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foursquare with the moonlight reflecting off the glass in the cupola and silvering the ball on the roof.A moment later and the vision had gone. The woods closed ranks, thick and forbidding, swallowing the house in darkness.
    The left turn took her by surprise and she almost missed it even though she had come this way so many times before. She bumped along the single-track road, past a bus stop standing beside the remains of the crumbling estate wall. The old coach yard was off to the left; it seemed that this was where the majority of the building work was taking place, behind the high brick-and-sarsen wall. Even in the dark Holly could see the grass verge churned up by heavy machinery and the crouching shadow of a mechanical digger. There was another sign here, a discreet one in cream with green lettering, giving the name of the developers and directing all deliveries back to the site office on the main road.
    The lane turned left again, running behind the village now, climbing towards the top of the hill. A driveway on the right, a white-painted gatepost flaking to wood beneath and a five-barred gate wedged open by the grasses and dandelions growing through it.
    Ashdown Mill.
    She stopped on the gravel circle in front of the water mill and turned off the engine. Bonnie gave a little, excited bark. Holly could hear the thud of her tail as the dog waited impatiently to jump out of the back. There were two other cars on the gravel, a small saloon car and Ben’s four-by-four. The exhaustion and relief hit Holly simultaneously. Her shoulders ached with tension. If Ben was here and it had all been a big misunderstanding she would kill him.
    She opened her door and slid out, her legs stiff, an ache low in her back. Outside the car the air had a pre-dawn chill to it. The daylight was growing slowly, trickling through the trees and washing away the moon.
    Bonnie was running around with her nose to the ground, released from the captivity of the car, a bounce in her step. She chased around the side of the whitewashed mill and disappeared from view. Holly slammed the car door and hurried after her, pushing open the little gate in the picket fence and running up the uneven stone path to the door, calling for Bonnie as she went.
    All the lights were on inside the mill. The door opened before she reached it.
    ‘Ben!’ she burst out. ‘What the hell—’
    ‘Miss Ansell?’ A uniformed policewoman stood there. ‘I’m PC Marilyn Caldwell. We spoke earlier.’ She had kind eyes in a pale face pinched with tiredness, and there was something in her voice that warned Holly of bad news. Her heart started to thump erratically again. A headache gripped her temples.
    She noticed that one of the door panels was splintered and broken.
    ‘We had to break it to get in.’ There was a note of apology in PC Caldwell’s voice. ‘The handle is too high for Florence to reach.’
    ‘Yes.’ Holly remembered that the door had a heavy, old-fashioned iron latch. So Ben had not been there when the police had arrived and there was no sign of him now. Her apprehension was edged with something deeper and more visceral now.
    She fought back the terror; breathed deeply.
    ‘Is Florence OK?’
    ‘She’s fine.’ Marilyn Caldwell laid a reassuring hand on Holly’s arm. She shifted a little so that Holly could see through into the mill’s long living room. Florence was sitting on the sofa next to another female police officer. They were reading together, although Florence’s eyes were droopy with tiredness and puffy with her earlier tears.
    Holly’s heart turned over to see her. She took an involuntary step forwards. ‘Can I go to her, please—’
    ‘Just a moment.’ The note in PC Caldwell’s voice stopped her. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t found your brother, Miss Ansell.’ She was looking at Holly with forensic detachment now. ‘We’ve searched the house and the woods in the close vicinity, also all the roads nearby. There’s no