Aidan is confused all the way home. He’d been so sure Connor would be there. He clings to the hope that he’ll be back at home but he isn’t. The police have gone. In the kitchen, he idly picks at the tape sealing the parcel as he wonders what to do. There’s a tear, the tape loose in his hands. He scrunches it up and tosses it to one side, opens the flaps of the cardboard.

When he looks inside, he knows.

Oh, Connor.

He is putting two and two together and he is making four but he hopes he has made six, eight, ten.

He has to be wildly wrong, doesn’t he?

He glances at the parcel again.

He hopes he has time to stop this.

He prays it’s not too late.

Chapter Seventy

Connor

All the way home from the cemetery, Connor throws glances over his shoulder as he runs, but he doesn’t think he is being followed.

He’s paranoid and that won’t change until Ryan is found.

Where is he? Could he have run away too, gone to find Fergus?

His house is empty. A mess. The table is still on the floor, he can see one of the legs is broken. The lilies have been cleared up but there are still fragments of the green vase that smashed. On the wall, a streak of Connor’s blood. Mum must have been so frightened when she saw it, still believing Tyler to be missing, Ryan having not yet been located. He knows she is out looking for him. She has never been one to sit around and wait; impatient and fiercely protective, she wouldn’t have left finding him to the police. Dad isn’t here either and Connor wonders if they are together.

In the kitchen are mugs half-full of tea, coffee. Too many mugs for his parents. Perhaps the police were drinking from them when the news came in that he had been found.

Connor runs up the stairs and pushes open the door to Kieron’s room. His duvet is smooth, pillows plumped. He can’t have been back here since his hospital visit.

Back in the kitchen, Connor picks up his mobile from the worktop. Its screen is broken but it is still switched on. He calls his mum. His dad. Both numbers go directly to voicemail. He leaves a message that he is okay. That he is at home.

He opens his Find My Friends app that his parents made him install. He sees where Dad is and is puzzled but it isn’t far away. He can run there in ten minutes.

As he’s leaving, he remembers PC Leighton’s scathing ‘Didn’t you leave a note?’ and so he scribbles his destination on the back of the shopping list and then he slips out of the front door. Eyes scanning for Julie.