with nettles and dock leaves. There’s a pile of dirty white plastic garden furniture, most of it upside down, and heaps of dead scrub where someone’s had a go at cutting back the undergrowth and left it where it fell. Right at the bottom, by the fence, there’s a large brick shed, with a tiled roof almost submerged in ivy. Several of the windows are broken.
‘See what I mean?’ she says.
They see it even more clearly when they get there. The slope of the garden is steeper than it looks and the shed is resting on a raised base.
‘I think,’ she says, reaching through the broken glass to unlatch the door, ‘that we may well find there’s a cavity under these boards.’
Inside, there are shelves crowded with old pots of paint and weedkiller, and a pile of rusting garden tools. An ancient wasps’ nest is rotting under the eaves and, hanging from a nail, an old boiler suit splashed with stains.
Challow stamps his foot, hearing the hollow echo underneath. ‘I think you’re right.’
He lifts a corner of the matting. Dirt and grit cascade down, woodlice run in all directions.
‘Once in a while,’ he says, looking up at them, ‘we just get lucky.’
It’s a trapdoor.
***
‘You can see her now. Though I’m not sure how much use it’s going to be.’
The nurse holds open the door of the family room and waits for Everett to join her, then the two of them walk together down the corridor. An old man with a walking frame, two doctors with clipboards, posters about hand hygiene and healthy eating and how to spot the signs of a stroke. The room is at the far end and the girl is sitting up in the bed in a hospital gown. And for once, the cliché is true: her face is scarcely darker than the sheet she’s pulled up tight against her chest. She looks bleached, somehow. Not just her skin but her eyes, even her hair. Like there’s a fine film of dust over her. There are cold sores around her mouth.
When she sees Everett she starts backwards, her eyes widening.
‘I’ll just be outside,’ says the nurse gently, pulling the door to behind her.
Everett waits a moment, then gestures to the chair. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
The girl says nothing. Her eyes follow Everett as she pulls the chair further away from the bed and sits down. There’s six foot of floor between them.
‘Can you tell me your name?’ she asks gently.
The girl is still staring at her.
‘We know you’ve been through something terrible. We just want to find out what happened. Who did this to you.’
The girl grips the sheet a little tighter. Her fingernails are broken and dirty.
‘I know it’s hard – I do. And the last thing I want to do is make it worse. But we really do need your help.’
The girl closes her eyes.
‘Do you remember how it happened? How you ended up in that place?’
There are tears now. Seeping out from under her eyelids and slowly down her face.
They sit in silence for a few moments, hearing the murmur of the hospital around them. Footsteps, the clank of trolleys, voices. The ping of the lift.
‘I’ve seen your little boy,’ says Everett at last. ‘They say he’s doing well.’
The girl opens her eyes.
‘He’s a lovely child. What’s his name?’
The girl starts shaking her head, clearly terrified, and a moment later she’s screaming and shrinking back in the bed and nurses are rushing in and Everett is out in the corridor on the wrong side of a closed door.
*
It takes twenty minutes and an injection to calm the girl down. Everett is sitting on a chair in the corridor when the doctor emerges from the room. He pulls up another chair and sits down next to her.
‘What happened back there?’ she says. ‘What did I do?’
He takes a deep breath. ‘The psychiatrist thinks she may be suffering from PTSD. To be honest, it would be more surprising if she wasn’t. It’s not uncommon for people in a situation like hers to repress the memory of what happened to them. It’s the brain going into survival mode. Shutting down something that’s just too painful to deal with. So when you asked her about the child you were forcing her to confront what she’s been through, and she simply couldn’t cope. I’m afraid it could be some time before she’ll be able to talk about it.’
‘How long do you think she’ll need?’
‘There’s no way of knowing. Perhaps hours. Perhaps weeks. Possibly never.’
Everett leans forward and puts her head in her hands. ‘Shit, I really fucked up, didn’t I?’
He looks at her kindly. ‘There was nothing wrong with your intentions. Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
She feels his hand on her shoulder. The warmth of his flesh through her shirt. And then he’s gone.
***
The cavity under the trapdoor is no more than two feet deep, and beneath it the ground is just earth and rubble. Challow lies down on the floor and shines a torch through the opening.
‘Yup, there’s definitely something down there. Nina – do you want to give it a try? I’m a bit too dimensionally challenged for this one.’
He levers himself back up and watches as Nina climbs down into the space, then gets down on her hands and knees. He passes her the torch and she disappears out of view.
‘Mind the rats,’ calls Challow cheerfully.
Down in the cavity Nina makes a face: now he tells me. She trains the torch beam around, left to right and back again. There are scuttling noises and the gleam of small eyes in the dark. Then she gasps as the torch beam collides with something only inches from her face. Something sharp and black and very long dead. Thin feet scratching at the empty air. Cavernous eyes like a Halloween ghost. Then she breathes again as she gets her perspective. It’s just a bird. Probably a crow.