Free The Drowning Ground by James Marrison Page A

side of the garden and a handful of stone steps.
    â€˜So what happened to them?’ Graves asked impatiently. ‘The girls that went missing. Gail … and Elise. They just disappeared you said, sir?’
    â€˜Surprised you never heard the names before. Couldn’t be more than, I don’t know, around seven years now.’
    â€˜Seven years? I was just finishing school then,’ Graves said.
    â€˜It was everywhere for a while. All over the television. In the newspapers. You sure you never heard the names?’
    Graves slowed down a little. ‘I’m not sure now,’ he said, a little flustered. ‘Maybe I have. I don’t know.’
    â€˜Well, you won’t get much out of the villagers. They won’t talk about it even now, if they can help it. They’ll speak about it amongst themselves, but not to us and definitely not to any outsiders. Gail Foster went missing from Quinton. The village never really got over it. Never will either, until she’s found one way or the other. She’s there, though.’
    â€˜Where?’ Graves said.
    â€˜Out in the village,’ I said simply. ‘You can feel her, ever since she vanished. The village kind of … drew in on itself and shut up shop. But it’s waiting – waiting for her to come back.’
    Graves looked at me doubtfully. ‘But she’s never coming back, is she?’ he said finally.
    â€˜No,’ I said, ‘she’s not. It’s been far too long for that.’
    â€˜And nothing’s been heard of the other girl either. Nothing at all?’
    â€˜There are still appeals every so often, and every now and again something will turn up and lead nowhere.’ I gestured vaguely at the black fields and ridges. ‘But someone got their hooks into those two little girls, and one day we’ll find what’s left of them and then we’ll know for sure.’
    â€˜But what do you think happened to them?’
    I didn’t answer straightaway. The horror of it all was coming back far too quickly, now that I was at Hurst’s house again. But then the horror really hadn’t gone away. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing. Sometimes it would hit me almost like a physical force. I could be driving, sitting in my house, reading about how River Plate were faring in the Apertura tournament, preparing my dinner, standing over the boiling saucepans, and I would suddenly remember them both. A cold sickness would run over my body.
    I would remember their pictures: removed with great care from scrapbooks by parents with shaking hands. Childish grins staring up at me that became branded in my memory forever. But perhaps all that really remained of them were ashes and fragments of burnt and shattered bone.
    For a while longer we carried on in silence. I ducked under the branches of an old silver birch and let Graves go on ahead, then caught up with him again.
    â€˜Sir? I said what happened to them?’
    â€˜They were abducted,’ I said finally. ‘Elise lived in Chipping Norton, a few miles away from Quinton. She was out in the garden. Just got home from the school they have over there, and she was messing about in her garden, playing. She was supposed to be inside doing her homework, and her older brother was supposed to be making sure she was doing it. But he had some friends round, and they went to play football out the front. When he came back she was gone. He looked for her up and down the street. He thought she might have been hiding or playing a game. So he waited until his mother came home from work. She was a GP, and on Tuesdays she always arrived late. But Elise was gone.
    â€˜Their house backed on to a little lane, and the lane overlooked the rear gardens of some of the houses. We think someone waited. Saw her brother leave, or maybe saw him messing about with his mates. So they went round the back and somehow coaxed her out of her garden