Now or never. Tyler untangles his wrists and drives his fists hard into her stomach. She wheezes as the breath goes out of her body, but at the same time she lashes out at his head with both arms. He manages to block one of the blows, but the other takes him hard on the side of the head. It wasn’t enough; his body wasn’t ready. He tumbles sideways, his legs still tied at the ankles. Then she’s on him in a fury, pushing him toward the wine rack. They hit hard. He feels something sharp stab its way into his back. There’s a pain in his side and another in his arm, and then his head is full of bright white light.

—

“Do you know her?” Paul Enfield asks from the rear passenger seat.

Doggett glances in the rearview mirror briefly and returns his eyes to the road. Something for which Rabbani, sitting in the front passenger seat, is enormously grateful. The man’s not exactly the best driver in the world and is currently doing seventy along a winding country lane that’s supposed to be a thirty zone.

“Who?” Doggett asks.

“Sally-Ann Digby. Is she involved with the case somehow?”

Doggett shakes his head. “She’s a civilian, works in IT. She’s the bloody one we put in charge of tracing the Internet address. When I chased it up with her yesterday, she fobbed me off with some excuse about the servers being busy, and I fucking believed her!”

They fall back into silence. Rabbani has her mobile pressed to her ear, but Guy Daley’s phone just rings and rings until it cuts to voicemail again. The car speeds on.

Enfield says, “Does Adam know her?”

Doggett doesn’t answer straightaway. Then he says, “Yes, Adam knows her.”

“And now Adam’s missing.”

“Trust me,” Doggett says. “Jordan’ll have half of South Yorkshire Police out looking for him by now.”

They drive on in silence. Rabbani clutches at the armrest on the door as the country lanes continue to unwind ahead of them. After a few more miles, the fire officer says, “Are we sure it’s this Digby woman?”

Doggett looks to Rabbani to answer, and she realizes that in his eyes she’s the computer expert.