Mrs Haynes answered them all with what patience she could muster until eventually they went away to begin the search. There were pitifully few police officers. The majority of them had been called up when the war started, and for years the local police force had been surviving on a skeleton staff. Even so, as the morning progressed and news spread of Sarah’s disappearance the local men joined in the search and fanned out over every square foot of the local area in the hope of finding her.
Adina joined in too. It was too painful just sitting at home waiting for news. The police assured Mrs Haynes that a child wandering off was far more common than she might think. She had probably just stayed at a friend’s house. They also told her that the majority of children who went missing usually turned up within twenty-four hours. Mrs Haynes desperately wanted to believe them. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
The day before, the whole street had been celebrating the end of the war, but now it was as if a dark cloud was hanging over it and those not searching for Sarah scuttled past the house with their heads bent.
Once again the shop remained closed. Ezra was out with the other men searching. At lunchtime Adina returned home to make them all a meal to find Dovi cowering in his usual seat. He started when she walked into the room and as she moved towards him he jerked away.
Adina bent to his level to ask, ‘Dovi, you were with Sarah last night. Do you know where she went?’
His head wagged from side-to-side and not wishing to agitate him further, she sighed and set about making platefuls of sandwiches for anyone that wanted them.
The afternoon dragged on and soon darkness streaked the sky but still there was no sign of the little girl: it was as if she had dropped off the face of the earth. Adina had arranged to meet Karl but she stood him up and hoped that he would understand why. She had an inkling that he might already know about Sarah being missing as the police had informed them that the prisoners of war up at the Hall had been given permission to join in the search. Even now they were combing the town with the rest of the volunteers, fruitlessly it seemed.
Adina carried two platefuls of food round to the Haynes’ house after trying without success to tempt Dovi to eat something, but the sandwiches remained on the table untouched as the vigil continued.
The search was finally called off at ten o’clock and another long night followed, during which none of them slept again. Adina heard two policemen speaking in the entry as she returned to check on Dovi earlier in the evening, and what they were saying struck terror into her heart.
‘If you was to ask me, time is running out,’ she heard one of them say in a low voice to his colleague. ‘In my experience, if a kid isn’t found alive within the first twenty-four hours of going missing, it’s usually a body we find.’
Adina shuddered but said nothing, who already seemed to be living on their nerves as it was. Mr Haynes spent most of the time in the small backyard smoking one Park Drive after another as he waited for news, whilst Mrs Haynes flitted from the kitchen table to the window like a butterfly.
At midnight, Freyde and Adina returned to their home. They were all exhausted but yet again, none of them managed to get much sleep.
Adina was the first up the following morning, just in time to see Dovi putting his coat on.
‘You’re an early bird,’ she smiled, trying to keep her voice light. ‘Where are you off to at this time of the morning?’
Dovi almost jumped out of his skin as he swung around to face her, and she was shocked to see how pale he was.
‘Are you feeling ill?’ she asked, taking a step towards him. He flinched away from her as if he had been burned and despair washed through her as she thought back to how he had been before he went away to war. This poor wreck standing in front of her was just a parody of the handsome, jolly young man she remembered. He flapped his hands at her now as if to ward her off, and then before she could stop him he threw the door open and disappeared outside at a shambling run. Adina sighed then filled the kettle at the stone sink before setting it on the stove. Striking a Vesta match she lit the gas ring beneath it. Upstairs she could hear her parents pottering about and no doubt they would want yet another cup of tea when they came downstairs. At the moment it felt as if that was all they were surviving on.
Once breakfast was over, Ezra again went out to join in the search while Freyde hurried around to the Haynes’ to wait with them for news.
Adina attempted to work on the blouse she was making for one of her regular customers, but it was impossible to concentrate, so she went back downstairs and looked for something to do that would pass a little time. Noting that the washing basket was overflowing she decided to fill the copper and get some of it done out of the way. It would save her mother a job when things had settled down.
Whilst the copper was heating up, Adina filled the dolly tub in the yard and began to wash some of the coloured clothing that she had separated into a neat pile. It was as she lifted the shirt that Dovi had worn the day before that she saw a stain down the front of it which she hadn’t noticed the night before. Holding it up to the light, she examined it more closely, gasping when she realised that it was dried blood. But where could it have come from? Dovi had shown no signs of being hurt in any way.
Plunging it into the water to soak, she dried her hands on her apron and slowly went back into the kitchen. She then went upstairs and cautiously pushed Dovi’s door open. The bed was unmade as yet, so crossing to it she threw back the sheets. It was then that a scream rose in her throat. The pillow and bottom sheet were stained a brilliant red. The stains stood out in stark contrast to the snow-white linen, and for a while hysteria gripped her. She was vaguely aware of someone thundering up the stairs and then there was her mother standing in the doorway struggling to get her breath back.
‘Whatever is wrong?’ she demanded. ‘We could hear you next door. I thought you were being strangled, at the very least.’
Now other footsteps were heard and within seconds Mr and Mrs Haynes appeared too. Adina was gesturing towards the discovery with a trembling hand, and as their eyes looked upon it, Mrs Haynes gasped.
‘Oh, dear God above.’ She hastily crossed herself. ‘Do you think that could be . . . Sarah’s blood?’
Mr Haynes turned without a word, his lips set in a grim line, and they all knew that he had gone to get the police. They also knew that if it was Sarah’s blood, it could only mean one thing: Dovi must be responsible for her disappearance. But why? Adina asked herself. Her brother had always been so gentle with the child, and it was more than obvious that he loved Sarah.
Within minutes a policeman panted up the stairs close on the heels of Mr Haynes, and when he saw the bloodstains he visibly blanched. ‘We need to find your son,’ he told Freyde before rushing off the way he had come.
A silence settled on the room, broken by Freyde who muttered miserably, ‘I cannot believe that my son could be responsible for hurting a child. Perhaps it is his own blood. He could have hurt himself.’
And then suddenly there were police everywhere, ushering them all out of the room and closing the bedroom door firmly behind them.
As yet, Mrs Haynes had not shed a tear, but now suddenly they erupted from her in great shuddering sobs that shook her ample frame.
‘We’d best get back round home, luv,’ her husband told her as he placed a comforting arm about her shoulder. ‘The police will deal with this.’
As Freyde watched them go, she bowed her head in shame and clung to Adina as if her very life depended on it.
Three hours later, the police came to inform them that Dovi had been found wandering and was now being questioned down at the police station. Freyde felt as if she was caught in the grip of a nightmare and could not believe that her son was capable of such a crime.
‘Why would he hurt Sarah?’ she asked over and over again as she rocked to and fro in Dovi’s chair. ‘And where is she?’ But no one could answer and the minutes on the clock continued to pass pain
fully slowly.
When Ezra returned home he went straight to the police station, but when he eventually returned he could tell them very little.
‘Dovi is with a doctor,’ he informed them. ‘But they were not able to question him. He seems locked away in a world of his own.’
‘And is there any news of Sarah?’ Adina asked,
Her father shook his head. ‘Not as yet. The police are still scouring the area though. It can only be a matter of time now.’
And so once again they all sat down to wait.
Sarah was found at five o’clock that evening by a man who was walking his little mongrel dog. Her small body was lying beneath a tree in the copse in Riversley Park that Adina and Karl had adopted as their own. It was said that the man who found her could be heard shouting and screaming from over half a mile away, and when the police arrived he was inconsolable. The ambulancemen who were called thought at first glance that the child was dead, and a cheer went up when one of them detected a faint pulse.
‘We’ve got to get her to the hospital and quick,’ the man barked. ‘She’s in a really bad way. If she survives this, it will be a miracle.’
The child was whipped away into the ambulance as the police hurried off to inform the Haynes family that she had been found.
Sarah’s life hung in the balance. She had taken such a severe beating that her little face was unrecognisable, and she was in a deep coma. She had a broken arm, a broken leg and three cracked ribs, and once Mrs Haynes was shown in to see her, she nearly fainted at the sight.
‘Is she goin’ to live, Doctor?’
The doctor shook his head gravely. ‘It could go either way at the moment,’ he told her truthfully. ‘We have set her broken arm and leg, and her ribs will heal with time – but the coma is the most worrying, along with exposure and dehydration. We have no way of knowing if she will come out of it or whether she will just slip away from us. All we can do is wait now.’
As word spread of what had happened, the whole town went into shock. They had long since grown used to the news that one of their sons, lovers, husbands, brothers or fathers had been killed in the war, but this senseless attack on a child was unforgivable.
‘What will become of Dovid now?’ Freyde asked the Police Constable who brought them the terrible news.
He removed his helmet and coughed. ‘I can’t rightly say, ma’am, but I do know that the doctor who is with your son at the station reckons he wasn’t responsible for his actions – if that makes you feel any better.’ He felt sorry for these people who seemed decent and law-abiding.
‘So when will we know?’ Ezra asked.
‘I should think within the next few days. Meantime I should try not to blame him too much. The poor chap hardly knows his head from his elbow at present, and he doesn’t seem like the type who would do this knowingly.’
It was like being caught in the grip of a nightmare, Freyde thought, but she was all too aware that this particular nightmare might never end.
Four days later they were informed that Dovid was being transferred from the police station to Hatton Mental Hospital, where he would be properly assessed. Several doctors had already examined him and had decided that he was insane and dangerous.
It was possible that there would be no court hearings for Dovi, but those who heard of the transfer knew that he could suffer a far worse fate than prison. Few people ever left Hatton after being incarcerated there.
Sarah opened her eyes the following week and Mrs Haynes, who had scarcely left her bedside for the whole time, burst into a fresh fit of sobbing, but this time these were tears of relief. She had come to love Sarah dearly, and had been blaming herself for not watching her more closely on the night of the party.
‘I think she’s going to pull through,’ the doctor told them after examining her yet again, and her foster family rejoiced.
The burden of guilt that Ezra and Freyde bore for their son’s crime was weighing heavily upon them, although the Haynes family bore them no ill-feeling.
‘Your lad weren’t of his right mind,’ Mrs Haynes told them kindly. ‘I dare say he never set out to hurt her, nor them other two poor buggers that he attacked. Sarah will be able to tell us what happened soon when she’s a bit better. Let’s just thank God that she came through it an’ stop whippin’ yourselves.’
Sarah was able to speak to the police three days later, and she told them that she and Dovi had been playing hide and seek in the copse. Everything had been fine until they suddenly heard a loud bang, and then Dovi had suddenly turned on her. That was the last she could remember. The doctors could only assume that the noise had startled Dovi and he had perhaps thought it was a gunshot – and once more in his mind returned to the terrible conditions of the battlefield, where it was kill or be killed.
But no one would ever know for sure now unless he chose to tell them – and the chances of that seemed remote.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ezra and Freyde were allowed to visit Dovid two weeks later. Hatton Hospital was almost twenty miles away from them and they had to catch three buses to get there, so it was mid-afternoon by the time they finally arrived at the gates which were unlocked by a solemn-faced man who was sitting in a small hut to one side of the drive.
Set in over 377 acres, Hatton was a huge Victorian asylum built in the Gothic style. It dated back to 1846, and since it had been erected on a site purchased from the Earl of Warwick, it had originally been known as the Warwick County Lunatic Asylum. However, from 1930 onwards, it had been renamed the Warwickshire County Mental Hospital, although everyone referred to it as simply, ‘Hatton’. Patients there received electric shock treatment amongst other things, and many of the rooms were reputed to be haunted which Freyde could well believe as she stared at the bleak façade.
‘I cannot believe that our son has ended up in such a place,’ she breathed to her husband.
He glanced at her sympathetically. The change in her over the last three weeks had been dramatic. She had lost yet more weight and found it hard to sleep, for when she did she was tormented by pictures of Dovi beating Sarah mercilessly. Sometimes now, Ezra wondered if she would ever be the same again. He had reopened the shop – after all, he still had to make a living – but trade had dropped off dramatically as word spread of the horrendous things that their son had done.
Thankfully, Sarah was now safely back at home, but her recovery would take a long time and she would bear the mental scars of Dovi’s attack for ever. Many people had offered condolences but others avoided the whole family like the plague now. At present Ezra was barely taking enough money to meet their bills, but this was not the right time to worry about that and he pushed his concerns to the back of his mind.
‘Come,’ he coaxed as he took her elbow. ‘There is nothing to be gained by us standing here. Let us go in.’
Freyde nodded as they began to walk along the endless drive.
They were met at the enormous double doors by a nurse who led them into a small side room to wait for a doctor. It was a small room, but clean and comfortable with five easy chairs positioned around a shining mahogany table. As Freyde stood looking out across the grounds it was hard to believe that they were in a mental institution – but she knew that they were.
The doctor when he arrived was a small stout man with a bald head and huge, gold-framed glasses perched on the end of his enormous nose. He held his hand out and smiled welcomingly.
‘Ah, Mr and Mrs Schwartz,’ he greeted them. ‘I have been expecting you. Do take a seat.’ Flicking the back of his white coat aside, he sat down as Freyde and Ezra perched nervously on the edge of two chairs.
‘How is my son?’ Ezra asked without preamble and now the doctor’s smile faded.
‘I am afraid he is not good,’ he told them truthfully. ‘We have him in the high security area. I fear that in his present state of mind he could be a risk to himself and to others.’
‘But . . . he will get better, won’t he?’ Freyde aske
d.
The doctor steepled his fingers and seemed to consider her question for a time before saying quietly, ‘If you are asking for my personal opinion, Mrs Schwartz, I would have to say no, I do not believe that Dovid will ever recover. In fact, I think he is now totally insane. It’s so sad. We have many like him here. Young men who have seen things in the war that should never be seen. It tips the balance of their minds. Some recover, some do not, but none of them will ever be the same again. But never fear; we shall take good care of him. It is a blessing really that he does not even realise that he is in a hospital. But I should warn you, you must prepare yourselves, for the son you see will not be the son you remember. Are there any more questions you would like to ask?’
When the couple shook their heads, the doctor rose and rang a small bell to the side of the door. Within seconds a nurse dressed in a navy-blue uniform topped by a crisp white apron appeared and the doctor asked her, ‘Would you take Mr and Mrs Schwartz along to the high security unit please, Nurse? The staff there are expecting them.’
‘Of course, Doctor.’ The nurse smiled at them and they followed her out into the corridor with their hearts thundering in their chests as they each wondered what they were about to see. It was hard to imagine Dovi being even worse than he had been.
The enormous entrance foyer was in actual fact quite presentable if somewhat plain. They followed the nurse up a huge sweeping staircase and along a corridor, and when they came to the end of it she paused in front of a door and knocked on it. A small hole in the top half of it instantly popped open as someone peered out at them, and then it slammed shut again and they heard a key turning in the lock.
The nurse who appeared now was wrapped in a voluminous calico apron with a large bunch of keys dangling from her thick leather belt. She nodded at them curtly to follow her, after hastily locking the door behind her. They found themselves in yet another long corridor, with locked doors leading off either side of it. Cries and groans issued from within each one as they passed and Freyde had to take a deep breath to hold herself together.
A Band of Steel Page 20
