Without a Trace Read Online Free PDF Page B

kind of personal, knowledgeable way. I think she was in Bristol, too, for a short while before she came to Sawbridge. She mentioned Devon, Glastonbury, Wells and other places sometimes, but I got the impression she was wandering around the area looking for a permanent place to bring up Petal and, when she got to Sawbridge, she felt this was it. She once told me she’d dreamed of a home like Stone Cottage for years.’
    All at once Molly felt exhausted, as if all the energy in her body had drained away. She didn’t want to talk any more and, anyway, she had nothing more to say.
    ‘Go on home after you’ve signed this,’ George said, as if he’d picked up on how she was feeling. ‘You look all in – not surprising after what you’ve been through – and I know you were up and about at seven o’clock this morning. I saw you carrying an armful of stuff to the village hall as I came on duty.’
    ‘I’ve got a feeling nothing is ever going to be the same after today,’ said Molly sadly as she got unsteadily to her feet. ‘Is that silly?’
    PC Walsh caught hold of her two hands in his and looked down at her. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Molly,’ he said. ‘Perhaps nothing will be the same again, but that doesn’tnecessarily mean it will be worse than before. Sometimes it takes something bad for us to see where we want to go, and who with.’
    Molly smiled weakly. She wanted to think he was expressing an interest in her but, after all that had happened, it wasn’t appropriate to think like that.
    ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Molly,’ he said. ‘If you think of anything else that might be useful to the investigation, jot it down so you don’t forget.’



CHAPTER THREE
    It was just after seven and still raining when Molly came out of the police station. Hearing music coming from the Pied Horse, she stopped in the middle of the road. She knew that the Percys had booked a small band to play tonight. If the weather had been good, they’d have played in the street and Molly would be helping to serve drinks.
    She was astounded that the Percys hadn’t cancelled the band the minute Sergeant Bailey had informed them at the village hall that Cassie was dead. It wasn’t right to carry on with all the jollity when a young woman had been murdered and her child was missing.
    Rage bubbled up inside her at the thought of people laughing, chatting and drinking at such a time, and the tears that welled up in her eyes were scalding. She already had a picture in her head of Petal stumbling around in the woods, hungry, soaked to the skin and too scared to go to anyone because she’d seen her mother being killed.
    Yet now there was an even worse picture nudging out the previous one. That of Petal’s small body shoved hastily under a bush to conceal it. Killed purely so she could never identify her mother’s murderer.
    Molly’s usual timidity left her, and she marched across to the pub, flung the door open wide and, holding it like that, she launched into a loud and bitter tirade.
    ‘You should not be in here drinking tonight!’ she shouted out at the top of her lungs.
    The band stopped playing and everyone turned to look at her. The blank expressions on their faces incensed her even further.
    ‘Surely you all know that Cassandra March was found dead today and her six-year-old daughter is missing? Little Petal may have been murdered, too, but just in case she ran away from the man who killed her mother, is there anyone in this pub who feels able to carry on drinking and chatting while a frightened six-year-old is hiding in the woods in this rain?’
    She let her question sink in for a few seconds. ‘Right, who is going to come and help me search? It won’t be dark until nearly ten tonight. We’ve got three hours to find her.’
    There was a buzz of discussion. Normally, there would’ve been very few women in the pub but, because it was a special day, there were around twenty or so this evening. Yet they, the