A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory Page B

was gone nine. Ronnie Duggan had brought his father’s pocket watch and a lantern. He suggested we light it. I said that lighting a lantern would be nothing better than an advertisement of who we were and what we were doing. Regardless, he insisted on carrying it with him.
    “So where are we going then?” he asked.
    “We walk around the edge of this field and start down toward the church,” I said. “Back of the church we turn toward the school, but before we reach the road we cut across behind my house and head toward the Sheriff’s Office—”
    “The Sheriff’s Office?” Michael Wiltsey asked.
    “We’re not going to the Sheriff’s Office,” I said, “just toward it, just as far as the bend in the road, and then we’re heading back this way.”
    “Hell, Joseph, that’s gotta be the better part of two or three miles,” Daniel protested. “That’s most of the way round Augusta Falls . . .”
    “Isn’t that the point?” Hans asked. “Isn’t that the point . . . to try and search as much of the town as we can?”
    No one said a word, not until Maurice Fricker stepped forward, eyes wide, skin dead-white, and said, “We made an oath. We made a promise we were gonna do this. So let’s do it, huh? Or is any of you chickenin’ out?”
    No one chickened out. I started walking. Hans right beside me and the others following in silence.
     
    Less than an hour. The air was chill, the sky a deep midnight blue that made our faces and hands glow almost white. I could see how frightened Daniel McRae was, starting at every sound—the slightest rustle from the hedgerow at the side of the road, the wings of some bird launching itself from a tree. At one point I sensed his fear, and I wondered whether he believed that the killer would find him by his smell, would recognize him as a McRae. Would come to finish the work he’d started with his sister. Wanted to tell him not to worry, that the killer was only after little girls, but I was insufficiently convinced of this to make it sound genuine. I practised the words in my head but they did not work. I said nothing. I watched Daniel, and when we reached the turn in the road and started back the way we’d come I held his gaze for a moment. I knew he wanted to leave. I knew he wanted to run like the Devil all the way home, to bolt the door, to hide in his room, to bury himself beneath the bedcovers and make believe that none of this had ever happened. But he could not ask. He could not break his oath, so I made it easy for him.
    “Daniel,” I said.
    Daniel seemed to jump inside his skin.
    “I need you to go back to your house.”
    His eyes widened.
    “What’s going on?” Hans Kruger asked.
    The others gathered around us. We’d been stumbling about in the dark for more than an hour. We had seen nothing, believed now that there was nothing to see, and perhaps all of them were hoping that some sort of reprieve had been granted, that they were going to be sent home.
    “I need Daniel to go back to his house,” I said.
    “Why?” Maurice Fricker asked. “Why should he be allowed to go home?”
    I looked at Maurice, and then each of them in turn. “Daniel’s the only one who’s lost a sister,” I said. “I’m concerned that the man who murdered his sister might be watching the rest of the family. I need Daniel to go and make sure they’re okay.”
    It was a foolish and shallow reason. All of them knew that, but no one dared challenge Daniel McRae, because he had lost his sister, he had been the only one to lose a family member, and I knew they would give him some sort of leeway because of that.
    Daniel’s eyes were wider than ever. He looked as if he was holding his breath.
    “Yes,” Hans Kruger said. “He should go.”
    I looked at Hans. I could tell from the way he returned my gaze that he understood what I was doing.
    “Go,” Hans said. “Run quickly, and on the way you can look around my house and make sure there is no one after my