'We have had our friends and family searching for the shallow graves of our children. It doesn't get more difficult than that'

by PAUL HARRIS, Daily Mail

Somewhere in the sea of people, you could just make out his face. A lost, lonely figure in a red bobble hat and Wellingtons, the kind of clothes that everyone should wear for such a damp day in the Fens.

All around him the police officers were talking and gesturing, using mobile telephones and trying to marshal the biggest search that anyone can remember round here.

Just for a moment, Kevin Wells remained motionless. The mud on his boots had come from traipsing through the countryside in a desperate attempt to find his daughter Holly and her best friend Jessica. The haunted expression was the kind that told you not to ask what he was thinking.

But for Mr Wells and his wife Nicola - just as for Jessica's parents Leslie and Sharon Chapman - these had perversely been the most hopeful hours. The worst part of the waiting was yet to come.

They had each spent the night not knowing where their children were, wondering if they would ever see them again. No parent will need telling what thoughts would have gone repeatedly through their minds.

'Last night was probably the worst night so far,' said Mr Wells. 'We have had friends and family searching in ditches, in rivers, looking for the shallow graves of our children. It doesn't get any more difficult than that.'

Then, during a poignant appeal for the safe return of the missing ten-year-olds, he added: 'We have had a very tearful night. We are starting to think of the worst case scenario.'

That was a euphemism, of course, for the words a father could not bring himself to say. But with every hour that passed in the search for the two little girls yesterday, the 'worst case' was a possibility that loomed ever nearer.

Police admitted that their fears for the girls' safety were deepening drastically. The picture of two little girls setting off for some secret adventure in their David Beckham shirts suddenly switched to talk of checking waterways, of keeping divers on standby, and of the possibility that they might have been abducted.

What detectives kept repeating yesterday was that Holly and Jessica are not the kind of children who would vanish of their own accord.

They are bright and clever, the police said. They come from 'ordinary, decent families'. The farthest from home they had previously travelled was the local shops.

Perhaps most worrying of all, was the question of how they could disappear so quickly. Holly and Jessica went missing from their homes in Soham, Cambridgeshire, at about 6.30pm on Sunday. The mystery has gripped the nation ever since. Last night the girls' football idol David Beckham made an appeal for their return.

But the only potential breakthrough has been a sighting of two girls walking towards Cambridge along the A10 on Monday.

Tina-Marie Easey, 39, saw two youngsters matching Holly and Jessica's descriptions walk past her house in Little Thetford, eight miles from Soham, at 6.45am.

Both were dressed in red Manchester United football shirts with the name Beckham and the number seven on the back.

Mrs Easey, who lives at the side of the A10 from Cambridge to Ely, phoned police at around 4pm on Monday to report the sighting.

Police are confident it was Holly and Jessica and were 'particularly reassured' that they appeared to be in good spirits. Holly's mother told reporters: 'It has given us a bit of hope.' The two girls Mrs Easey saw were 'larking around', as she put it. They were also clean and dry, suggesting that if they had spent the night away from home, they had found somewhere to stay. Which only heightened the mystery.

The sighting was reinforced by Mrs Easey's next-door neightbour Caroline Perry, 76, who said she saw the same girls at 2pm on Monday but walking in the opposite direction towards Ely.

When Detective Superintendent David Hankins gave his second press conference yesterday in a school hall in Soham, 48 hours after the girls vanished, he already had the look of a detective facing a long and difficult inquiry.

There had been 1,500 calls in response to appeals for information, he said. Now police faced the task of sifting through them all. He didn't actually say it, but the tone of his voice suggested that time was something he didn't have.

His team had been making routine 'background inquiries' into the girls and their circle of young friends, but these had produced nothing unusual. Computers taken from their homes were still being checked to discover whether Holly or Jessica had visited any Internet chatroom sites, or made any e-mail arrangements to meet anyone. Nothing significant had so far materialised from this examination.

'Their parents have provided us with the girls' computer passwords and we will be examining all their e-mails to see if they have been in contact with anybody,' said a police source.

The computer examination could take anything up to a week. As the source explained: 'Files are not always easily obtainable, and some may have been erased. We are hoping that files erased over the past few days can be found.'

What about their home life? 'They are just ordinary, decent families,' he said. Yesterday, they were shattered families.

Police assigned officers to look after the two sets of parents and keep them up to date on any developments. Good news was sparse. They were also persuaded that, despite their instincts, the searching was now best left to the police.

Hundreds of volunteers turned out on Monday to comb the countryside, a spontaneous and overwhelming show of determination to do everything they could to help. Yesterday police thanked the public for their support - and asked them to stand down.

Privately, it was a signal that the nature of the inquiry was changing.

If there is any forensic evidence to be gleaned from the police investigation, the last thing detectives want is for hordes of locals to trample it into oblivion.

Nevertheless, the legacy of this extraordinary show of solidarity could still be seen yesterday. In the shadow of a windmill, footmarks criss- crossed a cornfield. Elsewhere, little clutches of villagers congregated, as if on standby.

Just about everyone you spoke to mentioned the treacherous waterways that network the area. Some said Soham was not the kind of community where there was any great fear of crime. Others told how commuters to London had irrevocably changed the character of a village whose roots stretch back to the 7th century.

'This used to be the kind of place where you left your front door unlocked and you knew you would be all right,' said Mick Baldock, 59, who knows both girls' families. 'It's not like that any more.'

Holly's 60-year-old grandmother Diane Westley painted a depressing picture of what the wait has been like. 'We just do not know which way to go next,' she said. 'We are all devastated. We just can't take it in.'

She too had clearly considered the worst case scenario. 'All I can think is that someone must have taken them somewhere,' she said. 'But how do you just take two tenyearolds?'

Last night the strongest hopes were pinned on Beckham's appeal.

The England and Manchester United star led the rest of the United squad in begging: 'Please go home. You are not in any kind of trouble. Your parents love you deeply and want you back.'

One of Holly's friends, tenyearold Laura Newman-Dennis, who had been expecting the schoolgirl at her house for a sleepover on Monday, also delivered an appeal. 'If you are watching, come back,' she said.

The police hotline for information is 01480 422982.