Property of a Lady(23)

For a couple of seconds Nell could not think who Dr Flint was, and then she said, ‘Oh, that’s Michael Flint. I met him at the weekend – he’s a friend of the Americans who’ve just bought Charect House. He was here to check the work that’s being done. He told Beth a story about his cat which made her laugh, and he sent her a photo of the cat when he got home.’

‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘He’s a lecturer at Oxford. Oriel College, I think.’ She saw Inspector Brent make a note and said, ‘He won’t have anything to do with this, though.’

‘We’ll just check with him, however.’ He shut his notebook.

‘But surely you don’t think—’ Nell stopped, understanding the police would see the sudden entrance into Beth’s life of a single man as potentially suspicious. So she only said, ‘I’m sure he hasn’t got anything to do with this.’

‘We will just check, though.’

‘Have there been any other cases of – of missing children in the area?’ It felt like a betrayal to use the expression – it felt as if she had already given up on Beth. But the curious thing was that as she said it, a faint memory stirred at the back of Nell’s mind – something she had heard or read very recently. She tried to pin down the memory, but her mind was filled up with Beth and it eluded her.

‘No. And that’s good,’ said the inspector.

The search of Beth’s room was over, and it seemed nothing had been found that was likely to be of any help.

‘Is there anyone we can call who’d come to be with you?’ asked the PC. ‘Family – close friend?’


Nell tried to think. Her own parents were dead, and there were only some cousins in the north. Brad had family in Scotland, but they had never been very close. There were friends in London, but she did not want to drag people up here unnecessarily. ‘There’s not really anyone who could come up here at a moment’s notice.’

‘All right. Now listen, if there’s anything you think of that might help us – even the tiniest detail, even if you think it sounds ridiculous – tell us at once.’

He paused, as if allowing her time to consider this, and Nell said, ‘There’s nothing I can think of. Only—’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s been having one or two quite bad nightmares,’ said Nell slowly. ‘She’s been really terrified of them.’

He did not move but there was the impression that he sat up a bit straighter. ‘Can you describe the nightmares?’

‘She said someone was in her room,’ said Nell. ‘Just – standing in a corner of her bedroom, watching her. Oh, but – that couldn’t be actually true, could it? There couldn’t have been someone getting into her room—’ She broke off, hearing the escalating note of panic in her voice, frightened that she might lose control altogether.

‘No,’ he said, so definitely that Nell relaxed. ‘We’d have found signs, and you’d certainly have known if anyone was getting in and hiding somewhere.’

‘Yes, of course. And the only access to Beth’s room is through the window.’

‘Which is two storeys up. Did she describe this figure, though?’

‘She said—’ Nell forced herself to use Beth’s own words. ‘She said he was trying to find her, but he couldn’t because he had no eyes.’

‘Nasty,’ said DI Brent, non-committally. ‘But that could give us a bit of a lead. It’s possible that she saw someone outside the school this morning who looked like her nightmare man. A blind chap, perhaps, or a cripple of some kind.’

‘And ran away from him?’ said Nell, torn between panic all over again and half-guilty hope, because if this was the solution it might not be so bad.

‘It’s not beyond possibility,’ said Brent. ‘I’ll pass it on to uniform right away.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ said the policewoman as the inspector got up to leave. ‘That’s all right, is it, Mrs West?’

‘Nell.’

‘OK. I’m Lisa. We like to be at hand in this kind of situation, just to help out and relay any news.’

Nell did not know whether she wanted this or not. She was not keen on the idea of a stranger, however kind and efficient, being in the flat, offering cups of tea and reassurance every five minutes. But sitting on her own would be even worse, and probably it was police procedure to have an officer there. It would not be for long, of course. Beth would turn up at any minute. She looked at the clock and saw, incredulously, that it was only a quarter past twelve. Only just over three hours since she had dropped Beth off at the school gates.

It was at this point her eyes lit on the old diaries, on the top of the bookshelves, and the vagrant memory clicked into place. Alice had recorded details of a missing child – a child who had been seven years old. She went into the kitchen where Lisa was washing up the teacups.

‘This is most likely of no help, but the inspector said even the smallest thing—’

‘You’ve remembered something?’

‘I think another seven-year-old girl went missing from Marston Lacy in the nineteen sixties,’ said Nell. ‘And I know that’s over forty years ago, but—’