‘In there.’ Carly shoved Leah inside.

‘Please don’t shut me in here, Carly. I’m so scared of the dark. Please…’

Carly ignored her sister’s whimpers and closed the door.

Footsteps grew closer.

‘Your turn.’ Carly lifted Marie to a locker with a door and when satisfied she was hidden she searched for another intact one she could hide inside.

It was high.

Too high. Carly couldn’t reach.

The footsteps echoed in the corridor they had just crossed.

Carly’s hands stretched above her head as her socked feet scrambled for purchase. Her arms were on fire as she attempted to hoist herself up, before plummeting back to the ground.

‘Oh, girls.’

Almost whimpering, certain she’d be discovered, she tried again and this time she gained enough thrust to launch herself forward, until she was inside the locker. Carly was poised to curl herself into a ball but instead found there was a depth to the space that hadn’t been evident from the outside. She rolled onto her side and found she could stretch out her legs.

It dawned on her then that these weren’t lockers for possessions at all. They were built to house bodies.

They were in the morgue.

She could smell it then. Death. Despair. She thought of the things Nicola Morgan’s brother had boasted he had seen. The spirits of limbless soldiers. Bloodied officers. She imagined them laying where she now lay.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

The blackness settled over her, choking her. Carly’s heart beat loudly out of her chest. So loud she was sure it would draw the men to them like a beacon.

Footsteps.

Carly clamped her hand over her mouth to trap the whimper that threatened to escape.

‘Three blind mice, three blind mice,’ Moustache sang. ‘See how they run.’

The nursery rhyme turned her blood to ice.

But even more chilling was what came next.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Leah

Now

My bones are ice. Eyes frantically searching for the flicker of Archie’s red coat as I scream his name. My brain trying to make sense of what is going on.

But I know.

He has been taken.

Just as Marie, Carly and I were snatched all those years ago.

Just like Marie has been again. I knew he had got to her and now he’s got to Archie and… Oh God. I don’t know where to look first. There are too many bushes obscuring my view. Trees looming ominously. He must have been hiding. Watching Archie and me. Waiting for the opportunity to make his move.

I have to call the police. George. I unlock my mobile but it slips through my fumbling fingers and drops to the ground. Sobs escape me as I pick it up.

Hurry.

‘Are you okay, dear?’ the lady with the terrier asks, tentatively placing her hand on my arm.

‘My son. He’s gone. He’s…’

‘Isn’t that him just there?’ She nods her head to my left. I turn.

Archie!

My heart sings. I am giddy with relief.