Timeline: Hope, grief and despair

The last family picture of the two 10-year-olds

SOHAM, England -- The two-week search for murdered UK schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman gripped the nation.

Cambridgeshire Police have arrested and are questioning a 28-year-old man a 25-year-old woman on suspicion of abduction and murder. (Full story)

Here is how the events of one of the biggest police inquiries in British police history unfolded:

Sunday, August 4

* After spending the day playing together, the girls return to Holly's home in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in the late afternoon.

* At 6.17 p.m., CCTV footage shows the girls, both dressed in their Manchester United football team shirts, crossing the car park of a nearby sports center.

* At 8.30 p.m., Holly's parents, Nicola and Kevin, think the girls are playing upstairs but go to check on them when guests at a barbecue remark on how quiet they are. They discover the girls are missing and raise the alarm.

Monday, August 5

* The search, which started late the night before, continues. About 500 people and officers from two neighbouring police forces join Cambridgeshire Police in the hunt.

Tuesday, August 6

England and Manchester United football star David Beckham made an appeal

* Manchester United and England football star David Beckham appeals for the girls to return home. "Please go home," he said in a statement. "You are not in any kind of trouble. Your parents love you deeply and want you back."

Wednesday, August 7

* Detective Supt David Hankins, the officer leading the inquiry, admits police are "increasingly having to look at the possibility that the girls have been abducted."

Thursday, August 8

* Police release closed-circuit TV pictures showing the last pictures of the girls. Meanwhile, several British newspapers offer rewards totalling more than £1 million ($1.5 million) in the bid to find two schoolgirls.

Friday, August 9

* Police say they believe the girls are still alive and are being help captive. They make a direct appeal to any abductor. An examination of Holly's computer, which the girls were using minutes before vanishing, supplies "significant" new lines of inquiry.

Saturday, August 10

* A reconstruction of the girls' last known movements is filmed in Soham with the help of two girl actresses. Police say the computer revealed no attempts by Holly and Jessica to meet anybody through the Internet or e-mail.

Holly's distraught parents, Kevin and Nicola, attended press conferences

Sunday, August 11

* A week since the girls disappeared. The families attend an emotional prayer service at the local church.

Monday, August 12

* Police reveal details of a possible sighting of the girls being kidnapped. They say a taxi driver saw another motorist grappling with two children as he swerved across a road near Soham at about the time the girls went missing.

Tuesday, August 13

* Suffolk Police contact Cambridgeshire Police after the jogger who had heard "teenagers' screams" while out walking his dog on the Sunday night the girls went missing tells them he found two areas of disturbed earth. The area is cordoned off and scenes of crime and forensic experts are called to the scene.

Wednesday, August 14

* Police complete forensic examination of earth and families are told a fingertip and visual searches found no connection with the disappearance of Holly and Jessica. Later, Detective Supt David Beck releases a pre-recorded 30-second message in which he appeals to the abductor to telephone a hotline and speak to him in person "one-to-one" by midnight on Thursday.

Thursday, August 15

* Detectives discount a potential sighting of the girls in a green car at around 7 p.m. on the evening the girls' disappearance after taxi driver Ian Webster admitted his dashboard clock was an hour fast. Holly and Jessica were seen in Soham after 6 p.m.

* The midnight deadline passes with no word from the possible abductor who may have taken the girls.

Friday, August 16

* With 426 police officers from 21 forces involved in the search, Manchester United players make an appeal for help in finding the girls. Wearing their team shirts, the squad record a plea from manager Sir Alex Ferguson urging people to come forward with information to locate the missing girls.

National newspapers offered rewards of over £1 million

* At 3.55 p.m., school caretaker Ian Huntley, 28, and his girlfriend Maxine Carr, 25, a teaching assistant in Holly and Jessica's class at St Andrew's Primary School until the end of last term, are questioned by police over the girls' disappearance. A search is made of the couple's home, the village college, and St Andrew's Primary School, which the girls attended. The couple are later released after questioning.

Saturday, August 17

* In a statement, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb says that Huntley and Carr have been arrested on suspicion of murdering Holly and Jessica. He adds that items of major importance had been recovered during a search of the college.

* As the search for Holly and Jessica continues, police reveal that at 1300 BST a member of the public has found two bodies at a remote, woodland site at nearby Mildenhall, in Suffolk. Police are unable to confirm the sex or ages of the bodies.

Sunday, August 18

* As police continue their investigation at the scene where two bodies were found and question Huntley and Carr, the residents of Sohan attend a special morning church service for the missing girls. The Rev Tim Alban Jones, vicar of Sowham, told the congregation: "The whole town feels violated by the disappearance of Jessica and Holly."

* Huntley and Carr appear at closed magistrates' court hearings where police were granted a further 36 hours to question them.

* At 1900 BST -- almost two-weeks to the moment the girls disappeared -- police confirm that the two bodies found at Mildenhall are those of Holly and Jessica.

Deputy Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police, Keith Hoddy said: "It may be some days yet before we are able to positively identify the two bodies...However, we are as certain as we possibly can be tonight that they are those of Holly and Jessica."

* The bodies were being moved from where they were found to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge for further forensic tests.