I forced my boots inside my backpack and got my wellingtons from the car. Rolling my trouser legs up over my knees to stay dry, I stepped into the river. Across the field, a thin column of smoke rose from our camp. I’d made sitting ducks of us when I decided to come back here. Part of me wanted to rush back and bundle my three in the car and go somewhere I could just close the door on the world and hold them close. But we weren’t going anywhere without Lola. The quicker I found her, the quicker I could get back to Billy. I followed the river upstream.
After wading around the first bend, I stopped dead in the middle of the water. I hadn’t come all that far from the camp as the crow flies—a toddler would make quicker progress over land. But I was a good way from the safety of the car. And I was exposed. What would I do if I did find this man? Splash him? At least he wouldn’t be expecting me to come up the river. If nothing else, I had an element of surprise. And a toy gun that looked real from a distance.
Farther upstream, the water slid out from under a squat arch of bricks. The tangle of thicket above the tunnel prevented me from going over. There was only one way through. I put my hands down into the water and crabbed forward, my wellies filling with water amid great echoing footsteps. So much for an ambush. I crept along, my backpack dislodging masonry that plopped into the water behind me. The exit was covered in a gauze of branches, which grasped at me as I broke through.
Ahead, the landscape was sliced in two by the watercourse, as definitively as a tear through a piece of paper. To the left, a copse grasped across the stream. To the right, lush parkland was decorated with ornamental trees. In the distance, probably a mile back, stood a honey-colored mansion with a flat front and a long stone portico. This must be Moton Hall, I thought, a minor National Trust property that’s marked on the map. I’d poked my nose down the drive the night before, but there’d been no signs of life despite a number of parked cars: buzz. I’d retreated.
I stepped up onto the grassy bank toward the stately home, but instinctively turned to check the dark wood behind me on the other side of the river. And there, at a muddy spot where a path through the trees reached the water, stood a fishing rod. My insides recoiled from what I was looking for: human activity. I slid my backpack to the ground, pulling out the crowbar and Maglite. I changed the wellies for the big boots in case I needed some heft. I stepped into the water and picked my way across the rocks before slipping into the trees.
Just a few paces from the river, the forest turned Grimm. A wide-girthed tree marked the way, its spiraling torso pocked with bulbous lumps like an old woman’s swollen knees. I almost tripped over a walking stick with a handle of natural knotted wood that lay on the ground. It felt good in my hand, heavy but deft. It swung in time with my strides.
The trail led me around a dogleg into an avenue of enormous shade trees. It was overgrown and unkempt. A road to nowhere. I’d stopped to see if I could make out the path, when a snapping twig to my left spun me round.
“Are you lost?” An old man stood a few yards back. He was smaller than I, but hardy-looking, sinewy, like the forest. “You have returned my stick. I am forever in your debt.” He came through the trees with his hand out. Automatically, I offered the cane to him. He reached slowly forward, eye contact all the while, and plucked away the stick. As soon as it left my grip, I felt vulnerable, even though the crowbar hung down from my other hand.
“By way of thanks, may I offer you tea?” he said. “I even have milk. I suppose you have run out of milk by now?”
The underwood twined my feet as firmly as hands rising up from the earth. I would make little headway by running.
“You live at the house?” I nodded my head toward the stately home.
“Moton Hall? No such illusions. No, I’m this way.” He turned into the trees, and I used the crowbar to hold aside an overladen branch to follow behind. There was no obvious path, but bent twigs and broken flower heads suggested that he often passed this way. As we walked, he rabbited on about the trees—something about chestnuts—seemingly unconcerned about my reply, because I said nothing to encourage him. With each stride, his stick inflicted a fleshy jab into the soil. This could be my man. The one who’d held Billy. Who could still have Lola. Who was now leading me deeper into the woods. What was I thinking, coming out here, all invincible with a pair of heavy boots and a toy gun, like a kid playing dress up? I felt not just vulnerable, but worse: naive. Out of my depth. It made no sense that someone had taken Billy, and then returned him, unharmed; I saw that now. Billy must have been bait. My stomach crawled within my body as I realized how smoothly this man had lured me here. Maybe he already has Lola; now, me. Then what? Joni? Christ, would he take Maggie—what would he do to her? My hands gripped both ends of the crowbar, and I stepped closer behind him. He half glanced round, still walking and talking—“the Spanish Armada, would you believe!”—gesturing up into the umbrella of a vast tree. My footsteps muted on the bare ground under the canopy; I caught up to an arm’s length from his shoulder, focused on the leathery patch of skin behind his ear. I raised the crowbar, but as I did so he swung up his stick. I jumped aside and stumbled over a root, but he was only reaching up to hook a tree branch.
“Watch your step, dear.”
His voice was as waxy as the leaves he held in his straining grasp. I scooped up my crowbar from the forest floor. When he finally released the branch, it freed itself with a shudder, leaving on the end of his stick a perfect pair of chlorophyll-green chestnut cases. He held them out for me to take. “They’re early this year. It’s been so warm. We’ll have a bumper crop of conkers.” The spiked cases sat on my palm like some medieval weapon. “As I was saying, quite different from Spanish chestnuts. Anyway, here I am.” He indicated the end of the tree line, where a small field lay like an island inside the forest. It was neat, as though freshly swept. To one side was a small wooden building, little more than a garden shed, with a tin roof and shelves on the outside wall where tools and cleaning products were covered by an overhang.
The man crossed the grass to undo the padlocked door, then sat on the step to remove his boots, placing them upside down onto two sticks that were fixed to the inside of the door for that purpose. His fussing gave me a chance to glance into the sparse room. Bunk beds, with the bottom layer given over to a kind of work space. A sink unit with a single hob. Plates and a mug tree on a high shelf. I couldn’t see under the bed, but that appeared to be it. Spartan. Nowhere to hide.
“Sugar?” He waited in the doorway.
Beyond the hut, the land sloped steeply down to rejoin the forest. A set of three shallow steps, their honey-colored stone stained green with age, was stranded in the middle of the grass. A trail of heat tiptoed up my neck and onto my cheeks.
“Sugar, dear?”
I walked past him to the secluded steps. A carved stone acorn lay on the ground. One soft footstep, and he was next to me, barefoot in the wet grass. His head barely reached my shoulder, but his feet twitched with wiry tendons.