Smoke and Mirrors Read Online Free PDF

the pages. ‘Arthur Bates, aged ten. He was coming back from the park with his younger sister, Karen. Arthur said that they were standing on the street corner and he heard Annie say that Mark should “go back to primary school”.’
    ‘That’s a big insult when you’re twelve,’ said Bob.
    ‘Did this Arthur hear anything else?’ asked Edgar.
    ‘No. He said that they stayed on the corner, talking. Well, he said that he only heard Annie’s voice.’
    This fitted so well with the picture that Edgar had built up of Mark Webster that he almost felt tears coming to his eyes.
    ‘Were there any sightings after five o’clock?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘We spoke to a few people who’d been walking dogs in the park but it was dark and cold. No one saw the children but maybe no one was looking.’
    ‘I’ve got people searching the park again,’ said Edgar. Had the children gone back to the park? As Emma said, it was dark and cold, but they might have had their reasons for wanting to be on their own. Maybe Frank Hodges was right and they were in the throes of a pre-teen romance. But Edgar still didn’t think this was likely. Everything he had heard cast Annie in the role of leader and Mark as follower. Nothing about their relationship suggested Romeo and Juliet. It was more Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
    ‘Did you get anything more from the children at the school?’ he asked.
    ‘Not really,’ said Bob. ‘But they all seemed a bit wary, especially the older ones. They opened up a bit when they told us about the play-acting but I got the impression that they were holding something back.’
    ‘Didn’t you try to get it out of them?’ asked Edgar.
    Emma coloured. ‘I did try . . .’
    ‘Sergeant Holmes was very good with them,’ said Bob unexpectedly. ‘She got right down to their level. They trusted her.’
    Emma shot him a grateful look. Edgar felt a bit ashamed of his question but he was frustrated by the feeling that they were missing something, something momentous just out of their line of sight, like a great cloven hoof in the doorway.
    ‘Tell me again about the play Annie wrote,’ he said.
    Emma looked at her notes again. ‘It was called
The Stolen Children
. Louise and Agnes were the children, Richard and Betty were the parents. Lionel was the policeman. Kevin, one of the older children, was the villain, the Witch Man. Everyone thinks that the Witch Man has stolen the children but really the parents have killed them.’
    ‘Good God,’ said Edgar.
    ‘There was this really chilling little rhyme,’ said Emma. ‘I wrote it down.
Children, children, say your prayers. Children, children, stay upstairs. Children dear, don’t stay out late, or the Wicked Witch Man will be your fate.
’
    ‘Good God,’ said Edgar again.
    ‘Betty said that Annie loved a story with a twist,’ said Bob.
    ‘Betty is Annie’s little sister?’
    ‘Yes, Betty and Richard. They’re twins. There’s a baby brother too.’
    Edgar thought of the photograph in Annie’s grandparents’ house. The four red-haired children posing together in perfect harmony.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘do you suspect the parents?’ He raised his hand to stop their protests. ‘In cases like this it is often the parents, you know. It’s horrible but there it is.’
    ‘I know the figures,’ said Emma, ‘but I can’t believe it in this case. The parents all seem so distraught.’
    ‘And why would they kill them?’ asked Bob. ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘No,’ Edgar agreed. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ He looked at the clock. Two-thirty. Soon it would be forty-eight hours since the last sighting of the children. ‘I think I’ll talk to the parents again.’
    *
    He walked up to Freshfield Road. It was hard going. Although the snow had stopped, it was still several inches deep with drifts as high as Edgar’s waist in some places. The main roads had been cleared but, as Edgar climbed the hill leading to the racecourse,