The snow in front of the front door was smooth and clean. No sign of footprints. Raising his hand to the knocker, Jon surreptitiously crossed his frozen fingers.
The door swung open. His heart sank. ‘I suppose this is the right place?’ There should have been locks and bolts. There were locks and bolts. His hand located them on the inside of the door as cautiously, he pushed it open. ‘Hello!’ He called. ‘Kate?’
Silence.
He took a step in. ‘Kate, are you there?’ His searching fingers found a light switch and he clicked it up and down several times. ‘No light.’
Pete had followed him into the hall out of the wind. ‘Bit ripe in here, mate.’ Pete sniffed hard. ‘Somebody’s puked.’ He reached into his pocket for the torch and shone it around the hall. ‘There’s obviously no one here. I reckon your girlfriend moved out – for the night at least.’ Stepping forward, he pushed open a door and shone the light inside. ‘Kitchen. Bloody electric cooker. No electrics.’ He was trying that light switch as well. He turned and made for the door on the opposite side of the hall. ‘Living room. With a wood stove. We could light that at least. Oh my God!’ The roving beam of light was directed at the sofa.
‘What is it?’ Jon pushed through the door behind him and peered over his shoulder. ‘Oh Christ!’ Both men stood where they were for a moment, their eyes fixed on the shape beneath the blanket on the sofa. It was Jon who stepped reluctantly forward. Behind him Pete shone the torch onto the battered face.
Jon closed his eyes. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up, but somehow he controlled himself as he turned and staggered out of the room. There was no need to check if the man was dead.
Pete followed him. ‘Know who he is?’
Jon nodded. ‘Bill Norcross. The friend I was telling you about.’
‘Shit.’
‘As you say.’ They moved back into the kitchen and Jon sat down at the counter, his gloved hands to his face. ‘What the hell happened in there?’
‘I’d say he’d been beaten. Bloody hell, Jon, mate. Where’s your girl? Where’s her sister?’
Jon shook his head. Suddenly he was shaking like a leaf.
Pete reached onto the dresser. The fading torch beam had revealed a whisky bottle lying in a mess of earth. It turned out to be empty. ‘You sit here, mate. I’ll take a look round the rest of the place.’
Jon shook his head. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need.’ Both men were thinking the same thing. Were Kate and Anne up there somewhere?
‘No. But I’ll come all the same.’
They took the stairs two at a time. It was Pete who pushed open first one door then the other. Both rooms were empty. They stood in Kate’s bedroom and stared round. Sand and earth had drifted across the floor. The bed was unmade – blankets piled in a heap in the middle of it, and there was earth there as well. The room was full of the sweet, damp smell of it. And something else. Scent. The overpowering stench of it had completely blocked out the unpleasant smell that was seeping up the stairs from below.
‘No one here.’ Pete stated the obvious. ‘I reckon they got out all right.’
Jon sat down on the bed. His fingers trailed across the disarrayed sheets and he found Kate’s nightshirt, tangled amongst the pillows, beneath which presumably she had folded it at some point. He recognised it. It was blue with cheerful scarlet stripes. Smart. Almost masculine. He remembered the way her long, slim legs emerged from the indecently high hemline. Oh, God, Kate. Where was she? ‘What do we do?’ Holding the nightshirt against his chest, he found he was suddenly feeling very weak.
‘Go and look for this farmhouse. It shouldn’t be too far away. That’s where they’ll be.’ Pete’s voice was strong. Confident. Not for the first time, Jon thanked whichever fate had dictated that this particular Colchester taxi driver should be with him tonight.
Closing the front door behind them again, they stood outside the cottage and stared round. There was no clue to which direction to go. Any path there might have been had long since been covered by the snow. Pete shone the torch around once and was about to switch it off when he saw the tracks. A set of footprints. Recent footprints which had passed close to the door and went on across the snow back towards the sea.
‘Someone’s been past here within the last ten minutes or so, while we were inside,’ he commented.
Kate? Anne?
The two men bent their heads towards the wind and set off the way they had come, heading back towards the snow covered dunes.
LXIII
‘Where is she?’ Roger burst into the room and stared round at the sleepy figures sprawled around the fireplace. ‘Where in God’s name is she?’
‘Who, Dad?’ Greg stretched with a groan. They had all fallen asleep in the end, Anne and Kate and Paddy too. In the hearth the fire had died to cold embers. He shivered violently.
‘Alison. Where is Alison?’
‘She’s not upstairs?’ Greg asked the obvious.
It was Paddy who stood up first, stretching. ‘I’ll go and look.’
He disappeared through the door into the hall. Roger threw himself down in Paddy’s vacated chair and bent forward, rubbing his face wearily in his hands. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last few hours.
Kate stared at the greyness of his skin, the transparency of his face and she bit her lip. ‘Shall I make us all some tea?’ she said, standing up. ‘And let’s get the fire going.’ She walked across to the window and pulled back the curtain. It was still dark. Thick snow had fallen and judging by the sky, there was more to come. She could hear the wind buffeting against the glass. In the distance the trees were thrashing their branches, and she watched as a cascade of dislodged snow fell to the ground.
She was filling the kettle when Paddy came back into the room. ‘She’s nowhere through there. Her boots and jacket have gone. I can’t believe she came past us in the night, but she must have, while we were all asleep. Sorry, Dad.’ He slumped on the sofa, crestfallen.
‘Sorry!’ Roger roared. ‘Sorry! Is that all you can say?’ Behind him Susie had appeared in the doorway. Her hair was tangled and her face was still crumpled with sleep. The large bruise on her forehead from the car crash had turned a deep blue.
‘Sorry! You know where she’s gone, don’t you! God only knows how long she’s been out there. Go outside, Paddy. See if you can see footprints.’
‘Outside?’ Patrick looked at him doubtfully. He nodded. Dragging himself to his feet again he disappeared and moments later they all felt the rush of cold air as he pulled open the front door.
‘There’s no sign.’ He called from the hall. ‘No tracks at all. Just birds and rabbits and a fox.’
They heard the door slam.
‘Not that it matters. We all know where she’s gone.’ Roger’s face was livid suddenly, the dry skin flushed with colour. ‘To that damn beach. I’m going to have that dune bulldozed. I’ll have it destroyed utterly!’
Was it Kate’s imagination or was there a sudden frisson in the air, a charge of fear – and triumph. With a shiver, she hunted for the tea caddy. ‘That’s what he wants,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘That’s what Marcus wants.’
‘And once he’s got what he wants, perhaps he’ll leave us alone!’ Roger rocked back in the chair, and threw his head back, closing his eyes.
‘He might, but Claudia won’t.’ Paddy came and sat down next to his father. ‘The only way to put an end to this, Dad, is to get the dune excavated properly. Then we’ll know the truth.’
‘And you think that will put a stop to all this horror?’ Diana had appeared in the staircase doorway. She was still wearing her crumpled smock; there were smears of blood on it, but whose, Kate could not remember. She turned to the kettle which was steaming gently, willing it to boil. ‘I can’t believe you are all sitting there, doing nothing, when Alison is outside in all this snow. For pity’s sake is no one going to do anything? I’m going to find her!’
‘No, Ma.’ Paddy staggered to his feet again. The boy was white with exhaustion himself. ‘You’ve got to stay to
