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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

‘Maybe it was less of a holiday and more of a permanent move,’ Naylor adds. ‘She wouldn’t even tell us what she’s done with the dog.’

‘You wonder what he told her about why we might come to visit,’ Campbell says.

‘Probably he fed her some line about embezzlement,’ suggests Hagen. ‘People see that as a nice, respectable crime.’

‘We’ve come away empty-handed all round,’ says Naylor. ‘And Birch did a first-class job of clearing his tracks. Nothing’s left we might get a trace on, not even a recent photograph we might have circulated. So all we can do now is get in touch with Border Control and the airlines, see if we can find out when he left and where he went with a view to extradition, if he can be tracked in Spain. That’s an almighty task, given we’ve no idea where he’s been since I spoke to him when he was in Aylesbury. He might have been gone for weeks by now. When you think about how many flights there are to Spain on a daily basis, and from how many airports, even I would say that’s an expensive job.’

‘You’d have to include the sea ports too,’ says Hagen. ‘And we don’t even know what car he’d be driving.’

Campbell sighs.

‘It’s a massive job, I agree,’ he says, ‘and we can’t do it with existing resources. I’ll have a word upstairs. But we’re not quite empty-handed. Let me cheer you up with some good news, and tell you that we’ve had a result from digital forensics on the email received via the fake website. They’ve pulled an address for the computer which sent it. Dallabrida’s got the details, but rather improbably it seems to have originated in a library in Wolverhampton.’

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-ONE

6 September

Bobby Gillard is smiling.

Hagen’s not delighted to be back in Wolverhampton, but Naylor’s kept his spirits up, persuading him Gillard’s the key to Evan’s case.

‘Here’s the thing, Bobby,’ says Naylor. She leans forward across the desk, and Gillard slouches further back in his chair. The duty solicitor’s sitting beside him, a diminutive woman who looks far too delicate to be spending time with low-lifes like him. Naylor’s met her kind before. Undoubtedly, she’s tougher than she looks. ‘Library records show that at the time this email was sent, you were the only person signed in to use the computers, the only person issued with a password. You signed in with that password, so we’ve got you at the keyboard.’

From her file, she takes out two sheets of paper and slides them across the table, one to Gillard, one to the solicitor. The solicitor reads what’s on the sheet. Gillard doesn’t even glance at it.