I spent the rest of the night in and out of sleep and, come seven a.m, I got a taxi back to Chilcote. I asked the driver to let me out at the start of the lane that led towards Rook Farm. I paid and got out.
I followed the public footpath that ran alongside the farm. My eyes skipped over the fields and looked beyond to the wood where Zoe’s top had been found.
I climbed over a turnstile and walked purposefully up the side of the fields. The pale October morning was cool on my face, and the only sound, other than the cawing of the rooks overhead, was my feet as they hit the hard ground. The stiff, browning stalks of a harvested crop lined the field. My feet crunched on the husks as I walked. A small shrew shot out of the hedgerow and crossed my path. After a mile or so, I came across a wooded area and, as I entered, the temperature suddenly dropped. The wood was cool and damp, the sun unable to reach through the canopy of trees. The fallen branches were covered in lichen and moss, the earth soft and springy beneath my feet. Above, rooks circled the wood. I watched them momentarily, a shiver running through me. As they called to one another, I thought about how the noise resembled shrieking children. I was reminded of the many tales told of what had happened to young children in the wood, over the centuries. One girl, it was said, had been found hanging from a tree, her dismembered hands lying on the ground. I shivered and picked up my pace, sticking to the public footpath, but with the Wyres’ fields always in sight. Shadows slid across my path and I could hear my heart beating loudly.
I stopped abruptly. I could hear a banging noise and I shivered even though I felt warm from the exercise. I saw a woman up ahead, in the depth of the woods, and my breath caught. She hadn’t spotted me yet and I slunk behind a tree. I thought I saw her bring a shovel up and hit the ground with all her force. A chilling thought entered my head: she looked as if she was digging a grave.
I moved closer and she looked up, her face at first panic-stricken, but then, when she saw nothing, it relaxed. It was Eleanor Wyre. Twigs crackled under my feet as I made my way slowly towards her.
‘Who’s there?’ she called out, her voice echoing through the woods.
I decided to show myself.
‘Eleanor, what are you doing?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
‘What the hell are you doing on our land?’ She secured her grip on the shovel and moved towards me.
‘It’s a public footpath, and I want to know what you’re doing.’
She looked at me, glanced at the shovel and then at a plastic bag off to her left.
‘What’s in the bag, Eleanor?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’ I lunged forward and grabbed the bag as she dropped the shovel and attempted to drag it away from me. As we tussled, the bag ripped and out fell a pair of jeans. Zoe’s. I recognised them straight away: she had stylised them herself with diamante crystals and rips.
‘Fuck,’ I said, my eyes unable to register what I was looking at. My breathing came hard and fast. My gaze flitted towards Eleanor who stood, pale and unmoving. ‘Where is my daughter, Eleanor? Where is she?’
We locked eyes and she was the first to look away.
‘Please tell me my daughter is alive,’ I said, a sob escaping my lips, and then I moved fast towards Eleanor, grabbing the shovel from her hands. ‘Where the fuck is my daughter?’ I held the shovel above Eleanor’s head.
She was crying uncontrollably. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘Then why do you have Zoe’s jeans?’
‘I found them when I took the dog for a walk and I knew that if they were found anywhere on our land, that would be it. We’d be over. People look at my husband now like he’s some sort of paedophile. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but people start gossiping, don’t they?’ She waved her finger at me. ‘We’ve already lost half our business because of you. Farming is our livelihood and because of your daughter’s lies we are losing everything.’ She looked at me, her eyes hard. ‘I know you won’t believe I found these, but I did. And what I don’t need is it destroying us any further.’
I continued to hold the shovel above her head, my hands trembling violently. ‘Someone sent me a video of Zoe entering your house. The day we realised she was missing. If you’re so innocent, why was my daughter talking to you and then entering the house? You never told the police that.’
Eleanor sank into the dank earth, her body slumping forward in defeat. After a moment she looked up. ‘Zoe came to the house on Thursday afternoon. She was winding Jerry up. Acting like…’ Eleanor looked up at the shovel hovering inches from her skull. ‘Acting badly, and anyway Jerry told her to leave and then she went and that was that. Well, she came back on Friday and demanded to speak to him again. Only this time, she was acting even more strangely.’ Her head dropped and I saw her shoulders trembling. ‘I know you won’t believe me but I told Zoe to go away and then she barged past me into our house. She stood there for a couple of seconds and left again.’ She glanced at me. ‘I swear, that’s the truth.’
‘Why would she do that? It doesn’t make any sense. And it still doesn’t explain where my daughter is,’ I said, my arms tiring. ‘You were the last person to see her.’ I was beginning to suspect that Zoe had planned this whole thing. And the fact that all the clues led to the Wyres’ farm suggested a maliciousness I hadn’t imagined her capable of.
‘You’re assuming I was the last person to see her.’
I let the shovel fall to the ground, its metal head landing inches from Eleanor’s body.
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
‘I mean, you keep talking about these videos. It’s like someone wants you to believe me and Jerry were the last people to see your daughter.’ This was uncomfortably close to my own train of thought.
‘The jeans. Where did you find the jeans?’
‘Literally on the edge of the woods, just off the footpath.’
I nodded slowly, her words washing over me.
I grabbed the bag, stuffed Zoe’s jeans inside and turned and walked away.
‘Where are you going with that?’ she shouted after me, her voice desperate.
I didn’t answer and left Eleanor, on the ground, begging me not to do anything stupid.