“They had to leave all their stuff behind?” Marisa said. “That’s hardly fair. I wonder if they were given compensation?”

  Dave shrugged. “Who knows? It was wartime. The army took over what they wanted, didn’t they?”

  Liz had still been fighting to recapture the fleeting memory. Had she been to this shop? Bought an ice cream, perhaps? But it stirred no recollection. After the shop, the paved street ended, and steps ran down to the sea. Below they could see the broken remains of a harbour wall. Clouds were amassing in the west with the promise of more rain coming in.

  “I don’t see how anybody could have hidden out here for long,” Marisa said. “There’s nothing standing, apart from the church, and it’s locked. They can’t have got in there.”

  “There is the big house, you said,” Liz pointed out.

  “Yes, but I think that’s a complete ruin, too,” Dave answered. “And if you just came in here on the off chance, you wouldn’t know about it. It’s way off to the left, through those trees.” He pointed to a small wood. They started to walk towards it. Through the trees Liz could just make out some sort of building in the distance. There had once been a path, but it was so overgrown in places that it was now indistinguishable from the undergrowth. “I’m not sure about going down there,” Dave said. “Who knows what’s lying under this bracken? We don’t want to get a foot blown off, do we? I was told to keep you safe.”

  Liz peered through the trees, trying to make out what she saw there. She was fighting with a strange sense of dread. Something told her she didn’t want to go that way.

  “But if someone brought the little girl in through here?” Marisa asked.

  “Taking a big risk,” Dave said.

  “They’d already taken a big risk in kidnapping a child,” Marisa said sharply. “This is only a narrow path. Is there another way in? Wouldn’t the residents have had a car? And what about deliveries?”

  Dave thought about this. “I suppose there must have been a back entrance, or rather a front entrance, further up the lane. We could look, but I can’t let you go this way.”

  They retraced their steps back to the waiting Land Rover, where DI Jones now sprawled blissfully asleep, his mouth wide open, looking quite unappealing.

  “All done, are we?” he asked, stirring and opening his eyes as the women scrambled into the back seat. “Anything at all? No signs of them?”

  “No signs,” Marisa said. “It’s all quite ruined. Depressing, actually. But we are going to try and see if there is another way to get to the big house. The path from the village has been quite grown over.”

  “All right. But let’s get a move on.” DI Jones sat up. “Looks like more rain is coming in. I don’t fancy getting wet.”

  “But we should try to check it out, guv,” Marisa said.

  He sighed. “I suppose so. But to be honest, I’ve thought this was a wild-goose chase from square one. If you really want to know, I’ve always thought that they sent me down here to keep me out of the way of the real search. I begged them to put me on the team. I told them how important it was to me. I think they humoured me, but who’d want an old bloke who’d already failed three times?”

  Liz heard the bitterness in his voice about the other missing girls and felt a wave of sympathy. She knew how it felt to have been brushed aside only too well. In her case it hadn’t been failure, but stepping on the wrong toes, and the result had been the same—shoved off where she couldn’t do any damage.

  Marisa must have felt the same because she said, “Don’t give up now, guv. If the girl is not here, we’ll move further down the coast. But let’s try and find the big house first.”

  There was no room to turn around, so Dave reversed the Land Rover until they came to a five-bar gate leading into a field. He managed to turn the vehicle without going into the ditch that ran on either side, and they headed back to the road.

  “I say let’s give up on this,” DI Jones said. “It’s almost time for my beer. I’ll shout you one when we get back into town.”

  They had only gone about a hundred yards when Marisa grabbed at the corporal’s sleeve. “Wait. Look. There’s a driveway.”

  Off to their left there was a clear track, not too badly overgrown. They turned into it and followed, with a wood on one side and a newly ploughed field on the other.

  “This obviously leads to a farm,” DI Jones said. “These fields are being cultivated.”

  “We should try it anyway,” Marisa insisted.

  “You’re keeping your governor from his beer?” he said, but he was joking.

  The track plunged into a thick woodland. They had to duck as branches reached out across the road. Dying leaves fluttered down on to them. On the other side they came to giant rhododendron bushes, overgrown topiary hedges and other remains of a formal garden. And beyond they glimpsed the walls of what once had been a large grey stone manor house. It now stood roofless, with the same gaping holes replacing the former windows.

  “Bloody hell,” DI Jones said. “So this was it. It must have been a pretty impressive place once. Fountain and all over there. All right for some.”

  Dave stopped the vehicle, and they got out. Marisa was already examining the ground. “There are tire tracks here,” she said, looking up excitedly. “Someone has been here quite recently.”

  DI Jones came over to where she was indicating. “Not a Morris Minor, that’s for sure. That’s something much bigger. A van, I’d say.”

  Liz was staring at the ruin of the house. Had she once stayed here? But no memory stirred. She didn’t think she had ever seen this place before. Surely she would have remembered a fountain, beautiful gardens? It would have seemed like a fairy palace to a little girl who had spent a lonely childhood in fantasy worlds.

  The men had started towards the house. The flight of steps leading to the front door was pockmarked and cracked. Dave went up. Broken glass lay strewn around, along with slate tiles from a roof. A great oak door now swung crazily on a hinge.

  “Nothing here,” he called back. “The upper floor has fallen in. There are beams lying across, and the floor is piled with debris. What’s more, it’s all open to the sky, and there’s a couple of trees growing in the middle.”

  “Well, that’s that, then.” DI Jones turned back to the jeep. “I can’t see anyone wanting to keep a little kid hidden here. You wouldn’t want to venture in there. It’s too bloody dangerous.”

  “Someone came recently,” Marisa said, still staring down at the tracks.

  “Probably the same farmer that just ploughed that field,” DI Jones said. “Those tracks could be some sort of farm vehicle. Maybe he’s helping himself to slate tiles for his own roof, or timber from the beams.”

  Marisa walked beside Liz to the jeep. “Any memories of this?” she asked. “Do you think you stayed here once?”

  “What’s that?” DI Jones turned back sharply.

  “It was so strange,” Marisa said. “We were in the village, and Liz was sure she’d been there before.”

  “Before the war? You can’t be old enough. Or do you look young for your age?”

  “No, I was born in ’41,” she said.

  “And this was requisitioned in ’43,” Dave chimed in. “So she’d only have been two at the most.”

  “Then you can’t have been here,” DI Jones said. “It was wartime.”

  “But she remembered the pub, that was the weird thing.” Marisa looked at Liz for confirmation. “She called it ‘the Big Boat.’ And you know what? We found the pub sign, and it was the Golden Hinde. A picture of a ship in full sail.”

  “So I suppose you might have visited this house?” DI Jones asked. “Your people are obviously posh. Perhaps you knew the family.”

  “I don’t remember the house at all,” Liz said. “I’ll have to telephone my parents and ask them. But it’s strange, isn’t it? We didn’t live anywhere near here. I grew up in Shropshire. Miles away.”

  “And people didn’t travel much in wartime,” DI Jones said. “There was no petrol for civilians.”

  “My dad was a brigadier,” Liz said. “I’m wondering if perhaps we didn’t accompany him when he had to come down here. I know he supervised part of the D-Day operation.”

  Dave laughed. “You don’t bring your family along when you’re on army business, especially not during wartime.”

  They got into the Land Rover and drove away. Liz looked back at the house and frowned. She could remember a big house—just vaguely. She remembered looking through the banisters down at a square foyer below. And someone had said, “What are you doing out of your room, you naughty girl? Come away from those stairs.”

  She flinched at the sudden memory. A woman’s voice saying it. Not her mother’s. And then it was gone.

  Tydeham, Autumn 1943

  The lorries arrived as the church clock finished striking nine. A whole line of army Bedfords, backing cautiously down the village street.

  “They’re here, Betty,” Ed Jenkins shouted to his wife. “Come on. Get cracking.”

  “I’m finishing my cup of tea first,” Betty said. “They’ll not make me do without my last cup of tea in my own kitchen. Is there a whole lorry for us? And who’s going to help us load all the stuff?”

  “It looks like there’s only four of them,” Ed said. “Not one per family.”

  “Well, that’s no ruddy use, is it? I’ve got all the stock from the shop to take. I’m not leaving that behind, not when I’ve paid for it with good money. They’re not going to cheat me out of everything I’ve worked for . . .” Her voice broke with emotion.

  Ed came over and put his arm around her. “Steady on, old girl,” he said. “I know this is upsetting for you. Ruddy hell, it’s upsetting enough for me, who was born here, and my old dad before me. But there’s a war on, isn’t there? And there’s nothing we can do about it, so we just have to make the best of it. Come on. Drink up, or we’ll find that the Nortons have got all their stuff loaded before us.”

  Betty drained her teacup, washed it up, dried it and shoved the tea towel and cup into an open basket. She stood, looking around the kitchen and out to the shop beyond, with its shelves now almost empty, gave a big sigh, took off her apron and went to join Ed.

  Across the street, Reg Norton was already tottering out towards the lorry with a chest of drawers. “Here, give me a hand with this, young fella,” he shouted to the army private who had just descended from the cab. “I’m not as young as I was.” The private obliged, and together they lifted it on to the lorry bed. “You better come inside and help with the rest,” Reg said. “And God knows how we’re going to get the bedstead out through the front door. But the wife will insist on taking her brass bed.”

  His wife, Mary, met him as he came towards the cottage. “Here, Reg, what about my clothesline?” she called. “I’m not leaving that. Always been a good clothesline, that has.”

  “No time for that now, love,” Reg replied. “We’ve got enough to get on to the lorry as it is before my old back gives out.”

  “Didn’t they send soldiers to help us?” Mary demanded. She spotted the private. “Here, you over there. You’re supposed to be moving us, not standing there.”

  “I’m just the driver,” the boy said. “They didn’t send no one to move you.”

  “Damned cheek, that’s what it is,” Mary said. “And how are the Purvises going to manage, eh? She’s a slip of a girl, and the old man can hardly walk two steps. You’ll have to go down and help them, Reg.”

  “When we’re finished here. You’ll have to give me a hand, my love.”

  “Damned cheek,” Mary said again.

  Further up the street, Tom Pierce came out of the pub carrying a captain’s chair. “Come on, Freddie,” he shouted to his son. “You can help with these. Get cracking.”

  “Those lorries are big, aren’t they, Dad?” Freddie just stood there, wide-eyed, staring at them. “Big lorries.”

  Tom shook his head and went back into the pub to bring out the next chair.

  Bert Thatcher, strong as an ox, had clambered up on to the truck and was piling boxes handed up to him by Molly. “Take care with my china, now,” she called to him.

  “It’s all right. Keep your hair on. It’s not going far, is it?” he said. “And if it won’t all fit on the lorry, I’ll come back with the tractor and trailer for the rest.”

  “I can’t believe we’re going,” Molly said, looking around her. “I never thought this day would come.”

  “Cheer up, love. At least you’re going to get a real bathroom for the first time.” Bert did not seem too upset.

  “You should go and see if Mrs Purvis needs help. She can’t load furniture by herself, and those two little girls to look after.”

  Bert stared, then shook his head. “Joan Lee’s got one of her boys helping them.”

  “They should have sent army blokes to give us a hand,” Molly said as she handed up a kitchen chair. “Leaving us to our own devices like this . . . it’s not right.”

  “None of it’s right, is it?” Bert said. “But then it wasn’t right of Mr Hitler to invade Poland and start a war, was it? Nothing’s bloody well right any more.”

  And he threw a big sack of potatoes up on to the lorry.

  Old Mr Purvis was more concerned with onions. “We can’t leave now,” he shouted, waving his stick at his daughter-in-law. “My onions aren’t ready yet. And taters in the ground.”

  Sally Purvis pushed a strand of hair back from her face. “I told you, Dad, they’re going to compensate you for your crops. You’ll get money to start a new garden.”

  “Money don’t feed nobody come winter, do it?” he said. “And that pocket handkerchief of a garden won’t feed anybody.”

  They looked up as they saw the Lee boys approaching. “Ma says we should give you a hand,” one of them said.

  “Are you already loaded?” Sally Purvis asked.

  “That’s right. All done. Can’t wait to be out of here. Best thing that ever happened to us, I reckon. Now I can join up when I turn eighteen and not have to worry about Mum.”

  “What about the big house?” Old Mr Purvis asked. “Are they moving out today? Does someone have to go and give them a hand?”

  “Ma says they’ve got their own moving van coming, with men to help.”

  “Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” Old Mr Purvis said. “All that fine stuff they own. You couldn’t put that on the back of a lorry.”

  Amelia Bennington stood on the steps of Tydeham Grange as a van came up the drive. “This van is nowhere near big enough,” she said. “Didn’t you tell them we wanted a proper pantechnicon?”

  “It’s all they have, my dear,” Charles Bennington said. He came up behind her and put an arm around her shoulder. “And you have to understand that we can only take the bare minimum. There’s not going to be much room in the new place. Just enough to keep us going for now.”

  “But our lovely pictures. Our vases, our decorations. We must have those. I do need some beauty around me.”

  “The best of the pictures are going into storage. They’ll be all right,” Mr Bennington said. “But the rest of the stuff, well, we’ll just have to leave it in the hands of the gods and trust it will still be here when we come back.”

  Amelia Bennington walked through the house ahead of him, running a hand over a chair back, a sideboard. Then she froze. “My dining table,” she said. “We have to have our dining table, Charles.”

  “It won’t fit, old thing,” Charles Bennington said. “It’s only a small, ordinary house. You’ve seen it.”

  “Horrid, poky little place.” She shuddered. “Nasty, dark little rooms. I can’t stand it. How am I ever going to cope?” And she burst into tears.

  “We’ll manage somehow, my dear,” Mr Bennington said. “I’ll help in any way I can. We’ll get a girl in from the village to do the housework, I’m sure. We’ll get through this.”

  “Everything has been taken from me.” Her wail rose louder. “First my daughter, then my son and now my house. I’ve nothing left. Nothing at all.”

  Six-year-old James had been standing in the doorway watching as men carried out boxes, knowing that his rocking horse would be left behind. He knew he was too old for such toys, but it had been such a splendid rocking horse, still big enough for him and in the family for generations. He had spent hours galloping on it to imaginary battles. Now he was trying to be as brave as his father had urged him to be. A big man, right, James? Doing our part for our country. But it was hard. And seeing his mother going to pieces like this was most unnerving. She had always seemed so poised, remote, elegant—the sort of figure to be admired from afar. He went over to her and slipped his hand into hers. “You’ve got me, Mummy,” he said. “I’ll look after you.”

  She looked down at him as if she’d noticed him for the first time. “You’re a good boy, James,” she said. “I just wish I could love you better.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Weymouth, 1968

  Clouds had swallowed up the sunset by the time they drove into Weymouth and the first drops of rain spattered on to the bonnet of the car.

  “Time for that beer, I think,” the inspector said as they drew close to the seafront and the hotel. “What time do you have to have the Land Rover back, Corporal?”

  “No special time. It’s signed out for the day,” he said.

  “And you’d be allowed a beer on duty?”

  “Who’s to notice, sir?” Dave grinned.

  “That looks like a pub over there,” Marisa pointed out.

  Dave turned to their left and brought the vehicle to a halt outside the Black Dog. It was a pleasant-looking whitewashed building with the image of a running dog painted on it. It was beginning to rain in earnest as they sprinted for the front door. Inside was warm and cosy with a large stone fireplace on one wall and a dark oak bar. They took their seats at a table near the fire while DI Jones went up to the bar to order. Liz had followed mechanically, but her head was still spinning as she tried to recall those flashes of memory. All she wanted was to get back to the hotel so she could telephone her parents, but the others, it seemed, were in no hurry to leave the pub. DI Jones ordered the first round. Marisa had a half pint of lager. Liz ordered a shandy. Then Dave ordered a round. Even with the smaller amount of alcohol, Liz began to feel detached from reality. I might have visited that village, she told herself. I might have stayed at that big house before the village was abandoned. So what? But then why, she wondered, did she have this deep feeling of dread?