"And you say you were cut by the barbed wire? Don't movea there, that should do it."

"I was in the orchard; there was a loose strand of barbed wire in the hedge."

"Does it sting?"

"Not much."

"What were you doing prowling about in the bushes anyway?"

"Sam was in there, going crazy. I thought he'd got hold of a hedgehog or something."

"So, you wound up the injured hero, hmm?"

"I'll live."

Smiling, Val shook her head at the dog that sat there, his tail swishing back and forth across the carpet. He'd got the grinning look on his face. Sam knows the truth, John told himself. He knows I nearly had my head sliced off when the fence post burst out like a torpedo. He knows we had a visit from a stranger, too, with a dark tale to tell. But, thank G.o.d, dogs don't speakie da' English. Val won't be the wiser. He can hide this from her.

But why hide it? Why not tell her everything as she dabs antiseptic cream on my head? Buta But what? She'd worry. Yes. She would. A trouble shared isn't a trouble halved. It's trouble just spread a bit further, troubling people that don't need to be troubled.

He felt a sudden heart-warming burst of love for his wife. She'd certainly gone through a whole potty full of s.h.i.t when he first tried to cut it as a writer. When ma.n.u.scripts came bouncing back in the mail with rejection slips that were so d.a.m.n depressing he had to reach for the whisky bottle. Times were tough five years ago. They'd had to sell the car to keep the roof over their heads. Even when his first books. .h.i.t the stores they paid so d.a.m.n little. That old saying really was true: Crime doesn't pay.

Or at least it didn't pay him. He'd spend a year writing a crime book only to be paid what amounted to nickels and dimes. Come Christmas he'd wind up working nights in a mail depot to ensure that there'd be turkey on the table and presents in the Santa sacks.

Of course he and Val would argue, then endure the stony silences that followed. This wasn't some poverty paradise where they'd laughingly boil up a supper of potatoes and cabbage. But Val stuck with him. She'd weathered the rough times. Now life was good. Blast His Eyes sold like hot cakes. He didn't want to go upsetting things now. No, he'd see this plague of mystery letters through to the end himself.

Then as Dianne Kelly said: that would be an end to it for a while. A long while. So he shouldn't try to get all logical and reason it out. He'd go with the flow. He'd meet the demands of the letters. Then he'd forget them.

Outside, clouds had drawn a dark sheet over the face of the earth. Raindrops fell on the roof. A branch, or perhaps maybe a piece of timber pa.s.sed through the millrace. The sound of huge talons sc.r.a.ped furiously at the stone beneath their feet.

3.

"And this was the Necropolis station?"

"Cool, isn't it?"

Paul stood beside Miranda in the abandoned ticket office. With the windows boarded it was a velvety dark until she lit a candle. "It's something of an after school clubhouse," she told him. "There's candles all over the building. You might even find a few cushions, too."

"I thought it would have been wrecked." He looked round. There was no graffiti, with the exception of a few names scribbled in pencil on the wall. He noticed a timetable on the wall printed in heavy gothic type.

"See that one?" Miranda pointed at the timetable. "19:00. The Last Train." She smiled. "For lots of people who came here it really was the last train."

Paul looked round. Light fittings an inch thick with dust hung from the ceiling. The remains of heavy velvet drapes in still rich, dark funereal purple covered the windows. On an upholstered bench against the wall someone had spread a modern checked blanket.

"Are you sure we're alone?" he asked.

"Are you sure you've got the goodies?"

He looked down at her. In the candlelight she was breathtaking. Her eyes sparkled, her hair luxurious, while the curve of her slender waist was something else. Once more he found his eyes drawn to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s molding a white T-shirt.

He thought about them. The freckles. The dark nipples.

G.o.d, this was a long time coming.

She kissed him on the mouth. "Paul, I asked if you've brought them with you?"

Them. The delicious way she charged the word with emphasis was enough for his blood to run hot.

He slipped his hand into his back pocket, found the packet, then drew it out.

"Oh, h.e.l.l no," he breathed.

"What's wrong?"

"I've picked up Elizabeth's gum by mistake. That means she must have-"

"Paul! I don't believe it."

He showed her the packet. "I got you that time."

"You did, Paul." She smiled then kissed him again, her lips soft, open, wonderfully warm and as wonderfully moist. "Hook, line and stinking sinker."

When he kissed her now he felt as if he was on a huge slide. A dizzying ride that caught hold and took him whether he wanted to ride it or not. His head swam, his heart beat faster, his breathing came in gasps and-great G.o.d in heaven-he'd never been this hot before. He thought he could explode with such force it would tear the roof off the place.

Another force took him over now. His hands moved over her body as hers moved over his. Their kiss seamless, powerful, pa.s.sionate.

Ninety-five percent of his being strained to merge with her so completely they fused into a single ent.i.ty.

Yet, that five percent of him hung back, thinking with a quiet surprise, Yes, Paul. It's really happening. This is going to be the first time. If only the others could see you now. With one of the most beautiful girls in the school-Miranda Bloom with the long suntanned legs, Spanish eyes, lashings of hair that swathed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s when she walked, hips swaying.

Rain fell on the roof with the sound of dry lungs beginning to breathe after a century's pause. It rose and fell with a sizzling hiss. Shadows inflated from dwarf silhouettes to those of giants in the candlelight.

Miranda slid out of her clothes. Then, gripping his shoulders, she straightened her arms, pushing him back. She looked up at him, inviting him to gaze on her naked body.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "What you see is what you get."

Gooseflesh rose her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into points, the tips darkening. Her perfume rose into his nose, engulfing his head. His body crackled with an excitement that was nothing less than electric.

Like dance steps he'd learnt long ago, then forgotten, it came to him. He knew what to do. It was straightforward now. There was nothing complicated about the process at all.

Soon they lay together on the blanket. Her bare skin pressed against his. There was a sense of resistance. As if he'd reached a sealed door that couldn't be opened-not in a million, billion years. The sound of falling rain ran through the room and through his head like the labored breathing of a thousand souls. He'd got this far. The door was closed. He lifted his head dizzily, his eyes opened to see a pair of eyes looking back into hisa distorted misty globes, burning with primeval fires.

The door isn't opening. You're shut out. You're not going in. You're not entering. You're not penetrating. His back muscles quivered, his knees trembled, then he felt Miranda's hands circling his behind, gripping him, then pulling him down.

He moaned with pleasure the same moment this beautiful girl beneath him released a cry that sounded like pleasure, pain, bliss seamlessly joined.

"Paula Paula" Her breath rushed in his ear.

The impossible happened. The door openeda He found himself slipping deeply inside her; the pressure of her encircling him was enormous. Shooting stars streamed through his body. Now his hips moved like a motor as he thrust into her, eliciting gasps and tiny, kittenish cries from her lips.

There's music running through the universe. And this is its rhythm. He beat down with his body. The rhythm ran through him, an eternal life creating rhythm.

He thought about nothing now. He was nothing but the rhythm and the beat that went on and on until he heard a panting cry rising up through his throat, growing louder and louder until he couldn't hear the rain. He'd have heard nothing if all the iron doors in the Necropolis tomb had crashed open at once.

At that moment he cried out. As the explosion tore through him- through bone, blood and skin-leaving him gasping for air and his heart pounding like thunder.

CHAPTER 23.

1.

Monday. Noon. Clouds were breaking after a night's rain. With the rim of the cup of coffee touching his lip John Newton dreamily gazed at the computer screen. Once more he read the opening lines to his new book, Without Trace.

One day you might disappear.

It might he just another every-day kind of morning. You get out of bed, you dress, you eat toast and drink some coffee. Then you leave the house.

And you never return. As simple as that. You vanish. You're history. No body is ever found. No clues. Nothing. Gone.

It had been there under his very nose all along. Only he'd not known it-at least not on a conscious level-but he'd actually begun writing the book he was born to write. Without Trace wasn't meant to be a collection of individual cases about Mrs. Y disappearing over the side of a car ferry, or Mr. Z going out to buy a packet of cigarettes never to be seen again. Those cases had been covered. Good Lord, he had them in books right there on the bookshelf.

No. What hadn't been recorded at all were the Skelbrooke disappearances. Of course he'd play down the supernatural elements. He could leave that side of it to the reader's discretion in a 'Now make up your own mind what really happened' chapter at the end. But the naked truth was that certain people in the village seventy years ago did vanish without trace. His blood tingled in his veins. This was it. He felt like a gold prospector who'd just seen that yellow glint in the dirt. He could furnish the book with photographs of the missing Mr. Kelly and daughter. He could track down police records, sift through newspaper archives, maybe even find pa.s.senger lists of Liverpool-Canada crossings seventy years ago.

What would really hit the jackpot was to track down the descendents of Herbert Kelly in Canada. What's more, Mary Kelly might still be alive, even if she was only just the right side of eighty.

"The game's afoot, Watson," he murmured, gazing at the screen. "The game is most definitely afoot."

Last night he'd dreamt he'd been in the old engine room of the Water Mill. For some reason he dreamt he'd wept over the rusted mechanism. It hadn't worked for a century, but he was desperate to get the thing back in use. He longed to see the great cogs go round as the water wheel turned the axle. Then the ma.s.sive millstones would grind again. If he could do that everything would be all right.

But the d.a.m.n lever wouldn't budge. Everything was frozen. Everything was rusted. That heap of junk was locked solid. He wept like a broken-hearted child.

Then in the dream Herbert Kelly had walked into the room. He'd recognized the schoolteacher instantly from Dianne Kelly's description. Tall, thin, bearded; a white Panama hat that was so bright it dazzled John and he had to close his eyes against the glare.

"I can make it work, John," Kelly had told him. "I can make it all work like clockwork."

John tried to watch him work the controls. As far as John knew there was only one lever that set the monster machine in motion, yet Herbert Kelly made numerous delicate adjustments to controls John couldn't see because the hat was so dazzling.

Then the cogs started to turn, the axles spun, the millstones grated round and round like old gramophone records.

Kelly, in his shining hat, walked across to him, then pinched John's stomach so hard that he cried out.

Kelly whispered in his ear, "And if you work it all wrong, Newton, I'll make you cry again."

John Newton had woken to find himself laying face down with his hand under his stomach. It felt like rock pressing into his flesh. But as he groaned himself fully awake that's when he knew what Without Trace would be about.

The dream about Kelly-weird and incomprehensible as it was- triggered the necessary inspirationa or maybe the ghost of the old schoolteacher had really come padding upstairs to whisper in John's ear as he slept. Anyway, he, John Newton, had the makings of a book.

"OK, Tommy, it's over to you."

With a click of a b.u.t.ton he e-mailed his agent the chapter he'd revised that morning, along with a brand new outline that set out the skeleton of the book-an exclusive investigation into real-life disappearances.

Now he could play detective again. He'd hunt down clues. From them he'd piece together a detailed description of what happened seventy years ago in this village and in this very house. And today he had the house to himself. Val had left early for work; Paul and Lizzie were at school. He looked round his room. Maybe Kelly used this as his study all those years ago. There was even an ancient cast iron peg behind the door where he might have hung his white Panama hat. So, where to start?

2.

The neon strip lit the attic brilliantly. There were no funky Gothic cobwebs and no mannequins clothed in dust. Instead, there were neatly painted ceilings, carpeted boards, varnished cupboards. The only glitch in the sterility, a cl.u.s.ter of packing cases left over from when the New-tons had moved in. Mainly they were Paul's childhood toys that he'd never bother to unpack anyway.

John crawled into the eaves of the roof, but there was nothing there, apart from a couple of ancient computer games on ca.s.sette, which made them look positively Cretaceous. After the attic he worked his way downstairs floor by floor. Again, he told himself that the old lady yesterday hadn't revealed everything. He had a gut feeling that Herbert Kelly had hidden a number of facts from his family. Maybe he kept secret some of the letters he received? If he had, he would have needed to hide them. And letters were small enough to be slipped under skirting boards or in cracks behind cupboards.

John mentally stepped into Herbert Kelly's shoes. Now, he asked himself, if I had something to hide where would I hide it? It had to be in the house. He wouldn't risk burying letters in a jar in the garden, say, because there'd be a chance damp would find its way in to ruin them. But would Kelly preserve the letters? Maybe he burnt them?

No. That didn't ring true. Schoolmaster Kelly was a meticulous man. He'd keep the letters in good condition.

John went through room after room. Paul's was a mess. What looked like a collection of yogurt cartons (still smeared with the stuff) stood on the windowsill. The cupboards and closet in Paul's room were all modern. There was little point looking there.

Elizabeth's room was far tidier. She'd even laid out her pajamas on the bed with a paper drawing of her own head pushed into the neck of the pajama top, so at first glance it seemed she still lay on the bed-or at least a rolled flat version of her. Here, cupboards set into the wall were probably as old as the house. A quick inspection told him that unless he took a hammer to them there was no obvious place where the letters could be hidden. The same state of affairs presented itself in every room of the house. Where possible, he tugged aside furniture and lifted carpets. The boards were nailed down. He'd need a crowbar to lever them up.

In the living room he stood in the center of the floor and said out loud, "Mr. Kelly. Tell me where you put the lettersa please!" His voice sounded small.

There was no answer. At that moment, however, the dog started to bark. John looked out of the window in the direction of the meadow. There by the back gate stood a figure.

Tall. Thin. It wore a brilliant white hat.

John started, and his blood thundered in his ears.

"Idiot, John Newton," he breathed. "Great prize idiot." As he watched the figure the hat detached itself from the head to fly away on a large pair of wings. It had been a gull on the gatepost. His imagination had completed the trick.