63

‘ALL THREE OF THEM? ARE YOU SURE?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Evi. ‘Joe drew her, Tom and Millie both recognized her. Millie even had a name for her. Ebba, she called her. She’s quite real, this Ebba person. The police just have to find her. Are you playing Springsteen?’

‘A man can dream. Hang on, I’ll turn it down.’ Harry picked up the remote control and the music faded. ‘So what is she?’ he asked. ‘A kid, a dwarf?’

‘Hard to say. Tom showed me on a height chart roughly how tall he thought she was. About 140 centimetres, which would put her on a par with an eight-or a nine-year-old child. But if Joe’s drawing was accurate, her hands, feet and head are disproportionately big. That might suggest an adult with stunted growth. And she appears to have some sort of lump, maybe a goitre, on the front of her neck.’

‘If someone like that lives in Heptonclough, people will know about her.’

‘Exactly. And she must live there. There are no other towns close enough.’

‘There are quite a few farms dotted about, some of them pretty isolated. She may come from one of them.’

‘The detective who was there mentioned that. He’s going to talk to his boss about getting a couple of officers to start visiting homes.’

‘They took all this seriously? I mean, at the end of the day, it was a six-year-old kid’s drawing.’

‘I don’t think they have much else to go on, do you?’

‘What did Joe have to say about her?’

‘Nothing. I talked to him for a good five minutes on his own, but he wasn’t saying a word. Tom thinks he’s made her a promise that he won’t talk about her, but drawing her picture doesn’t seem to count.’

‘Could she have threatened him?’ asked Harry.

‘Possibly. Although I rather doubt it. Joe doesn’t show any sign of being frightened of her. He wasn’t stressed by the conversation, just silent. And Millie greeted her picture like she was an old friend.’

‘So Tom has been scared to death of someone his brother and sister are fine with? How likely does that seem?’

‘Tom’s quite a bit older,’ said Evi. ‘In many ways he’s starting to think like an adult. Joe and Millie, being younger, might be more likely to accept Ebba.’

‘What is that you’re calling her?’ asked Harry.

‘Ebba. It’s Millie’s name for her. Could be anything, of course – Emma, Ella, who knows? The point is, she’s real.’

‘And how’s she getting into the house?’

‘Well, she isn’t any more, according to Tom. He’s hasn’t seen her since the night the wall came down. Now that Alice and Gareth have tightened up their security, she can’t get in. He thinks she might still be watching them when they’re outside, but he can’t be sure.’

‘Come round,’ said Harry, scared at how much he wanted her to.

No reply.

‘I’m cooking,’ he tried, when there was still no response.

‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said.

Inside Harry, something snapped. ‘I don’t know anything of the kind,’ he said. ‘All I know is that for the first time in my life, I’m losing my grip on what’s happening around me. I have reporters pouncing on me every time I go out, I hardly dare answer the phone any more. Everywhere I turn I find a police officer. I’m starting to feel like I’m a suspect myself.’

‘I understand that, but—’

‘I’m dealing with a level of grief that is unprecedented for me, I have corpses of children tumbling out of the ground and my only friends in this place are heading for nervous breakdowns. I find effigies of children in the church, I’ve been tricked into drinking blood …’

‘Harry …’

‘And the one person I’ve met who could help keep me sane refuses to have anything to do with me.’

‘Effigies? Blood? What are you talking about?’ Her voice had dropped. She sounded as if she was holding the telephone away from her ear. Harry heard a soft knocking sound. Had the cat knocked something over?

‘Evi, if I thought you weren’t interested, I wouldn’t be pestering you,’ he said, looking round the room. No sign of the cat. ‘I promise you, I’m not that pathetic. Just tell me I’m out of line and I’ll leave you alone. But I don’t think that. I think you feel the same way I do, and …’ The knocking sounded again. There was someone at the door.

‘What do you mean, you’ve drunk blood?’

‘Look, can we just forget that crap for a minute and talk about us? Come for dinner – nothing else, I promise. I just want to talk. ‘

‘Harry, what haven’t you told me?’

‘I’ll tell you everything if you come round,’ he offered.

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody childish,’ she snapped at him. ‘Harry, this is serious. Tell me what happened.’

‘There’s someone at the door,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to answer it. If you’re not here in half an hour, I’m coming to you.’ He put the phone down.

Muttering curses, Harry walked down the hall. He could see a tall, dark shape through the glass of the front door. Wondering what the record might be for speed of dispatching an unwanted parishioner, Harry pulled the door open.

Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton stood on his doorstep, one hand clutching a bottle of Jameson. He lifted it into the air. ‘Couldn’t help noticing your own bottle was looking a bit depleted last time I was here,’ he said. ‘So I brought my own.’