‘Yes, I was thinking the same. I ought to check in with the hospital again.’ She took her burner phone from a pocket. She quickly glanced again at the anonymous text that had arrived a couple of hours earlier while she was searching alone. This time, however much she knew the message wouldn’t send, she checked her phone was on silent, hit reply and typed.

Who ARE you?

An instant reply. She jumped out of her skin.

Don’t you know by now?

She turned her back to Patrick, thumbs gently tapping.

Just tell me it’s you.

Seconds passed. Nothing.

Message sending failed.

‘I can’t get a signal,’ she said, hiding her tension by fiddling with her phone. She disliked the lie and promised herself it would be the last.

He sighed. ‘OK, we’ll drive back up the hill till you get one. But be quick.’ She was already marching down the drive, shaking with relief that he hadn’t checked for a signal on his own phone.

Thirty minutes later, they were back.

‘I overestimated,’ said Patrick. ‘Depending on the weather, we’ve got two or so hours of decent light left before the sun ducks behind the mountain. Maybe the stable was our best chance. But let’s cover the ground – courtyards, drives, garden, perimeter. That’s the one thing the underpants do confirm – if someone has tidied the place up, something else could have been missed.’

Beyond the house, they found a disused well. Patrick peered down; it seemed to descend for ever. ‘You’d probably never see the bottom,’ he said, ‘even with the sun overhead.’ He leant over, his head and long back disappearing. ‘Anyway no need to chuck bodies down here. That’s the trouble,’ he said, pulling himself up and gazing at the hillside beyond, ‘great expanses of green as far as the eye can see, some thick forests, lakes, reservoirs. Hiding bodies wouldn’t be difficult if you had the will and the muscle.’

They were tramping around the perimeter fields as the sun ducked behind a ridge, their spirits sinking with the light. ‘That’s nearly it,’ he said. ‘One last look inside.’ They walked back down the lane and slid back through the gateway. ‘You said it earlier. It’s not as if we found nothing.’ He spread his arms towards the courtyard. ‘We found the place itself.’

‘Shush,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

She placed a forefinger on her lips and then pointed it towards the barn. He followed the line. ‘Is that a light?’

‘We can leave,’ he murmured. ‘Just turn round. Drive away.’ She shook her head, then nodded once, silently, and moved forward.

Chapter 28

28

They crept across the courtyard. Nothing moved. Just an unexplained single bulb hanging from a beam at the near end of the barn.