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Chapters (62)
  1. Title
  2. Copyright
  3. Contents
  4. About the Author
  5. About the Book
  6. Dedication
  7. Your Worst Nightmare
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. The Answer to All Your Prayers
  18. TEN
  19. ELEVEN
  20. TWELVE
  21. THIRTEEN
  22. FOURTEEN
  23. FIFTEEN
  24. SIXTEEN
  25. SEVENTEEN
  26. EIGHTEEN
  27. NINETEEN
  28. TWENTY
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. TWENTY-FIVE
  34. TWENTY-SIX
  35. TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. TWENTY-NINE
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. Somebody Else’s Child
  41. THIRTY-TWO
  42. THIRTY-THREE
  43. THIRTY-FOUR
  44. THIRTY-FIVE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. FORTY
  50. FORTY-ONE
  51. FORTY-TWO
  52. FORTY-THREE
  53. FORTY-FOUR
  54. FORTY-FIVE
  55. FORTY-SIX
  56. FORTY-SEVEN
  57. FORTY-EIGHT
  58. FORTY-NINE
  59. Sunlight on Water
  60. July
  61. September
  62. Acknowledgements

There’s more in the envelope, statements from a Lloyds savings account. What catches Hagen’s eye first about this account is the amount of money it holds. Brian Birch has over £30,000 in savings. That’s not unusual for the man in the street – a legacy, a house sale or even a lottery win would cover it easily – but Birch’s money hasn’t come from any of those sources. Like his personal current account, this money has come from cash, a string of deposits that have begun to add up to a significant amount. For a man who seems to be unemployed, Brian Birch is on a very nice little earner.

There’s one thing outstanding. Hagen picks up the phone and dials the tech guys on the second floor. The girl who answers sounds flustered and weary.

Hagen states his name and his business.

‘Relating to a mobile phone owned by a Brian William Birch,’ he says. ‘We were looking for whatever you’ve got on that from June thirtieth onwards.’

She’s gone a while, hunting through the completed requests, and he’s expecting her to say he can come up and pick up the sheets. The kind of records he’s asking for commonly run into hundreds of calls.

‘Two inbound calls from Chelmsford, Essex on the thirtieth,’ she says, at last. ‘Phone switched off in the Aylesbury area the same day.’

There’s silence.

‘Is that it?’ asks Hagen.

‘That’s it.’

‘It’s never been switched on again?’

‘Nope. Not so far.’

‘OK,’ says Hagen slowly. ‘Thanks very much for your help.’

TWENTY-NINE

TWENTY-NINE

30 August

Hagen’s back at his desk early the next morning, pulling out the envelope with Brian Birch’s bank statements and glancing over them, re-confirming what he found last night. He needs to alert Naylor to what he’s uncovered, but in the meantime, he’s feeling inspired to do some digging in other areas.

He pulls up Naylor’s notes on the theft of the car. There’s a crime number from Cleveland Police and the basics of the incident: a red Ford Focus and its registration number, reported stolen from outside a Costcutter on Chatham Road, Hartlepool, at 18.43 on the 16th of June.

A prickle of intuition runs down Hagen’s spine. Something about the timing isn’t right. It takes him only moments to check, and he doesn’t even need to go through their own database to do so. News reports from Google confirm Evan Ferrers was found in the back of that Focus on 16 June, but the first reports are timed before 5 p.m. They’d been making the assumption Birch reported the car stolen before Evan was found, because that’s the way it usually is. Car reported stolen, car turns up days later in some kind of criminal use.