Darkest hours before the dawn

They waited through the long night, dreading the knock on the door that would confirm their very worst fears.

From the moment a jogger reported freshly disturbed earth at Newmarket Gallops, seven miles from where their little girls disappeared, the parents of Holly and Jessica were warned by police to expect the worst.

Then shortly after 6am today came relief and with it renewed uncertainty. Police were able to tell Kevin and Nicola Wells and Leslie and Sharon Chapman that they had not found the bodies of their lovely daughters.

As soon as forensic science experts completed their examination of two mounds of earth, 30 yards apart on the gallops, police family liaison officers relayed the news to the two families.

The officers in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb, then walked purposefully from the scene to a group of reporters waiting nearby to confirm that the night's grim search had proved fruitless.

From the moment it was announced last night that police were examining the slope close to Newmarket, the country was plunged into a state of tense anticipation.

News bulletins relayed the latest from the scene as police tape was hastily drawn around a quarter-mile square of wooded land.

At about 4.25pm yesterday a jogger had stumbled upon the two plots on the edge of a wooded copse. To make this dark find even more forbidding, police confirmed that the same man had earlier reported hearing the sounds of screaming near the same spot on Sunday night, hours after the girls vanished.

Most observers dashed to the site expecting another false trail, but climbing the hill where thoroughbred racing champions have been trained for centuries, it quickly became obvious that police were taking this discovery very seriously.

The mood grew increasingly dejected as officers erected white tents over the site, often a sign that a body had been found.

The broad avenue between two clumps of trees is the spot where horses warm up in the mornings before galloping up and down the heath.

Warren Hill was first used by King James I in the 1600s to exercise his thoroughbred horses, while the area at the top of the Gallops is known as King's Chair, because Charles II would look down from his shelter to see his horses being trained.

Today, instead of horses and riders, the top of the heath was covered by police cars and vans.

Throughout the night uniformed officers using torches scoured woodland. Just out of sight, at the crest of the slope, scenesofcrime specialists in white paper overalls began their grim task, sifting over every inch of the freshly turned earth. The forensic experts knew that if the sites did prove to be shallow graves, it was vital that they proceed with the utmost delicacy in the hope of preserving DNA evidence which could trap a killer.

At Holly's home her mother and father were keeping an open house, with friends and relatives offering what little comfort they could. Mr Wells spent much of the time on the phone while his wife could be seen with her head in her hands.

The Chapmans hid their agony behind closed curtains. At both houses, police liaison officers were on hand to relay information the moment any discovery was made.

As the search continued pubs in Soham - where only 10 days ago Holly and Jessica had wandered carefree - closed early and a dark foreboding hung over the streets.

On the Gallops, across the road from the palatial homes of top trainer Henry Cecil and racing giants Sheikh Maktoum and Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum of the Godolphin Stable, half a dozen police chiefs were huddled in urgent conference. A convoy of police vehicles, including a scenes-of-crime van with blackedout windows, rolled into the exclusion zone.

By nightfall, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb, eyes brimming with emotion, said the early examination was inconclusive, so arc lights were brought in to allow the operation to continue through the night.

While the two families waited at home the media kept vigil on Warren Hill. On the other side of a low metal gate, arc lights and the constant throb of a generator disturbed the night. Heavy crane platforms rumbled into position as television crews tried to get a close-up view of the activity happening just out of sight in the trees about 300 yards away from the road.

At 1.30am, police working by the light of a car's headlamps constructed a white tented canopy, of the type usually used to cover a body at a crime scene. When it was built, officers carried it into the woods out of sight from the road. Two hours later, the calm was broken by another flurry of activity as the white-suited forensic science teams came back into view and an unmarked blacked-out van drove to join them. But with the dawn, it became clear that there were still no conclusive answers - the night's work had consisted of a complete search of the area around the two mounds of earth and only now would the slow process of excavation begin.

Back in Soham, where the families have kept candles lit for their daughters, the waiting and hoping moved into another day, but by now there was a nagging sense that the early optimism about finding the girls alive had been cruelly misplaced.

Then, at 6.41am DCI Andy Hebb emerged from the woods. He said: "We can now say that there is no connection with the disappearance of Holly and Jessica."

He said forensic science experts had been conducting fingertip and visual searches overnight, "a very similar process to an archaeological dig".

Officers eventually found just "loose mounds of earth with nothing underneath".

Mr Hebb added: "This has been a particularly long and distressing night for the two girls' parents and my heart goes out to them at this time. Clearly now we need to regain the focus and find Jessica and Holly alive and well."

For the parents of Jessica and Holly his words must have come as a relief of sorts, but today their long and dreadful vigil continues.