Detectives fear missing girls could be held abroad

Officers widen the net as they investigate movements of paedophiles in neighbouring counties and consult overseas experts

Detectives hunting the missing 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman have widened the net and started looking at the movements of sex offenders in neighbouring counties.

Officers from Operation Fincham are considering the possibility that the girls might be held anywhere in the country or even abroad. As they continued to question Cambridgeshire's 266 known sex offenders, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb confirmed that Norfolk and Suffolk police had handed over names of "high-risk" offenders in their areas.

The search would widen nationally and even internationally if those failed to turn up any leads and his officers had already consulted experts from abroad, he said. "It is a possibility they were taken abroad. There is nothing to suggest they have been taken out of the country but it is a possibility and there has been an all-ports warning," he said.

One week, 7,500 phone calls and thousands of police man hours on, the whereabouts of the two schoolgirls remained as great a mystery as ever yesterday.

Cambridgeshire police set up roadblocks, questioning hundreds of drivers passing through the area in the hope that they had been in Soham at the same time last week and might have seen something.

Despite countless reports of girls seen around the country, the last definite sighting of them – by Margaret Willers, a family friend, at 7.20pm on last Sunday – has remained the same for days now.

The weary and emotional residents of the market town gathered yet again at St Andrew's church yesterday to show their support for the two families at the centre of what their vicar called "the most terrible storm".

More than 100 people watched in silence as Holly's parents, Kevin and Nicola Wells, and her grandmother, Diane Westley, were the last to join the queue for communion. For a minute, the three of them knelt alone before the altar as the Reverend Tim Alban Jones blessed them. Jessica's mother and father, Sharon and Leslie Chapman, as well as her sisters, Rebecca, aged 16, and Alison, who is 14, sat near by, just feet away from an alcove where pictures of the girls were lit by candles.

In what Mr Alban Jones said was the most difficult sermon he had written, he tried to offer reassurance to a town caught up "in these profoundly disturbing and unsettling events.

"We have been through such a lot that it seems almost incredible that it was only a week ago that life was normal here. I say only a week but if it has seemed a long time to us, then how much more interminable must it have been for the families of Holly and Jessica? For them, this living nightmare must seem to be unending," he said.

As Mrs Wells, 35, sobbed in her mother's arms, Amanda Taylor, a parishioner said: "This week has been a week of 'if onlys' – if only I had seen them, if only they had not gone out, if only we could find them, if only they would come back." After the service, Kevin Wells, the strain evident on his face, said: "We are bearing up."

One of the biggest hunts in recent history has turned away from Soham and begun searching within a three-mile radius. More than 300 officers drawn from forces across the country as well as the Ministry of Defence have been working around the clock while a helicopter using thermal-imaging equipment has been combing the area.

An examination of Holly's computer, which the girls used shortly before they disappeared, has provided no evidence that they sent e-mails or entered internet chatrooms. But detectives are continuing to search for evidence of any contacts they may have made before Sunday. Two men arrested for failing to co-operate with police enquiries were released yesterday.

While officers said they were looking into reports of other attempted abductions or approaches to children in the area over the past few months none have been linked to this case yet.

Det Ch Insp Hebb said that he remained confident the girls were alive and being held by someone.

This is a hope the families clung to as they acknowledged the girls might have known the person who kidnapped them. "It is a scenario, which has been discussed with us by the police. Why would two girls get into a vehicle without creating a fuss? The obvious answer is that one of the girls knew the parties involved. I can't bring myself to believe that would happen at this stage," said Kevin Wells.

He repeated his message to any abductor not to harm the youngsters. "It's been a shocking incident for both of those girls. They must be frightened to death. But if you have them please let them come home," he said.

Nicola Wells recalled the moment she realised her daughter and a friend had disappeared, after a family barbecue. "We just assumed they'd gone upstairs to play. We shouted 'come and say goodbye' and there was nobody there. I shouted several times and then popped up just to check they could hear me. They weren't there."

The family searched long and hard. Mrs Wells said: "I just kept thinking she's going to walk through the door in a moment, every 10 minutes, pacing around. Everybody was getting very panicky. It was just dreadful."