On Sunday, in the southern Belgian town of Neufchateau, some 5,000 people gathered with the families of disappeared and murdered children to mark a year since the whole country, it seemed then, had come on to the streets in the extraordinary marche blanche (white march). Today a cynical public feels it has little to show for its outpouring of anger - except, in the most bitter of ironies, the horrific contents of yet more bloody cellars.
The discoveries last weekend, at 54 Rue Vandermaelan in the rundown Molenbeek suburb of Brussels, of buried human bones, of unidentified flesh in a freezer, and of bloodstains on the cellar wall, were only possible because of last year's popular marches.
Stung by the evidence of police and magisterial incompetence and popular demands for the truth, the authorities ordered the reopening of 400 old files on disappearances in the hands of more energetic investigators. Soon they had found the body of missing nine-year-old Loubna Benaissa 200 yards from her home, and now, it seems, the missing family of Pastor Andreas Pandy (70), raising the question yet again of why, if it was so straightforward now, could they not have been found before?
On Monday, grappling with that very question, the continuing parliamentary inquiry into the Dutroux affair confronted one of the junior policemen charged in 1995 with investigating disappearances. Why, when Dutroux was a suspect, had he failed to act for five months on a request from another force to question Dutroux about a car theft? Because he had been ordered by a superior not to do so, was his reply. Not so, says his commanding officer.
Yesterday police continued to search two other houses owned by the "quiet-spoken" Pastor Pandy, who has now been charged with the murder of two former wives and four of his children. His detention confirmed by a court, he is being held in solitary confinement in the prison of Forest, still pleading his innocence.
But there are fears that yet others may have died. One of Mr Pandy's surviving children, Agnes (39), is reported to have testified that her father had relationships with some 20 Hungarian women in the early 1990s when he was looking for a third wife and had placed a series of advertisements in Hungarian newspapers. Other reports suggested he has been accused of having sexually abused his daughters.
Mr Pandy, who emigrated to Belgium after the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, had earned a living as a teacher of religion in a number of Flemish schools. He was first married in 1956 to a Hungarian, Ms Llona Sores, with whom he had three children - Agnes, and two sons, Daniel and Zoltan. The sons are now thought to have been murdered.
His second wife, Ms Edith Fintmr, had three daughters from previous marriages, two of whom, Tunde and Andrea, he is believed to have killed. The couple had two more children together.
In 1992 the two former wives and four children were reported by other members of the family to police as having gone missing in the late 1980s. But Mr Pandy, using letters now thought to be forged, managed to convince the authorities they were living in Hungary.
When the case was reopened this year the Hungarian police were not able to find any trace of them. A Belgian police mission will now travel to Hungary to talk to relations.
In Belgium the circumstances of the horrific find serve only to emphasise how little has been done to reform the police and investigating services. Yesterday Le Soir reported a poll showing nearly half the population say their confidence in the police has declined in the last year.
Recent proposals to merge the country's three police forces prompted protest marches last week involving police unions, lawyers and parents of disappeared children. Some fear that the judicial police would be swamped in the new organisation, others that magistrates will have even less control over investigations, yet others that the reforms do not go far enough.
Meanwhile, the bodies keep turning up.
