Chattering swallows darted in and out of the eaves of the Pavel house as they prepared for the approaching bad weather. The light was fading fast, dark clouds closing in. When the storm finally did come through, any outside evidence would be obliterated.

With this in mind, Stevie stepped towards the tape. She caught the attention of the crime scene tech treading the path outside, head bowed, covered with the hood of his blue forensic overalls like a meditating monk. He stopped his pacing when she told him who she was and regarded her suspiciously. She had no form of ID and no William Trotman close at hand to greet her by name. When she asked if he’d found anything in the garden bed by the kitchen window, he told her it wasn’t in his brief. Nor would he tell her if he’d taken scrapings from the brown stains under the chesterfield—how did he know she wasn’t a reporter? he said. But he did agree to check out the button near the front gate. He sounded bored, but polite enough, covering his options in case she really was who she said she was.

There was only one thing for it.

Stevie had more success convincing the hovering uniform in the street that she was part of the investigating team. No questions were asked when she strode toward the white van and pulled on a pair of overalls and booties from the storage box in the back and snapped on a pair of gloves. Stepping over the crime scene tape, she made her way across the overgrown grass towards the side of the house and the kitchen window. Crushed weeds choked the garden bed below. She squatted on her haunches and combed through them with her gloved hands. What she was expecting to find, she had no idea. No footprints were evident on the dry surface, though it was obvious something or someone had recently trampled down the weeds. The flyscreen had also been removed and propped up against the wall.

She straightened and peered through the open window, seeing no sign of police in the house. She wondered if the substance from the floor really had been scraped up and dispatched to the lab. The thoroughness of the investigation at this stage would largely depend on how seriously Fowler was taking the disappearance of the couple; not very, if the interview with the press was anything to go on. With budget restrictions as they were he couldn’t afford unnecessary procedures. This could, after all, merely be a case of crossed wires, such as a babysitter failing to turn up, or, as Fowler had mused earlier, a horrible accident. For all they knew the couple could at this very moment be lying on a beach in Bali, unconscious in hospital, or worse still, on a slab in the morgue.

If foul play was the last thing on Fowler’s mind, why then was it at the front of hers? Perhaps it was the feeling she’d had earlier when exploring the house. Maybe it was the odour of the baby still rising up from her clothes. Whatever it was, she had been with the police long enough to know that these kinds of feelings should not be ignored. Bugger Fowler.

She approached the front porch and looked around. No one seemed to be paying her the least bit of attention. A couple of cops had returned to stand by their patrol car, lounging with their backs to the house, drinking from plastic cups. The door of the house was open enough for her to slip through without a sound.

The false dusk of the oncoming storm had made the interior gloomy and the searchers had left all the lights downstairs ablaze, which was just as well because it meant she didn’t have to draw attention to herself by turning them on. There didn’t appear to be much evidence of the crime scene tech’s activities in here, no coating of fingerprint dust across the surfaces of the kitchen and no apparent interference with the food on the table. One of the chesterfields had been moved, though, and Stevie did detect fresh scrapings in the brown coating on the tiles. At least something had been taken seriously.

When the unpleasant smell became too much, she decided to have another look upstairs, an area she hadn’t had the chance to thoroughly explore earlier.

As with downstairs, a similar state of neglect was evident here, but with less sign of human habitation. Things were dusty and spidery, but not unhygienic. The stairs led to an unfurnished room with a new looking grey-flecked carpet, power points and an aerial connection. A TV-or playroom, she’d hazard a guess. A bathroom and two bedrooms led from this central room. One of the bedrooms was tiny, not much more than a storeroom, and stacked with removalist’s boxes. She prised some of the lids and found an assortment of cooking utensils, a collection of baby’s toys, folded clothes, a pile of old shoes. Stevie and Monty still hadn’t unpacked boxes in their house from their recent move, so there was nothing strange about these. But Skye had told her the couple had lived here for a while—were they preparing to move house perhaps? If they were, the dusty lids must mean they’d packed a while ago. She must remember to ask Skye if she could discover more from Mrs Hardegan; find out just how reliable a source of information the old lady might be.

The other bedroom was much more spacious. It held four single beds with bare mattresses, giving Stevie the impression of a school dormitory on the last day of term. Unlike the smaller room, this one had an ensuite bathroom and a large in-built robe.

From a locked window Stevie had a good view of Mrs Hardegan’s neat back garden. A car pulled up outside her house. Lights flicked off and a man climbed out. It might be Fowler returning to ask Mrs Hardegan more questions, she thought, until she saw the man take a key from his pocket and let himself in through the front door.

The wind picked up in an instant and whipped at the trees in the surrounding gardens. In the street below, the patrol car’s door blew shut. The crime scene tech wrestled with his overall hood, but soon gave up, dashing to the white incident van as the first heavy drops of rain fell. Lights went on in the parked police cars as officers returned to exchange information gleaned from canvassing the neighbours.

Stevie felt as detached from the goings on below as if she were viewing it all from a CCTV monitor. The grey road gradually turned black, yet she could hear no sound of the storm, no hammering of the rain on the roof, rattling window frames or whooshes of wind in the eaves. In this room everything remained silent and still.

A sudden draft blew the heavy bedroom door shut. She drew a breath, whirled around and moved quickly. It was time to leave—the last thing she needed was for someone to come up and investigate the noise.

But when she reached for the doorhandle, there was nothing there. The handle was missing. She was trapped. (Image 3.1)

Image 3.1

CHAPTER FOUR

Lilly Hardegan turned off her TV and leaned back in the chair with the lacy armrests, pausing for a moment to listen to the drumming of the rain on the orange tiles of her roof. Through her open window the metallic smell of fresh rain on bitumen gusted in. Forcing herself to try to relax and enjoy the scent, she attempted to block out today’s disturbing events, closed her eyes and began to compose the letter she would never write to a person who would never be able to read it.

When she was writing in her head, she saw the words as clearly as if they were printed on a blackboard. But when she tried to say them aloud, it was as if the board had become coated with butter, and the words slid from it and flew around the room and all she had to catch them with was a large-holed net.

She began to compose, leaning back in her chair, fingers of each hand touching, here’s the church here’s the steeple, like the childhood game.

My Dear ... she began, setting the letter out in her head as if it were on a page. I trust this finds you...