‘I noticed that the paint on your windows is faking,’ said Morland. ‘You ought to do something with it before it gets much worse.’

Harry’s smile didn’t waver. It was a test. Everything was a test now, and the only thing that mattered in a test was not failing.

‘I was waiting for winter to pass,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to paint a window frame when your hands are shaking with cold. You’re liable to end up with windows that you can’t see much out of.’

Morland wasn’t about to let it go.

‘You could have taken care of it last summer.’

Harry was finding it hard to keep his smile in place.

‘I was busy last summer.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Making a living. Is this an interrogation, Chief?’

Hayley Conyer intervened.

‘We’re just worried about you, Harry. With this downturn in the economy, and the way it’s hit construction, well, you’re more … vulnerable than most. Businesses like your own must be suffering.’

‘We’re getting by,’ said Erin. She wasn’t going to let her husband be cornered alone by these two. ‘Harry works hard.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ said Conyer.

She pursed her lips, and then pulled from memory the semblance of a concerned expression.

‘You see, it’s the job of the board to protect the town, and the best way we can do that is by protecting the people of the town.’

She didn’t look at Harry. She had her eyes on Erin. She spoke to Erin as though to a slow child. She was goading her, just as Morland had goaded Harry. They wanted a reaction. They wanted anger.

They wanted an excuse.

‘I understand that, Hayley,’ said Erin. She didn’t allow even a drop of sarcasm to pollute her apparent sincerity.

‘I’m glad. That’s why I asked Chief Morland here to look into your affairs some, just to be sure that all was well with you.’

This time, Erin couldn’t conceal her anger.

‘You what?’

Harry placed a hand on her arm, leaning into it so that she felt his weight.

Calm, calm.

‘Would you mind explaining to me what that means?’ said Harry.

‘It means,’ said Morland, ‘that I talked to some of your suppliers, and your subcontractors. It means that, when the mood has struck me, I’ve followed you around these last few weeks. It means that I’ve had a meeting with Allan Dantree at the bank, and we had a discreet conversation about your accounts.’

Harry couldn’t help but close his eyes for a moment. He’d tried so hard, but he’d underestimated Morland, and Hayley Conyer, and the board. He wasn’t the first to have tried to hide his difficulties, and he wouldn’t be the last. He should have known that, over the centuries, the town had learned to spot weakness, but he had exposed himself by applying to the town’s fund for that loan. Perhaps they’d all just been more alert than usual to strange patterns, to blips in behavior, because of the economy. So many folk were struggling in the current climate. That was why the board had acted. That was why they had taken the girl.

‘Those are our private affairs,’ said Erin, but her voice sounded hollow even to herself. In Prosperous nothing was private, not really.

‘But what happens when private difficulties affect all?’ said Hayley, still speaking in that maddeningly reasonable, insidiously patronizing tone. God, Erin hated her. It was as though cataracts had been removed from her eyes, the old clouded lenses replaced by ones that were new and clear. She saw the town as it really was, saw it in all its viciousness, its selfregard, its madness. They had been brainwashed, conditioned by centuries of behavior, but it was only when it arrived at their own door in the form of the girl that Harry and Erin had realized they could no longer be a part of it. Releasing the girl was an imperfect solution, the action of those who were still not brave enough to take the final step themselves and hoped that another might do it for them. The girl would go to the police, she would tell her story, and they would come.

And what then? The girl would have been able to give them a description of Walter and Beatrix, and of Harry and Erin. All four would have been questioned, but Walter and Beatrix wouldn’t have buckled under interrogation. They had been responsible for finding and taking the last two girls, but they were now nearing death. They were as loyal to the town as Hayley Conyer, and they weren’t likely to roll over on it in the final years of their life. At best, it would have been their word against that of Harry and Erin.

They threatened us. They told us to get them a girl or they’d burn our house down. We’re old. We were frightened. We didn’t know what they wanted with the girl. We didn’t ask …

And Hayley Conyer, and the selectmen, and Chief Morland? Why, there’d be nothing to connect them to the girl, nothing beyond the word of Harry and Erin Dixon, who’d kept her trapped in their basement before leaving a door unlocked, and it could be that they’d done that only because they’d lost the courage to follow through on whatever it was they had planned for her. It would still have left them open to felony charges of kidnapping and criminal restraint, a Class A crime, or a Class B if the prosecution accepted that they’d voluntarily released the victim alive and in a safe place, and not suffering from serious bodily injury. It was the difference between ten years behind bars and thirty years, but it would still have been more time than either of them wanted to spend in a cell.

And maybe, just maybe, someone might have believed their story.

But, no, that was the greatest fantasy of all.

‘Harry? Erin? You still with us?’

It was Morland speaking.

Erin looked at her husband. She knew that their thoughts had been running along similar lines.

What if, what if …

‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘We’re listening.’

‘You’re in financial difficulties – far more serious difficulties than you chose to share with Ben when you asked for a loan – and you tried to keep them from us.’

There was no point in denying it.

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we were ashamed.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No. We were frightened as well.’

‘Frightened? Frightened of what?’

There was no going back now.

‘Frightened that the town might turn against us.’

Now Hayley Conyer spoke again.

‘The town does not turn against its own, Harry. It protects them. That’s the reason for its existence. How could you doubt that?’

Harry squeezed the bridge of his nose with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. He could feel a migraine coming on.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘With all that was going on, with all of our problems …’

‘You lost faith,’ said Conyer.

‘Yes, Hayley, I suppose we did.’

Conyer leaned over the table. Her breath smelled of mints and dying.

‘Did you let the girl go?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Harry.

‘Look me in the eye and tell me true.’

Harry took his hand away from his nose and stared Conyer down.

‘No, we did not let the girl go.’

She didn’t want to believe him. He could see that. Just like Morland, she had her suspicions, but she couldn’t prove them, and the town wouldn’t allow her to move against them without proof.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘The question is, where do we go from here? You’ll have to make amends, both of you.’

The pain was pulsing in Harry’s head now, and with it came the nausea. He knew what was coming. He’d known right from the moment that Morland had arrived at their house with the body of the girl in the trunk of his car. He wanted to tell them of the dreams he’d been having, but he bit the words back. He hadn’t even told his wife about them. In his dreams the girl wasn’t dead. They’d put her in the grave alive, because dead girls didn’t open their eyes. She was alive and scratching at the plastic below the ground, and somehow she had managed to tear through it and dig her way out, except when she emerged she really was dead. She was a being transformed, a revenant, and when she opened her mouth she spewed darkness, and the night deepened around her.