Within moments they saw the flash of the officer’s torch through the gloom of the windows, and heard a number of bolts being dragged back. A muffled voice came from inside.
‘I can’t find what’s keeping it closed. It won’t budge.’
Tom shone his own torch on the door, and saw that there were padlocked metal bars at the top and bottom. He immediately recognised the significance of them being on the outside. Bruce didn’t need to be told what to do, and disappeared once more round the side of the house.
‘Hang on in there. Bruce has just gone for some tool or other - we’ll be with you in a second.’
‘It’s all right, sir. This place is as quiet as the grave.’
Tom didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
Within minutes, Bruce had taken a sledgehammer to the padlocks, and the door was pushed open.
‘Are you okay?’
The woman officer, who was herself no more than a girl, nodded. But this wasn’t a comfortable house, and certainly not a place to be alone in the dark.
He tried a light switch, but nothing happened. He realised that Hugo must have switched the power off at the fuse box. That suggested that the house was empty, but he couldn’t be sure. He no longer knew if he wanted to find Mirela here. Like Laura, he was beginning to hope for a phone call to say that Mirela was somewhere else entirely.
‘Beatrice, do you know where the main fuse box is?’
‘No idea.’
‘Right. We can waste time looking for it, or we can use torches. Everybody happy to use a torch?’ With nods all round, they split into two groups. Tom and the woman officer, with Beatrice in tow, began their search of the downstairs rooms whilst Bruce and detective made their way upstairs to the first floor bedrooms. They crept around like burglars in the night, as if frightened of the secrets that the house would reveal. Each footstep seemed to resonate, as if the house were hollow and empty.
And it was ominously quiet. A large stained glass window high above the front door cast sinister shadows as the moon periodically darted out from behind a cloud.
The first door Tom tried opened into a dining room. Tom shone his torch into the shadowy depths of the room. The furniture was old, but in good condition. There was a very thin film of dust, but not what Tom would have expected if the house was deserted. He couldn’t believe that Hugo would clean for himself, so somebody else must have been doing it. Perhaps this was all that he wanted the girls for. Tom brushed that thought aside. With what he knew now, he was certain that it was nothing so simple.
For the moment, he cast no more than a cursory glance around each of the rooms he entered. There would be time for a proper search later, when they had established that they were definitely alone. Although he knew that Hugo was dead and there could be no threat from anybody in this house, he couldn’t deny that the darkness and the silence sent a cold shiver up his spine.
He had just tried the last door and found it locked when Tom heard a shout from upstairs.
‘DCI Douglas! Here! You need to come here.
Now
!’
Tom turned to the woman officer and pointed to Beatrice.
‘Keep her down here, do you understand?’
He turned and ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. The shadows cast by the moon appeared to be chasing him as he ran, the thump of his feet echoing dismally around the barren walls. He followed the sounds of the voices to a bedroom at the front of the house.
Pushing open the door, he could see the light from the officers’ abandoned torches shining against blank walls, and didn’t know what he was looking for. There was a dreadful smell in the room, but he couldn’t see anybody. He flashed his torch and captured the policemen in the light, kneeling by the side of a mattress on the floor.
At that moment, the room burst into bright light. The woman officer’s voice drifted up the stairs, shouting something about finding the fuse box. But Tom didn’t register what she was saying. All he could do was look at the body lying on the mattress, revealed in the harsh glare of a bare light bulb.
Laura felt a deep sense of foreboding. She had no idea what they would discover, but she knew it wouldn’t be good. Nobody knew Hugo the way that she did, and she felt a massive pressure in her chest, as if somebody were pressing down on it. In the end, nothing prepared her for the reality.
Becky came into the drawing room where they were all waiting in silence. Her face was grim.
‘Laura, Tom just called. Could I speak to you in private, please?’
‘Becky, whatever it is you can tell everybody. Too much has happened now for there to be any secrets.’
Becky swallowed, and asked if it would be okay if she sat down. Everybody just looked at her.
‘Tell us, please Becky.’
‘Tom is going to come and see you and give you more detail, but it appears that when they reached the farm, they found a girl. Mirela Tinescy.
Laura put her head down and gasped. It was Will who spoke, reaching for Imogen’s hand as he did so as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
‘My God! Is she okay?’ he said.
‘She’s alive. That’s about as much as I can say, really. She was chained up in a bedroom, by her ankle. Her water had run out - we don’t know how long ago.’
The words ‘chained up’ made Laura shiver, and she could feel her body covered with goose bumps. She had to ask.
‘But there’s only the one girl? They’ve not found any others?’
Becky shook her head silently.
‘Tom’s going to organise a car to bring Beatrice back, but he needs to stay there. He won’t be able to get back to you until late morning at the earliest. He asked me to tell you that he’s really sorry, Laura. We both know how dreadful this must be for you.’
Three stunned faces were turned towards Becky, and then back towards Laura, who lifted her head and leaned back heavily. She stared up at the ceiling, unable to return anybody’s gaze.
Only Will broke the silence.
‘My God, Laura. What were you married to?’
Imogen glared at her ex-husband, their moment of closeness apparently gone.
‘Shut up, Will. Now’s not the time, is it? Leave Laura alone. Stella, not the time for a cup of tea, I don’t think. I know where the brandy is. Let’s get it sorted shall we?’
Laura stared into space, and suddenly realised that tears were running down her face. Only Becky and Will remained in the room.
Becky broke the silence. ‘I’m sorry, Laura. It must be an awful time for you. I really don’t know what to say.’
Laura tried to smile through her tears.
‘It’s okay, Becky. I’m not crying for me. I’m crying for those girls. If he treated them that badly, you see, I can’t believe he would have risked letting them go. He
wouldn’t
have let them go. They would have exposed him for what he was. Do you understand?’
Nobody spoke.
‘And I knew. I
knew
he was taking them.’
There was a shocked silence. Will was looking at his sister in amazement.
‘What the fuck do you mean, Laura? You knew he was taking them? Why in God’s name didn’t you
do
anything?’
How could she ever explain?
‘Don’t you think I
tried
, Will? You have no idea. No idea at all. I even went to the
police
with my suspicions - a Chief Constable no less. And look where that got me. Back in a straightjacket, practically. There’s a lot you don’t understand, and clearly a lot that even I didn’t understand.’
She wanted to plead with them. She just wanted somebody - anybody - to begin to comprehend the life she had lead, and why she had only one option.
‘I thought he was just paying them off - really I did. That’s what he implied. I knew it wouldn’t have been nice for them, knowing Hugo’s proclivities, but I never thought he’d chain them up. I thought he’d use them in his weird games and send them away with more money than they had ever dreamed of. And when I returned here from the home, I had to do exactly as he said. I couldn’t rock the boat. There was too much at stake.’
Laura realised that she was in danger of saying too much. She tried to calm herself down before she continued with her explanation.
‘Once he was dead, I thought they were all safe, don’t you see? So there didn’t seem any point raking through the dirt then. More than anything, I didn’t want Alexa to ever know who her father really was. She has enough to deal with.’
Laura turned to Becky, in the hope that the other woman would understand what she was saying, and why she had kept this to herself. Becky looked sympathetic, but Laura felt a sense of futility. She wished Tom were here. She thought that he would understand. He already knew some of it, and he believed in her. She was sure of that.
‘Will,’ Laura said, ‘there’s a lot of this that won’t make sense to you. But the day after Hugo died, we heard that a girl was missing. A girl called Danika. When I heard that, I didn’t know what to do. If I had thought that I could help, I would have told Tom. But I had no idea where he’d taken them - and I
promise
you I didn’t think he would harm them. At least, not physically. Tom only told me that Mirela was missing a few hours ago, but there was
still
nothing I could do.’
Laura was crying. She bit the inside of her mouth to try to control her urge to sob out everything - all the things that she had kept to herself for so long. Things that even Imogen didn’t know. But she knew she mustn’t. She told Will how she had reported her suspicions to Theo Hodder. She had no idea how much of this Becky knew - maybe Tom had told her, maybe he hadn’t. But she didn’t care.
‘But it didn’t work, Will,’ she sobbed. ‘I should have tried harder to make somebody believe me. I should have stopped him before now. But I couldn’t. Hugo knew I was on to him, and he had all the cards, you see. It’s much more complex than any of you realise.’
She looked at Becky and Will, and could see nothing but bewilderment on their faces. They had no idea what she was talking about now.
‘Those poor, poor girls. Hadn’t they suffered enough? They’d been brought to England full of hope, only to find that they had to service God knows how many revolting men each day. Then they were rescued and all was well for a while. Life started to look good. Then a devil in disguise smiled at them, and they didn’t recognise what he was. What’s that Shakespeare quote? ‘O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain.’ That was my husband. That was Hugo.’
As soon as the ambulance had left with a weak - but alive - Mirela, Tom arranged for a car to take Beatrice back to Oxfordshire.
‘Beatrice, thank you so much for agreeing to come. The local police have arrived now, and they’re taking over. But I’m going to stay here and work with them. You’ve been a great help, you know, and I do hope it hasn’t been too traumatic for you.’
She patted him on the arm in an almost maternal way, which seemed at odds with her previous manner. She must have been as shocked as anybody. After all, Hugo was her brother.
‘I’ve lived a long time, Tom, and witnessed a lot of pain and suffering over the years. It’s deeply disturbing that a member of my own family treated another human being in this deplorable fashion, but I don’t think it’s me you should be worried about.’
Beatrice looked genuinely concerned as she continued.
‘How do you think Laura’s going to take this? Whatever she suspected, it’s not going to be an easy thing to come to terms with.’
Tom didn’t want to contemplate how Laura would feel. She had lived with this man, and been his wife for several years, so on top of all the other emotions there was inevitably going to be a huge sense of humiliation - the shame of living with a monster, and the guilt of wondering whether any of the blame could rest with her. He tried to think of a way to lessen her pain.
‘Beatrice, you may be able to help. At the moment, Laura will only have the bare facts. But you’ve seen what this place is like. One of the locals told me that the fence and gate have been here for at least twelve years, as far as he can remember, so whatever Hugo’s been doing, he’s been doing it for a long time. Since
before
he met Laura. She needs to be made to understand that whatever has happened, it is
not
her fault. I don’t think anybody but you will be able to convince her of that - particularly given what you told me on the journey down here. Would you do that for me, please?’
Beatrice squeezed his arm.
‘You’re a kind and thoughtful man, Tom Douglas. I would say that it will be my pleasure - but of course it won’t. I’ll talk to Laura and I’ll do my best to make her understand, because I don’t want the innocent to suffer any more than you do.’
Trying his best to muster a smile of thanks, Tom quickly helped Beatrice into the waiting car and returned to the house.
‘Good timing, Tom,’ DCI Sarah Charles, the Senior Investigating Officer from the Dorset police informed him. ‘We’ve managed to open the study door about ten minutes ago. Hugo clearly didn’t want anybody getting in there, given the elaborate locks, so let’s see what he’s been hiding, shall we?’
A quiet voice interrupted them. Bruce, the ever-resourceful young sergeant had been put in charge of searching the upper floors, and Tom could see that he still looked a little pale. But then he had been the one to find Mirela, and it couldn’t have been easy for him. Even the most hardened and experienced of policemen never really become inured to acts of blatant cruelty.
‘Ma’am, sir, I thought you should know that we’ve found lots of female clothing upstairs in the attic. Some of it’s in cheap suitcases, some just in bin liners. But it’s all just shoved in - there’s no way it’s been packed for a trip.’
‘All for one woman, would you say Bruce?’ Sarah Charles asked.
‘Doubt it, ma’am. Several different sizes - none big - from about a size six to about a ten, I’m reliably informed.’
‘Okay, thanks. You know the drill.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Tom spoke for the first time.
‘What do you reckon, Sarah?’
She shook her head and gave a small shrug.
‘I don’t feel good about this, if I’m honest. I’ve got that tell-tale tingle up my spine. You?’