surprised it took him so long. I heard him, you see, with Christiana. I knew what was coming.’
Evi’s hands were at her mouth. She was going to fall. She reached out and grabbed hold of the banister again. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone? Your parents, your mother, surely she wouldn’t…’ She stopped. Jenny didn’t need to answer. Children didn’t tell. They were told not to and they didn’t. Children did what adults told them to do.
‘Did he threaten you?’ she asked.
Jenny was coming towards her again. She’d been drinking, Evi noticed now. ‘He did more than threaten us,’ she said. ‘He locked us in the mausoleum, with all the stone coffins. Even after my mother was laid to rest there, he’d lock us in. Or he’d carry us up to the top of the stairs, to the gallery in the church, even up to the Tor, and dangle us off the edge. By one ankle sometimes. We had to be good, he’d say, or he’d let go. I know he used to do it to Christiana too; she’s petrified of heights.’
Evi tried to blink away the picture in her head. ‘You must have been terrified,’ she said.
‘I never screamed, Evi, there was no point. I’d just close my eyes and wonder if this was the time, this was the day when he’d let go and I’d feel that rush of air and know it was over.’
She’d been wrong. Evi had accused Gillian and she’d been wrong. She’d sent Harry and Gareth off on a wild-goose chase and now Gillian could be dying, Joe and Tom were missing and Alice – where was Alice?
‘Jenny,’ said Evi, ‘has your grandfather been killing the children? Does he have Joe?’
Pull up the chain. No need to think about anything else. Pull up the chain and pray to the God who’d abandoned him that there was nothing on the other end of it. Don’t look at Gareth, who was close to losing it, could have lost it already. The only really sensible thing was to get the two of them out of there, before one of them got killed, except Harry knew he’d never do it. So pull up the chain, because they’d come this far and now they had to know.
The chain was moving, coming up with each heaving armful, but there was something heavy on the other end. Pull with his right arm, ease it over the edge with the left, don’t think, just keep going. Something was scraping against the side of the walls, something was catching, making it harder to pull up, something was getting closer.
The muscles in Harry’s arms were screaming at him and still he had no idea how much more of the chain there was to come up. Twenty more tugs and he’d have to rest. Wasn’t sure he’d make it to twenty. Ten more, seven more … no more needed. Clipped on to the end of the chain was a large canvas bag with a heavy, old-fashioned zip. Without stopping to think or rest, Harry pulled it up on to the stone floor of the hut, reached out and pulled open the zip.
Eye sockets – empty – were the first things he saw.
Tom blinked. Snow was blowing in his eyes and he really couldn’t see that well. He was definitely looking at the moon, shining through the stonework of the north-east bell tower. He risked turning his head around. The moon was over his shoulder. Two moons? Ebba was nearing the tower now. She scampered up to one side of it and looked back, waiting for him. What was she thinking of? The helicopter had passed overhead several times that day. The small roofs on the top of the bell towers would have stopped the helicopter crew seeing inside the towers themselves, but the choppers had heat-seeking equipment, they would have spotted a warm body. Ebba was beckoning him forward.
The church had been full of people. When the helicopter started its search, the police had brought everyone off the moors and they’d all gone into the church. Nearly two hundred people had been inside when the helicopter was searching. Two hundred warm bodies. Where do you hide a needle? In a haystack. Tom was close enough now to touch the bell tower, to put his hand through the stone pillars that sat at each corner. He reached out and saw the reflection of his hand coming towards him, saw his own face