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‘WHO’S THERE?!’ he shouted. Or maybe that was just in his head, along with the terrible sound of panting and fear that made his brain feel as full to bursting as his bladder had recently been.

Were they just messing about? He’d read them the bloody riot act if they were. But they were good girls who’d never given him any trouble. He could see the maroon frames of the bus windows emerge, the dark glass, the struts, the cream lower paint, the neat lettering EXMOOR COACHES – CONTRACT OR HIRE.

The clatter of the diesel engine rose and Ken missed his footing and fell flat on his face. He got up to a sharp pain in his right knee but kept going.

He staggered up to the road, half on his hands and knees.

It was empty apart from the bus and the unmistakeable smell of diesel fumes. He hobbled to the steps and hauled himself up on the handrails.

The girls were gone.

Or hiding! Please God they were hiding! He limped down the aisle, looking madly from side to side at the seats, at the floor, even at the overhead luggage racks.

‘Maisie! Kylie!’

This couldn’t be happening. Not to him. The cancer was nothing compared to this hollow horror in his heart. He wished he had cancer instead of two missing children. Cancer would be a blessing.

He ran up and down outside the bus, looking underneath, then shouted the girls’ names furiously from the top of the steps.

‘It’s not funny!’ he yelled. ‘You get back here! It’s not funny! I’ll leave you! I’ll bloody well leave you and you can walk home and tell your mothers why you’re late! You get back here right now!’ His voice cracked.

He limped up and down the aisle compulsively. He could have missed them. They might be sitting very still, or curled into balls on the back seat, winding him up. He was close to crying, he was so scared. He had to call Karen and tell her he loved her, whatever she did, and to please come back home and everything would be OK, just like it was when she was little. Please, please, please come back. Please.

Frank Tithecott pulled his Royal Mail van over behind the school bus and got out. There was a curious thumping from inside the bus, and it rocked ever so slightly from side to side.

The postman climbed the steps cautiously, and was met by the disturbing sight of Ken Beard lurching down the aisle towards him, babbling about two children and a diesel car, and with his limp penis bobbing from side to side through his open slacks.

Frank took charge. He got Ken Beard to zip up and sit down, then called the police to tell them that it seemed two children had gone missing from the school bus.

That the driver was mazed.

And that there was a square yellow note on the steering wheel that read: You don’t love them.

* * *

The postman who’d stopped behind the school bus had told Reynolds that Ken Beard had been exposing himself at the scene. What he’d actually said was, ‘Come at me pretty as you please, bawling and babbling and with his dongle out.’ So Reynolds had quizzed the driver until he cried so hard he was no longer coherent, whereupon the local doctor was called to give him a sedative, and his nephew – a small-town solicitor who was there at short notice to safeguard his Uncle Ken’s legal rights – hurriedly removed himself from the case and called a proper criminal lawyer from Bristol.

Reynolds would have loved it if having your dongle out was conclusive evidence of serial kidnap, but life just wasn’t that simple. As it was, he was not even suspicious enough of Ken Beard to hold him in custody overnight.

The Bristol lawyer was turned back on the M5 and still charged the family £285.

A mobile incident room arrived from HQ – although this one was less grotty than the one they’d been assigned two winters back. Graham Nash allowed them to put it in the Red Lion car park, which was handy.

Reynolds now had twelve officers assigned specifically to the case, and could call on another dozen or so from the Exmoor team, in the form of men volunteering their days off, or beat officers like Holly and PC Walters, who could be seconded from regular duties as and when they were needed.

With most of Exmoor’s manpower concentrated on the abductions, other crimes on the moor took a back seat. Theft from garden sheds soared – doubling over the next two weeks from four to eight, and prompting one police-control-room officer to sigh without irony, ‘It’s all gone Chicago out there.’

Despite all the hustle and bustle and the new men and the new incident room and the new publicity and the new thermal-imaging search and the new Google maps Reynolds kept sticking on the whiteboard, in the hunt for five missing children there were no new leads.

25

KATE GULLIVER KNEW SHE’D done the wrong thing.

Even if it all turned out all right – which it surely would – nothing could change that.