Page 64 of First Blood

Obviously not, he thought, as his stomach began to react.

He continued reading about the Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton who had remained Roman Catholic after the Reformation.

Many such families had sheltered Catholic priests who would have been killed if discovered.

Special arrangements were made to hide and protect them by building priest holes and secret passages to hide priests when properties were searched by the authorities. Some were hidden by wooden panelling, others in the sewers and some even hidden beneath the stairs.

Dawson sat back and thought for a moment. This was why the tiny space was nowhere to be found on the floorplans. It had either been a secret space or built after the issue of the ancient plans.

The priest hole had to mean something. Of all the space in that house, why had he been killed there?

Chapter Fifty-Seven

‘Not really much of a playground, though, is it, guv?’ Bryant asked, rubbing his hands together. The temperature had risen only two degrees above freezing due to a biting wind.

He wasn’t wrong about the park. The space had a see-saw, three swings and a short metal slide.

But it was the nearest playground to Luke Fenton’s house, and from what the elderly lady had told Dawson about this Hayley woman walking past the window, she didn’t have a car.

Unsurprisingly there were no kids out playing.

‘You didn’t think she was going to be here, did you?’ Bryant asked.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, Bryant, that’s exactly what I thought.’

She got out of the car, walked towards the playground and was through it by the time Bryant caught her.

A row of semi-detached houses lay beyond a grass verge on the other side of the space.

She walked along the pavement looking over fences and hedges as she went. A threadbare silver Christmas tree had been slung into the corner of one garden. No doubt to make way for a brand-new model, possibly with snow-speckled branches or built-in LED or even a pine-smelling real one that lasted barely longer than the goodwill that accompanied the season.

‘Err… guv, what are?…’

‘This one,’ she said, opening a waist-high gate onto the property.

Bryant’s gaze finally found what she had spotted. Two bikes beneath the windowsill.

She knocked the door, which was quickly answered by a slim woman wearing a jogging suit and an angry expression.

‘I’m sorry but I already donate to enough…’

‘Police,’ Kim said, holding up her identification.

Her expression softened. ‘Sorry, but I’ve had three callers already today. Time of year but you can’t give to everything.’

‘Understandable,’ Kim said, as the expression turned pensive as she remembered who they were.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine, Mrs…’

‘Willis, Kate,’ she said.

‘Mrs Willis, do you use that playground over there?’

‘Of course. I have eight- and six-year-old boys,’ she said, as though it were obvious that the house alone could not contain such levels of energy.

‘Have you at any time seen a woman here with a birthmark over her right eye and a little girl…’