Di’s chin trembled. ‘They’ve found his car,’ she said.

Robin felt herself startle. ‘Have they?’

‘This morning. They rang this afternoon.’

‘Where?’

‘Warwick Parkway. The car park at the station.’

‘Did he get on a train?’

‘They don’t know yet. They’re going through the CCTV. He didn’t use his card – they’re trying to see if he bought a ticket with cash.’

Robin didn’t ask; she didn’t have to. Di had fought it, she didn’t want to believe it and yet, as the hours passed and he wasn’t found, didn’t come forward, she too was asking: why not?

Most of the ward was open, the beds divided by curtains, but built down one side were four separate bays with walls and closing doors. Robin knew without being told that Peter’s was the one furthest from the entrance. The police guard outside was in plain clothes, visitors here had enough to worry about, but she’d recognize the posture a mile off. ‘In case he comes back to finish the job,’ Will said on the phone. The unnamed he.

The lights had been dimmed for the night, the lamps at the nurses’ station angled down. From behind curtains came the gentle push-and-suck of a machine, a series of low beeps as another demanded attention. A pair of rubber soles squeaked on lino.

The blind in the internal window of Peter’s room was drawn, the door pushed to. ‘Robin Lyons, the family friend,’ murmured the nurse who’d walked her back. ‘Di vouched for her.’ The guard looked at her then nodded the go-ahead.

The bed was positioned in the centre of the room, raised like an altar, covered in white. The shape of it was odd, boxy – there was some sort of structure under the sheets to hold them away from his body, she realized, making a tent to keep him warm without touching him. The bank of monitors around the head of the bed cast an otherworldly glow, faintly green, as if this wasn’t a hospital but some sort of alien laboratory.

She approached. He was lying on his back, the head of the bed raised as if to put him on display, their prize. A band across his face held tubes in place in his nostrils. The first three inches of his hair had been shaved around a gash that stretched over his forehead and across his scalp. He looked like a prisoner, shaven-headed and beaten. His face on the pillow was so small.