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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

Along the street, there’s a toy shop. Evan wants to go in, and wanders for a while among the displays, picking up toy cars and wooden puzzles, scanning the shelves of games, checking out the latest Lego, pulling out books whose titles intrigue him. Maybe he’s moving on here, too; Claire notices the books he’s looking at are young adult, more zombie and science fiction than Biggles, but when she offers to buy him one, he declines.

Instead, he leads the way upstairs, to a room filled with jigsaws.

‘Grandpa might like one of these,’ he says, and Claire agrees. A jigsaw might be good for all of them – companionable, quiet, absorbing. Healing.

‘Which one do you think?’

Evan is drawn to a cartoon picture of a summery farm, with chickens sitting on a broken-down tractor, a sheepdog that looks like Millie failing to round up a fluffy flock of escaping sheep, a red-faced farmer being chased by a snorting bull.

He points to the farmer.

‘That looks like Grandpa,’ he says, and Claire laughs.

‘It does a bit,’ she says, ‘but don’t tell him so.’

From the toy shop they go on to buy wrapping paper, mince pies and some toffee for Matt.

As they wander back to the car, Claire’s all but forgotten the reason they came to Harrogate, but she suspects that, despite his good humour, Evan has not.

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-ONE

18 December

‘So,’ says Campbell to the team gathered in front of him. ‘Let’s put our heads together and see what we’ve got. Rose, can you update us on what Evan said about the bridges and let’s take it from there?’

Rose stands up.

‘Cautiously good news,’ she says. ‘Evan ruled out two of the most troublesome possible locations, Manchester and Glasgow.’

‘That’s a great relief,’ says Campbell. ‘Trying to nail down a riverside flat in Manchester or Glasgow would have been a logistical nightmare. So where does that leave us?’

Rose glances down at her notes. ‘We’ve still got Newcastle, Sunderland and Rochester. There were a couple of other things. He remembers being given a drink and feeling confused afterwards, so that may be how any narcotics were administered. On the original snatch, he recalls a man with tattoos, and overhearing a conversation about spiders.’

‘Spiders?’ Naylor frowns. ‘Sounds like the drugs kicking in.’

‘There’s one very troubling thing he said, I’m afraid. Evan believes there was another child being held alongside him.’

‘Oh crap,’ says Hagen.

‘He thought he could hear a child crying,’ Rose goes on. ‘Probably a girl. It could, as he says, have been in another flat, but we can’t rule out the possibility that we have other victims in the location.’

‘Wherever it turns out to be,’ says Dallabrida.