Copyright

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Luke Delaney 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Cover photographs © Henry Steadman

Luke Delaney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007486144

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007486137

Version 2016-10-31

DEDICATION

To my Mum – Mary.

I grew up in quite a large family, my siblings and I being close in age and none of us angels. We were a nightmare at times and just feeding, clothing and keeping us clean must have been exhausting and stressful, enough to push a mere mortal over the edge. But to this day I can’t remember Mum ever being angry with me or even telling me off much. All I remember is feeling safe and loved when she was there. I could have done with a kick up the backside from time to time, but I think Mum felt we’d take enough hits and knocks as we grew older, and saw her role as being the one to give us sanctuary when we needed it – and we did.

It would be wrong of me to give the impression she was soft though. She’s intelligent and tough, and razor sharp – a legacy of being the only sister with three older brothers growing up in the industrial northeast. She used her toughness to protect us when we were younger: she was the buffer between us and the big bad world – mine in particular, I think. She’d occasionally bunk me off school on a Friday, and we’d head into the city centre where I’d watch patiently while she bought yet more cushions, my reward being a slap-up lunch in a café. They were the best Fridays ever!

As my childhood gave way to the teenage years she remained the brick I anchored myself to, dispensing words of wisdom in a never-ending supply, picking me up when I was down, encouraging me when I was ready to quit, slipping me (and my pals) a few quid when she could so we could buy some smokes and the occasional pint, feeding me (and my pals) at the drop of a hat, advising me (and my pals) of how to fix our broken hearts when girlfriends left us for boys with cars.

One day, as I was miserably nursing an aforementioned broken heart, she said something that has stuck with me ever since: Being miserable is a conscious decision and a waste of life. Every minute you sit there being miserable is a minute of your life you’ll never get back. In a blink of an eye you’ll be as old as I am now and you’ll regret wasting these minutes like you won’t believe. Wise words indeed.

Sadly Mary lost the one and only love of her life a few years ago – my dad, Mike. She’s struggled since then, understandably. They were together for nearly fifty years – loyal and loving to the last. Not easy losing the love of your life, but she remains a beautiful and formidable lady.

For everything she’s done for me, my siblings and my dad, Mike, I’d like to dedicate this book to her.

For Mum. For Mary.

God bless.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also By Luke Delaney

About the Publisher

1

The street was quiet, empty of the noise of living people, with only the sound of a million leaves hissing in the strong breeze that intensified as it blew in over Hampstead Heath in north-west London. Smart Georgian houses lined either side of the deserted Courthope Road, all gently washed in the pale yellow of the street lights, their warming appearance giving lie to the increasingly bitter cold that late autumn brought with it. Some of the shallow porches added their own light to the yellow, left on by security-conscious occupiers and those too exhausted to remember to switch them off before heading for bed. But these were the homes of London’s affluent, who had little to fear from the streets outside – the hugely inflated house prices ensuring the entire area was a sanctuary for the rich and privileged. Higher than normal police patrols, private security firms and state-of-the-art burglar alarms meant the people within slept soundly and contentedly.

His gloved fingers worked quickly and nimbly as he crouched by the front door, the small powerful torch – the type used by potholers, strapped to his forehead by an elasticated band – provided him with more than enough light to see inside the locks on the door: two deadlocks, top and bottom, and a combined deadlock and latch in the centre. His warm breath turned to plumes of mist that swirled in the tubular light of the torch before disappearing into the night, making way for the next calmly expelled breath. He’d already unlocked the top and bottom deadlocks easily enough – a thousand hours of practice making the task simple, but the centre locks were new and more sophisticated. Still he remained totally calm as he gently and precisely worked the two miniature tools together, each of which looked similar to the type of instruments a dentist would use – the thin wrench with its slightly hooked end holding the first of the lock’s pins down as the pick silently slid quickly back and forth until eventually it aligned all the pins in the barrel of the lock and it clicked open. It was a tiny sound, but one that in the emptiness of the street made him freeze, holding his breath as he waited for any reaction in the night that surrounded him. When his lungs began to burn he exhaled the dead air, taking a second to look at his watch. It was just gone three a.m. The family inside would be in the deepest part of their sleep – at their least likely to react to any slight sound or change in the atmosphere.

He inserted the slim hook wrench into the last remaining lock and once more slid the pick through the lock’s barrel until within only a few seconds he felt the pins drop into their holes and allow him to turn the barrel and open the lock, the door falling open just a few millimetres. He replaced the tools in their suede case along with the other dozen or so lock-picking items, rolled it up and put it into the small plastic sports holdall he’d brought with him. He added the head-torch, then paused for a second before taking out the item that he knew was so precious to the little boy who waited inside – the one thing that would virtually guarantee the boy’s cooperation – even his happiness.

He eased the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind him and silently returning the latch to its locked position. He waited for the sounds of an intruder alarm to begin its countdown to the wailing of sirens, but there was none, just as he all but knew there wouldn’t be.

The house was warm inside, the cold of outside quickly fading in his mind as he stepped deeper into the family’s home, heading for the staircase, his way lit by the street light pouring through the windows. Their curtains had been left open and lights strategically left on in case little feet went wandering in the night. He felt safe in the house, almost like a child himself once more – no longer alone and unloved. As he walked slowly towards the stairs that would lead him to the boy, he noted the order of the things within – neat and tidy, everything in its place except for the occasional toy scattered on the hallway floor, abandoned by the children of the house and left by parents too tired to care any more. He breathed in the smells of the family – the food they had had for dinner mixing with the mother’s perfume and bathtime creams and soaps, air fresheners and polish.

He listened to the sounds of the house – the bubbling of a fish-tank filter coming from the children’s playroom and the ticking of electronic devices that seemed to inhabit every modern family’s home, accompanied by blinking green and red lights. All the time he thought of the parents rushing the children to their beds, too preoccupied with making it to that first glass of wine to even read them a bedtime story or stroke their hair until sleep took them. Parents who had children as a matter of course – to keep them as possessions and a sign of wealth, mere extensions of the expensive houses they lived in and exotic cars they drove. Children they would educate privately as another show of wealth and influence – bought educations that minimized the need for parental input while guaranteeing they never had to step out of their own social confines – even at the school gate.

More discarded toys lay on the occasional step as he began to climb towards the boy’s room, careful not to step on the floorboards that he already knew would creak, his gloved hands carrying the bag and the thing so precious to the boy. His footsteps were silent on the carpet as he glided past the parents’ bedroom on the first floor, the door almost wide open in case of a child in distress. He could sense only the mother in the room – no odours or sounds of a man. He left her sleeping in the semi-darkness and climbed the next flight of stairs to where the children slept – George and his older sister Sophia, each in their own bedrooms. If they hadn’t been, he wouldn’t be here.

He reached the second-floor landing and stood still for a few seconds, looking above to the third floor where he knew the guest bedrooms were, listening for any faint sounds of life, unsure whether the family had a late-arriving guest staying. He only moved forward along the hallway when he was sure the floor above held nothing but emptiness.

Pink and blue light from the children’s night-lamps seeped through their partially opened doors – the blueness guiding him towards George, his grip on the special thing tightening. He was only seconds away from what he’d come for. He passed the girl’s room without looking inside and moved slowly, carefully, silently to the boy’s room, easing the door open, knowing the hinges wouldn’t make a noise. He crossed the room to the boy’s bed that was pushed up under the window, momentarily stopping to look around at the blue wallpaper with white clouds, periodically broken up by childish paintings in the boy’s own hand; the mobile of trains with smiling faces above the boy’s head and the seemingly dozens of teddy bears of all kinds spread across his bed and beyond. He felt both tears of joy and sadness rising from deep inside himself and swelling behind his eyes, but he knew he had to do what he’d come to do: a greater power than he or any man had guided him this far and would protect him the rest of the way.

He knelt next to the boy’s bed and placed the bag on the floor, his face only inches away from the child’s, their breath intertwining in the space between them and becoming one as he gently began to whisper. ‘George … sssh … George.’ The boy stirred under his duvet, his slight four-year-old body wriggling as it fought to stay asleep. ‘George … sssh … open your eyes, George. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I have something for you, George. Something very precious.’ The boy rolled over slowly, blinking sleep from his narrow eyes – eyes that suddenly grew large with excitement and confusion, a smile spreading across his face, his green eyes sparkling with joy as he saw what the man had brought him – reaching out for the precious gift as the man’s still gloved hand stroked his straight blond hair. ‘Do you want to come to a magic place with me, George? A special place with special things?’ he whispered. ‘If you do, we need to go now and we need to be very, very quiet. Do you understand?’ he asked smiling.

‘A magic place?’ the boy asked, yawning and stretching in his pale blue pyjamas, making the pictures of dinosaurs printed on them come to life.

‘Yes,’ the man assured him. ‘A place just for the best, nicest children to see.’

‘Do we have to go now?’ the boy asked.

‘Yes, George,’ the man told him, taking him by the hand and lifting his bag at the same time. ‘We have to go now. We have to go right now.’

Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan sat in his small goldfish bowl of an office at Peckham Police Station reading through CPS reports and reviews of the last case he and his team had dealt with – over six months ago now. Initially they’d all been glad of the lull in the number of murder investigations coming their way, but after six months, and with the paperwork for the last case already tidied away, they were growing bored and restless. They watched and waited as the other murder teams across south-east London continued to work on the everyday, run-of-the-mill murders that kept them in the overtime that meant they could pay their mortgages on time and maybe even save enough for an inexpensive family holiday. Sean’s team were beginning to feel the pinch and even old, experienced hands like Detective Sergeant Dave Donnelly were struggling to find increasingly creative ways to justify the need for them to work overtime.

Sean momentarily glanced up and looked into the main office where half his team casually sat at desks and computer screens, the usual sense of urgency plainly not there. He knew he and they were being kept for something special, but if this went on any longer he’d have to speak to Detective Superintendent Featherstone and ask him to toss his team something, even just a domestic murder – anything to keep them gainfully employed. He gave his head a little shake and looked back down at the report on his desk from the CPS detailing the case against Thomas Keller – kidnapper and murderer of women, and the man who’d so nearly taken Sean’s life. He rubbed his shoulder. It still ached, even after three separate operations to try and remove all the shotgun pellets Keller’s gun had put there.

As he read the psychological report that detailed some of the abuse Keller had suffered as a boy, abuse that occasionally mirrored his own childhood, he struggled to work out how he felt about the man. He knew he didn’t hate him or even resent him, and decided he just felt overwhelmingly sorry for him. But he felt sorry for his victims too. No one had come out of the Keller case a winner.

Despite being completely immersed in the report, he still sensed a change in the atmosphere of the main office that made him look up and see Featherstone striding across the office, all smiles and waves, as if he was on an American presidential campaign. Sean puffed out his cheeks and waited for Featherstone’s inevitable arrival, his large frame soon filling the doorway as for some reason he bothered to knock on the open door before entering without being invited and slumping heavily into the chair opposite Sean.

‘Fuck me. Freeze brass monkeys out there,’ was his opening gambit. ‘Nice and warm in here though. Wouldn’t want to be stuck at an outside murder scene too long today.’

‘Morning, boss,’ Sean replied, his voice heavy with disinterest once he realized Featherstone wasn’t about to hand him a much-needed murder investigation. ‘Anything happening out there?’

‘Nah!’ Featherstone answered. ‘Just thought I’d drop by and tell you myself.’

Sean frowned. ‘Tell me what?’

‘Now don’t get too pissed off, but I had a call from the Assistant Commissioner a couple of hours ago.’

‘And?’

‘One of the top bods at the CPS called him and told him they wouldn’t be trying to get any convictions for rape or murder against Thomas Keller or any other type of conviction for that matter. They’re going to accept a plea of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility and then he’s off to Broadmoor for the rest of his natural. I thought it best if I tell you personally. I know what he did to you.’ Sean involuntarily grabbed his shoulder. ‘How is the old shoulder, anyway?’

‘It’s fine,’ Sean lied, ‘and I’m neither pissed off nor surprised. Keller is what he is. I don’t care how he ends up behind bars just so long as he does.’

‘He can talk to all the other nutters in there.’ Featherstone smiled, but stopped when he realized Sean wasn’t returning the sentiment. ‘Anyway, that’s that job put to bed, so I suppose you’ll be needing something to keep the troops busy. Idle hands and all that.’

‘Right now I’ll take anything,’ Sean told him.

‘Can’t allow that, I’m afraid,’ Featherstone said. ‘Assistant Commissioner Addis is adamant you and yours are to be saved for the more … well, you know.’

‘Yeah, but this is south-east London, not Washington State. It could be years before another Keller comes along.’

‘Indeed,’ Featherstone agreed. ‘But what if you covered the whole of London and, sometimes, if the case merited it, beyond?’

‘How can we investigate a murder in deepest-darkest north London if we’re based in Peckham?’

‘Which rather neatly brings us on to my next bit of news – you’re moving.’

‘What?’ Sean almost shouted, drawing concerned looks from the detectives eavesdropping in the main office. ‘Where to?’

‘Where else? The Yard, of course.’

‘Scotland Yard?’ Sean asked, incredulous. ‘Most of my team live in Kent or the borders of. How are they supposed to get to the Yard every day?’

‘Same way everyone else does,’ Featherstone told him. ‘Train, bus – you can even drive if you have to. The Assistant Commissioner’s bagged you a few parking places in the underground car park there. Best you pull rank and reserve yourself one.’

‘This is not going to go down well,’ Sean warned him.

‘Nothing I can do about it, and nothing you can do about it,’ Featherstone replied, his voice hushed now, as if Addis could somehow overhear him from his office high in the tower that was New Scotland Yard. ‘Mr Addis is determined to keep you for the special ones: murders with strong sexual elements, especially ones involving children; murders showing excessive violence and body mutilation, and missing person cases where there are strong grounds to believe a predatory offender may be involved. You get the drift. Addis put the proposal to the Commissioner and he agreed it, so that’s that. They feel we’ve been getting caught out by not having a specialist team to investigate these types of cases, so they decided to create one and you’re it.’

‘Meaning,’ Sean offered, ‘when these high-interest, media-attracting cases don’t go quite to plan they’ve got someone ready-made and in place to blame?’

‘You may think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Featherstone replied. ‘Let’s just say you don’t get to be the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police without learning how to cover your arse.’ Sean just pursed his lips. ‘Anyway, your new home’s on the seventh floor, Room 714. Used to be the Arts and Antiques Team’s, until Addis decided they weren’t offering value for money any more and sent them back to division – half of them back to uniform. Wonder how they’re feeling this morning – walking the beat in some khazi somewhere freezing their nuts or tits off. A warning to the wise – Addis is not a man to piss off.’

‘What if I say no?’ Sean suddenly asked. ‘What if I say I don’t want to do it?’ Images of his wife, Kate, flashed in his mind, smiling and clutching her chest with relief as he told her he’d quit the Murder Team.

‘And what else would you do?’ Featherstone answered. ‘Go back to division and rubber-stamp search warrants, oversee endless dodgy rape allegations? Come on, Sean – it would kill you.’

‘Flying Squad? Anti-Terrorist?’

‘They’re plum jobs, Sean. You know the score: everyone leaving a central or area posting has to go back and serve time on division before getting another off-division posting. And like I said – just in case you weren’t listening – Addis is not a man to piss off.’ Kate’s smiling face faded to nothing. ‘Besides, this is where you belong. I’m not blowing smoke up your arse, but seriously, Sean, you’re the best I’ve got at doing this – the best I’ve ever seen, always one step ahead of everyone else, sometimes two steps, three steps. I don’t know how you do what you do, but I know you can use it to catch some very bad people, and maybe save a few lives along the way.’ Sean said nothing. ‘What’s done is done. Now get yourself and your team over to NSY and set up shop. Your new home awaits you.’

The discussion over, Featherstone stood and walked backwards towards the door. ‘We’re done here. I’ll drop in and see you in a couple of days, see how the move’s going. Who knows, you might have a special case by then. Just what your troops need to take their minds off being moved – and you too. Good luck, and remember, when you make it to the Yard be careful: Addis has eyes and ears everywhere. Loose lips sink ships.’

With that he turned on his heels and was gone, leaving Sean alone, staring at the space he’d left. A special case, Sean thought to himself. Such a neat, sterile way to describe what he had seen and would see again: women and men mutilated and abused before death finally claimed them. What would be next?

Celia Bridgeman checked her watch as she searched through the under-the-stairs cupboard for her training shoes and realized it was almost eight fifteen a.m. She needed to be at the gym by nine a.m. At thirty-five it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain her sleek figure, no matter how little she ate; the hairdressers by ten thirty a.m and then she had a lunch date with some of the mums from school at twelve thirty p.m; grilled chicken salads, no dressing, all round. At least the nanny was here to get the kids fed and dressed and off to school, even if her soon-to-be-sacked cleaner was late again. She found her trainers just as she heard footsteps above her rattling down the stairs, at which she pulled her head from the cupboard in time to see her six-year-old daughter jump the last three stairs into the hallway. She flicked her perfectly dyed blonde hair from her face and spoke to her through straight, shining white teeth. ‘Sophia, have you seen George yet?’

‘No,’ Sophia replied, sounding more like a teenager than a six-year-old. ‘He’s probably playing with his toys in his bedroom – as usual.’

‘Yeah, well he’s going to be late for school.’

‘Nursery, mum,’ Sophia corrected her. ‘George goes to nursery, not school. Remember?’

‘Don’t talk to me like that, Sophia and go and tell Caroline what you want for breakfast.’ Sophia tossed her head to one side to show her dissatisfaction and headed for the kitchen, her mother’s genes already shaping her face and body for a life at the top table. Celia pursed her lips and shook her head as she watched daddy’s little princess swagger towards a health-conscious breakfast before looking at the flights of stairs above her and calling to the heavens. ‘George. Stop playing with your toys and come and get breakfast.’ She waited for an answer, but none came. ‘George.’ Again she waited. Nothing. Caroline, the nanny, had arrived while she was still in the shower. Perhaps she’d already fed and dressed George? She looked at her watch again, the increasing concern she was going to be late for the gym urging her to speak to Caroline and save herself a trip up two flights of stairs. She followed Sophia’s route to the kitchen and found the nanny slicing apples and bananas for her daughter’s breakfast. ‘You should have some toast or something as well,’ she reprimanded her.

‘I don’t want to get fat,’ Sophia answered. Celia almost argued with her but remembered why she was there.

‘Caroline. Have you seen George yet this morning?’ she asked.

‘No, Mrs Bridgeman,’ she answered. ‘Not yet. I thought maybe he’d already had his breakfast.’

‘He’s hardly going to get it himself,’ Sophia unhelpfully added.

‘Don’t be rude, Sophia,’ Celia silenced her.

‘Maybe he’s not feeling very well,’ Caroline suggested. ‘D’you want me to go and check on him?’

‘No,’ Celia snapped, a sudden unexplained feeling of anxiety creeping through her like a grass fire. George had been late before – many times – quietly playing in his bedroom with his toys, unwilling to join the family rituals that his young mind knew would be being played out two floors below, but this felt different somehow. ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

Her daughter and the nanny exchanged bemused looks as she turned her back on them and walked quickly to the stairs, climbing them two at a time, her slim body and athletic legs making her progress rapid, but the closer she got the slower she seemed to move, until she was only feet away from his bedroom door, the silence from within drowned out by the relentless beating of her heart, all thoughts of the gym and lunch gone from her head.

As she eased the door open she could see the curtains were still drawn and the blue night-lamp was still on – not unusual for George, but it meant no one else had been in to see him that morning. ‘George?’ she softly called into the room as the door opened wider, as if she didn’t want to startle him if he was still sleeping, especially if he was unwell – another fever perhaps. ‘George?’ She moved into the room, the sickness in her stomach growing as she approached his bed, the thick duvet and plump pillows making it difficult to tell whether he was there or not, but as she closed the distance the realization dawned on her that the bed was empty, making her sprint the last few steps to where her son should have been. Pointlessly, desperately, she patted the bedclothes, pulling the duvet back and tossing it on the floor, even looking under the pillows, feeling increasingly dizzy. Quickly she pulled the heavy blackout curtains open, almost pulling them from their rail, flooding the room with bright orange light, the late autumn sun still low in the sky, barely clearing the adjacent houses.

She stood in the centre of the room, her eyes desperately searching for signs of life – a slight movement or a giggle coming from a hiding place. For a second she laughed at herself, realizing she must be in a game, a game to find a hiding boy. She dropped to her knees and peered under the bed, about to say the boy’s name when she’d discovered him, but the words never came out and her smile was vanquished as she stared into the empty space, the panic returning – stronger now.

‘Where the hell are you, George?’ she asked the emptiness, pushing herself back to her feet and pacing the room, opening the wardrobe and searching places that in her heart she knew he couldn’t be: his drawers and toy boxes, even under the mattress, until she had to admit he couldn’t be in the room. For a moment she felt her throat swell and close, as if she was about to start crying, before she convinced herself it was only a matter of time before she found him.

She walked quickly from room to room, searching every wardrobe and cupboard, behind every curtain and under every table, checking every window was still locked from the inside, constantly calling the boy’s name – threatening and encouraging him to reveal himself. But something in her soul told her the rooms were empty: the way the silence felt so still and lifeless. In the middle of her desperate search she suddenly stopped for a second, the memory of how the very atmosphere of a space would change when the boy was in it and the sudden fear she would never feel it again making her so nauseous and light-headed that she had to lean against the wall and try and control her breathing, swallowing gulps of air until the floor she was looking down at came back into focus. As quickly as she dared, Celia walked downstairs, her outstretched hand sliding along the wall for support until she reached the kitchen, her softly tanned skin pale now and her lips a little blue. The nanny saw her first. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Bridgeman?’

Celia spoke without answering the question, her eyes growing ever wilder with thoughts and fears she’d never once in her life imagined having. ‘Have you seen Mr Bridgeman this morning?’

‘No,’ the nanny answered, confusion spreading across her face. ‘I thought he was away on business last night?’

‘He was,’ Sophia answered for her mother.

‘Be quiet, Sophia,’ Celia snapped. ‘Are you sure he didn’t come back very early this morning? Maybe he …?’ Celia suddenly didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say.

‘He wasn’t here when I arrived,’ the nanny told her, ‘and his car wasn’t here either. Is something wrong?’

‘The front door,’ Celia asked, ‘was it locked when you arrived?’

‘Yes,’ the nanny answered.

‘All the locks?’

‘Yes, Mrs Bridgeman. Is there something wrong?’ the nanny asked again.

Celia’s voice almost failed her as she tried to speak, the words weak and wavering. ‘I can’t find George,’ she finally managed to tell them. ‘He’s gone. Someone’s taken him.’

‘That’s not possible,’ the nanny told her, her smile hiding her own rising fears. ‘He must be hiding somewhere.’

‘No,’ she answered, her voice growing ever weaker as she slumped to her knees on the floor. ‘He’s gone. He’s been taken. I can feel it.’

The nanny came to her side and bent over her, trying to encourage her to stand. ‘Let’s look again – together. I know we’ll find him.’

‘No,’ Celia almost shouted, summoning the last of her strength, the tears rolling freely down her face now. ‘Listen to me – he’s gone. He’s been taken. We’ve wasted enough time. I need to phone the police.’

‘I’ll phone Mr Bridgeman,’ the nanny offered.

‘No,’ Celia spat, grabbing the phone. ‘I’ll do it.’

Sean looked from his office into the main office outside and decided that enough of the team had gathered for the meeting to begin. He exhaled, took a deep breath and walked the few steps next door, suddenly aware of the relentless noise; the laughter and loud chatter mixing with the seemingly constant ringing of land and mobile phones. He caught Donnelly’s eye, but his other stalwart detective sergeant, Sally Jones, seemed to be holding a girls-only meeting with the other female detectives in the far corner next to the coffee- and tea-making facilities: a limescale-clogged old kettle and a fridge that smelled like something had died in it.

Donnelly knew his job. ‘All right, all right,’ he boomed across the office in his Glaswegian-tinged-with-London accent. ‘This office meeting is officially open, so park your bums and listen up.’ He seemed to make eye contact with everyone in the room while he waited for total silence, not speaking again until he had it, turning to Sean. ‘Guv’nor – all yours.’

But before Sean could start, a dissenting voice spoke up.

‘Guv’nor,’ DC Alan Jesson asked in his Liverpudlian accent, ‘when we gonna get a new case? I’m fucking skint. I need the overtime just to make ends meet here, you know.’ The murmur of approval from the others told Sean they were all feeling pretty much the same way.

‘Something will be coming our way soon enough,’ Sean tried to assure them.

‘How d’you know?’ Sally asked. ‘How can you be sure it’ll be sooner rather than later?’

‘Because the sea we fish in just got a whole lot bigger,’ Sean answered in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sally replied. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’re no longer a south-east London Murder Investigation Team, we’re a London-wide Murder Investigation Team.’ He watched the silent, blank faces trying to understand what he’d just told them.

‘Excuse me?’ Donnelly finally broke the stunned silence. ‘We’re a what?’

‘We’ve just gone London-wide,’ Sean explained. ‘Express orders of Assistant Commissioner Addis. Featherstone told me earlier this morning – the Commissioner’s agreed to it, so that’s that. As of now, anything a bit special comes our way. Potential serial offenders, child murders by strangers, sexually motivated murders – all the good stuff’s going to land on our desk. It won’t be easy, but it will be interesting. Anybody not up for it needs to have the applications for a transfer on my desk by this time tomorrow. I’m sure HR can find you all suitable posts on division. You could even stay here at Peckham.’

‘Stay?’ Donnelly said. ‘Then by inference if we decide to stay part of this team we’ll be moving?’

‘Yes,’ Sean told him, beginning to enjoy the game.

‘D’you mind telling us where to?’

‘The Yard.’

Donnelly closed his eyes and groaned as he leaned back in his chair so much he risked over-balancing. ‘Jesus. Not the fucking Yard. How am I supposed to get there from Swanley every day? And there’s nowhere to park.’

‘They’ve reserved us a few spaces in the underground car park.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Donnelly said sarcastically.

‘Sounds great to me,’ Sally chipped in with a mischievous grin, keen to kick Donnelly while he was down.

‘Aye,’ Donnelly continued. ‘It’s all right for you, living in Putney. Putney to Victoria every day – lovely.

‘Sorry, Dave,’ Sally told him, her grin turning into a fully fledged smile.

‘I’m all right, Jack, eh?’

‘All right,’ Sean broke it up, ‘enough of the table tennis. Let’s make this official – if you don’t want to come with me, put your hand up.’ He scanned the room, but saw no raised hands. ‘I promise you there’ll be no hard feelings. Many of you have wives, husbands, kids, so if the nature of the work or the travelling’s too much I’ll understand.’ Still no raised hands. ‘Dave?’

‘Aye, fuck-it – why not? But there’d better be plenty overtime.’

‘More than you could possibly spend.’

‘Aye, there better be.’

‘Right,’ Sean snapped to attention, ‘we’re moving today.’ The groans almost drowned him out. ‘So let’s get everything packed up and over to the Yard – Room 714, seventh floor in the North Tower. Take everything that’s not screwed down and even stuff that is, if it’s of any use. Take the computers, chairs, phones – everything we’ll need to be up and running straight away.’

‘Pickfords not moving us then, boss?’ Jesson asked.

‘Where d’you think you are, Alan – the City Police? This is the good old Met – remember? Pile everything into anything with four wheels that’s been left in the yard with keys in and let’s get out of this toilet.’ He still felt eyes upon him. ‘Well come on, then. What you waiting for?’

As the detectives burst into action, Sean slipped quietly into his office, summoning Donnelly and Sally with a nod of his head. Within a few seconds they were all gathered together.

‘Problem?’ Sally asked.

‘Not yet,’ he told her as Donnelly caught up with them.

‘Not yet what?’ he asked.

‘A problem,’ Sally filled him in.

‘There’s a first!’ Donnelly replied.

‘Yeah, well,’ Sean continued, ‘I’ve got a feeling we won’t have to wait too much longer before something comes our way, and when it does it’s clearly not going to be anything straightforward and not something we’ll be able to quietly get on with. The Yard’s full of senior officers with not enough to do who’ll be more than keen to stick their noses where they’re not wanted – and that means our business.’

‘So?’ Sally asked.

‘So we need to be ready for anything,’ Sean warned them. ‘Which is why I need you two to keep a fire burning under everyone’s arses until we’re up and running at the Yard. Understand?’

‘Yes, guv,’ Sally answered.

‘Whatever,’ Donnelly agreed unhappily.

‘I’m going to pack up some essentials and head over there ASAP – check out the lay of the land before anyone else gets there.’

‘Looking for anything in particular?’ Donnelly asked suspiciously.

‘No,’ Sean answered, too quickly. ‘But let’s just say I’d rather we used the phones we’re taking with us than the ones that will have been left for us.’

‘That’s a bit paranoid isn’t it, guv’nor?’ Sally asked.

‘It’s the Yard,’ Sean reminded her. ‘Being a little paranoid can go a long way to keeping you out of the brown sticky stuff.’

‘I’ve always avoided the place,’ Donnelly added. ‘Things can get very … political there very quickly. That’s why I always stuck with the Flying Squad – squirrelled away in Tower Bridge, out of sight, out of mind – beautiful.’

‘However,’ Sean interrupted Donnelly’s reminiscing, ‘the Yard it is, so just be mindful and be ready,’ he warned them. ‘I’ve got a feeling something really nasty’s heading our way, and heading our way very, very soon.’

2

Sean staggered along the seventh-floor corridor carrying a brown cardboard box that was heavy enough to make him sweat. The heating at the Yard was turned up high to please the ageing computers housed within. He checked the doors as he passed them – store rooms, empty rooms; occasionally a room with no sign, just a number and a few wary-looking people inside, silently raising their heads from their desks as he passed, disturbing their expectations of another day without change. He didn’t bother to introduce himself but just kept walking down the unpleasantly narrow corridor that was no different to all the other corridors at New Scotland Yard, with the same polystyrene ceiling tiles and walls no thicker than plasterboard, all painted a shade of light brown that blended into the worn, slightly darker brown carpet. ‘At least the floors don’t squeak,’ he whispered to himself, remembering the awful rubber floors back at Peckham as he arrived at Room 714 and its closed door.

He half-expected the door to be locked in a final gesture of defiance from the now disbanded Arts and Antiques Squad – a show of two fingers to Assistant Commissioner Addis, who Sean ironically always pictured living in a house surrounded by arts and antiques. Maybe one day Addis would get burgled and have to hastily re-form the squad in an effort to recover his own stolen treasures.

Sean balanced the heavy box on his raised thigh and tried the door handle, which to his surprise turned and opened, the door itself swinging aside in response to a good kick, allowing him to enter his new home from home.

Sean peered inside as best he could before stepping over the threshold. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed as he walked deeper into the office, which was about half the size of the one they’d just left and looked like a hand-grenade had gone off in it. Clearly the Arts and Antiques boys and girls had been moved out in a hurry, leaving very little but rubbish and broken computers behind. He congratulated himself on the decision to tell his own team to ransack the Peckham office as part of the move. He dumped the box on an abandoned desk and crossed the office to the still-closed blinds – cheap, grey plastic venetians. He tugged the string, expecting the blind to neatly, if noisily, roll up to the ceiling, but the entire thing came crashing to the floor, the reverberating sound appearing to go on for ever as it bounced back and forth off the empty walls. Sean stood frozen, his face a grimace, long after the sound had faded. He turned back towards the door, anticipating a flurry of concerned people coming to investigate, but no one came, although he thought he heard laughter from further down the hallway. He moved along the line of blinds and gingerly pulled the strings until all were open and he was able to look down on the streets of St James’s Park below, the traffic little more than a distant murmur.

Turning his back on the windows, he surveyed the office in the daylight and didn’t like what he saw any better than before. It was going to be a real squeeze and arguments would abound as to who was entitled to a desk of their own, but at least there were two offices at one end of the main room, partitioned off with the usual polystyrene boards and sheets of Perspex, all held together by strips of aluminium. He made his way to the larger office and stepped inside, deciding it was about as big as his last one. He decided he’d give it to Sally and Donnelly to share while he took the smaller one. At the very least it might placate the unhappy Donnelly.

Leaving the office, he retrieved the heavy cardboard box that contained his most precious policing tools and entered the smaller office, dumping the box on the standard-sized desk that would soon be covered in keyboards, computer screens, phones and files. Under the desk he found the usual cheap three-drawer cabinet and miraculously the previous owner had left the keys in the top lock. Only someone leaving the force for good would abandon such a prized possession. Sean felt a twang of jealousy as he imagined the previous owner skipping out of the office after their last day at work, knowing they would never be returning. He shook the thought away and looked around for a chair, finding a swivel one pushed into the corner of the room, foam peeking from the rip in the seat cover. Never mind – it would have to do.

Before sitting he began to unpack the contents of the box – the few personal things first, placed on top of everything else where they were least likely to be damaged: a photograph of his wife, Kate, and of his smiling daughters, Mandy and Louise, and finally a small silver cross on a thin silver chain, given to him by his mother when he was just a boy. She’d told him it would protect him. It hadn’t, but still he’d kept it without knowing why. He hung it over the corner of the frame that held Kate’s picture and remembered being dragged to church as a child, never to return as an adult, despite his mother’s frequent encouragement.

He continued to unpack his things: his Detective’s Training Course Manual – otherwise known as The Bible, a copy of Butterworths Criminal Law and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, old files kept for reference, stationery and even the landline phone he’d commandeered from his old office back at Peckham. Every so often he glanced up from arranging his new desk to look exactly like his old one and stared into the empty main office – imagining, almost seeing how it would soon look – the characters who he so strongly associated with Peckham transported to this strange new environment, working away at computers, phones clamped between ears and shoulders as they hurriedly scribbled notes, the constant chatter and noise bringing the place to life. He blinked the imaginary detectives away, returning the office to its eerie emptiness and leaving him feeling strangely lonely. It wasn’t something he felt often, not since his childhood when being alone generally meant being safe. He shook his head and continued to empty the box, but a voice close by broke the silence and made him jump a little, leaving him surprised that he hadn’t felt the other person approaching as he usually would have.

‘Settling in all right I trust, Inspector?’ Assistant Commissioner Addis asked from the doorway.

‘More moving in than settling in,’ Sean answered.

‘Indeed,’ Addis agreed, a thin, unpleasant grin fixed on his face, his eyes sparkling with cunning and intelligence. ‘The office is on the small side, I know, but I’m sure it will serve its purpose.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Sean told him without enthusiasm, returning to the task of unpacking.

‘Good,’ Addis said, walking deeper into the room. ‘It’s fortunate you’ve arrived early,’ he added, making Sean look up.

‘Really?’ Sean asked, already concerned about what was coming next. ‘How so?’

‘Gives us time to chat – in private.’ Addis looked around at the emptiness as if to make the point.

‘About what?’ Sean asked without trying to veil the suspicion in his voice.

‘Your new position, of course – here at the Yard. I’m assuming Superintendent Featherstone briefed you?’

‘He did – more or less.’

‘You should thank me,’ Addis told him without a hint of irony. ‘You’re free now. Free of all those tedious investigations a trained chimp could solve: husband strangles wife to death; drug dealer shoots other drug dealer; teenage gang member stabs other teenage gang member. I think we can leave the mundane to the less gifted to solve, don’t you?’

Sean shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Suppose so?’ Addis asked. ‘You know so I think. Yes?’ Sean said nothing. ‘You know one of the things we do really badly in the police, Sean? We waste talent. But I don’t waste talent when I see it, Sean – I use it, in whatever way I think best.’

‘And that’s why I’m here?’ Sean asked. ‘To be used?’

Addis gave a short, shallow laugh before pulling a thin manilla file from under his armpit that Sean hadn’t registered he was carrying until now. Addis flopped it on the desk, some of the documents inside spilling out, including a photograph of a radiant, beautiful child. ‘Your first case,’ Addis told him without emotion. ‘A four-year-old child has gone missing in suspicious circumstances from his home in Hampstead.’

‘Hampstead?’ Sean asked, remembering the area or at least several of its pubs that were frequently used by detectives attending residential courses at the Metropolitan Police Training Centre in nearby Hendon.

‘The boy apparently went missing overnight while his mother and sister were asleep. No signs of forced entry anywhere in the house, so it appears the boy has vanished into thin air. Quite the mystery. Right up your street – don’t you think?’

‘And the father?’ Sean asked.

‘Away on business, I believe. The local CID are at the address with the family eagerly awaiting your arrival.’

‘Has the house been searched yet?’ Sean enquired. ‘Sounds like the kid’s probably still in there somewhere, hiding.’

‘The house’s been searched by the mother, the local uniform officers and the local CID. No trace of the boy, which is why I’ve decided to assign the investigation to you.’

‘I see,’ Sean said, realizing that nothing he could say would deter Addis.

‘If you find the boy hiding somewhere the others failed to look then all well and good,’ Addis told him. ‘But if you don’t …’ He let it hang for a while before speaking again. ‘I understand you had some success a few years ago working undercover to infiltrate a paedophile ring known as the Network?’

‘I did,’ Sean admitted, slightly fazed that Addis had taken the time to research him so thoroughly.

‘Then you’ll have good understanding of how these people work.’

‘And you think a paedophile is involved here?’

‘That would be my guess,’ Addis answered. ‘And these people aren’t council estate scum, Sean – before you start accusing the parents of being involved.’

‘I was only thinking it’s a little too soon to make any assumptions. If the family are wealthy there may be a ransom demand.’

‘Well,’ Addis said, allowing Sean his moment of contradiction, ‘I’ll leave that for you to discover. All the details I have are in the file.’ Addis’s eyes indicated the folder on the desk. ‘Oh, and while I have you, I’ve decided your team needs a new name – to help you stand out from the crowd. As of now you will be known as the Special Investigations Unit. Should keep your troops happy: there’s nothing detectives seem to like more than a bit of elitism – or at least that’s what I’ve always found. Predominantly you’ll still be investigating murders, but every now and then something else may come along.’ Sean didn’t reply, his eyes never leaving Addis. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it. A quick result would be much appreciated: we could do with some positive press. If you need anything just pop in and see me – I’m never far away, just a few floors above. Report to me when you find anything, or Superintendent Featherstone if I’m not around. Until later, then.’ Addis turned to leave.

‘Mr Addis,’ Sean called after him, making the Assistant Commissioner stop and turn, his face slightly perplexed, as if having his progress interrupted was a novel and unwelcome experience.

‘Something wrong, Inspector?’

‘No. It’s just that I was brought up on a council estate,’ Sean told him. ‘I thought you should know.’

Addis grinned and nodded, impossible to read as he turned his back on Sean and headed for the exit, almost colliding with Sally as she barrelled into the room, unable to see where she was going due to the size of the box she was carrying. Addis jumped out of the way and cleared his throat to make her aware of his presence.

Sally peeped over the top of her box at the sullen-faced Assistant Commissioner and groaned inwardly. ‘Shit,’ she spurted, immediately realizing her mistake and hurrying to correct it: ‘I mean, fuck … Sorry, sir … sorry.’

Addis glared at her and exited quickly into the corridor, leaving the bemused Sally scanning the room for Sean, eventually spotting him still standing in his new office. She dumped her box on the nearest desk and made for Sean who was already heading towards her, the file on the missing boy in his hand.

‘Pompous twat,’ she offered, with a jerk of the head towards the door Addis had just departed through. Registering that Sean was advancing in that direction, she added, ‘Going somewhere, guv’nor?’

‘Yes,’ Sean told her. ‘And so are you.’

Donnelly sat in the passenger seat while DC Paulo Zukov drove them through the increasingly dense traffic around Parliament Square, Donnelly shaking his head at the thought of having to use public transport to beat the traffic. ‘The Yard,’ he moaned out loud. ‘Why did it have to be the Yard? They’re selling the damn thing as soon as they can find a buyer. We’ll no sooner get sorted than they’ll have us on the move again. Bloody waste of time. Where to next, for Christ’s sake – Belgravia?’

‘Look on the bright side,’ Zukov told him, ‘we can tell everyone we’re detectives from New Scotland Yard now. Better than saying you’re from Peckham. And the traffic’s not that bad – considering. You’ve just got to get used to it.’

Donnelly looked him up and down with unveiled contempt. ‘Why don’t you just drive the car, son. Let me do the talking and the thinking, eh. “You’ve just got to get used to it” – sometimes I wonder how you ever got into the CID. Let anyone in these days, I suppose. I’ll tell you this for nothing – after a few weeks at the Yard you’ll be wishing you were back at Peckham. Where do you live – Purley, isn’t it? How you gonna get in from there every day?’

‘Train,’ Zukov answered precisely, too suspicious of Donnelly’s reason for asking to say more.

‘Oh well, let me know how that works out for you – hanging around on a freezing platform before being squeezed into a carriage with standing-room only, rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed every morning and evening. And how you gonna get home when we don’t finish until three in the morning? There’s no local uniform units to bum a lift from at the Yard.’

‘I’ll take a job car.’

‘Oh aye. You and everyone else. Only one problem – we have a lot more people than we have cars. Better get used to sleeping on the floor, son.’

‘I’ll figure something out,’ Zukov replied, promising himself he wouldn’t speak again.

‘You will, will you?’ Donnelly condescended. ‘Well, I’ll look forward to seeing that. And while we’re about it, remember to watch your back at all times. You make the same sort of mistake you made on the Gibran case and I won’t be able to cover your arse, not at the Yard. Everything’s changed for us now: senior management have got us right where they want us – under their noses. And I’m pretty sure why.’

The ensuing silence and air of mystery was too much for Zukov. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why do they want us right under their noses?’

‘That, son, is for me to know and for you not to find out,’ Donnelly told him. ‘Now get us out of this traffic and to the Yard. I’m bursting for a piss.’

Sean and Sally pulled up outside 7 Courthope Road on the edges of Hampstead Heath and headed for the smart four-storey Georgian house that four-year-old George Bridgeman had apparently gone missing from, although Sean would assume nothing until he proved it was so. The house reminded him of other houses he’d visited, other investigations. Other victims whose faces flashed through his mind like images from a rapid-fire projector. He forced the distraction away, needing to concentrate on the job in front of him, his mind already clouded with thoughts of moving the office and all the admin and logistical headaches that would bring, as well as recurring day-and-night dreams about Thomas Keller and the women he’d killed. If he was to think the way he needed to think he had to clear his mind.

He paused at the foot of the steps just as Sally was about to ring the doorbell, making her hesitate while he looked up and down the street. He watched the last of the leaves falling from the trees and floating to the ground, some briefly resting on the two lines of cars parked on either side of the road before the bitter breeze blew them away, all the time waiting to see something in his mind’s eye. But nothing came – no hint of what had happened, no feeling about what sort of person might have taken the boy, if anyone even had. He cursed Addis for putting thoughts of paedophiles and the Network in his mind – pre-wiring his train of thought before he had a chance to look around the scene. He gazed up and down the road once more, but still he saw nothing.

‘Something wrong?’ Sally asked. Sean didn’t answer. She repeated the question a little louder.

‘What? No,’ he replied. ‘I was just thinking it must have been freezing outside last night.’

‘So?’

‘Nothing,’ he answered, moving next to her, stretching then crouching as he examined the four locks on the front door, all of which appeared high quality and well fitted. ‘The report said all four locks were still on when the nanny arrived in the morning and that the mother checked all the windows on the house and the back door – again, all locked and secure. So how the hell did someone get in, grab the boy and get out, leaving the place all locked up, without being heard or seen?’

‘He didn’t,’ Sally explained. ‘That’s not possible. The boy must be hiding in the house somewhere, too afraid to come out now his joke’s gone too far. We’ll have a good look around, find him, talk his parents into not killing him and then get back to our unpacking.’

‘But he’s only four,’ Sean argued.

‘So?’

‘When my kids were four they wouldn’t have stayed hidden this long. They might now, but not back then. It’s too long.’

‘So you do think someone has taken him?’

Sean stepped back from the door, looking the house up and down before once again peering in both directions along the affluent, leafy road. ‘I don’t know,’ he eventually confessed, ‘but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘Don’t tell me that,’ Sally almost begged him, rolling her eyes back into her skull. ‘Every time you say that we end up in it up to our necks. We haven’t even got the office up and running – the last thing we need now is a child abduction – or worse. A few days from now we’ll be ready and willing, but not yet.’

‘Too late,’ Sean told her. ‘For better or worse, this one’s ours.’ He flicked his eyes towards the doorbell.

With a shake of her head, Sally pressed the button, stepping back to be at Sean’s side – a united front for when the door was opened, warrant cards open in their hands.

They heard the rattle of the central lock before the door was opened by a plain woman in her mid-thirties, brown hair tied back in a ponytail like Sally’s, her inexpensive grey suit and white blouse the virtual uniform for female detectives. Neither Sean nor Sally had to ask whether she was the mother or the local CID’s representative and she in turn knew what they were and why they were there, but they showed her their warrant cards and introduced themselves anyway.

‘Morning. DI Sean Corrigan and this is DS Sally Jones – Special Investigations Unit,’ Sean told her, drawing a sideways glance from Sally, who was hearing their new name for the first time.

‘Special Investigations Unit?’ the detective asked. ‘That’s a new one on me.’

‘Me too,’ Sally added, making the other detective narrow her eyes.

‘We’re based at the Yard,’ Sean explained. ‘It’s a new thing that’s being trialled – rapid response to potentially high-profile crimes – that sort of thing.’

The detective nodded suspiciously before responding. ‘DC Kimberly Robinson, Hampstead CID.’

‘Can we see the parents?’ Sean asked.

‘Of course,’ Robinson answered, but instead of opening the door for them to enter she stepped outside and shut the door to behind her, leaving it slightly ajar. ‘But before you do there’s one thing bothering me,’ she told them in a near whisper. ‘Why has this case been handed over to you? Why has this case been handed over to anyone? Something like this would usually stay with the local CID until we get a ransom demand or …’ she checked the door behind her before continuing ‘… until a body turns up. So why are you here so soon?’

‘You know how it is,’ Sean explained. ‘Your boss gets to hear about something a little different and he tells his boss who tells his boss who tells my boss, whose interest is piqued and before you know it the case lands on my desk and here we are.’

Robinson studied him for a while before answering. ‘Fine,’ she eventually said, easing the door open and stepping inside. ‘You’re welcome to it. Parents are in the kitchen.’

‘D’you have any background on the parents yet?’ Sean asked quietly.

‘He’s thirty-eight, works in the City – a broker for Britbank, apparently,’ she said in a lowered voice, before lowering it even further. ‘She’s a few years younger, a full-time mum, although round here that isn’t exactly what it sounds like, if you know what I mean.’

Sally and Sean glanced at each other before following Robinson through the hallway, Sally closing the door behind them. She quickly and discreetly swept slightly envious eyes over the hall’s contents: large, original oil paintings, Tiffany lampshades and polished oak floorboards. Sean also noticed a control panel for an intruder alarm attached to the wall.

As soon as they entered the large contemporary kitchen Sean was making mental notes of what he saw: Mrs Bridgeman pacing around the work area, her husband leaning on the kitchen island watching her but not speaking, while the nanny sat with their young daughter, trying to keep the crying child distracted with small talk and a drink.

‘Mr and Mrs Bridgeman,’ Robinson said, ‘these officers are from the Special Investigations Unit, Scotland Yard. I believe they’ll be taking over the investigation now.’

‘Why?’ Celia Bridgeman asked before Sean or Sally could speak, panic lighting her eyes. ‘Has something happened? Have you found him?’

Sally could tell she was about to lose it completely. ‘No, Mrs Bridgeman. Nothing’s changed. We’re just here to try and help find George as quickly as we can. Everything’s going to be fine, but we’ll have to ask you both some questions if we’re going to do that.’

‘More questions?’ Stuart Bridgeman interrupted. ‘We’ve already answered all the questions. Now you need to get out there and find our son.’

‘Almost every officer in the borough is out there searching for George,’ Robinson tried to reassure him, ‘including dogs. Even the police helicopter’s up and looking.’

Sean eyed Bridgeman for a while before considering his response. He felt an instant dislike for the man – his carefully groomed hair, golden tan and athletic build, and above all his arrogance, which more than matched his wealth. ‘I can understand your frustration.’ He managed to sound businesslike. ‘But we really do need to ask you some more questions.

‘Of course,’ Celia took over, ‘anything.’ She wiped the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘I believe you were the one who discovered George was apparently missing, Mrs Bridgeman?’ Sean asked.

‘Not apparently,’ Stuart Bridgeman interrupted again, ‘is missing. Who did you say you were?’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Corrigan and this is Detective Sergeant Jones from the Special Investigations Unit.’

‘Special Investigations?’ Bridgeman asked, distaste etched into his face. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Stuart,’ his wife stopped him. ‘You’re wasting time.’

Bridgeman grudgingly backed down. ‘Ask your questions, Inspector.’

‘When you couldn’t find George, what did you do?’

‘I looked everywhere,’ she told him, shaking as she spoke, involuntarily closing her eyes as she remembered the panic and fear, the feeling of sickness overtaking her body, ‘but I couldn’t find him.’

‘Then what?’

‘I checked the windows and doors.’

‘And?’

‘They were all closed and locked – all of them.’

‘Even the front door?’

‘Yes, and the front door.’

‘All four locks?’

‘No. Just the top lock.’

‘How come?’

‘Because Caroline had already arrived for work before I discovered George was missing.’

‘Caroline being yourself,’ he said looking over at the nodding nanny.

‘I always put the top lock on,’ she told him, ‘so that the kids can’t get out through the front door. It’s the only lock they can’t reach.’

‘And that’s how you found it?’ he asked, turning back to look at Celia Bridgeman.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

Sean considered the nanny for a moment. Had she forgotten to put the top lock on when she’d arrived, fastening it later once she’d realized her mistake? Was it already too late by then – George had slipped out into the street and wandered off, or been taken away? The nanny looked relaxed and calm enough under the circumstances – he sensed no guilt or fear in her, even if it was the most logical explanation. But he was picking up on something else – a presentiment of foul play that made him consider the entire family for a second. It was impossible to look at them and not be struck by their wealth and privilege and even more so by their beauty. All of them beautiful, including both children. Had that been the flame that had drawn the moth to them?

Stuart Bridgeman’s voice cut through his thoughts.

‘This is all we need – a wannabe Sherlock bloody Holmes on the case. These stupid questions are a waste of time. You need to stop hiding in the warm and get out on those streets and find our son.’

Ignoring Bridgeman’s rant, Sean directed the next question at him. ‘You weren’t here last night, Mr Bridgeman, is that right?’

‘I was away on business. You know – earning money for my family. I work in the private sector. I have to earn my money, unlike some.’

Again Sean let it pass. ‘So, where were you last night?’

‘Why? Am I a suspect in my own son’s disappearance?’

‘No. I just need to know where you were.’

‘Fine. I was in Oxford.’

‘You got back quickly,’ Sean prodded.

‘I came straight back as soon as I heard. Wouldn’t you – if your child had gone missing?’

‘What time did you hear?’

‘I don’t remember … some time before nine.’

‘And when did you get back here?’

‘A little while ago – why?’

‘It was ten thirty,’ Robinson told Sean. ‘It’s in the crime-scene log.’

‘That was fast,’ Sean accused him, ‘through rush-hour traffic.’

‘So I broke a few speed limits – what the fuck do I care?’

‘Stuart, please,’ Celia appealed to him. ‘You’re not helping.’

‘Here we go,’ Stuart Bridgeman said, shaking his head. ‘I wondered how long it would be before this all became my fault.’

Sean didn’t have time to referee a domestic. ‘Where did you stay? In Oxford – where did you stay?’

Bridgeman took several calming breaths before answering. ‘The Old Parsonage Hotel – just outside the city centre. They’ll be able to confirm I was there last night.’

Sean studied him, in no hurry to fill the uncomfortable silence. Bridgeman could have comfortably booked into his hotel but then come back in the night and taken the boy before returning to Oxford to await his wife’s distressed phone call. But why would he want to abduct his own son? He decided not to push that line of questioning – not yet.

‘I’m sure we won’t be needing to check with the hotel, Mr Bridgeman,’ he lied. ‘But one thing’s bothering me.’

‘And what would that be?’ Bridgeman asked, not attempting to disguise his frustration.

‘I saw an alarm panel as I came through the hallway. I assume it’s for an intruder alarm.’

‘So?’ Bridgeman asked.

‘So, if someone did manage to break into the house, why didn’t the alarm go off? Wasn’t it set last night?’

‘No,’ Bridgeman told him, ‘nor any other night since we’ve been here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s the old alarm left here by the previous owners. They cancelled their subscription to the alarm company when we bought the house and I haven’t got round to having it reactivated yet.’

‘So the house wasn’t alarmed?’ Sean clarified.

‘No,’ Bridgeman admitted. ‘But there’s an alarm box on the front of the house. You would think that would deter most people from trying to break in.’

‘So you haven’t been here long then?’ Sally asked.

‘No,’ Celia Bridgeman answered, never taking her accusing eyes off her husband. ‘A little less than three weeks.’

‘Where did you move from?’ Sally continued.

‘Primrose Hill.’

‘Any reason for the move?’ Sean asked.

‘Camden seemed to be getting closer and closer,’ Bridgeman explained, ‘and Primrose Hill’s full of very dull Russian bankers.’

‘Did you change the locks when you moved in?’ Sean questioned.

‘No,’ Bridgeman replied. ‘Who changes the locks when they move into a new house? This is Hampstead, not Peckham.’ Sean and Sally looked at each other, Sally failing to stop a small grin forming on her lips. ‘The people we bought it off were decent people. In fact, the husband works not far from me in the City. They’re hardly likely to come back and burgle us, are they?’

‘But there are keys out there you can’t account for?’ Sean asked. ‘In all likelihood there’ll be keys for this house in the hands of others?’

‘I suppose so,’ Bridgeman agreed.

‘Then we’ll need a list of anyone who might have keys to the house: the estate agent you used, the previous owners, the removal company you hired – anyone who has access to the house.’

‘Fine,’ Bridgeman reluctantly agreed, ‘but that’ll take time. What are you going to do to find our son now?’

Sean nodded his head slightly, looking around at the faces watching him expectantly. ‘I need to see the boy’s bedroom. I need to see it alone.’

‘It’s upstairs,’ Celia Bridgeman told him without hesitation, her pale lips trembling. ‘On the second floor. Along the hallway on the right.’

‘Thank you,’ Sean replied and headed for the exit. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he told them, although he was mainly talking to Sally. The relief of being on his own, away from the parents’ torment, guilt and anger felt immediately liberating as he headed for the stairs, stopping for a while to look around him, his eyes drifting towards the front door the nanny had sworn she’d locked. He believed her, but the front door somehow wouldn’t let him look away, as if it held answers to the questions firing inside his head. But the answers wouldn’t come. His mind was awhirl with distractions: the office move, Assistant Commissioner Addis, Thomas Keller still awaiting sentencing … The mental clutter was robbing him of the very thing that set him apart.

Work through the evidence, he told himself, looking at the windows he could see and noting they were all in good condition with security locks fitted and in place. The door, he told himself. Someone came in through that door, in through it in the middle of the night and took the boy away. But how, who and why? Still nothing particular stirred in his subconscious, no early ideas of who or what he could be about to hunt. He felt a rising panic at the thought of no longer being able to see or feel what the people he had to find and stop had seen or felt.

There was an alarm, but it wasn’t working – did you know that? A man lives in the house, but he was away – did you know that? Have you been watching the family – and if so, for how long? He waited for answers or ideas, some coldness in the pit of his stomach that would tell him the darkness within him was beginning to stir – the malevolence that could lead him straight to the front door of whoever took the little boy. You don’t even know for sure he’s been taken yet, he reminded himself as he began to climb the stairs, careful not to touch the mahogany bannister that clearly hadn’t been polished for a day or so. Did you touch this bannister? In your excitement to reach the boy, did you forget yourself and touch the bannister? Did you leave me your fingerprints here, hiding amongst the prints of the family, the nanny, the cleaner? What did it feel like to be inside this warm house with its comforting sounds and smells – so different from the cold, empty street outside?

‘Shit,’ he whispered as still nothing happened – no flash of inspiration or horror of realization, just blackness. ‘If you’re hiding somewhere, George,’ he said, a little louder than a whisper, ‘now would be a really good time to show yourself.’

As he stepped on to the first floor landing his eyes again swept over his surroundings: more oil paintings and Tiffany lamps, good quality carpet under his feet deadening the sound of his footsteps, stretching out in front of him and seemingly spreading into three of the four rooms he could see, the fourth of which he assumed would be a bathroom, the carpet giving way to floor tiles. He began to walk along the landing towards the staircase that continued its way upwards at the other end, but the scent of the mother leaking from the first room he passed made him stop and look around, checking he was still alone. Did the carpet feel good under your feet – silencing your footsteps? Did it reassure you? He moved to the bedroom where he knew the mother slept and moved slowly inside, breathing her in as he studied the room – her clothes tossed on the chaise longue for someone else to tidy and the bed only slept in on one side. Stuart Bridgeman had been away the previous night, but Sean felt only a fading presence of the father in the room, as if he’d stopped sleeping here days or weeks ago. Maybe he never had, just using it to store his clothes for appearances’ sake – to keep the sad truth from the children? Did you come in here? Did you stand where I am now and watch her while she slept – watching her chest rise and fall – hypnotized by her beauty? But you didn’t come for her, did you? Again the answers evaded him. He scratched his forehead and left the room, passing what was indeed a bathroom, a room used as an office and another made up as a spare bedroom, but almost overly tidy and sterile. Was this where Stuart Bridgeman spent his nights – making the bed immaculately every morning before the children, nanny or cleaner could discover it had been used – quickly moving his used clothes into the master bedroom to complete the illusion? Probably, Sean decided, but what did it mean? What, if anything, did it have to do with George’s disappearance?

He left the room behind and climbed to the second floor and the children’s bedrooms, his foot finding a loose floorboard and making it creak loudly. Did you step on the creaking stair? Did it make you freeze with panic or fear? Or did you know it was there and avoid it? But how could you know it was there? He could feel the ideas, even possible answers straining to break free, but the weeds of his everyday responsibilities and life kept strangling his newly flowering strands of thought. Finally he lifted his foot, the returning floorboard making the same loud creaking that would have been magnified ten-fold in the dead of the night. No one came in here in the middle of the night and stole the boy, he almost chastised himself as he strode up the final few stairs and along the hallway. I’m letting things from the past fuck with my head. There’s no mystery here – just a little boy whose joke’s gone too far. The doors and windows are locked. No one came in here and the boy couldn’t have left, so he’s here – somewhere inside this house. He reached George’s room and unceremoniously pushed the door wide open, the sense of excitement that they would soon find the boy hiding instantly replaced by a deep sense of coldness. He felt as if he was stepping into a murder scene where the shattered soul of the victim still lingered, only there was no body, just an awful feeling of emptiness, as if the boy had never been there in the first place and the room was little more than a mock-up of a child’s room: the silhouettes of clouds printed on the powder-blue wallpaper, the train mobile above the bed with its matching bedclothes. The duvet remained on the floor where the mother had thrown it, along with a dozen or so teddy bears and other soft toys. More toys were neatly stacked on the shelving units and play table. But none of it seemed real any more – it felt surreal, just like so many other crime scenes he’d seen. And although the answers to his questions failed to come, the sickness in his stomach told him something had happened to the little boy. But what?

He crouched down and picked up a small brown bear similar to one his youngest daughter Mandy kept in her bed and tried not to think of how he’d feel if anything ever happened to either of his daughters. Sadness and rage swelled inside him at the mere possibility, but a sudden feeling of another presence in the room made him spin around and forget his fearful imaginings. Celia Bridgeman stood in the doorway, both hands clasped over her heart, her eyes red and her skin pale as her lips opened and closed as if she was trying to speak but couldn’t. ‘You all right?’ Sean asked and regretted it.

‘No,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ She staggered a little into the room, Sean catching her by the elbow and forearm as he led her to the bed to sit, cringing at the possible forensic evidence he may be complicit in destroying. He watched her trying to catch her breath, breathing in and out a little erratically, but it was enough to put a little colour back into her lips and face. He gave her some time and space. ‘It’s like a dream,’ she told him, ‘or I should say a nightmare – like it’s not really happening. It can’t be happening, can it? He must be here somewhere,’ she continued, panic sweeping over her again as she tried to get to her feet.

Sean placed a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from standing. ‘I need to look for him,’ she pleaded, her red eyes swelling with fear and tears. ‘I have to keep looking.’

‘We’ll all look for him,’ Sean promised, ‘but you need to help me help you.’

‘I feel sick,’ she told him, jumping to her feet and rushing from the room. A few seconds later he heard the sound of her retching in a nearby bathroom, retching that seemed to go on for a long time, before he heard the sound of a toilet lid closing and the flushing of water. She returned to the bedroom looking like a ghost, walking past him and sitting on the bed without speaking, lifting a floppy-eared rabbit from the floor and holding it tight to her chest while she stared at the wall opposite.

‘Feel a little better?’ Sean asked, keen to get her talking before she went catatonic on him.

‘Not really,’ she responded.

‘I have some difficult questions that need answers,’ he warned her. ‘They’re best asked when your husband’s not here.’

‘Stuart?’ she asked in a conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t worry about Stuart – he’s just scared and angry. He always reacts like that when he feels something is beyond his control.’

‘I understand,’ Sean assured her.

‘You said you had questions.’

‘Keys,’ he began. ‘Is there anyone no one’s mentioned who could have keys to the house?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she answered.

‘Anyone who shouldn’t have keys to the house but does?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I need to know if both your children are yours and your husband’s – genetically?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, confusion etched into her face. ‘Why?’

‘Most children who are abducted are abducted by their estranged fathers,’ he told her. ‘If there was one and he had keys to the house, then …’

‘There isn’t,’ she stopped him. ‘How could you even think that? I’m his mother and Stuart’s his father,’ she insisted, but Sean sensed some doubt in her voice – and her eyes.

‘Any problems with your marriage?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she muttered, her eyes avoiding his.

‘Could Stuart be seeing anyone else?’

‘God no.’

‘And you?’ Sean ambushed her.

‘No,’ she swore, ‘nothing like that. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that to my children.’

‘My children?’ Sean questioned. ‘Not our children, but my children?’

‘Stuart’s not around much,’ she explained. ‘He works hard for us – that’s all I meant.’

Sean watched her silently for a moment as she continued to hug the toy rabbit – watching her eyes and hands, her feet that stayed flat and still on the carpeted floor – judging her. He believed most of what she was saying, but there were doubts and untruths hiding in her grief.

The longer he stood in the boy’s room, the more sure he was that George had been taken. But why and by whom? His mind searched back for memories – going back more than ten years to when he was still a detective sergeant, deployed by SO10 on an undercover operation to infiltrate the Network, a paedophile gang who’d been grooming children during the early days of the Internet and then sexually abusing them, filming their exploits and circulating them to other paedophiles. He forced the face of the gang’s leader, John Conway, into his mind, remembering the way he talked and moved, recalling his mindset – what excited him and motivated him. But Conway and his cronies groomed older children and always met the children a safe distance from their houses and schools, whereas whoever had taken George had risked coming into the house in the dead of night. And George was only four, too young to be groomed from a distance. From a distance, but what about by someone close? Conway’s face melted into that of Sean’s own father. But there had never been anything subtle about the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his father. The face faded away, replaced by the things that continued to plague his mind: There’s an alarm, but you knew it wasn’t working. A man lives in the house, but you knew he wasn’t there. The floorboard creaks, but you didn’t step on it. You knew all this because you know this house. You have to know this house – but how? Who are you and what do you want? John Conway’s face flashed back into his mind. Slow down, he warned himself. You’re making assumptions. You don’t know he knew about the alarm, the husband being away, the damn floorboard. All you know for sure is that the boy is gone. Someone came to the house, entered without breaking in, took the boy and left, locking the house after them. Was Addis right? Could it have been a paedophile, acting alone or with others, going to the next level that the Network never reached – taking children from their own homes, the danger of the game making the moment of triumph all the sweeter.

‘You will find him, won’t you?’ Celia Bridgeman asked, making his attempt to build a mental picture of what could have happened tumble like a house of cards. He gave his mind a few seconds to recall and understand what she had asked before answering.

‘Of course,’ he answered, telling her the only thing he could. ‘Cases like this can come together pretty quickly,’ he added truthfully, although he already had his doubts this one would. ‘You should all move out, just while we have the house searched by a dog team. And our forensic people always appreciate an empty scene. We need to do everything possible to give us the best chance of finding your son quickly.’

‘Where should we go?’ she asked, her voice forlorn and sad, as if moving out was giving up on the boy.

‘Family, friends,’ Sean suggested. ‘Just for a couple of days while we do what we need to do with the house. In the meantime, try not to touch anything. We’ll need a set of fingerprints from everyone who’s been in the house since you moved in. Are you OK with that?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘if it’ll help.’

‘Good,’ Sean told her, taking a last look around the room. ‘I have to go now. Do you need some help getting downstairs?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’d like to stay here for a while – if that’s all right?’

‘Of course.’ Sean slowly headed to the door, almost unable to take his eyes off the mother, her sadness and longing dragging at him like a magnet as he managed to pull himself from the room and into the hallway where he rested with his back to the wall for a few seconds before walking quietly to the staircase.

‘All right?’ Sally asked as he joined the others in the kitchen. Sean nodded.

‘Mr Bridgeman,’ he turned to the father, ‘I was just telling your wife you’ll need to move out for a couple of days’ – Bridgeman tried to interrupt, but Sean talked over him – ‘and I’ll need those names: the estate agent, the removal firm, anyone who’s been in the house since you’ve been here.’ He took something from his warrant-card wallet and dropped it on the kitchen island. ‘That’s my card – ignore the landline number, it’s old, but the mobile and email address are good. Call me if you think of anything.’ He quickly turned to Robinson. ‘I need you to wait here until my own Family Liaison Officer gets here. They won’t be long.’ Robinson just shrugged. He understood her keenness to escape. ‘I have to go back and brief my team, Mr Bridgeman. You may not see me for a while, but rest assured I’ll be working full-time to find your son.’

Sean headed for the door with Sally trailing in his wake, the crystal-clear air hitting him like a plunge into freezing water as soon as he opened the door, temporarily taking his breath away. He skipped down the stairs and headed for their car, then sat on the bonnet, breathing in as deeply as he could before blowing out great plumes of breath, trying to settle his spinning mind. But still he was left with only questions – questions to which he had no answers, just too many broken, ragged theories.

‘Family Liaison Officer?’ Sally asked. ‘Why are we wasting our time doing all that? Let’s stick a dog unit in there and find this kid.’

‘He’s not there,’ Sean answered. ‘If he was, the mother would have found him – I would have.’

‘So he’s got a secret hiding place nobody knows about. He can’t hide from a dog.’

‘I’m telling you, he’s gone,’ Sean insisted, the unintentional aggression in his voice silencing Sally.

She was silent for a moment, considering her next move.

‘Listen,’ she opened, ‘maybe the Keller case is messing with your head a bit? Believe me, when it comes to having your head messed with, I’m an expert.’

‘Meaning?’ Sean asked, prepared to consider anything.

‘Keller took his victims from their homes before he killed them,’ she explained. ‘Maybe that’s stuck in your head, making you see similarities here that don’t actually exist.’

‘The boy’s gone,’ Sean insisted, his voice sad and resigned. ‘But get a dog to check it over anyway. It might find something.’

Sally studied him for a moment, searching for things in him that not so long ago she’d seen in herself. ‘OK,’ she relented, ‘so the boy’s gone. Someone came in the middle of the night, somehow got in, took the boy and left, all without being seen, heard or leaving any signs of entry.’

‘Either they had a key,’ Sean told her, ‘or they picked the locks.’

‘Christ, Sean,’ she reminded him. ‘Lock-picking’s bloody rare.’

‘Good, then that helps us. But why lock the door after they’d left? Why would they do that?’

‘Because they’re insane.’

‘Or because they cared about the people they left in the house – didn’t want to leave them at risk. Exposed.’

‘You mean the father?’ Sally asked.

‘Possibly.’

‘Why would the father want to abduct his own son?’

‘Why do some fathers slaughter their entire family at the first sign their wives might leave them?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sally admitted. ‘You tell me, Sean. Why do some men do that?’

‘Better to destroy something you love rather than lose it.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No. No it doesn’t,’ he agreed. ‘Much like this case.’

‘So what you want to do?’

‘Keep an open mind.’

‘Easier for some than others,’ she mumbled.

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘How’s your shoulder, by the way?’

‘Sore. And you?’

‘Better and better,’ she told him.

‘Is there something you want to ask me, Sally?’

‘No,’ she lied again. This was not the right moment.

‘Then we’re wasting time,’ he told her. ‘Time we don’t have.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Featherstone sat in his office at Shooter’s Hill Police Station looking at pictures of sailing yachts in the magazine he subscribed to and kept hidden inside a pink cardboard file marked Confidential. Owning a nice thirty-two-footer had long been his retirement dream, but constant pay-cuts, pay-freezes, allowance-scrapping and now attacks on the police pension were turning his dream into a fantasy. If he could make it to the rank of commander before he retired, the dream might still be alive – just. His mind drifted to Sean and the sort of results he seemed able to pull out of a hat. At the end of the day, he was Sean’s supervising officer and therefore in a position to bask warmly in the reflected glory of Sean’s successes – successes that might just get him over the line and promoted to commander before deadline-day struck. But only if things kept working out and Corrigan didn’t fuck up. He liked the man and watched his back better and with more fervour than most senior officers ever would, but he wasn’t about to put his head on the chopping block for anyone.

His daydreaming was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone on his desk. He answered it slowly and without enthusiasm. ‘Hello, Detective Superintendent Featherstone speaking.’

‘Alan. Assistant Commissioner Addis here.’

Featherstone felt his heart drop and his bowels loosen slightly. ‘Sir.’

‘I’ve assigned that case we discussed to Inspector Corrigan,’ Addis told him.

‘That was fast,’ Featherstone replied.

‘I thought the sooner he got on with it the better. The quicker we act the more chance we have of finding the missing boy.’

‘If there’s been foul play, Corrigan’s the best man to lead the investigation. He won’t let anyone down.’

‘I hope not,’ Addis told him, making it sound like a threat. ‘Let’s hope your confidence in him isn’t misplaced.’

‘Like I told you in the beginning, sir, Corrigan has special qualities. In the field, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some good ones.’

‘Good,’ Addis replied. ‘Then once it’s confirmed the boy is actually missing I suggest we get the media in and tell them how confident we are of bringing the investigation to a swift conclusion. Some good publicity for the Metropolitan Police would be very useful right now.’

‘Publicity?’ Featherstone asked, his voice riddled with concern. ‘Don’t you think it’s too soon for publicity? Maybe we should give Corrigan and his team a little breathing space for—’

‘Breathing space?’ Addis asked mockingly. ‘That’s a luxury we don’t have in the Metropolitan Police. Not any more. This is a results-orientated business, and Corrigan has been brought here to deliver those results. He has until tomorrow, then I’m briefing the press.’

Featherstone heard the line go dead, leaving the echo of Addis’s words sinking into his consciousness. A results-orientated business. Is that what they were now – a business? He looked down at his magazine, open at a page showing a sleek thirty-two-footer, and his dreams of retirement and yachts faded as abruptly as his conversation with Addis had concluded.

‘For God’s sake, Sean,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘don’t fuck this one up or Addis will have both our heads mounted on his office wall – and it’s not like we’ll be the first either.’ Shaking the unpleasant thought from his head, he went back to reading his magazine.

Sally and Sean arrived back at Room 714 to the chaotic scene of a dozen or more detectives unpacking cardboard boxes containing everything from personal belongings to keyboards and phones they’d commandeered from their old office back at Peckham. The chaos they created was matched by the noise levels as they universally moaned and groaned about being moved, the size of their new office and the lack of power-points. At the centre of the discontent was Donnelly, conducting the orchestra of rebellion, his voice easily heard above the din as he searched for the strategically best placed desk. He wasted no time speaking his mind as soon as he saw Sally and Sean enter. ‘This place is worse than Peckham,’ he called to them. ‘You couldn’t swing a cat in here, and have you seen the size of the queue in the canteen? All I wanted was a cup of tea.’

‘Not out here,’ Sean told him, his eyes resting on the box Donnelly was holding. ‘You share the larger side office with Sally. The smaller one is mine.’

‘Excuse me?’ he asked. ‘I need to be out here, keeping an eye on this lot. You may be the circus ringmaster, guv’nor, but I’m the lion tamer round here.’

‘You said it yourself,’ Sean reminded him. ‘There’s not enough room out here for everyone – so you get to share with Sally.’ Donnelly was about to continue the argument when Sean silenced him and everyone else in the shambolic room. ‘Listen up,’ he shouted. His voice seem to freeze everyone where they stood, the sound of the guv’nor shouting rare enough to draw their immediate attention. ‘I know this isn’t ideal and we’d all like a few days to get sorted and settled, but that’s not going to be the case, I’m afraid.’

‘Meaning what?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Meaning we’ve just been given a new case.’

‘You must be joking!’ Donnelly said above the rising murmurs of disbelief. ‘We can’t take on a new case – we’re in it up to our necks with this bloody move. There’s not even a single computer up and running. We can’t deal with a new murder investigation yet.’

‘It’s not a murder,’ Sean told them, ‘it’s a missing person.’

‘Not again,’ Donnelly complained.

‘It didn’t take long for our last missing person case to turn into a murder investigation, remember? We have a four-year-old boy disappeared overnight from his home in Hampstead. His mother discovered he was missing earlier this morning. No signs of forced entry, but he’s definitely gone.’

‘Has the house been checked by a Special Search Team yet?’ Donnelly asked.

‘No,’ Sean admitted.

‘Well then, the boy’s not gone anywhere. He’s got himself a secret hiding place, that’s all. Special Search Team will find him soon enough.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sean locked eyes with him. ‘However, you’re right – the house needs to be searched properly. We have to be absolutely sure.’ He looked across to DC Ashley Goodwin, a tall, fit, black detective in his late twenties. ‘Ashley, sort out a search team and a dog unit and get the house checked. If the boy’s alive and hiding, great. If his body’s been hidden in the house then I want it found.’

‘No problem,’ Goodwin answered, plugging in the phone he was holding and immediately starting to make calls.

‘Dave,’ Sean turned to Donnelly, ‘take Paulo and whoever else you need and get started on the door-to-door, but keep it local and as quiet as you can – we don’t want to start a parental panic across North London.’ Donnelly didn’t reply; resigned to his fate, he simply reached for his jacket and indicated for Paulo to do the same. ‘Alan, find out which Forensic Support Team cover Hampstead for Major Inquiries and get them to examine the house.’ DC Alan Jesson, tall and slim, nodded as he scribbled notes. ‘Maggie, I need you to go Family Liaison on this one.’

‘Not again, guv’nor,’ DC Maggie O’Neil pleaded in her Birmingham accent.

‘Sorry, but I need someone with experience to keep an eye on the family and report anything out of the ordinary.’

Donnelly’s ears pricked up. ‘Are the family suspects?’

‘Too early to say yes – too early to say no,’ Sean answered, ‘but if it turns out they aren’t involved then someone came to their house, got in and took the boy all without breaking a single door or window. And what’s more, they locked up behind themselves.’

‘Then they must have had keys,’ Goodwin deduced.

‘Possibly.’ Sean frowned, picturing the front door and its four locks. ‘But if they didn’t, then they must have somehow come through the locked door and secured it behind them when they left.’

‘Why not a window?’ DC Fiona Cahill asked.

‘Because I checked the windows,’ Sean answered. ‘There’s no way they can be shut properly and locked from the outside, leaving only the front door as a possibility.’

‘What about the back door – if there is one?’ Cahill continued, undaunted.

‘There is,’ Sean explained, ‘but it was secured with old-fashioned bolts, top and bottom. You can’t do those up from outside.’

The office fell silent as the detectives pondered the puzzle.

‘So what does this mean?’ Donnelly finally asked. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘We discount nothing yet,’ Sean warned them, ‘but if he was taken by a stranger then it’s safe to assume he could have been taken by a known sex offender or someone who’s gravitating towards it.’

‘Then why not just snatch a child off the street?’ O’Neil asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Sean admitted. ‘Perhaps because they thought it was too dangerous.’

‘More dangerous than breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night?’ Zukov queried, disbelief evident in his voice.

‘We’re just exploring possibilities here,’ Sean reminded them, ‘but if someone did go through the front door then it’s possible they picked the locks.’

‘Picked the locks?’ Donnelly asked disbelievingly. ‘Criminals smart enough to pick locks are about as rare as hen’s teeth.’

‘And that’s exactly what I’m banking on,’ Sean told him. ‘That’s our advantage. Sally, have the surrounding stations search their intelligence records for anyone with previous for using lock-picking to commit residential burglaries. If by some miracle you get more than a few, look for those who also have previous for sexual assault – ideally on children, but any type of sexual assault makes them a suspect. If you get no joy then check the local Sex Offenders Registers and see if anything takes your fancy.’

‘No problem,’ Sally assured him.

‘OK, good,’ Sean told his assembled team. ‘Now you all know what you need to be getting on with, so let’s get this show on the road. Dave—’

‘Aye, guv’nor?’

‘Get HOLMES up and running ASAP – make it a priority. We’re gonna have a lot of names and information coming our way soon. Without the database we can’t cross-reference a damn thing, and that’s when we’ll miss things – important things.’

‘It will be done,’ Donnelly promised.

‘As soon as anyone has anything, let me know – I’ll be in my office for the next few hours making the usual endless phone calls and God knows what else, so dust off the cobwebs, people, and let’s get on with it. Remember, a four-year-old boy is apparently missing and if we don’t find him – no one will.’

3

George Bridgeman sat on the bed in the room where he’d woken up cuddling his teddy – a floppy grey and pink elephant he called Ellie that had been his constant companion since the day he was born. He looked around the strange room the man had brought him to in the middle of the night, his wonderment at the myriad of toys that surrounded him only matched by his fear at being seemingly alone in an unfamiliar house. On the opposite side of the room he could see another child’s bed, but the covers remained unruffled and pristine, the stuffed toys untouched.

George dropped his bare feet carefully over the side of the bed, fearful of what might be hiding underneath, and padded towards the empty bed, still clad in the pyjamas his mother had dressed him in only the night before. As he drew closer to the tempting toys, he was distracted by sounds coming from somewhere deeper in the house – voices, a man and a woman talking – deep, muffled voices he couldn’t understand. Instinctively he looked for a window, but the only source of natural light came from the two skylights high in the ceiling, impossible to reach even if he wanted to, and escape wasn’t yet on his mind. Why would he want to escape from the things the man had promised?

He moved towards the door to better hear the sounds coming from the other side: gentle music leaking through the wooden panels, mixing with the unfamiliar voices, making him swallow hard as his tiny hand reached for the door handle and began to turn it, first one way and then the other. But the door wouldn’t open – he was locked in. He pressed his ear to the door and listened harder, trying to focus on the voices. The sudden scream of a distant child made him recoil from the door, his eyes wide and pupils dilated with sudden, unexpected terror. The woman’s voice was raised now as the man’s faded to nothing, then silence for a few seconds before they started talking again, quieter than before, barely audible. The sound of what he believed was a door closing heavily made him run back to the bed and jump under the covers, waiting – waiting for the voices to start coming upstairs towards him, ready – ready to scream like he’d heard the other child scream, his frail little body beginning to shake. He pulled Ellie close to his chest and cuddled her tightly – tighter than he’d ever held anything in his short life.

Sean sat in his office alone, his ear warm and sore from having the phone pressed to it too long and too hard, his eyes aching from staring at his newly connected computer screen. One minute he’d be thinking about the missing boy, his house and family, and the next he’d be on the phone to the stores trying to beg, steal or borrow the basics for the office and his team: paper, pens, more chairs and the forms of all kinds they needed for daily policework and to run an investigation. A loud double knock at his open door made him jump and look up as a smiling Featherstone entered without being asked and sat heavily in the one spare chair in the office. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Sean replied. ‘The investigation or the move?’

‘The investigation,’ Featherstone clarified. ‘You found the missing kid yet?’

‘No,’ Sean told him.

‘Shame,’ Featherstone continued. ‘Would have made life a lot easier if you had.’

‘Why are you here, sir? You’re a long way from Shooter’s Hill.’

‘ACC wants an update,’ he admitted. ‘Wants to know how you’re getting on.’

‘We’ve only just started looking.’

‘I appreciate that, Sean, but you know what assistant commissioners can be like – updates, updates, updates.’

‘Then why didn’t he just come down here and ask me himself?’

‘Mr Addis likes a chain of command, when it suits him. A buffer-zone, if you know what I mean. It would appear I am that buffer-zone – so try not to drop me in it.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Sean assured him without conviction just as Sally hurried from her office and into Sean’s, her body language making him sit bolt upright in anticipation. ‘What you got?’

‘Mark McKenzie,’ Sally began without ceremony, ‘male, IC1, twenty-three years old, last known address in Kentish Town where he’s also a fully paid-up member of their Sex Offenders Register. He has previous for residential burglary, some of which he committed at night while the occupants were inside sleeping. And if that wasn’t enough, he also has previous for sexual assault on minors.’

Sean felt his heart rate suddenly increasing as a picture of McKenzie began to form in his mind – climbing the stairs to little George’s bedroom, moving silently past the room where his mother peacefully slept. ‘And …?’ he hurried Sally.

‘And,’ she continued, ‘he’s previously used lock-picking as a method of entry.’

‘Jesus,’ Sean said. ‘How far’s Kentish Town from Hampstead?’

‘Not my neck of the woods,’ Sally answered, ‘but I think it’s close.’

‘It is,’ Featherstone joined in. ‘No more than a couple of miles.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sean said. ‘Does he come gift-wrapped as well?’

‘Think he’s your man?’ Featherstone asked.

‘He couldn’t fit the profile more if he tried,’ Sean answered.

‘If the boy has been taken,’ Sally warned them. ‘Taken by a stranger.’

‘You’re right,’ Sean admitted. ‘You’re right. We should keep an open mind, but he looks good – he looks really good. Has he been keeping his appointments to sign the Sex Offender Register?’

‘As far as I know,’ Sally answered.

‘That doesn’t mean he’s not your man,’ Featherstone cautioned.

‘No,’ Sean agreed, ‘it does not. No amount of reporting to police stations could stop him entering a house in the middle of the night.’

‘Then I can tell the Assistant Commissioner you’re close to getting your man?’

Sean had seen Featherstone acting impulsively and impatiently before, but never to this degree. Clearly something or someone had given him an added sense of urgency. ‘I wouldn’t tell the Assistant Commissioner anything just yet,’ he warned Featherstone. ‘If he asks, just give him the generic bullshit and tell him we’re following a few lines of inquiry.’

‘But this McKenzie character looks good and Addis has been explicit about wanting a quick result. He doesn’t strike me as being a good man to fuck with.’

‘I’ll do the best I can, but you need to keep him at arm’s length – even if it’s just for a few days.’

‘A few days – I don’t know about that. Twenty-four hours maybe, but a few days—’

‘Fine,’ Sean told him. ‘I’ll take it, but I’ll need surveillance on McKenzie up and running within a couple of hours. I want to know where he’s going, what he’s doing, who’s he seeing—’

‘Surveillance?’ Featherstone stopped him. ‘No chance.’

‘Why?’ Sean snapped. ‘I need this bastard followed.’

‘Sorry, Sean,’ Featherstone explained, ‘but there’ve been too many cases in the media lately of the police acting too slowly – following people around while the suspect remains at large and the victims remain missing, only to turn up dead a few days later in the places we should have just charged into and searched from the off. So let’s not fuck about here. If you have a viable suspect – and you do – let’s get in there and nick the bastard, spin his gaff and anywhere else he’s known to have been. Our priority is to get the boy back – alive, preferably.’

‘But if we can follow him for a while, I’ll know,’ Sean argued. ‘I’ll know for sure before we even make a move.’

‘There’s nothing to be gained from surveillance,’ Featherstone reiterated. ‘Act decisively – that’s the way forward here. Now, you get on with what you’ve got to do while I go and see the Assistant Commissioner and spin him along for a bit. Hopefully the next time I see him I’ll be able to give him the good news, yes?’

‘Maybe,’ Sean answered sullenly.

‘Fine. Until then—’ Featherstone was already springing out of his chair and striding from the office. No one spoke until he disappeared into the corridor.

‘What’s got him so rattled?’ Sally asked.

‘Eighteen months from retirement with Assistant Commissioner Addis all over his back – you’d be rattled too,’ Sean told her. ‘Now, get hold of Stan and Tony and let’s pay McKenzie a visit.’

A few drops of sweat formed on Mark McKenzie’s forehead as he searched his newly acquired, second-hand laptop for pornography that suited his particular taste. Hard-core child pornography was hard to find on the Internet unless you’d had a tip-off from a like-minded friend, but his well-practised fingers danced across the keyboard entering the words that experience had taught him were the quickest way to find what he was after. He wiped the sweat away with the back of his hand and considered turning the heating down in the small, squalid flat he rented above a fried chicken takeaway franchise. But once he found what he was looking for it would be better to be warm for what he had in mind. He felt the old familiar excitement beginning to spread through his body as his testicles coiled and swelled, constant licking making his thin lips appear red and full, as if stained by wine. He lit another cigarette and tried not to let thoughts of the police and what would happen to him if he was caught downloading child pornography spoil his magical moment as he drew ever nearer to his prize.

The very thought of the police, the entire criminal justice system, made him almost laugh out loud as he blew plumes of thick grey smoke at the computer’s screen. They thought themselves so clever, but so long as he kept signing their pathetic register on time and turning up for their pointless interviews they’d leave him alone – alone to do whatever he wanted. Thoughts of the police faded to nothing as he finally found what he was looking for and amateur pictures of young, naked bodies began to fill his screen. This one even had half-decent sound. He took one last, hurried drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out and loosening the belt around his grubby trousers.

Just as he was about to take hold of his penis, the flimsy door to his flat exploded inwards, sending splinters of wood flying almost the full length of the living room. He jumped off his chair in shock, taking temporary refuge under the flimsy table. As soon as he saw the people in raincoats and suits bursting through the hole where the door used to be, he knew they were police and not the local vigilantes – even before they started calling into the flat, ‘Police! Police! Stay where you are and stand still.’ In a millisecond he remembered the laptop sitting on the table above his head and the damning evidence it contained. The fear of it being discovered turned his legs to springs as he rolled from under the table, stood and reached for the computer – but before his fingers could touch a single key one of the bastard policemen had crossed the room and knocked him back to the floor with a two-handed push to the chest. By the time he recovered his breath and his senses, the cop was standing over him, holding a warrant card in his face.

‘DI Corrigan, you little prick. Consider yourself under arrest.’

McKenzie coughed violently before speaking, to the point where he almost vomited. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he pleaded, almost out of habit.

‘Really,’ Sean snarled. ‘Then what the fuck is this?’ He grabbed McKenzie by the back of his head and pushed his face close to the screen.

‘I don’t know how that got there,’ McKenzie stammered, feigning amazement. ‘Swear to God.’

‘Don’t lie to me, you miserable little shit. You lie to me, it’ll only get worse for you.’

‘I’m telling the truth,’ McKenzie lied again. ‘It’s a second-hand computer – the download was already on it – I just found it when I was clearing its memory.’

‘Liar,’ Sean told him, his voice threatening as his hand slipped behind McKenzie’s neck and began to squeeze hard, the pain opening his mouth and making him whimper in pain. ‘You’re off to a bad start, McKenzie. Now it’s time to start telling the truth.’

The sweat on his brow made the thin, brown hair of his long fringe stick to his forehead as his thin fingers tried to prise Sean’s iron grip from the back of his neck, his dirty, broken fingernails scratching and drawing lines of blood on the back of Sean’s hand. ‘I’m not saying anything until I speak to a solicitor,’ he managed to say between deep swallows. ‘I know my rights.’

‘Fuck your rights,’ Sean hissed. ‘The children you were convicted of assaulting – where were their rights when you were abusing them?’ He thrust McKenzie’s face closer to the laptop’s screen. ‘Where are their rights?’

‘Maybe you should take it a little easy, guv’nor?’ Keeping her voice low, Sally laid a hand on Sean’s arm. This was no game of good cop, bad cop – she’d seen Sean like this before and knew it could mean trouble – trouble for them all.

‘Anyone wants to leave, they can leave,’ Sean told Sally and the other two detectives. ‘Mark and I wouldn’t mind being left alone, would we, Mark? We could have a private chat – get a few things straightened out.’

Sally sighed inwardly, but said nothing.

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ McKenzie sneered through his pain, the fear leaving him as his mind began to spin with the possibilities of his situation.

‘Wrong,’ Sean shouted in his ear. ‘Time to talk, McKenzie. Now, where’s the boy? Where are you keeping him?’

McKenzie shook his head, trying to assess the situation and play it to his own advantage – to turn the tables on the police at last, especially the one who held him by the neck as if he was nothing more than an unruly dog. He couldn’t stand any police, but this one was especially easy to hate. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he answered. A sickening smirk twisted across his face as he fed off Sean’s dark anger, sensing that he was the one in control, no matter how hard Sean squeezed his neck; no matter how much he might beat him or try to humiliate him. He held the power – for now.

‘The boy?’ Sean repeated. ‘You snatched him from his bedroom in Hampstead last night, but where is he now? What have you done with him? For your sake, Mark, I hope he’s all right.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you – whoever you are.’

‘I already told you who I am, Mark. You need to pay a little more attention and you need to answer my questions and you need to answer them now. Do you know what happens to child murderers inside, Mark? Look at you – you wouldn’t last a week before someone stuck a sharpened screwdriver into your liver. You already know all about living Rule 43 inside, don’t you, Mark – but a child murderer? How long before the screws accidentally leave your cell unlocked, eh?’

‘You finished yet?’ McKenzie asked, his smirk turning to a full-blown smile.

‘Fuck you, am I finished!’ Sean told him as he pushed his face into the computer screen, releasing him at the same time and stepping back before he did something he knew he’d regret. ‘I’m just getting started, you disgusting piece of shit. Trust me, McKenzie, when I’m finished you’ll know.’

Donnelly sat alone, surveying the interior of the café he’d found off Hampstead High Street, sipping the coffee he’d just bought, the price of which had made his eyes water. He regretted not opting for one of the many big-chain coffee shops and saving himself a few pounds, even though he couldn’t stand the places. It had been a few years since he’d attended any training courses at the nearby Peel Centre Police College, but even in that time many of the independent cafés and restaurants had disappeared, overtaken by the ever-spreading international franchises. He sighed as he took a bite from his extortionate bacon sandwich and sipped the coffee that cost as much as a pint of bitter in his favourite pub. As his mind drifted back to the case in hand and his appointed task of organizing the door-to-door inquiries, he couldn’t suppress a snort of disgust at the way his talents were being wasted. Not that he had any intention of actually knocking on endless doors himself, speaking to the disinterested and the over-keen alike − though he had reserved a couple of addresses for his special attention: the immediate neighbours of the Bridgemans.

He had quickly come to the conclusion that they were looking for some spectre who didn’t actually exist. During his long service he’d seen a lot of strange things, but when a child went missing and there was no sign of a forced entry there was no need to look further than the parents. The boy was almost certainly dead already and probably still hidden somewhere in the house – a suitcase or holdall. Once the search team or dog unit found the body, they could crack on with the murder investigation, by which time he planned to be one or two steps ahead. Interviewing the neighbours would be the first of those steps.

Donnelly hadn’t even met the missing boy’s parents yet, but just sitting in this café in the middle of Hampstead told him the sort of people they would be: smug and self-important. God, he loved putting the squeeze on types like that. They always thought they were so clever – so much cleverer than a dumb copper. Which was just how he liked it, because they invariably thought they were smart enough to talk their way out of any situation. In reality, they always ended up digging themselves great big holes to neatly fall headfirst into. If they really were as clever as they thought, they’d say nothing – just like the everyday feral criminal from any housing estate in London would. How I love hubris, he told himself with a smile, the image of tearing their alibis to pieces across an interview table cheering him considerably. The cold, hard truth was that all he had to do was bide his time and wait for the body to turn up.

Kentish Town Police Station sat on the corner of Kentish Town Road and Holmes Road, blending in perfectly with its bleak surroundings, its Victorian architecture oppressive and forbidding, a relic from the past that seemed to hold the entire area back, despite its proximity to some of the wealthiest and most sought-after areas of London. From outside the building almost no signs of life could be seen within, just as the Victorians had wanted: small windows with thick, dimpled glass kept the secrets of its business from the public outside. That suited Sean just fine as he and Sally sat in the small office they’d borrowed from the resident DI, preparing to interview Mark McKenzie – who was currently languishing in the dingy, threatening cells that lay in the bowels of the building.

‘So, how much d’you like McKenzie for our yet-to-be-established abduction?’ Sally asked, breaking minutes of silence. Sean looked up from McKenzie’s intelligence file, his expression telling her he hadn’t heard her question.

‘What?’

‘McKenzie? D’you think he could be our man – if it’s confirmed the boy has actually been taken?’

‘The boy’s been taken,’ he assured her, ‘and yes, he could be our man. His previous is perfect – especially his record of night-time residential burglaries while the families were at home, sleeping. He’s a creeper, and that makes him a dangerous individual. You and I both know that. People don’t do night-time burglaries while the residents are at home for profit alone – it gives them something else – a buzz, some perverted satisfaction. It makes them feel powerful and in control, even if half of them do end up fouling themselves with fear.’

‘But not McKenzie,’ Sally added. ‘There’s nothing in his records to say he ever defecated at the scenes of his burglaries.’

‘Which means either he wasn’t afraid or he’s learned to control his fear, both of which make him all the more dangerous. Add to that the fact he has previous for sexual assaults on children, and has used lock-picking as a way of gaining entry … yes, I like him for this – a lot. But I could do with something a bit more concrete before we interview him. Which reminds me …’ He grabbed his mobile from the desk and searched its memory for one of the newest members of his team, then hit speed-dial and waited.

‘Guv’nor,’ Goodwin answered.

‘How you getting on with that search team and dog unit?’

‘I’m gonna meet them at the house in a couple of hours, guv.’

‘What’s the hold-up?’ Sean asked impatiently.

‘Anti-Terrorist, guv. They’ve had them all tied up for days now. I had to be a little economical with the truth to pull them away for a few hours, so if you get an irate call from any brass, I’m afraid that’ll be down to me.’

‘If I do, I’ll deal with it,’ Sean assured him. ‘You got a team and that’s all that matters. Anyone gives you a hard time, you tell them I made the call on that one – understand?’

‘Thanks, guv.’

‘As soon as you get a result, let me know,’ Sean told him and hung up.

‘Problem?’ Sally asked.

‘The house hasn’t been searched yet,’ Sean told her, ‘and won’t be for a few hours.’

‘Shall we delay the interview?’

‘No. We’ll do it anyway. We’ve got a missing four-year-old, we can’t afford to wait around.’

‘So,’ Sally began, her eyebrows raised in exaggerated concern, ‘we’ll be interviewing a possible suspect who we have no evidence against about a crime we can’t even prove has happened. This’ll be interesting.’

‘The crime’s happened,’ Sean almost snapped at her, ‘and McKenzie’s a good suspect. We go with what we’ve got. If the search teams or Forensics come up with anything else, we can always re-interview him.’

‘If you think he fits the bill, that’s good enough for me,’ Sally told him.

Sean closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, allowing the images of McKenzie crouched by the front door of the Bridgemans’ house to flow into his mind, the dark figure quickly and smoothly working the locks as his breath condensed in the cold night air, before slipping inside the house and moving silently towards the stairs that would lead him to the boy he knew was sleeping upstairs. ‘How did you know?’ He spoke aloud without knowing it.

‘Know what?’ Sally asked, making him open his eyes.

‘It’s nothing,’ he assured her, ‘or at least nothing that’s going to take us forward. Christ, my head’s so full of crap at the moment I can barely think.’

‘Then use your experience instead,’ Sally encouraged him. ‘You’ve dealt with paedophiles before. What about that undercover case you were on?’

‘That was years ago.’

‘These particular leopards never change their spots.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No, they don’t.’

‘So what was the job?’

‘To infiltrate a paedophile ring calling itself the Network.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ Sally sniffed sarcastically.

‘The Internet was just beginning to spread and typically the baddies were on to it before we were – grooming kids online before getting them to … to perform – sometimes with each other, sometimes with the men who’d groomed then. They’d film the abuse and post it on the Internet.’

‘Why?’ Sally asked.

‘Because they were proud of what they did.’

‘Sick,’ Sally judged.

‘Maybe, or maybe that was just the way nature intended them. Anyway, I infiltrated their top man in prison first, then on the outside we continued our relationship until eventually he let me into the heart of their organization, something they called the Sanctum, made up of the members who actually did the abusing and oversaw distribution of the pictures.’

‘And you took them out?’ Sally asked.

‘We did. But the whole time I was with them, the head of the snake knew I was a cop – from the very first time he met me.’

‘He was bullshitting you.’

‘No,’ Sean said without hesitation. ‘He knew. John Conway knew.’

‘Then why did he take you in?’

‘Because he thought he could turn me,’ Sean admitted.

‘Thought he could turn you into a paedophile?’ Sally asked, confused.

‘What else?’ he answered, the question lingering unanswered between them. He steered the conversation back to the present. ‘But the Network groomed their victims, luring them to places where they could safely meet them. And the victims were older – all between nine and thirteen. Not like this one. Our guy goes into the house and takes them – and he takes them when they’re still very young.’

‘Them?’ Sally asked. ‘He’s only taken one, if that.’

‘Slip of the tongue,’ Sean lied. ‘Anyway, there’s a damn good chance we have our man banged up downstairs. So, if you’re ready …’ He stood, gathering up the piles of reports he’d been reading in preparation for the interview.

‘Ready when you are, Mr McKenzie,’ Sally said. ‘Ready when you are.’

DC Maggie O’Neil looked out of the fifteenth-floor hotel-room window at the view of Swiss Cottage and Maida Vale, the streets below twinkling and sparkling in the headlights, the crowded pavements bathed in the yellow light that leaked from the shop-fronts. The traffic was in gridlock, the sounds of which drifted up to the fifteenth floor and through the double-glazing. She’d offered the Bridgemans the use of a police safe house but they had unceremoniously turned her offer down, instead opting to find and pay for their own temporary accommodation, hence the three-bedroom apartment in the hotel in Swiss Cottage. Mr and Mrs Bridgeman took the largest room, while the nanny and Sophia shared the twin room. Maggie could use the small single room if she felt it was necessary for her to spend the night with the family, and so far she did.

She drew the curtains on the city below and turned to study the family, wishing she was tucked up at home in her small flat in Beckenham with her partner, who worked on the Mounted Division out of Wandsworth. She’d recently turned thirty and still hadn’t told her parents and family back in Birmingham she was gay, although she suspected her older sister had worked it out by now – the lack of boyfriends, no marriage talk, no baby talk. But for the rest, their conservative Irish background seemed to mean they’d rather not know the truth than have to deal with it. Besides, her brothers and sisters had already produced four grandchildren with the promise of plenty more to come, so it wasn’t as if she was leaving her parents with no little brats to bounce on their knees at Christmas.

She watched the nanny chasing six-year-old Sophia around the living area, her excitement at staying in a London hotel on a school night making her even more difficult to deal with – all thoughts of her missing brother seemingly forgotten. How cruel and selfish young children can be, she thought to herself as Sophia’s noisy protests against bedtime drowned out the urgent whispers from the small kitchen next door where Mr and Mrs Bridgeman had retreated in search of privacy.

‘Do you need any help there, Caroline?’ she asked the nanny, who continued to chase the six-year-old.

‘No thanks,’ she replied, ‘I’m used to it. Come on, Sophia – it’s time for bed.’

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ Sophia unhelpfully answered. ‘You’re not my mother.’

‘Don’t talk yourself into trouble, Sophia,’ Caroline warned, prompting the six-year-old to turn her back on them and reluctantly head towards the bathroom, calling back without looking:

‘Whatever.’

Caroline rolled her eyes in Maggie’s direction before whispering, ‘Proper little madam, that one.’

‘What about her brother?’ Maggie asked quietly. ‘What’s George like?’

‘Not like this one. He’s a really sweet boy,’ Caroline managed to answer before her voice failed and her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I wasn’t expecting to have to speak about him.’

‘It’s all right,’ Maggie reassured her. ‘In situations like this our emotions can sometimes ambush us. One second you think you’re fine, then the next …’

‘Poor George. Dear God, poor George. What’s happened to him?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie told her. ‘We’ll find him.’

‘How do you know that?’ Caroline asked. ‘I mean, how do you know that for sure?’

It was a question Maggie knew she had to avoid answering. ‘How’s Mrs Bridgeman coping?’

‘She’s doing a decent job of hiding it, but I can tell she’s scared – really scared. This is killing her inside.’ The sound of Mr Bridgeman’s raised voice in the kitchen made them both freeze for a second, their eyes locked, neither speaking until the sounds from the kitchen returned to faint murmuring.

‘And Mr Bridgeman,’ Maggie asked, her voice hushed, ‘how’s he doing?’

Caroline suddenly looked uncomfortable, like a child being asked to divulge a playground secret to a parent. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘It’s difficult to say. Sometimes men hide their fear behind anger – especially men like Mr Bridgeman.’

‘Like Mr Bridgeman?’

‘You know – powerful men – men who are used to being in control.’

‘So who’s he angry with?’

‘With … I didn’t say he was angry with anyone in particular, just that he was angry at what’s happened. He’s upset, you know.’

Maggie ignored her explanation, sensing there was more for her to find. ‘Mrs Bridgeman? Is he angry with her? Or maybe he’s angry with George about something.’

‘Listen,’ Caroline tried to backtrack, ‘I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m just the nanny. I look after the children – that’s all.’ She walked from the room in search of Sophia, leaving Maggie alone with her thoughts and doubts. She’d been Family Liaison Officer on plenty of cases in the past. Until a body was found, family members would never wander too far from the phone or each other, but after the body was found and confirmed as their missing loved one, family members would frequently seek solitude for their grief. She’d seen murders destroy families more often than she’d seen them bring them together – the parents of victims often divorcing in the aftermath of murder − but she’d never seen or felt a reaction quite like she was seeing in the Bridgemans: a devastated mother and an angry father who seemed to be doing everything they could to avoid being in the same room as her. The usual non-stop flow of questions from the terrified parents was absent; instead she could hear the constant murmur of their hushed, urgent voices coming from the kitchen. She reminded herself that she’d never dealt with victims like the Bridgemans before – wealthy and privileged. The families she’d worked with had all been comfortable at best, poor beyond most people’s understanding at worst. Maybe this was simply how rich people dealt with things – she just didn’t know. But something in her still-developing detective’s instinct told her all was not as it should be, as if they resented her presence. It wasn’t the first time she had encountered hostility as a Family Liaison Officer, but that had been from criminal families whose hatred of the police wouldn’t be softened by the mere death of a family member. That wasn’t the case with the Bridgemans – so what was wrong?

The loud buzzing noise filled the small interview room where Sean and Sally sat opposite Mark McKenzie and his state-appointed duty solicitor. Sarah Jackson was a fifty-six-year-old veteran of North London’s police stations. Her plain, loose-fitting clothes covered a bulky five-foot-two frame and her round face was surrounded by short, curly hair. Ancient spectacles finished her look. Within minutes of meeting and talking to her prior to introducing her to McKenzie, Sean could tell she knew her business and would not be walked over, although he also sensed she was a straight player and wasn’t here to do McKenzie any special favours. If he admitted to her he’d taken the boy then Sean would back Jackson to get him to admit it to them – for his own sake and the boy’s. Sean’s eyes never left McKenzie, who squirmed in his rickety chair and waited for the buzzing to fall silent. When it did Sean spoke first.

‘The time is approximately eight fifteen p.m. This interview is being conducted in an interview room at Kentish Town Police Station. I am Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan and the other officer present is …’

‘Detective Sergeant Sally Jones,’ she introduced herself without needing to be prompted.

‘I am interviewing – could you state your name clearly for the tape, please?’

‘Mark McKenzie,’ he answered curtly with a thin smile.

Sean continued to speak without having to think about the words, his mind already considering the questions he would ask – the small, ball-hammer taps he would keep making, attacking the veneer until finally McKenzie’s protective shell shattered.

‘And the other person present is …?’

Jackson answered without looking up from the notes she was busy scribbling. ‘Sarah Jackson, solicitor here to represent Mr McKenzie.’

Sean was glad to note the lack of a self-important speech about rights, hypothetical questions and fairness. She’d stated her business and it was enough.

‘Mark,’ Sean continued, ‘you are still under caution, which means you don’t have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court it may harm your defence. Do you understand?’ McKenzie just shrugged.

‘I’ve explained all this to Mr McKenzie,’ said his solicitor, keen to move on.

‘And anything you do say can be used in evidence,’ Sean finished. McKenzie said nothing. ‘I’ll assume that’s also been explained.’

Jackson briefly looked up and over the top of her spectacles. ‘It has,’ she told him, leaving Sean a little unsure who she disliked most – him or McKenzie. Had she already done his job for him and browbeaten McKenzie into making a confession? He decided there wasn’t enough excitement in the room for that.

‘Mark, you’ve been arrested on suspicion of having abducted a four-year-old boy, George Bridgeman, from his home in Hampstead last night. Is there anything you want to tell me about that?’

‘No comment,’ McKenzie answered, looking Sean square in the face while his solicitor seemed to raise her eyebrows as she stared down at her increasing notes. Was McKenzie going against her advice? And if so why?

‘Anything at all?’

‘No comment,’ McKenzie continued, already beginning to sound irritated.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sean quickly changed tack, ‘are my questions annoying you in some way?’ Jackson gave him a warning glance.

‘No comment.’

‘You live in Kentish Town – right?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Pretty close to Hampstead, isn’t it?’

‘So what?’

‘The boy went missing from Hampstead, from Courthope Road. Have you ever been to Courthope Road, Mark?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you go there last night?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you go there because you knew the boy would be there?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you take the boy, Mark – a simple yes or no?’

‘No comment.’

Sean leaned back silently for a few seconds before continuing, trying to read the man in front of him – trying to crawl inside his mind and see what he saw, feel what he felt − but nothing came to him. Keep asking the questions – keep asking until the light begins to spill through a chink in his armour. ‘Funny how you answer some questions no problem, but then when it’s about the missing boy you answer no comment.’

‘That’s his right, Inspector,’ Jackson was obliged to interrupt.

‘Of course,’ Sean insincerely apologized, ‘just an observation – that was all. So you’ve never been to Courthope Road in Hampstead?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ McKenzie corrected him.

‘So you have been there before?’

‘I didn’t say that either.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Perhaps it would be better if you stuck to answering no comment,’ Jackson advised him.

‘And I’ll ask you again,’ Sean kept up, ‘have you ever been to Courthope Road or not?’

‘Like my solicitor says, no comment.’

‘Mark, we’re investigating the disappearance of a very young boy. If you’re involved in it then you really need to start answering my questions.’

‘Disappeared? Sure of that, are you?’

‘What d’you mean?’ Sean asked, caught slightly off guard by McKenzie’s question.

‘I mean, have you searched the house properly yet? I know how you police do things – slow and steady, step by step, always afraid of missing something.’

‘It’s being done as we speak,’ Sean told him bluntly. ‘But I’m sure the boy is missing.’

‘Then maybe his parents did him in and got rid of the body before they called you lot, knowing you’d come after someone like me to blame for it.’

‘Is that how you see yourself – as a victim?’

McKenzie ignored him and shrugged his shoulders, the thin smile still fixed on his face. ‘Or you’re right. Someone went into the house and took him – took him away right under your nose.’

‘Right under my nose?’ Sean asked.

‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you? You’re supposed to stop things like this from happening.’

Was that McKenzie’s motivation – some kind of twisted intellectual vanity? A misguided sense of needing revenge on the police and justice system for all that had happened to him? Take the boy to prove he could get away with murder? ‘I suppose so,’ Sean played along, ‘but whoever took the boy was obviously extremely smart. They got in and out without leaving a single piece of evidence.’ McKenzie’s smile grew a little wider as his eyes grew narrower. ‘Is that why someone took the boy – to show us how clever they are?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And is that someone you?’

‘Ha,’ McKenzie laughed, ‘you’ll have to do better than that.’

‘This is not a game, Mark. Do you know what your life will be like if anything happens to the boy? Nowhere will be safe for you ever again.’

‘Is that a threat?’ McKenzie pushed back, making his solicitor look up like a teacher surveying a class of trouble-makers.

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘It’s a warning.’

‘Don’t patronize me. I know what it’s like to survive behind bars once they call you a sex offender. You bastards have put me away before, remember? But I survived all right, and I will again if I have to.’

‘But this time it’ll be child-abduction,’ Sean warned him. ‘You’ll be the scalp everyone’s looking to take.’

‘Only if you can prove it,’ McKenzie mocked, stopping Sean dead for a while.

‘OK,’ Sean continued after a few seconds, ‘let’s move on to something I can prove, and maybe we’ll come back to the missing boy. Earlier today when you were arrested in your flat there was something on your laptop – care to tell me what it was?’

‘You know what it was. But I told you – I just bought it second-hand. The stuff you saw was already on it.’

‘Come on, Mark,’ Sean gently encouraged, ‘we’ve already had a look at it and it’s clear the obscene images – the obscene images of children, Mark − were only downloaded seconds before we entered your flat. And seeing as how you were the only person there, it kind of means you had to be the one who downloaded them – doesn’t it?’

‘Must have been a glitch, or maybe someone downloaded it remotely from somewhere else.’

‘On to your laptop?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Not with your previous it’s not,’ Sean told him. ‘Are you aware of Bad Character Evidence? Have you discussed it with your solicitor?’ McKenzie shrugged while Jackson briefly looked up to shake her head. ‘It means if you rely on a story like that then we can tell the jury all about your previous convictions for downloading other, similar pornography, not to mention your convictions for sexually assaulting children. I really don’t think that’s going to help your cause.’

‘You can’t prove anything.’

‘By the time the specialists at our computer laboratory have examined that laptop, I’ll be able to prove plenty.’

‘If you say so.’

‘You’re going back inside, Mark.’

‘I don’t think so.’

McKenzie’s misplaced confidence was beginning to irritate him. ‘Well at least we’ve established one thing – that you’re a liar. A liar who, even when faced with the truth, still can’t be honest.’ McKenzie squirmed a little in his chair. ‘Everybody in this room knows you downloaded the child pornography yourself and everybody here knows you took the boy.’ Sally and Jackson now also shuffled uncomfortably in their chairs.

‘Like I said,’ McKenzie goaded him, ‘you can’t prove anything and you can’t save the boy. You’re too late.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sean asked, as calmly as he could. ‘What do you mean, I’m too late?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

‘If you know something, you need to tell me.’

McKenzie’s foot tapped fast and repeatedly as his excitement grew. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

Sean’s heart burnt with anger at McKenzie and fear for the missing boy, but he wouldn’t play McKenzie’s game any more – it was too easy for him to come up with sound-bite answers that might mean something or nothing. ‘Did it feel good?’ he began, ‘being alone in the street in the middle of the night? Quiet and cold, nothing but the sound of the leaves in the wind.’ McKenzie stopped tapping his foot and looked Sean in the eyes for almost the first time. ‘You’re good with locks, but it still must have taken a while to get the door open – were you scared someone would hear or see you, kneeling outside by the front door? It must have been difficult, working with gloves on, using those fine, small tools, but you had to wear them, because it was cold that night and you needed to stop your fingers from going numb, didn’t you?’ McKenzie squinted and frowned, his thin smile all but gone. ‘And when you finally stepped inside the house, the warmth hitting you in the face, the smell of the family must have been almost more than you could bear – did it make you feel dizzy, like you were having a dream?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ McKenzie interrupted.

‘What did it feel like, Mark, climbing those stairs towards the boy’s room – walking past his mother’s bedroom while she slept – knowing you were going to take her baby?’ Jackson glanced at him, her face betraying that she had children herself, no matter how grown-up they may be now – her mother’s instinct stopping her from intervening even when she should. ‘Did it make you feel special, Mark? Special like you never feel in everyday life? Did it make you feel powerful?’

‘Guessing, guessing, guessing,’ McKenzie hissed. ‘All you’re doing is guessing.’

‘But why didn’t you touch the mother? Is it because you’re a coward? Because you were afraid of her – afraid to rape a grown woman in case she fought back?’

‘This is going too far, Inspector,’ Jackson finally interjected.

‘Which is why it has to be children for you, doesn’t it?’ Sean ignored her, his voice louder than before. ‘But why not the little girl? Is it only little boys that do it for you, Mark?’

‘I think that’s enough, Inspector,’ Jackson insisted, her voice matching his until McKenzie spoke over the top of both of them.

‘You think you’re so clever – the police,’ he spat at them. ‘Fuck the police. I have the power here – no one else. I say what happens. We play by my rules – no one else’s.’

‘You have the power, Mark? Your rules? You seem to be forgetting something.’

‘Yeah? And what would that be?

‘That we’ve already caught you.’

McKenzie looked shocked for a moment, but then his blank expression began to grow into a smile and the smile into a barely audible laugh. His laughter grew until it was as loud as it was mocking and all the time he stared into Sean’s eyes.

Sean was close to leaping across the interview table when his vibrating phone distracted him. ‘Fuck,’ he swore too loudly before remembering his every word was being recorded. He snatched the phone from his belt and examined the caller ID. ‘Sorry, but I need to take this. For the recording, DI Corrigan is leaving the room for a short while.’ He made sure the door was shut behind him before he answered. ‘Ashley, what you got?’

‘The Special Search Team and the dog have both been through the house,’ DC Goodwin told him.

‘And?’ Sean asked impatiently.

‘Nothing. The boy’s definitely not still in the house.’

‘They absolutely sure?’

‘Sorry, guv, but the boy’s gone, no doubt about it.’

‘Christ,’ Sean blasphemed. For all that he’d been convinced the boy had been taken, it was still a deeply disturbing jolt to have it confirmed. ‘What about a scent? Did the dog pick up on any scent?’

‘Sorry,’ Goodwin explained. ‘Too many people have been through the house too many times, including the boy. The dog followed his scent to the front door, but once in the street it didn’t know which way to turn.’

‘OK, Ash – and thanks. You might as well get the forensic team in now – see what they can find.’ He hung up, returned to the interview room and sat down heavily. ‘DI Corrigan re-entering the interview room.’

‘Everything all right?’ Sally asked.

‘Fine,’ Sean lied. ‘I’d just like to clear a few things up before we take a break.’

‘Such as?’ McKenzie asked, suspicious of Sean’s surprise exit and re-entry. He’d been interviewed enough times to know the police weren’t above an underhand trick or two to get a confession – especially from a convicted paedophile.

‘The house George Bridgeman was reported missing from has now been thoroughly searched.’ He paused for a second to give himself time to read McKenzie’s face. ‘There’s no sign of him.’ McKenzie’s foot immediately started tapping uncontrollably again. ‘A full forensic search of the house will be starting almost immediately – looking for any tiny traces of whoever went to the boy’s room and took him. We’ve taken your clothes and body samples already: how long before we put you at the scene, Mark? How long?’

‘Too long,’ McKenzie grinned. ‘Too long to save the boy.’

‘We’ll see,’ Sean answered.

‘You’re too late,’ McKenzie almost sang. ‘You’re too late. You’re too late,’ over and over again.

‘This interview is concluded,’ Sean told him, pushing the stop button that made a heavy click followed by a slight whirring sound, the noise reverberating around the room as Sean gathered his sparse interview notes and headed for the door as quickly as he could before McKenzie’s mocking chants pushed him beyond control. Sally followed him out of the room, leaving McKenzie alone with his solicitor. They walked a few steps away from the door before speaking in hushed, conspiratorial tones.

‘What d’you think?’ Sally asked.

‘He couldn’t look more like our man if he tried,’ Sean answered.

‘Well, we know the boy’s definitely missing now – so it’s McKenzie or the parents.’

‘In all likelihood,’ Sean agreed. ‘But what game is he playing? He neither denies taking the boy nor admits it. He seems to want to float somewhere in the middle. But why? If I could just get inside—’

‘Inside what?’ Sally jumped on him. ‘Inside his head? Last time you did that, it didn’t work out too well, did it?’

‘We got our man,’ Sean argued, ‘and probably saved at least one life.’

‘Yeah, and Keller almost took yours – remember? Maybe this time we can just do things normally. You know, follow the evidence, wait for back-up – that sort of thing.’

‘Is that what you think George Bridgeman wants us to do – sit around waiting for the evidence to come to us? Is that what his parents want?’

‘I guess that depends on whether they were involved or not. I’m beginning to think you’re not even considering them as suspects.’

‘I’m considering everything. Right now, I’m considering everything.’

‘But you like McKenzie for it more than the other options?’

‘Don’t you? His previous. His lock-picking skills. The way he’s behaving in interview. I have to like him for it.’

‘Fair enough,’ Sally agreed. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Lock him up till the morning and then interview him again. Perhaps by that time we’ll have something from Forensics to rattle his cage with.’

‘And if we don’t?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll think of something … something to knock him out of his stride, with or without more evidence. He’ll talk – eventually.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Sally asked.

‘Because he wants to,’ Sean explained. ‘They all want to – that’s half the reason they do what they do. He just needs a few more shoves in the right direction. I’m going to pop back to the Yard and see what’s happening. Get hold of the local superintendent and have them meet you here in the morning to sort out an extension of detention for McKenzie. I’ll meet you back here later tomorrow morning to interview him again. Once you’ve got it sorted, go home and get some rest while you can.’

‘And you?’ Sally asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact to hide her concerns.

‘I’ll get home later,’ he promised as he headed for the exit. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he called over his shoulder and was gone.

‘Here we go again,’ Sally told no one. ‘Here we go again.’

Donnelly stood on the doorstep of 9 Courthope Road, warrant card in hand, and waited for the door to be opened. He’d already visited the Bridgemans’ neighbours on the other side in number five. The Beiersdorfs – Simon and Emily − had given him more than a few interesting tit-bits about the Bridgemans, even if they hadn’t realized they were doing so: how they had no intention of moving their children from their current school some distance from home rather than send them to the excellent local private school. How they never really spoke to anyone or tried to socialize, keeping themselves very much to themselves and seemingly avoiding their new neighbours. And then there had been the occasional sound of heated voices raised in argument, the children being shouted at. They had been at pains to explain that they understood all couples and families argued from time to time, but the Bridgemans’ arguments happened a little too often and were a little too disturbing.

Everything was turning out just how he thought it would.

The door was finally opened by yet another attractive woman, although she was slightly older than the norm for the street − she must have been in her early fifties. Nevertheless she had the same physical characteristics as the other women wealthy enough to live in this part of Hampstead: tall, slim, perfect skin and expertly dyed silver-blonde hair in a ponytail. She spoke in the same accent as everyone else too, almost a non-accent, but with just a hint of the aristocratic as she peered through the small gap the security chain allowed. ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

‘Mrs Howells?’ Donnelly asked, flipping his warrant card open for her to examine. ‘Detective Sergeant Donnelly from …’ he struggled to remember the name of his new team for a second … ‘Special Investigations Unit, New Scotland Yard.’

‘How do you know my name?’ she asked, still scrutinizing his warrant card, her first reaction one of suspicion.

‘I’ve just been speaking with the Beiersdorfs from number 5. I took the liberty of asking them your name. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No,’ she lied. ‘I assume this is about the little boy from next door?’

‘You heard then?’

‘Couldn’t help hearing with all the police walking up and down the street. Have you found him yet?’

‘No,’ Donnelly answered. ‘Sadly not.’

‘His poor mother,’ Mrs Howells said without feeling, ‘she must be besides herself with worry.’

‘She’s holding up. Sorry I didn’t catch your first name.’

‘Philippa,’ she told him.

‘Well, Philippa, I was wondering if I could come inside and speak with you a minute?’

‘It’s very late. I was expecting someone from the police to call here earlier. Perhaps you could come back tomorrow?’

‘Better to get it out of the way now,’ Donnelly quickly told her, sensing she was about to close the door. ‘Anything that might help us find the little boy – right?’

‘Very well,’ she relented, flicking the chain off the hook and swinging the door open for him. ‘You’d better come inside.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Donnelly said as he skipped up the stairs. ‘Is Mr Howells also at home by any chance?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she answered curtly while closing the door, ‘he’s away on business.’

‘Pity,’ he told her. ‘Ideally I would have liked to speak to both of you.’

‘I don’t suppose my husband would know any more than I do,’ she explained, leading him through the house to the large kitchen diner – a common feature in the houses of the street. ‘We hardly know them − they only moved in a few weeks ago. But I suppose you already know that. Please, take a seat,’ she told him, indicating a stool at the breakfast bar.

‘And you popped round to introduce yourself?’ Donnelly asked, keen to speed things along.

‘Of course. This is a friendly street. We had a street party for the Jubilee and every Christmas we have a big party for all the kids at the local tennis club, that sort of thing.’

‘But the Bridgemans didn’t want to know?’

‘You could say that. She seemed keener than her husband, but not exactly over-friendly.’

‘So the husband seemed to be the one wanting them to keep their distance – is that fair?’

‘I suppose so,’ she answered. ‘I assumed they were just shy and preferred to keep themselves to themselves.’

‘Fair enough,’ Donnelly encouraged.

‘Exactly, but they’d only been here a few days when … well, quite frankly, the arguments started. Believe me, the walls of these houses are pretty solid, but you could still hear them – or rather him.’

‘So it was Mr Bridgeman doing the shouting?’

‘She joined in, but yes, mainly him.’

‘Could you hear what they were arguing about?’

‘Not really, although I did hear him calling her a lying bitch one time. I think at that point my husband and I vowed to have as little to do with them as possible and that’s the way it’s been.’

‘What about the kids? How did they seem?’

‘All right, considering.’

‘And the children’s behaviour?’

‘Fine. The little girl …’

‘Sophia.’

‘Yes, Sophia, seemed to have a lot to say for herself, but the little boy …’

‘George.’

‘Yes, sorry, George was a very quiet boy, from what I could tell. But like I said, we don’t really know them.’

‘But on the occasions you did see them,’ Donnelly pressed, ‘maybe in the back garden or out the front there, how did the parents seem towards the children?’ Donnelly’s chirping mobile broke the flow of questions and answers, making him curse under his breath. The caller ID told him it was Sean. He answered without excusing himself. ‘Guv’nor.’

‘Where are you?’ Sean asked.

‘Door-to-door, as assigned. Speaking to the Bridgemans’ neighbours, who are being very helpful,’ he added for the benefit of the listening Mrs Howells.

‘Good,’ Sean told him. ‘While you’re doing that you should bear in mind the house has now been searched properly and the boy hasn’t been found.’

Donnelly cursed inwardly twice: once for not being right about the boy’s body being found in the house and again for not making sure DC Goodwin tipped him off about the search before he told Sean. The news must have come through while he was in with the Beiersdorfs. Damn it. Not to worry. His theory still held water. After killing the boy the Bridgemans could have easily moved the body from the house – perhaps to a secure place while they waited for the heat to die down before getting rid of it permanently. Or maybe they had already disposed of it. ‘Is that so,’ he finally answered.

‘Yes, and the one we have in custody is shaping up nicely,’ Sean continued.

‘Has he admitted it yet?’ Donnelly asked, disappointment at the prospect of being proved wrong mingling with satisfaction that the person responsible was in custody. He had no problem swallowing his pride for the sake of getting a conviction on some sick bastard kiddie-fiddler.

‘No,’ Sean told him. ‘But he hasn’t denied it either, and you have to ask yourself why he wouldn’t deny it if he wasn’t involved.’

‘Because he’s insane?’ Donnelly offered.

‘Not this one,’ Sean explained. ‘He’s wired wrong, but he’s not insane. Seems to want to play games too.’

‘With us?’

‘Apparently. Finish up where you are and try and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be an early start and a late finish, as is every day until we find George – one way or the other.’ Donnelly heard the connection go dead.

‘Sorry about that. Where were we?’ Donnelly asked Mrs Howells.

‘The Bridgeman children,’ she reminded him.

‘Aye, indeed. From what you could see, how did the parents behave towards their children?’

‘OK,’ she answered. ‘Although …’

‘Although what?’ Donnelly seized on it.

‘From the bits and pieces I’ve seen, they were fine towards Sophia, but …’

‘But …?’ he pushed her.

‘Not Celia, but Mr Bridgeman always seemed a little … well, a little cold towards George.’

‘Any idea why?’

‘As I said, I barely know them. I’m just telling you what struck me from the little I’ve observed.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ Donnelly told her. ‘But he’s fine towards Sophia?’

‘Kisses and cuddles on the doorstep when he comes home – plays with her in the garden at the weekends.’

‘Nothing unusual about a daddy’s girl. I have a few kids of my own and my ten-year-old only has eyes for her old dad – much to the annoyance of her mother.’

‘It’s getting very late now,’ Mrs Howells said with a polite smile Donnelly had seen a thousand times before. ‘I really ought to check on the children.’

‘Have you ever seen him, maybe, hit the boy?’ Donnelly ignored her hints.

‘No. No. Of course not.’

‘Ever see him touch George in an inappropriate way?’

‘I really don’t think I should say any more.’

‘Anything you tell me will be treated as confidential, Mrs Howells.’

‘I’ve told you all I know. I never saw him abuse George in any way. It’s just … he was …’

‘Cold towards him,’ Donnelly reminded her.

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘And your mother’s instinct told you something was wrong?’ Donnelly tried to seduce her with praise.

‘Yes – I mean no. I’m not sure, really I’m not. It’s late, detective. I must …’

Donnelly tapped the top of the breakfast bar before standing and fastening his overcoat against the cold that waited for him outside. ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

‘I just hope I haven’t misled you,’ she told him.

‘Oh, I don’t think you’ve done that, Mrs Howells. I don’t think you’ve done that at all.’

Sean cursed his nine-to-five neighbours as he searched and failed to find a parking spot anywhere close to the front door of his modest three-bedroom terraced house in East Dulwich, bought just before the wealth spread into the area from Dulwich Village and Blackheath. Maybe Kate was right – they should cash in while it was worth as much as it was and flee to New Zealand; perhaps then he would be able to afford somewhere with off-street parking instead of going through this nightly ritual of imagining his neighbours smugly tucked up in their beds while they thought of him having to park a couple of streets away. At least it wasn’t raining. Finally he parked up and trudged back towards his house, passing cars that he knew would still be parked in the same places as he headed back to his own the next morning. Last home and first to leave – same as usual.

His head was still buzzing with the day’s events: the office move, the new case, meeting the missing boy’s parents, and most of all the interview with McKenzie and all the questions he’d thought of on the way home that he’d forgotten to ask during the interview. He had only a few hours before it would be time to head back to work and pick up where he left off, and experience told him that if he was to get any rest at all he needed to unwind; sit alone and watch something on the TV unrelated to any type of policework while he consumed as much bourbon as he dared to slow his racing mind without leaving him groggy in the morning. To his disappointment, as he entered the house he sensed Kate was still up, a sinking feeling in his belly making him feel guilty for seeking solitude. He eased the door shut behind him and headed for the kitchen where he knew she would be waiting.

‘You’re late,’ she said, unconfrontationally. ‘Or at least, later than you’ve been for a while.’

‘They finally gave us a new case,’ he told her, trying not to show his excitement and relief at once again being gainfully employed, once again leading the hunt.

‘Oh,’ she responded, not hiding her disappointment.

‘They weren’t going to leave me alone for ever.’ He gave an apologetic shrug.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I realize that. It’s just, I was getting used to having you around a bit more than usual, and so were the girls.’

‘We’ve had a good run, perhaps we should just be grateful for that.’

‘Grateful!’ Kate snapped, then immediately softened her tone: ‘You were shot, Sean. I think you earned some time off.’

‘Maybe,’ he answered, desperately wishing he could just be alone as he pulled a glass and a bottle of bourbon from a cupboard the kids couldn’t reach and poured two fingers before emptying his pockets on the kitchen table and slumping into a chair on the other side to his wife.

‘Haven’t seen you do that in a while,’ she told him, her eyes accusing the drink in his hand.

‘I need to sleep tonight and this’ll help.’

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you look pretty pleased with yourself,’ she told him.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Sitting there, drink in hand, hardly speaking, holier-than-thou look on your face.’ He couldn’t help but grin a little. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was enjoying being back in the same old shit. ‘Yeah, that smile says it all.’

‘Don’t be so pissed off,’ he told her. ‘I’m a detective. They pay me to solve cases, catch the bad guys, save the day, remember?’

‘I’m pissed off because I was worried, Sean. I called you, several times, and left messages, but you didn’t call back – not even a text.’

He lifted his mobile from the table and checked for missed calls. Sure enough she’d called him several times. ‘Sorry,’ he told her. ‘I must have been in the middle of an interview.’

‘I don’t know, Sean – it feels like we’re heading back to the bad old days: me here alone with the kids while you run around trying to get yourself … We can do better than this, can’t we?’

‘It’s only been one night,’ he reminded her.

‘You said it’s a new case, so we all know what that means.’ Sean didn’t respond as a silence fell between them that only increased his yearning to be alone. ‘So what is it?’

‘What’s what?’ he asked unnecessarily.

‘The new case.’

‘A four-year-old boy gone missing from his home in Hampstead,’ he answered, immediately regretting mentioning Hampstead.

‘Hampstead?’ Kate seized on it. ‘Why are you investigating something that happened in Hampstead?’

He took a gulp of the bourbon before answering. ‘They’ve moved us to the Yard.’

‘Why would they do that?’ she asked, her voice heavy with suspicion.

He swallowed the liquid he’d been holding in his mouth and waited for the burning in his throat to cease before answering. ‘They’ve changed my brief,’ he told her. ‘We’re to investigate murders and crimes of special interest across the whole of London, not just the south-east.’

‘Have they centralized all the Murder Teams?’ she asked, her voice tightening with concern.

‘No. Just mine.’

Kate took a few seconds to comprehend what it could mean. ‘So now they can dump anything from anywhere on you? That’s just fucking great, Sean. I mean that’s really just fucking great.’

‘What d’you want me to do?’ he asked. ‘I had no choice.’

‘Don’t be so damn weak,’ she chastised him. ‘You could have said no.’

‘That’s not how it works – you know that.’

‘Sean, it doesn’t work at all. God, it was bad enough before and now it’s going to be even worse, if that’s at all possible. Everything we’ve planned for the next few weeks I might as well just scrap – just chuck it in the bin?’

The frustration at not being alone finally snapped him. ‘I’m sorry if I’m fucking up your social calendar. I thought it was a bit more important to find this four-year-old boy before some paedophile bastard rapes and murders him. I’ll tell his parents I can’t help them any more because my wife’s made dinner reservations – will that make you happy?’

‘Fuck you, Sean, and your self-important, arrogant bullshit. I’m going to bed.’ She sprang to her feet, almost knocking the chair over, then looked across the table accusingly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in asking when you’ll next be home at a reasonable time?’

‘That’s not really up to me, is it? That’s up to whoever took—’

‘I’ve had enough of this crap,’ she told him and turned her back on him as she headed for the stairs. He considered calling after her, trying to make the peace before it was too late, but that would mean more sitting and talking, lessening any chance he’d have of calming his mind enough to think as he needed, to think about who could have taken George Bridgeman. But the damage had already been done and the fight with Kate had only added more turmoil to the mix. Now he wouldn’t be able to think or sleep.

‘Fuck it,’ he swore at the room and drained his glass. ‘Why do I always have to be such a prick?’

4

The only window in the prison cell was made of heavy, opaque, square glass bricks through which the rising sunlight outside struggled to penetrate, but it was enough to stir Mark McKenzie from his shallow sleep. He’d grown used to sleeping in prison cells, at police stations or more permanent institutions. Although he slept better than most, he was still frequently disturbed by the comings and goings of prisoners elsewhere in the custody area – drunken fights and the screams of the mentally ill, locked up until the system decided what to do with them.

He pulled the regulation blue prisoners’ blanket off and padded barefoot on the cold stone floor to the stainless-steel toilet which had been bolted to the wall in a purpose-built alcove of the small room to afford the user some degree of privacy if the cell was being shared. Mercifully he was on his own – the white paper forensic suit ensuring he would not be expected to share this Victorian hole with anyone else. But the suit also marked him out to police and villains alike as something special, and the other criminals had a dog-sense born of the need to survive that told them at a glance that he was no armed robber to be respected and revered; no suspected gangland assassin to be avoided or sucked-up to. No, they knew what he was – a sex case – a rapist or kiddie-fiddler. Either way, he wouldn’t be sharing his accommodation with anyone – just in case. He didn’t fear too much for his safety while he was banged up with the Old Bill – he knew they wouldn’t let the other prisoners near him, and thanks to the advent of CCTV inside custody areas the risk of a visit from a uniformed Neanderthal administering summary justice was unlikely. But if he ended up going back to prison things would be different, even on Rule 43, segregated from the main prison population. He would be constantly living on his nerves, always aware that a vindictive prison officer – or, more likely, a bribed one – might leave a door unlocked just at the right time.

He tried not to dwell on the subject as he finished emptying his bladder and returned to his bed – a flat, blue, plastic mattress on a completely solid wooden bench affixed to the wall on three sides. He pulled the blue blanket back over himself to keep out the morning chill. Clearly some police bastard had turned the heating off in his cell knowing he only had a paper suit and thin blanket to keep out the cold.

As he lay on his back staring at the off-green ceiling his mind wandered back to his life as a young teenager living with his drunken stepfather who beat him for light entertainment and a mother who was too busy with much younger children from her new husband and too in need of the income he provided to do anything about it. And then the stepfather had started making accusations – whispering evil things in his mother’s ear about how he seemed a bit too keen to help bathe the younger children – how he’d caught him sneaking out of their bedrooms in the middle of the night. Even though they couldn’t prove anything, when he was only sixteen years old they had pushed him out of the door with a suitcase and two hundred pounds cash, given to him only once he’d promised never to come back. His pleas to his mother had fallen on deaf ears, but alone in the world he’d survived, living off a pittance of unemployment benefit in godforsaken bedsits until finally he’d been forced to take a job as an apprentice locksmith as part of his Job Seeker programme. After a few months he realized he was actually enjoying the job. Getting up every day knowing he had a purpose. Everybody in the small family business treated him with respect – treated him indeed as if he was part of their family as he watched and learned from the more experienced locksmiths. Soon he could fit almost any type of lock to almost any type of door and had even begun to learn the finer art of picking the locks open – a company speciality that had saved many a customer the expense of fitting new locks to doors that had unexpectedly swung shut on them. It started innocently enough as far as he was concerned – just a bit of harmless thrill-seeking – crouching in the dark at the doors of shops closed for the night, working his fine tools until the locks popped open, pushing the doors inwards until the burglar alarms were activated, then watching from a safe distance as the attending police berated the shopkeeper who they’d dragged out in the middle of the night to turn off the terrible noise, warning them that police would stop responding to their alarms if they couldn’t even be bothered to make sure they’d shut their doors properly. His night-time games were amusing as well as giving him the opportunity to hone his new-found skills, but soon their appeal began to wear thin. He needed more.

The first few years of his life had been happy enough, – as far as he could remember – living with his mother and real father as an only child, but the admiring looks his mother drew from other men drove his father insane with jealousy – an insanity he tried to drown in drink, until finally his alcoholism chased him from the family home never to be seen again. He’d died a few years later and was buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere in the Midlands. After that it had been a succession of strange men he was told to call uncle until such time as they became more permanent in his mother’s life. Some had been decent enough, but most saw him at best as an inconvenience, while a few had treated him as something to be used and abused. All the while he’d had to watch the children of other families being loved and cherished by their parents – knowing that, while he was unwelcome in his own home, they would be sleeping soundly in warm, comfortable beds. If only he could share some of their life.

Finally he could wait no longer and at last he perfected the method of becoming part of another family without anyone ever knowing. He slipped into their houses through silently opened windows and doors, his lock-picking skills improving with each adventure, standing in the kitchens and living rooms of the families as they slept upstairs, knowing that if he was caught he would be accused of terrible things. But all he wanted was to be alone with them, safe and accepted – part of a real family.

For a long time he was too afraid to venture upstairs and stand in the same rooms as the sleeping children. Instead he’d settled for taking things to remind him of his innocent visits; not things of value, just little keepsakes no one would miss. But eventually that was no longer enough, and his fear of walking up the long, creaking staircases was overwhelmed by his need to see the sleeping children. So he took his first terrifying walk up the stairs, struggling to control his bladder and bowels as he slid past the parents’ room and entered the room of a little girl bathed in her blue night-light.

It had been everything he’d dreamed it would be – standing, watching her little chest rise and fall under the covers, her long curly hair draped over her face like a beautiful veil. Her room was warm and pretty, with princesses and rainbows on her wallpaper, toys and dolls on every surface as she slept in her soft, comfortable bed, wrapped in a floral-patterned duvet that smelled of fresh orchids on a spring day. So this was how the other children had lived – cared for and adored, as far from his own childhood as it was possible to imagine. Tears had rolled down his face as he’d stood watching her – tears of happiness for her and sadness for his own lost childhood. After what seemed an age he left her room and slipped away as quietly as he’d arrived, taking one of her dolls from the shelf as he did so – being sure to lock the window behind him, leaving it just as he found it.

Time and again he paid his visits to the sleeping, always taking something small and personal from the child’s room – just another toy lost or misplaced, soon forgotten by both parents and child alike. His collection of soft toys and dolls was squeezed into a suitcase stored under his bed for when he needed their help to relive his innocent little visits.

But his wage as an apprentice remained small and while he was in the houses he saw many things of value: watches, jewellery, cash in purses and wallets. Small things at first, but as he became bolder the things he took grew larger: laptops, iPads, Blu-ray players. He knew just the landlord in just the pub to sell them to – no questions asked, cash over the counter. Finally his luck ran out as he let himself out of the back door of a semi-detached in Tufnell Park, straight into the arms of a waiting uniform police constable who was quietly investigating a call from a concerned neighbour who thought they’d heard something suspicious in next-door’s garden. Obviously he’d been unable to explain the laptop and iPhone they’d found in his bag and once it was established he was not the lawful occupier of the semi-detached he was arrested for residential burglary and handed over to the local CID for further investigation.

He could still clearly remember the abject terror he’d felt when the detectives had handcuffed him and said they were going to take him back to his bedsit to search it for further stolen goods – his mind suddenly unable to think of anything other than the suitcase under the bed and the damning evidence it contained. Trying not to sound too desperate, he told the police he’d happily admit to the burglary and that therefore there was really no need to search his home. But his pleas had been ignored.

Thirty minutes later he could only stand and watch in horror as the younger of the two detectives pulled the suitcase from under the bed and flicked open the latches, throwing open the lid to reveal the toys inside. ‘From my childhood,’ he’d lied before the detective could speak. ‘My parents were going to throw them away so I brought them here. I was going to try and sell them – some of them might be worth something.’ Before the detective could question him his colleague distracted both of them as he began to pull watches, credit cards, mobile phones and jewellery from a drawer in a chest.

‘Hello there,’ he mocked as he let the items he’d found fall through his fingers like pirates’ gold. ‘Looks like you’ve been a very busy boy, Mark.’ McKenzie’s eyes had never left the suitcase until to his astonishment and relief the younger detective closed it and slid it back under the bed before moving quickly to his colleague’s side to examine the items that seemed far more interesting than a suitcase of old toys, and certainly easier to trace and prove as stolen. ‘You’re fucked,’ the detective added for good measure, ‘properly fucked.’

It was all he could do to suppress the smile he felt warming his insides as he continued to thank God that the burglary he’d been arrested for had been one of the rare occasions when he hadn’t taken a toy from the child’s room as a trophy. If he had, the suitcase under the bed would have meant so much more to the young detective, but now it had simply been forgotten. He admitted to eight different residential burglaries, listening carefully as the police listed the property taken from the homes, always fearful the toys he’d taken would be on the list, but they never were. Perhaps the parents of the children had never noticed them missing in the first place. Or maybe they had, but not until days after the burglaries, by which time their minds, their imaginations had failed to make the connection.

Four months later, as a first-time offender, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and was out in five, jobless and homeless until the Probation Service found him another shithole of a bedsit. With so much time on his hands and bitterness in his heart old, dark, disturbing longings soon began to stir in the pit of his soul and he knew that merely standing by the sides of their beds wouldn’t be enough any more. Besides, if the police were looking at him, they’d be looking at him during the night, as they would any night-time offender.

And so it was that he found himself stalking playgrounds during the day, always waiting for his opportunity, waiting for the watching mothers to look away at the wrong moment, for the young child to wander too close to where he hid. Which was exactly what the little boy had done that fateful Wednesday afternoon. He led him away through the woods, touching him and making him do things as he listened to the cries and screams coming from the playground, as the mother and the other hens frantically searched for the little boy. He’d finally panicked and run deeper into the woods leaving the boy alone, sobbing. But he soon became lost and disorientated, voices seemingly closing in on him from all sides, so he decided to hide in the hollow of an old tree, covering himself with dead leaves as the sound of a barking dog joined the chorus of shouts and screams. Eventually the hound came so close that he could hear its sniffling and scratching and he made a last desperate run for it, only for the huge, terrifying beast to bring him down hard within a few paces. A uniformed dog handler arrived, but was clearly in no hurry to call the beast to bay, and in that moment he knew he’d been labelled forever – labelled as a child-molester, hated by all but his own kind. As a residential burglar he’d already been treated by the police as something ugly and suspicious, but that was nothing compared to the treatment he’d received after his arrest for the sexual assault of the child. It seemed everywhere he turned someone would be singing in a whisper: Sex case. Sex case. Hang him, hang him, hang him.

His first week in prison had been a living hell, but somehow he’d survived in the open prison population until he was eventually moved to a segregated wing on Rule 43 with all the other sex offenders. His two-year sentence had given him plenty of time to think about the bastard police and their revelling at his expense and now he had this new bastard cop all over him – Detective Inspector Corrigan. Soon they would learn that it was he who held the power in this particular game – he who would lead them by the nose. And when the time was right it would be he who humiliated them all – all the bastard police, but especially Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan.

Sean swung into the new Inquiry Office at Scotland Yard shortly after eight a.m. and was immediately confronted by a scene of chaos as his team continued to unpack cardboard boxes and rearrange the furniture, crawling under desks to search for power-points and telephone sockets. Donnelly stood in the middle of the maelstrom, conducting affairs without offering to help, while Sally took refuge in her office, her head buried in reports. She gave a start when Sean rattled on the side of her open door.

‘Bloody hell,’ she told him, pressing her hand to the scars hidden under her white blouse, smiling as she spoke. ‘You scared me.’

‘Sorry,’ he apologized, his eyes inadvertently falling on the hand covering her chest. ‘I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you.’

‘I know,’ she assured him, her hand slipping down to her lap. ‘Can’t hear anyone approaching above that din out there.’

Sean stepped inside her office and closed the door. ‘Did you get the extension of detention OK?’

‘Yeah, the local superintendent was most obliging. But it still only gives us a few hours before we either release him, charge him or try our luck with the magistrates to get a further extension.’

‘Hopefully it won’t come to that. We’ll get back to Kentish as soon as we can and re-interview him – see if we can’t put the frighteners on him a bit and get him to talk.’

‘Any ideas how we’re going to do that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe tell him that the papers and TV are on to him – digging up his past. Let him know we can’t protect him if he doesn’t confess, that he’ll have to take his chances out on the streets alone – with everybody knowing who he is and what he’s accused of.’

‘Bit below the belt.’

‘We’ve got a missing boy, Sally, and a convicted sex-offender and residential burglar with a history of using lock-picking to gain entry. He’s a more than viable suspect, which means I’m within my rights to tell the media his name – in an effort to trace his movements the night the boy went missing. If that puts him in danger at the hands of the public then there’s not much I can do about it.’

‘You seem to be forgetting we have a duty of care to look after anyone we know or suspect is in clear and immediate danger.’

‘Care that we will offer and McKenzie will refuse.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether he accepts it or not – we have to provide it.’

A devilish grin spread across Sean’s face. ‘Which is exactly why Featherstone and the Assistant Commissioner will have to give me a surveillance team to follow McKenzie in the event we have to release him.’

‘Oh, that’s sneaky,’ Sally told him with an appreciative grin of her own.

‘Just want to make sure I’ve got all the bases covered. Now get next door and see if you can’t bring some order to that rabble – we need an office meeting. I doubt half of them have a clue what’s going on. I’ll join you in a couple of minutes.’

Sally immediately bounced into the main office, shouting and cajoling the mess of detectives into something approaching order. Sean took a few deep breaths before following her, but was frozen by the photograph Sally had attached to the whiteboard in her office – the photograph of a smiling George Bridgeman dressed in his nursery school uniform – the type taken by a professional photographer visiting the school. He realized it was the first time he’d stopped to look at any pictures of the missing boy properly – his beauty and innocence he’d noticed the first time he saw a photograph of the child suddenly seemed even more striking. His thoughts travelled back to the boy’s family, and once again he found himself asking whether it was their very beauty that had attracted the monster in the first place. Was McKenzie visually driven – irresistibly drawn by the physical beauty of the family? Sally’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

‘Ready when you are,’ she told him. Sean nodded and walked into the main office, all eyes immediately falling on him as the image of George Bridgeman continued to burn itself into his conscience.

‘For those of you who spent all of yesterday back at Peckham, I understand you’re probably not yet up to running speed on our new case.’

‘Another MISPER, isn’t it?’ DC Tony Summers asked in his husky Manchester accent.

‘It is,’ Sean confirmed.

‘Not again,’ moaned DC Tony Summers whose size and thick blond hair had earned him the nickname Thor amongst his colleagues.

‘The last case we had started as a MISPER,’ Sean warned them, ‘and we all know how that one ended. This time, for those of you who don’t already know, the missing person is a four-year-old boy called George Bridgeman. We have limited time to find him before everyone’s going to start assuming the worst and before the media are either informed or find out about it themselves. When that happens, we need to stay focused and separate from the inevitable circus – let Press Bureau do their job and we’ll get on with ours. Understand?’ His team nodded that they did. ‘We’ve had night-duty teams searching the streets around the family house, but nothing so far. Now we’ve got daylight, further teams will continue the search and expand it on to Hampstead Heath. We’ll be using dogs and India 99 will be searching from above if the weather stays fine. OK – updates. Dave, anything from Forensics yet?’

Donnelly remained seated, pausing to clear his throat before speaking. ‘They worked through the night at the family home of the missing boy and have lifted multiple prints, including some shoe prints, and fibres. They’ve seized a few items the suspect may have touched to get to the boy and will be submitting them to the lab this morning for a DNA sweep, but there’s been a ton of people through the house – not just the family, but their cleaner, nanny, the removal men, the estate agent and any one they showed around the house when they were trying to sell it. And no doubt there’ll still be traces of the previous family all over the place too. Basically we’re looking at dozens of sets of prints, and the same for DNA. Other than that – no traces of blood or signs of a break-in.’

‘So we know our suspect entered, took the boy and left without leaving any obvious trace, other than possibly prints and/or DNA.’

Cahill winced. ‘If the media get hold of that they’re going to start making him into some sort of urban bogeyman.’

‘They don’t need the details of the break-in,’ Sean assured her.

‘What break-in?’ Donnelly reminded him.

‘You know what I mean,’ Sean answered. ‘Tell Forensics not to waste their time trying to compare the prints to the family, etc. Just get them all up to Fingerprints and have them run against sets already in their database. Maybe we’ll strike lucky and get a hit against someone with previous convictions.’

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