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, I feel her. 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,