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CHAPTER ONE

1997

When Eva woke, imprisoned in a large metal box, the one thing that terrified her more than the prospect of her captor returning was the thought that he might not. Then she would be trapped here for good, or at least until she ran out of the things she needed most: food, water, air.

Oh my God, how long would that take? She didn’t want to die like this. She didn’t want to die at all. She had to stifle the overwhelming feeling of panic and face the reality of her situation. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she realized she was in a container of some sort, with thick corrugated-metal sides, floor and roof. She felt dizzy and tried to focus on her surroundings so she could clear her head and begin to understand what might have happened to her.

She was lying on a cheap camp bed with no memory of how she had got there. The only light came from a single battery-operated lamp set upon a packing case that acted as a makeshift bedside table. She felt incredibly weak and had a splitting headache which added to her conviction that she must have been drugged somehow. Had someone put something in her drink, or did something happen after she had left the pub? She couldn’t remember.

How had she got here? Who had trapped her in this airless metal prison, no bigger than her bedroom at home?

Then there were the unfamiliar clothes. She hadn’t been wearing them before. Her dress was gone. In its place there was a thick, dark-blue sweatshirt that was a little too big for her, its cuffs riding down over her hands, and a pair of loose tracksuit bottoms. Eva didn’t remember removing her dress voluntarily, or putting these other items on. Someone had stripped her then dressed her, but she must have been unconscious while it happened. She was still wearing the same underwear, minus her bra. The thought made her feel physically sick.

In her fear, Eva’s hand gripped the side of the bed. The mattress sagged in the middle where it had once been folded for storage. It smelt new, as if it had been bought with her in mind – that was another chilling realization.

The metal box was a rectangular shape and around twenty feet long and eight wide, with a door in the far wall. There was barely enough room to stand up. Eva tried to do just that but rose too quickly and her legs immediately buckled and she fell back on to the side of the bed, slipped off and landed heavily on the cold, hard floor. She managed to crawl towards the door, fighting the effects of the drug she was sure she must have been given. Once there, she struggled to pull herself to her feet. When she was finally upright, she tugged on the door then pushed at it. Even in her weakened state, she could tell it was stuck fast, locked from the outside.

She returned to the bed, feeling as if her legs were about to give way again at any moment, and allowed herself to fall back on to it. Then she tried hard to remember what had happened to her, and fragments of the previous evening slowly came back to her.

She had been in the pub with the girls. She didn’t think she had been all that drunk. Eva had a flash of recollection: the girls laughing together about something someone had said, then, later, they were leaving, some on to a club, but Eva couldn’t go with them because she was meant to be at work the next day. Would her colleagues at the gym have missed her and reported her missing, or would they just have assumed she had overslept or felt ill? Was anyone looking for her?

She recalled almost falling over in the street outside the pub because one of her heels broke suddenly, and that she had to go barefoot, making her way gingerly along the pavement.

What had happened after that? Her memory of the evening seemed to end with her standing alone in a street down by the quayside. She recalled walking away from a taxi rank because the queue was absurdly long; it could take an hour to reach the front. She’d been put off by the raised voices and the pushing in she’d witnessed, the kind of behaviour that always seemed to cause a fight. But, after she had made her decision to turn away, what then?

Rain.

Rain? She had a memory of rain, hard and unrelenting, with large drops falling and drenching her. She had worn no coat that night. It had been a sudden and malicious downpour that soaked her auburn hair and drenched her dress until it clung to her. It was so heavy people were running to take shelter, but Eva was barefoot and the ground was cold, wet and slippery. She couldn’t remember anything more after that. Had she been snatched in the street? Had she gone with someone willingly? She couldn’t imagine she would ever do that unless it was somebody she knew, but had the combination of the downpour and a couple of drinks made her careless? Would she have accepted a lift from a stranger? It seemed unlikely.

The panic began to rise again in her, along with a clawing sense of despair. Eva had almost reached breaking point when she noticed something scraped on the wall near the foot of the bed: white marks, lots of them ‒ and she thought she understood what they were.

She reached for the handle of the lamp and scrambled down to the foot of the bed, holding her face close and the lamp closer, so she could be sure. Scratched into the metal wall of the box were a large number of little white lines. Four verticals and a diagonal over them, to indicate the number five.

Five days.

Someone had been keeping track of the days, somebody who had been held prisoner here before Eva. Each clump of lines represented five days, and there were many, filling a large space that ran down to the floor of the box then ending abruptly. Eva began to scream then.

Inside the box, her screams came loud and shrill and they went on and on, with a force powered by blind terror. Outside, they were muffled by the thick walls of her metal prison. No one could hear.

CHAPTER TWO

Jenna Ellison always enjoyed the calm that descended at five minutes to six. It was just before locking-up time and her little shop was empty. Everyone knew what time she closed her doors and respected it. Dashing in with a couple of minutes to spare, to grab some washing powder or a packet of sweets, would be thought rude. It was one of the many reasons she never once regretted the decision to swap hectic city living for life in a sleepy village.

It was serendipity: the shop had become available at exactly the right time. She had just enough money, had grown weary of Newcastle and was more than ready for a change. The old lady who had run the place long after normal retirement age finally bowed to the inevitable, selling the lease on the shop and the first-floor flat that went with it, to move away and live with her daughter and her family. Grange Moor needed a shop, so the villagers had given her a cautious welcome, keeping their distance while they waited to see what changes she would bring about. When the stock stayed largely the same but with the addition of products that proved to be popular, when the opening hours didn’t alter and she continued to run the villagers’ small ads in her windows for free, it stood her in good stead.

Jenna wasn’t naïve. She knew she would always be an outsider, but she didn’t mind that. As long as the locals bought goods from her and continued to tolerate her presence among them, that was good enough for her. When the shop closed for the day, she felt like she was pulling up the drawbridge; happy to climb the stairs to her flat, feed the cat, cook something in her tiny kitchen and eat dinner in glorious solitude while watching TV in the lounge, with its bay window overlooking the village green, which always seemed to catch the last of the evening sun.

Sometimes she would venture out to the local pub, order a glass of wine and exchange pleasantries with the locals before happily retiring to a corner of the lounge bar. Unlike most women she knew, she had never had a problem going into a quiet pub alone. For the most part, she was happy to be on her own. The men who approached her, especially the married ones, were easily but politely brushed off and she would go back to quietly reading her book. She didn’t want a man.

When she thought of her life here in Grange Moor, Jenna felt a sense of serene calm. She had escaped her past, and the memories had slowly begun to fade, even though she knew they would never disappear entirely. Usually, she managed to push them from her mind.

Until she saw the note.

It was on the mat when Jenna went to lock the front door. It must have been pushed through the letterbox, but she hadn’t noticed anyone pass the window. There was no envelope, just the handwritten note, with neat writing in block capitals on lined paper.

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Jenna felt heat rush into the skin of her face and a sharp tingle of shock passed through her body. Who had sent this? How could anyone know? It wasn’t possible.

There was nothing on the note to give her a clue: no familiar handwriting, no signature or contact number, no indication of what the writer might want from her to keep her secret, just that one simple, devastating fact.

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Sergeant Ian Bradshaw had been summoned to Kane’s office by his boss, DI Kate Tennant. It had been a frosty invitation, consisting of the words, ‘DCI Kane wants to see you,’ before she pointedly added: ‘again.’

Now Bradshaw was waiting in the office ‒ his DCI was late for their appointment ‒ and he had time to ponder Kate Tennant’s hostility. He couldn’t really blame her. Whenever there was a tricky case with few leads, little evidence and the prospect of newspaper headlines such as ‘BAFFLED POLICE STUMPED’ becoming attached to it, there were usually only two possible outcomes. The first: the case would be assigned to Durham Constabulary’s only female detective inspector, for her team to pick up the poisoned chalice, and even then it would be done reluctantly, with senior officers admitting that this was the 1990s, after all, as if they were being bludgeoned into accepting the intrusion of women into their previously exclusively male environment. The other outcome would be that Kate Tennant’s already insufficient workforce would be reduced even further, because DCI Kane would see fit to ‘borrow’ Ian Bradshaw from her, to provide ‘a fresh pair of eyes’. Kane had a grudging respect for Bradshaw’s academic record, but he was defiantly old school in his own methods, so he viewed the DS with suspicion. Being called to Kane’s office could often feel like a back-handed compliment. Bradshaw knew he was seen as a last resort.

He didn’t really fit in. He wasn’t a golfer or a mason, didn’t always agree with the orders he was given, often relied on his instincts and, to the bemusement of his colleagues, had no particular desire to be promoted. It wasn’t exactly true that DS Bradshaw was happy where he was; he just knew he’d be even more unhappy if he rose any further, and his mental health had been too fragile in recent years to add more stress to his life voluntarily.

Bradshaw was hampered by a self-doubt that rarely seemed to plague more senior men. He wasn’t sure why he worried about not being good enough when he was often unimpressed by his superiors’ abilities, but he couldn’t help it. Bradshaw dreamed of a far less responsible life, without murder, with no missing children, abused teenagers, grieving relatives or multiple killers to contend with. On his last foreign holiday he’d seriously considered staying abroad to run a bar or work in a hotel. Wouldn’t a world of lemon trees and olive groves be more tranquil than this one?

Bradshaw knew he would never actually do this. His overwrought mind needed the distraction that investigating complex cases provided. He dreaded to think how he would fare if he had too much time alone with his thoughts. He’d already endured counselling sessions to cope with earlier traumas, something he’d found utterly pointless. Kate Tennant was less convinced of the need to suspend the sessions. ‘Are you sure about this, Ian?’ she had asked when she signed the forms freeing him from regular appointments with the excruciating Dr Mellor. ‘You could probably use someone to talk to.’

‘Well, I’ve got mates,’ he protested, and she raised her eyebrows.

‘Not exactly pub chat,’ she said, meaning the time he had spent one to one with a notorious child-killer, trying to get inside the man’s mind to solve the disappearance of a missing girl, but she signed the forms anyway, making him feel like a kid getting a note from his mum excusing him from games.

Bradshaw had assured her there were no lasting scars from his repeated encounters with Adrian Wicklow. Of course he hadn’t mentioned the bad dreams, night terrors and chronic insomnia. He had also failed to explain another side-effect he’d begun to notice recently: his deadened emotional sense. Almost a year on, the things Bradshaw used to enjoy felt like pale shadows of their former selves. Seeing mates outside the force ‒ not that he had that many ‒ going to the pub, walks in the countryside, watching football, a meal, a drink, a kiss; all of these things felt different now somehow, as if they didn’t really matter all that much in the scheme of things.

He was snapped out of these thoughts abruptly when Kane arrived. The DCI greeted Bradshaw with the words, ‘Eight detectives!’

Before Bradshaw could react or even stand up, Kane dropped a copy of the country’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper on to his lap. ‘Suspended!’ he said angrily. ‘All eight of them,’ and Kane shook his head vehemently, as if he had never heard of such a thing.

Bradshaw looked at that morning’s front page. The headline seemed to roar at them:

‘BENT COPPERS CAUGHT IN STING’

Underneath was a strapline that helpfully explained how a TV documentary crew had filmed detectives taking bribes and offering protection to drug dealers.

‘Oh Christ,’ said Bradshaw, scanning the piece. The documentary in question would be screened in a couple of days and Durham police were being forced to ‘clean house’ by undertaking a full and comprehensive investigation into the matter, which was likely to recommend a much-needed ‘root and branch reform’.

‘It’s a disgrace!’ roared Kane. Bradshaw felt quite buoyed by his DCI’s anger at the police officers who had besmirched the name of their force, but only for a moment. ‘It’s not eight detectives filmed taking bribes. It’s just one!’

Bradshaw had to fight the urge to say, Oh, that’s all right, then. Instead he managed a feeble ‘Who was it?’

Kane looked as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself when he said, ‘DI Peacock.’

‘Really?’ This was a shock. Peacock had been Bradshaw’s boss back when he was an unpromising detective constable. Even though he had given his subordinate a series of often foul-mouthed bollockings, Bradshaw still respected Peacock and had certainly never questioned his integrity. He couldn’t say that about some of the other officers in CID. ‘What was he thinking?’

Kane shook his head. ‘He’s been going through a divorce, wanted to keep his house, so I suppose he needed the money. Anyway, he’ll lose it now, and a lot more besides, because they’ve got him bang to rights. He was filmed taking money from a dealer to destroy evidence and let him off the hook.’ Kane snorted his disbelief. ‘Apparently the dealer was shocked and disgusted to find there were corrupt police officers working on his patch, so he decided to do his civic duty and phone the BBC. They got him to wear a wire and hide a tiny camera in a bag. The shit’s already hit the fan. Peacock has been arrested and is looking at proper jail time, unless he gets a lawyer who can perform miracles. The other seven have been suspended on full pay while there’s an investigation. I’m not sure how many of them we’ll be able to clear.’

Bradshaw couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. ‘Is that the aim of the inquiry, sir ‒ to clear them?’

‘Of course,’ Kane snapped, as if he were an idiot.

‘Shouldn’t it be to ascertain whether or not they have committed a crime?’

‘Don’t be bloody obtuse, man. If we find any evidence of corruption, they will receive the proper punishment, but that’s what it has to be, proper evidence, not the word of some kangaroo court masquerading as a documentary.’ He forced himself to calm down. ‘Deputy Chief Constable Tyler has promised a full and unbiased inquiry into all the allegations, but Peacock is the only one who was filmed taking money directly, so an example will have to be made, of course.’

A fall guy, thought Bradshaw. Peacock will get a jail sentence and the misdemeanours of the others will likely be swept under the carpet.

‘And some of them might have to go before their time,’ Kane said, with some sadness. Bradshaw knew this was a reference to the early retirement so many disgraced police officers took whenever overwhelming evidence of their wrongdoing was presented to them. There really were different rules for the police. ‘In any case, it will drag on for months, which means we have lost eight detectives for the foreseeable future.’ He looked directly at Bradshaw. ‘And some of them had been working on the Disappeared.’

Christ, thought Bradshaw. Don’t give me that case, but he already knew what was coming.

‘I’ll need you to take it on, Bradshaw. I’m up shit creek without a paddle … or even a bloody boat! I can’t spare anyone else and the rest of your team are on this murdered teenager.’

‘Everyone reckons it’s the stepdad,’ said Bradshaw hopefully, praying they would solve that case soon, so he wouldn’t be left entirely on his own.

‘They do, and I agree with them. I don’t think anyone in the country would dispute it, in fact. He’s not just the prime suspect, he’s the only one, but knowing it and proving it are two different things. That’s why we’ve put Katie’s team on it’ ‒ and in case Bradshaw saw this as Kane giving his DI yet another unexploded grenade to hold ‒ ‘because she has proven herself such a fine investigator.’

And if she doesn’t get a result, you can throw her to the wolves, thought Bradshaw. There were still a significant number of men in his force who were just waiting for Kate Tennant to make a mistake so they could say, That’s what happens when you put a woman in charge.

‘Anyway’ ‒ Kane’s voice went up an octave as he tried to sound positive ‒ ‘you’ve proven you can work on your own.’

Not through choice.

‘And I reckon this could be just the kind of case to challenge that big brain of yours.’

‘I thought we weren’t even admitting there was a case, sir.’

‘We are not admitting it to the press, yet,’ he conceded, ‘because it might not be, but we know something is up. Five women have gone missing in the past six months, and none of them fits the usual profile of a runaway. You know the score: nearly always, when we start digging, we find something; a reason for just running off – among the women, anyway. They’re not like the men.’

This was a compliment. Bradshaw knew what he meant – men cracked and left, abandoning wives and family, jobs, homes, even their cars, along with any kind of responsibility, often on a whim. Sometimes there was a reason – debts, scandal, huge pressure of some sort – but often they just couldn’t hack modern-day life, so off they went without any explanation. Women didn’t usually do that. If they left, they were more than likely fleeing something. It was usually abusive partners or stepfathers, sometimes their own dad. Violence or abuse, either sexual or domestic, figured high on the list of reasons why women were so desperate they chose to run. Rarely did a woman abandon her children, like the men often did ‒ though Bradshaw realized he knew of at least one case where that had happened, because the child affected more than a quarter of a century ago was his friend, the journalist Tom Carney.

‘We’ve found nothing to indicate that any of the women planned to leave,’ continued Kane. ‘Not so much as a bus ticket or a train timetable. No bank accounts were emptied or cash cards used after they left.’ He paused. ‘So it’s possible they were taken.’

‘But how could a man do that without attracting any attention? A woman would struggle. She would scream, surely, unless she knew the man. Were these women linked in any way?’

‘Obviously, they looked into that.’ Kane meant the suspended detectives he had previously tasked with the investigation. ‘And there was no common denominator. They were from different parts of the county and led very different lives. The only commonality is that they are all youngish women from the region. It’s hard to imagine how they could have all known the same man.’

‘Have we been given any possible explanation from their nearest and dearest?’

‘None of them had any reason to go. They vanished abruptly, during nights out or on their way home from somewhere ‒ work, a friend’s house …’ He suddenly grew tired of explaining it all. ‘Look, it’s all in the case files. I asked Malone to sort them out for you.’

She will have loved that.

Bradshaw thought for a moment. ‘You said five women had gone missing. I thought it was four.’

‘Another one went two nights ago.’

‘And you want me to work this out on my own?’ asked Bradshaw.

‘Have I not just told you about the eight detectives?’

‘Yes, but ‒’

Kane interrupted him with a raised hand. ‘No buts. There is no one else. I can’t spare anyone for what could prove to be a wild-goose chase. You have to remember that no demands of any kind have been made, so that rules out kidnap. No bodies have been found, and all these women might simply wind up unharmed in London, or Blackpool, or somewhere. We just don’t know. That’s why we’re not making a song and dance about it in the press. We don’t want to panic people unnecessarily.’

Bradshaw folded his arms defiantly. ‘I hear what you’re saying, sir, but I am still going to need help.’

‘I get it.’ Kane looked at Bradshaw as if the DS had let him down somehow. ‘You want me to hire the princess and the pain in the arse again, don’t you?’

‘Well, sir,’ said Bradshaw more brightly, ‘I think it would be a step in the right direction.’

‘Norton and Carney?’ mused Kane. ‘Do you really think it’s wise to involve them in this?’

‘They’re both excellent investigators, and I don’t see how I’ll be able to do it without them.’

Kane thought for a full minute before answering. ‘All right, I’ll have a word and see if we can put them back on the pay roll for a bit, assuming they actually want to work with us again, instead of flogging stories to the tabloids for obscene amounts of money. Bloody journalists. They’ve got the life of Riley.’

At that moment Kane’s phone rang. He answered it, listened for a while then threw his DS a significant look. Kane asked, ‘When?’ then, ‘Where?’, wrote notes on a pad then thanked the caller and hung up.

‘What’s that word, Bradshaw,’ he said thoughtfully, as he tore the top sheet off the pad, ‘the one that means you’re the opposite of a lucky mascot?’

‘A jinx?’ offered a puzzled Bradshaw. ‘Or a Jonah?’

Kane handed him the notes. ‘A Jonah, that’s it. How long have you been on this case?’ He pretended to look at his watch. ‘About five bloody minutes.’ His eyes widened. ‘And already they’ve found a body.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Tom Carney turned off the car radio as soon as he heard the words ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,’ from the man widely considered to be the Prime-Minister-in-waiting.

‘Why switch it off?’ Helen Norton asked him. ‘It’s the news,’ she reminded Tom sarcastically, ‘and we are journalists.’

‘Because I’ve heard it all before,’ said Tom, ‘and any minute now he’ll say, “Education, education, education,” again; whatever that means.’

‘I thought you’d be happy that Blair is going to win the election.’

‘Most people think he’s going to win and I’m not unhappy about it. I just don’t believe he’s the messiah, that’s all. Because, well, no one is.’

Helen rolled her eyes, even though she knew her business partner in the journalistic enterprise of Norton‒Carney was driving and couldn’t see it. Tom pulled out into the fast lane of the two-lane A1 and overtook a lorry. A large German car immediately appeared from nowhere, raced up behind them and tailgated their car, flashing its lights repeatedly to shoo them out of the way.

‘Tosser,’ muttered Tom.

‘Are you going to pull over?’

‘Because this guy thinks he owns the road? Why should I?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘To prevent the idiot causing an accident, maybe? Just a thought.’

Tom sighed, ‘Anything for a quiet life.’ He pulled over, and the driver of the German car flew past them, pipping his horn to signal his impatience with Tom’s driving.

He turned the radio back on and switched to a music channel. ‘Shit,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The Spice Girls.’ He nodded at the radio. ‘I’ll vote for Blair if he promises to ban them, and fox-hunting.’

‘He’s promised a free vote on fox-hunting,’ said Helen. ‘I think it should be a three-line-whip against the Spice Girls.’

‘We agree on that, at least.’

‘Have you noticed,’ Tom asked Helen as they climbed from the car half an hour later, ‘that it’s either crumbs or a banquet?’

‘What is?’ They were parked outside a crumbling block of flats on the outskirts of Leeds, and Helen peered up at it.

‘Journalism,’ he said. ‘The freelance variety, anyhow.’

‘I’d settle for crumbs right now,’ she told him. ‘Lately, it’s been more of a famine.’

She was right about that. Sometimes the young team of Norton‒Carney, aka Helen and Tom, would crack a big story, often while assisting Durham Constabulary to investigate one of its ‘unsolvable’ cases. If they did blow one of these cold cases wide open, usually with the help of DS Ian Bradshaw, there was a brief honeymoon period while they were courted by every major newspaper and radio station in the land for their exclusive story. Occasionally, an article would be sold for a substantial amount of money, but interest in that case would inevitably wane quite quickly, and they would have to write more mundane stories to pay the bills. Even those were proving hard to come by at the moment.

‘This could be a crumb,’ he reminded Helen hopefully. ‘It was a good spot.’ It was Helen who had first read about the woman they were about to visit, in a discarded copy of a West Yorkshire newspaper left on a north-bound train.

Tom pointed to the tower block in front of them. ‘What floor is she on?’

‘The nineteenth.’

‘Bugger,’ he said, ‘and I’ll bet the lift’s not working.’

‘At least we have a guaranteed sale,’ she reminded him. Tom had sounded out one of the women’s magazines in advance, because Leeds was a fair drive from Durham and not worth the hassle if there wasn’t any money at the end of it. This story was perfect for a low-budget, gossipy publication, the type sold in supermarkets and petrol stations all over the country. They usually focused on celebrities but paid reasonable money for outlandish stories involving real people. The woman they were here to see certainly had one of those to tell, and Mandy Brook was keen to sell her exclusive.

The magazine needed photographs, so Helen had brought her camera and they had endured two hours of stop‒start traffic to get here. Tom jabbed at the button on the lift and there was a whirring, cranking sound as it juddered down to them.

‘It’s working, then,’ said Helen doubtfully, just as the doors opened.

Tom recoiled. ‘Christ, it smells like a toilet. Do you really want to risk it?’

The prospect of being trapped inside the foul-smelling lift for hours, if it suddenly broke down, was enough to convince them both that climbing nineteen floors was a better option. ‘Come on,’ said Helen. ‘Just think of it as exercise.’

‘And so much cheaper than gym membership.’

They arrived breathless, with sore legs, late for their appointment, but Mandy didn’t seem to mind or even notice. She was loving the attention and commenced excitably telling her story almost as soon as they were through the door. Tom was forced to cut her off to get her back on track.

‘Our theme,’ he said forcibly, ‘is the possibility of finding love in the unlikeliest places, and that’s exactly what you did, isn’t it, Mandy?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I found it in Leeds.’

‘I wasn’t talking geographically,’ he explained patiently. ‘I meant what happened after your wedding.’ And when she needed further prompting, he added: ‘Which was what, exactly?’

Tom held up his tape recorder to prompt her to speak into it.

‘He left me, didn’t he?’

‘He left you,’ repeated Helen, to show Mandy that she was listening. ‘Your husband, you mean? And when was this?’

‘The day after the wedding.’ She said this as if it were a relatively common occurrence.

‘The day after,’ repeated Tom, when she showed no outward sign of devastation. ‘And how did that make you feel?’

‘I were gutted, weren’t I?’ Her Yorkshire accent got broader along with her indignation. ‘I were miles from anywhere, on our honeymoon, in the middle of piggin’ Thailand. I knew no one, and he just left me. How d’you think I felt?’

‘With respect to you, Mandy,’ said Tom, ‘that’s what the readers are going to want to know, but they need to hear it from you, not me.’

‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Well, I cried myself to sleep for ages. Anyway, I never saw him again.’

‘He just disappeared in Bangkok and never got back in touch?’ asked Helen.

‘No one knows where he is. I knew he weren’t that bothered about getting married, see, but I never thought he’d run off like that. When the honeymoon was over I had to come home.’

‘And what happened then?’ asked Helen, knowing the answer already but needing Mandy to put it in her own words.

‘Well, he were an angel, weren’t he?’ she said. ‘He took my side completely and he comforted me and made me realize my life weren’t over at all. In the end, I fell in love with him and he with me. He was everything piggin’ Darren weren’t.’

‘Who was?’ asked Tom. ‘For the benefit of the readers.’

‘Gary,’ she beamed happily. ‘Darren’s dad.’

‘Just to confirm, then, so we haven’t got this wrong …’ summarized Tom, because he had no wish to be sued at a later date. ‘You were married to Darren for twenty-four hours before he disappeared for good in a foreign country, you came home and were comforted by your husband’s father and now you are with him.’

She nodded happily. ‘We got married in’t registry office as soon as my divorce came through.’ She frowned. ‘It took two years, you know, because that’s how long you have to leave it to prove desertion.’ She looked at Helen when she said this. Perhaps she thought it was information that might prove useful to her one day. ‘I said to the lass, “He ran away from me the day after our wedding, isn’t that proof enough of desertion?” but she was having none of it, the stroppy cow.’

‘What a wonderful story,’ said Tom, and he winked at Helen while Mandy wasn’t looking and she had to try hard not to laugh.

‘I’m surprised by how much attention I’ve been getting about it, to be honest. We’ve had the local paper round, and that other magazine.’

‘Another magazine?’ asked Helen abruptly.

Mandy mentioned the name of a rival publication and added, for good measure, ‘They were here a few days ago.’

‘You’ve spoken to another magazine already?’ ‒ The woman nodded happily ‒ ‘but you promised us an exclusive.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

Realizing they were not dealing with an intellectual giant, Tom turned off the tape recorder and put it back inside his jacket pocket. He managed to stay reasonably calm while he explained the definition of ‘exclusive’. ‘It means you don’t give it to anyone else. We didn’t realize you’d already sold your exclusive story?’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘But it’s okay, because I’m happy to sell it again, to you.’

‘That’s not how it works!’ protested Helen, who by now could have cheerfully thrown the camera at her.

‘It’s all my fault,’ Helen told Tom as they climbed back into the car.

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Tom, fishing his mobile phone out of his pocket and turning it back on, now the interview was over. ‘How were you to know she was so stupid she thought she could sell her exclusive story several times over?’

‘There was a clue,’ Helen reminded him. ‘She is currently married to her former father-in-law.’ She sighed. ‘All this way for nothing. What the hell are we going to do now? For money, I mean. I just wish we had something lined up.’

Tom didn’t answer. He was too busy concentrating on the phone, which had rung the moment it kicked back into life, to tell him there was a voicemail. He held it to his ear and listened. The message was a long one.

‘What is it?’ she asked him.

‘Not quite your fairy godmother,’ he said when he had finished listening to the message, ‘but your wish has been granted. It’s our old mate Ian Bradshaw, and he might have a job for us.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Not exactly dressed for the occasion, are you?’ The SOCO regarded Bradshaw dubiously as he climbed from his car, which was parked by the end of the footpath that led off into the woods. Bradshaw’s suit and smart shoes weren’t the most practical clothing for this terrain.

‘I was told she was by the side of the road,’ explained Bradshaw.

‘She’s in the trees.’ The SOCO nodded towards the woodland at the end of the muddy track.

‘Who found her?’ Bradshaw guessed it would have been a jogger or a dog-walker, as usual.

‘Kids. They were playing in there. I suspect it’s a sight that will stay with them, poor bastards. Get your gear on and I’ll show you.’

Bradshaw was doing as he was told, lifting protective clothing from the boot of his car, when a second car pulled up not far from his and Detective Constable Hugh Rennie got out. Both he and Rennie normally reported to Kate Tennant. The veteran seemed as perplexed by the sight of Bradshaw standing there as the younger man was to see him. ‘Kane sent me,’ explained Bradshaw. ‘They think this might be one of the Disappeared.’

‘Katie Tennant asked me to drive up,’ said Rennie. ‘In case it’s her.’ He didn’t have to say a name. Everyone on Tennant’s team was expecting to get a call any day now to say that the young girl who had been missing for more than two weeks had been found. Only then could they really hope to put a proper case together against the man they were already privately referring to as ‘Evil Stepdad’, such was the suspect’s wild-eyed eccentricity during police interviews and press conferences. The stepfather had managed to contradict and trip himself up on more than one occasion and seemed pretty calm, considering his fifteen-year-old stepdaughter had gone missing. As DC Malone succinctly put it, ‘He’s guilty of being guilty, plain and simple.’

‘Left hand, right hand,’ said a world-weary Rennie, explaining the lack of communication that had led to them both driving separately out here to check the same crime scene. ‘This is the last thing I need when I’m so busy. I’ve only got a fortnight left, you know.’

Bradshaw did know, because Hugh Rennie had made a point of ensuring everyone was aware how close he was to retirement and just how much he had to tidy up before he went, so no one would have the nerve to give him something new to do. Bradshaw brought his finger to his lips as if shushing the older man. ‘Careful, Hugh. You know what happens to cops in films when they only have a couple of weeks to go before retirement? They get killed,’ he said solemnly. ‘Sorry, mate. It happens every time.’

‘Very funny,’ said Rennie, who didn’t look remotely amused.

They donned their protective suits then put coverings over their shoes and plastic guards across their mouths. The three men trudged along the muddy footpath, Bradshaw trying not to slide in the mud, now that he had lost what little grip his shoes had had. The SOCO led them through a gap in the trees where the ground was a little firmer, and they continued until they reached some yellow police tape that had been used to mark a perimeter. The SOCO lifted it and they ducked underneath. They took a few more steps then went beyond the bushes that had been shielding the crime scene from view.

There was activity all around the clearing. One man was photographing everything in the vicinity, while a number of officers examined small sections of the cordoned-off zone for clues. Bradshaw’s eye was immediately drawn to the victim. She was sitting up with her back pressed against a tree. From a distance, it might have appeared she was alive and merely resting. Up close, however, there was no mistaking that she was dead. The sightless eyes bulged wide open, the body was kept in place by the ligature pulled tightly around the neck, a grubby but sturdy length of grey rope that had cut deep into the flesh. Instead of simply strangling the woman by wrapping the rope around her neck, the killer had stretched it all the way around the tree she was leaning against then pulled it taut from behind until she was dead. To Bradshaw it looked almost ritualistic, and he wondered why the woman hadn’t struggled. Her mouth was open, as if she had fought for a last breath, but gravity had forced her chin down and her tongue lolled out of her mouth.

Her hair was a greying auburn colour, but her most striking feature was her emaciated body, the bones showing through skin as white as paint. The only contrast to her pale complexion aside from the red markings either side of the rope on her neck was a faded dark strip around her wrist where an old tattoo could still be made out. Bradshaw bent lower and realized it was in the shape of a Celtic band.

‘Time of death?’ he asked, knowing it could only be a rough estimate at this stage.

‘Nothing confirmed yet, but we’re probably looking at a couple of days ago,’ said the SOCO.

Bradshaw trod carefully around the body and peered at the back of the tree. He saw that the rope had been knotted around a long, thick stick which had been repeatedly turned to tighten the noose. It seemed an elaborate way to kill the victim and he wondered how the killer had achieved it without her wriggling free. Had she been too weak to fight back?

When he stepped back to survey the victim once more, the SOCO nodded towards her. ‘That one of your girls, then?’

Bradshaw shook his head. ‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’ He sounded surprised. There weren’t that many murders in the North-East.

‘About twenty years too old,’ Bradshaw informed him. By the same reckoning, it couldn’t be Hugh Rennie’s missing girl either.

‘Sorry to hear that.’ When they both looked questioningly at the SOCO, he added: ‘You know what I mean ‒ you’ve wasted your time.’

‘At least I can rule her out,’ said Bradshaw. ‘No clue as to the identity yet, then?’

‘We were hoping you could shed some light on it,’ the SOCO said. ‘She had no purse or ID of any kind on her, no door keys or money, no jewellery. All we’ve got so far in the way of distinguishing marks is a mole on her neck and the tattoo on her wrist.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe that will be enough.’

‘Someone will know her,’ said Bradshaw, then he noticed that DC Rennie had his head to one side and was peering down at the victim with what appeared to be great concentration, even though this could not possibly be the girl he was looking for.

‘What is it?’ asked Bradshaw.

Rennie didn’t answer at first, then he said, ‘Nothing.’

‘You seen her before?’

‘Don’t think so,’ he said doubtfully, but Rennie continued to peer at the woman as Bradshaw and the SOCO exchanged a look. Rennie was lying, and they both knew it.

CHAPTER SIX

A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds.

‘Gammer Gurton’s Garland’, 1784

The last thing Eva recalled before waking up inside the box was being incredibly tired. Nothing to explain her presence here.

It was all so unreal.

She couldn’t deny the reality of it now, though. Eva had been taken by someone and imprisoned in this box. Surely it couldn’t be anyone she knew. None of her ex-boyfriends was this vengeful or unhinged. Eva had no obsessive stalkers or overzealous admirers, so who could have done this, and why? To rape, torture ‒ perhaps even kill her? Eva’s mind raced with the possibilities it could imagine, while knowing there might be others it could not. Why would a man imprison a girl except to harm her? Kidnap? A ransom? She barely made enough from her job on the reception desk at the gym to live; her mother was just about surviving financially. It couldn’t be that, then, unless it was a case of mistaken identity. Did she look like some rich daddy’s girl? Was there another young woman with long, red hair like hers, from a prosperous family somewhere, who the kidnapper was meant to have snatched instead? It seemed impossible, but then so did everything else about her situation. Her anxiety reached a whole new level. It was the thought of her mother sitting at home, frantic with worry, that did it. All that came into Eva’s mind now was what would happen if she did not get out of here, and fast.

She sat bolt upright when she heard the door. Someone was unlocking it from the outside and she was torn between conflicting emotions of fear and relief.

Was he letting her out?

Why was he letting her out? To let her go? To kill her? To do something else to her?

Oh God.

She tried to stay calm when the door swung open and light poured through it.

Her captor leaned in and she saw him clearly for the first time.

Then she screamed.

The scream was an involuntary response to the sight before her. A dark face, its features completely hidden by a mask. No, a balaclava, like the ones terrorists or bank robbers wore, but this one was home-made, and all the more disturbing for its shoddy, amateur construction. It hung loosely over the man’s head, obscuring his entire face, apart from the eye holes and a thin slit where the mouth was.

Then he stepped into the box and she saw the shotgun. He was carrying it in one hand, pointing it straight at her, his finger near the trigger, and she flinched then pushed herself backwards as far as she could go, until her back was pressed right against the wall. He stood still for a moment, and at first she couldn’t take her eyes away from the gun, terrified it would go off. Then, when she realized he wasn’t about to fire it, she took in a squat figure in a thick jumper with a padded body-warmer over it. He was average height, perhaps a little overweight, but powerfully built. There was strength here, she could tell. Then she saw that he was balancing a small tray in the palm of his other hand. He set it down next to a book on a packing case by the door. It held a plate of food and a glass of water, along with a plastic container.

He straightened and took a step nearer. Eva felt a growing sense of panic.

‘Who are you?’ she managed, her voice wavering. ‘What do you want?’

‘If you do what you’re told,’ the man said, his deep voice was almost a growl, ‘you’ll be safe.’

Did he say safe? It sounded like it, but his voice was muffled by the balaclava.

‘Safe?’ she asked.

‘If you listen to him, you’ll be saved.’

‘Who?’ she sobbed, her eyes darting around the room, even though she knew no one else was there. ‘Listen to who?’

‘Father.’ And as he said this her eyes settled on the book next to the food. It was well worn and leather bound, with a gold cross embossed on the cover, along with the words ‘Holy Bible’.

Was that what he meant by Father or was he talking about his father? She didn’t understand. Eva was about to ask him, but he was already leaving, backing out of the room, the shotgun still pointed towards her.

‘Wait. Don’t go. Why are you keeping me here?’

‘You’ll be saved,’ the man’s deep voice assured her as he left.

‘Don’t leave me in here!’ she shrieked, but his only response was to shut the door and bolt it from the outside, muffling her cries once more.

PENGUIN BOOKS

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Howard Linskey