29 October 02:29

To Sephy Ealing:

We have Troy Ealing and Liberty Jackman. This is not a joke or a hoax. Follow the instructions below to the letter or you will never see your loved ones again. If you involve the police we will know and you’ll never see your loved ones again. Keep your daughter Callie in line. Make sure she doesn’t get any unfortunate ideas – like going straight to the police.

This will be our only communication.

Send the following messages to Callie Rose Hadley and Tobias Durbridge.

TOBIAS DURBRIDGE, you will do the following within the next twenty-four hours:

– Plead guilty in court to the murder of Dan Jeavons.

– Go public with the admission of your guilt.

If you fail to do either of the above, you will never see your daughter Liberty again. This is NOT a bluff.

CALLIE ROSE HADLEY, you will do the following within the next twenty-four hours:

– Remove the super-injunction forbidding the press from reporting on Tobias Durbridge and his forthcoming court case.

– Remove yourself as Tobias’s lawyer.

If you fail to do either of the above, you will receive your brother Troy back in pieces. This is NOT a bluff.

So many unanswered questions. I reread the text message forwarded to me by Callie, who had received it from Sephy, her mother. A man – who claimed to be working on behalf of Dan Jeavons – had called Sephy, using her son Troy’s mobile phone, to state his list of demands. He had followed this up in writing.

Working on behalf of Dan Jeavons … There was just one problem with that – Dan was dead. He’d been murdered and I was on the hook for it. Someone out there was desperate to see me spend the rest of my natural existence rotting in prison.

On behalf of Dan Jeavons …

What did that even mean? Had someone from within ‘the Outfit’ decided to branch out for themselves and this was a way of proving their worth? Or were they doing it to avenge Dan’s death? Maybe this whole thing had been orchestrated by Owen Dowd, head of a rival set-up, in an attempt to cause real problems for the opposition.

Whoever it was who’d spoken to Sephy had backed up his verbal threat with this text message spelling out all the kidnappers’ demands. And now Troy’s phone was untraceable. On my instructions, my personal executive assistant, Jade Habari, had already tried to find out the location of Libby’s and Troy’s phones, but they’d been switched off – or smashed. The last recorded location of both was Heathcroft High School, the last place they were seen. No help there then.

Where was my daughter?