Derwent was back in a few seconds, shaking his head, the tension visible in the line of his mouth and the set of his shoulders. If she’d gone … And where the hell was Georgia? If something had happened to her …
I started up the stairs because I was closer, and because I knew Derwent wanted to go first. I would break him of his desire to protect me if it was the last thing I did, I thought, stepping as quietly as I could on the wooden treads. I hugged the wall, my eyes straining to make sense of the landing: a chair, an ornate chest of drawers, a door on the right that was slightly ajar. I turned back to check whether Derwent had seen it and he gave me a look: Get on with it but be careful. I didn’t often regret that I wasn’t allowed to carry a gun but the weight of it would have been a comfort. A torch and a metal baton weren’t really all that reassuring when you came down to it. Nor was the hand in the small of my back, pushing me forward. Derwent, protective? Not today, apparently.
I pushed the door open gingerly and waited one … two … three. No attack. I pushed harder, letting it swing back against the wall with a hollow thud. No one standing behind the door, waiting for me. I stepped smartly through it and swung around, trying to take in every noteworthy detail of the room in a single sweep. A bay window, the curtains open on the gloomy weather outside. There was a lopsided dressing table in the window, with a three-part mirror on the top reflecting three tense versions of me. A chair. A wardrobe, the doors ajar to show it was empty apart from a couple of pairs of jeans and a jumper.
Kate’s room.
If she’d gone, she’d gone without packing. I went back to the hallway, where Derwent was emerging from another bedroom shaking his head.
‘Nothing.’
We checked the remaining rooms together, finding a dim bathroom and a single bedroom but no sign of Kate or Georgia. I had more or less ordered Georgia to take more risks. I had insisted on leaving her alone with Kate, who was prepared to be ruthless when she needed to be. What had I done?
As I came back down the stairs to the hall I heard the sound again and this time I had more luck in placing it: a door beside the stairs. I crossed over to it and listened, my own breathing filling my ears unhelpfully. Then I turned to Derwent and nodded. He tapped very gently on the door and there was a distinct sob from behind it.
‘Georgia?’ I hissed.
‘Maeve? I thought – I wasn’t sure it was you.’ She sounded terrified, on the edge of hysteria.
‘Where’s Kate?’
‘I don’t know. She – she locked me in here.’
Derwent rattled the door. ‘No key. Can you stand back a bit?’
‘I’ll try.’ There was a shuffling sound. Derwent took a step back and kicked the door as hard as he could. The wood splintered. He kicked it again and the lock gave up. He pulled the door open and it swung back to show a tear-streaked, dusty face blinking at us from the depths of a cupboard that was full of old coats, deckchairs, a croquet set and cobwebs.
‘Come on. Out you come.’ Derwent took her by the arm and helped her out. ‘What happened?’
‘We were in the kitchen – I was making a cup of tea – and she put all the lights on. It must have tripped a fuse. The fuse box is in here. She asked me if I’d mind sorting it out because she was scared of spiders. The next thing I knew, she’d locked me in.’ Georgia held out shaking hands: broken nails, skinned knuckles. ‘I tried to open the door. I couldn’t get any purchase on it. There was nothing to hold on to.’
‘No, once you were in there you had no chance,’ Derwent said. ‘The trick is not getting locked up in the first place.’
‘Has she done a runner? Is her car still there?’ I asked.
‘There’s a silver Seat at the back of the house. I saw it from the kitchen window,’ Derwent said. ‘Hasn’t moved.’
‘Maybe she went on foot.’ Georgia was shivering. ‘My hands really hurt.’
‘Did you hear her moving around, Georgia?’
‘I couldn’t hear anything. I heard the two of you moving around. I wasn’t sure if I should call out or not. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know it was you.’
‘OK. No one’s blaming you,’ Derwent said, quite obviously blaming her. I was holding on to my temper with difficulty. ‘Kate had a plan and you didn’t spot it.’
‘She was always going to run. Why hadn’t she gone before, though? What was she waiting for?’ I was trying to puzzle it out. ‘As soon as she heard Chloe was gone she should have packed up and left.’
‘Why don’t we find her and ask her?’ Derwent said, heading for the kitchen. ‘If she went on foot, she can’t have gone far.’
We scoured the outbuildings quickly and found nothing.
‘Road or river?’ I said as the three of us gathered in the small yard next to the house.
‘She didn’t know where we were going but she’d have known we were coming back by road. Let’s go with river first,’ Derwent decided.
If anything, the rain was heavier now, drumming on the parched earth. Weeks of drought had made the ground steel-hard and the water was sitting on top of it rather than sinking in. We hacked across the gravelled terrace behind the house and onto the sodden grass, our feet sending up a fine spray as we hurried towards the dense evergreen hedge at the end of the lawn. I was the first to reach the wrought-iron gate set into it. I stepped onto flagstones that were slippery-green with algae, and found myself in a walled garden. The beds were overplanted, the paths half-hidden under wildly flourishing plants that smelled sweet and fresh under my feet. There was a pergola at the centre, raised up a little, smothered in a mantle of some sort of creeper. I headed straight for it to orientate myself and decide where to go next.
That decision was made for me as soon as I got close enough to see the floor.
‘Over here!’ I yelled. ‘Blood.’
There was a substantial amount of it – more than a scratch, I thought – and it was smeared in places, as if there had been a struggle. And in the middle of it all lay a battered kitchen knife, the handle smeared red, the blade snapped off at the tip. It was such an ordinary thing, domestic and familiar, the metal dulled with age.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Derwent snapped, looking over my shoulder. ‘Not again.’
It was hard to see the blood that had splashed on the paving slabs: the rain had diluted it, turning it brown, and had washed it away almost everywhere. The trail seemed to lead to the left, where there was another gate out to the riverbank.
‘You go that way,’ Derwent said to Georgia, pointing right. ‘In case this is another of her tricks.’