After they’ve gone Tyler goes back to the floor and the blog entries. He sits cross-legged and reads them through again. He thinks he has most of it now. He visualizes the picture Doggett showed him: the pale, scarred flesh, the steep gabled roof of an attic bedroom, and the corner of an ashen-faced portrait hanging on the wall above the bed. He rereads the last entry. The night Lily and Edna sat up watching for fires. The fire watcher. He thinks about what Paul Enfield told him, that desperate compulsion to watch. Where is he? He should be back by now. He googles the words fire watcher and lowry, and sure enough the first hit is the portrait from the Old Vicarage that once hung in the attic but now sits above the mantelpiece in the living room. The Fire Watcher.

He thinks of opening lines. My dad used to drink that.

And closing ones. It’s up to you to finish it for him.

Tyler picks up his keys and his mobile. On his way downstairs he tries Sophie Denham, but she either can’t or won’t answer. So he calls Rabbani instead and tells her to find out what he needs to know. Then he gets into his car, hoping for the first time he can ever remember that for once he’s got it wrong.

—

There’s no one on the gate at the Old Vicarage. The lack of reporters isn’t overly concerning; he imagines the bulk of the television vans and photographers are currently camped out at the top of Wentworth’s cul-de-sac. But the lack of any officers on the scene is a little more worrying. The police tape that should be stretched wide across the driveway has snapped and is fluttering in the breeze. He leaves his car on the main road and walks toward the house. There are two cars parked outside the front door. Daley’s beat-up Mondeo, and a BMW convertible that once drove him to Ladybower Reservoir. Oscar’s car.

The mobile incident room is locked. There’s no sign of Guy Daley. He takes out his mobile, but the screen is blank. He holds down the power button but nothing happens. It looks like the battery’s gone for good this time. He steps across the gravel and shivers; for the first time in weeks the temperature has dropped below sixty degrees. There’s a strong wind whistling through the trees, and thick, dark clouds race above the house.

The front door is standing wide open. He waits a moment, listening. There’s nothing but the wind rustling the branches above. Even so, he walks past the front door and moves around the side of the house, aware that his shoes are crunching loudly in the gravel. The back door is open too, but he can see through the window that the kitchen is empty.