‘What do you mean, you can’t find her? Fuck’s sake, what’s wrong with you morons?’ asked Harlan, who was walking around Nula’s sitting room in irritation, glaring at Nipper and Ludo.

Everything should have been neat and tidy, but this was a loose end and he didn’t want any of those. All this hassle with Belle was holding him up. He was due back on the manor, he had business to conduct. The Air Accident people were phoning, asking to meet and discuss Charlie and Nula’s crash. Another distraction. This was all such a fucking nuisance.

‘It’s like we say, boss,’ said Ludo with a shrug. ‘We’ve looked all over the grounds, everywhere. We been up the lane, both ways. We knocked on farm doors.’

‘How many?’

‘You what?’

‘How many farm doors? There’s at least twenty smallholdings around here and a lot of larger farms too.’

‘Well not that many, I grant you, but . . .’

Harlan walked up to Ludo and he fell silent at the look in Harlan’s eyes.

‘You get out there and find that bitch, OK?’

‘She couldn’t have walked far. She was bleeding,’ said Nipper.

‘Yeah, that happens when you been in a tankful of caimans. As you useless fucking articles might find out if you’re not very bloody careful. She should never have got out of there. You silly fucker, Nipper, I told you, you should have stayed there and made sure the job was done right.’

‘We’ll keep looking boss. Don’t worry,’ said Ludo.

Harlan’s gaze held his. ‘You better check the hospitals.’

‘But, boss—’

‘If she’s managed to get some help, managed to get herself checked in somewhere, then she could start talking and it could be a problem. We don’t want that, now do we? Check the hospitals.’

116

Days were passing, Belle supposed. She’d lost all track. Trix stayed on the bed except for when she went out into the kitchen to be fed, or outside to do her business. The bearded man fed Belle cool soup, mashing up bread in it so that it was soft and didn’t pull at her stitched cheek. He made her tea and gave it to her cool, through a straw. Fed her more painkillers. She dozed and woke and dozed again, hearing sounds of someone working with tools nearby, maybe unscrewing something, but it didn’t matter.

When she began to get stronger he helped her across the room to the loo with its built-in shower cubicle and waited outside the door to be sure she wasn’t about to faint in there. While she was in there she saw what the noises had been. The bathroom cabinet door was missing.

Bet that had a mirror on it.