So why not light the fire to cover up the crime?
Then it hits me.
Because he wasn’t finished.
He hasn’t found her. Hehasto find her, to be sure the job’s done before he lights the match. Even a burned body would yield DNA, wouldn’t it? Unless it was completely incinerated, and he could never be sure of that in a house fire. Too many variables. He can’t risk leaving a body to burn. He has to be sure that no trace of her is ever found. Take the baby and burn the rest, the clothes, the sheets, the muslin cloths, the bottles of formula, anything that might hold a trace of her DNA. Extinguish all traces of her, as if she never existed.
But if he hasn’t started the fire, he hasn’t found her. I pray that I’m right. Had I disturbed him when I arrived a few minutes before? Had he fled before he could finish what he came here for?
I go across the hall into a spare bedroom. Check under the bed, behind a desk. Nothing.
The urge to shout Mia’s name is almost overwhelming, but I can’t risk it. Instead I will search every inch of this mansion if I have to.
Think.
Angela was doing what Kathryn did when she got off that train five days ago. Drawing the danger away from Mia. Away from the baby. Right from when Mia was born, Angela had been doing exactly this – consciously or otherwise. That was why the nursery was on the top floor of the house, rather than next to their own bedroom on the first floor, or next to her mother below that in the annexe. They had done what parents have always done, put the precious child in the topmost branches of the tree, to be further away from predators on the ground. In their walled estate in the middle of the countryside, as far away as possible from a predator they knew was out there. But it hasn’t been far enough.
I turn to face the stairs and drop into a kneeling position, the shotgun tight into my shoulder. Close my eyes and listen for five seconds. Ten.
There. Was that something? I stay perfectly still, my breath held, turning my head slowly from side to side. For a moment I think my ears are playing tricks. Then I hear it again, faint, muffled, almost inaudible. But unmistakeable.
A cry.
64
I run to the bedrooms at the end of the hall. Two doors opposite each other, both ajar. I push the right-hand one open, looking all around for the source of the noise. A double bed, untouched. A dressing table and stool. A big oak wardrobe. Empty. I drop to all fours and look under the bed. Nothing.
Across the hall, the other room is a mirror image of the previous bedroom save for two twin beds rather than a double. The beds are covered with yellow and black tartan blankets, flat and untouched, nowhere to hide a baby. No ottoman base, nowhere that might open to reveal a hiding space. There is a slatted door into a walk-in closet, empty rows of hangers, old shoe boxes stacked high against the wall. None of them big enough.
She’s not here. Did I imagine it? No,no.
The noise comes again. Muffled, again, and I feel helpless frustration start to boil up inside. Mia is close by, Ifeelher. In a roof space? There’s no trapdoor to the attic here, not in this room anyway. Memories strobe through my mind. Images of Mia in her cot yesterday, Angela opening the blinds in her room, warming a bottle of milk in the microwave, telling me about her daughter and her granddaughter. Angela wasn’t at all what I expected, very down-to-earth despite how far she’d come from her own upbringing. Or perhaps, because of it. Her soft Liverpool vowels pushing through a little stronger when she talked about her own bedroom, as a young girl growing up.
Two in each bed and the littlest in the bottom drawer.
My eyes are drawn to a chest of drawers taking up one half of the far wall, solid dark oak with four wide drawers. An oval brass-framed mirror above it on a stand, cream lace doilies and porcelain figurines beside it.
I pull open the bottom drawer.
Mia stares back at me, big blue eyes glistening with tears, blinking against the sudden light. She gives another startled cry and I feel as if my heart is about to explode with relief.
‘Hey, you,’ I say, feeling the weight of tears behind my eyes again. ‘Hello Mia.’
She is lying on a soft white blanket, one half of the drawer cleared to make a little nest big enough for her to lie in. She has a yellow muslin cloth clutched in one little hand, damp from where she has been sucking it. I pick her up, blanket and all, and lay her gently onto the carpet, turning her this way and that to check for any blood, any cuts or signs of injury, but there’s nothing obvious. I wipe her tears gently away and her small hand closes around my finger.
‘Come on, little one,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
I sling the shotgun over my shoulder, wrap Mia up in the blanket and carry her down the back stairs. They must have been designed for use by the domestic staff back when the house was first built, they’re much narrower and darker than the main staircase that leads up from the hallway. The back stairs run all the way down the rear of the house with only a few windows, the bottom section deep in shadow. I stop halfway down to listen for any other noise, any sign that Church is waiting for me in the scullery below, but hear nothing apart from Mia’s low gurgling and snuffling. Now I have her, safe, unharmed, my only thought is to get her out of here as fast as possible. But there is one more stop I have to make before we can leave.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and creep through the scullery, converted into a walk-in larder, its walls lined with shelves and cupboards. To the right is the main house, to the left, the annexe. I slip left and creep down the corridor, the creaking of wooden floorboards horribly loud in the silence. I unsling the shotgun from my shoulder and hold it one-handed, the stock tucked against my elbow, finger on the trigger. The door to the room at the end of the corridor is closed. Zoe’s room. Dominic Church’s ex-wife. I have a horrible, sick feeling in my stomach that he will have taken his revenge on her, too, finished off what he started a year ago while she lies helpless in bed.
I push open the door to the white room.
Zoe’s here, her head turned slightly to the side, wires and machines and clean white sheets, the monitor next to her bed still beeping its slow and steady rhythm, her body somewhere between life and death. No wounds, no sign of injury. She seems the same as she was yesterday.
‘I have to take Mia away from here,’ I say, standing by her bed. ‘I’m sorry, Zoe.’
If there was a way of taking her with us, I would. But she needs the machines, she needs this room. I check the machine’s monitor. Her pulse seems regular, no alarms or warning messages. The police will be here soon and—
