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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

‘Do me a favour!’ Gillard spits the words. ‘How could I, when you’ve as good as got me chained here? I was better off inside. At least in there I didn’t have them two nagging me night and day. My life’s not worth living and that’s the truth.’

‘Having a flutter on the horses, are you?’

‘Just a couple of quid. It passes the time. There’s nothing against that in my conditions.’

‘I don’t suppose there is,’ says Hagen. ‘But with those youngsters the other side of that wall, I think it’s time you took yourself home, don’t you? I’ll wait while you pack up.’

At the bottom of the screen, Hagen can see there are two Google windows open on the machine. Gillard hits the power button, and the computer begins to shut itself down. Pulling on his windcheater, he leads the way towards the exit, pushes open the door and lets it swing back in Hagen’s face before walking away towards the shopping centre.

‘Your sister wants you to take her a packet of cigarettes,’ Hagen calls after him, and Gillard sticks a finger in the air.

From the information which comes through from the DVLA, Naylor learns the Focus has had three owners, all women. She studies the addresses but can see nothing there. Sevenoaks, Chelmsford, Woking. The most recent keeper – in Chelmsford – seems as good a place as any to start.

Essex is a county she doesn’t know except for its trashy TV fame, and she puts her trust in the satnav as it guides her round the M25 to junction 28 and along the A12 past Brentwood. Once she’s off the A12, she finds herself on the grandiosely named Essex Yeomanry Way – a bypass by another name – and from there drives into Great Baddow, a place whose origins as a pretty village are still visible despite the opportunistic development on every square metre of available space.

The house she’s looking for turns out to be one of the new-builds – a townhouse at the end of a cul-de-sac, white-rendered and with ridiculously tiny windows both upstairs and down, which could surely have made sense in an architect’s mind only as a means to frustrate the neighbours’ peeping. Attached to the house are two parking spaces, one of them occupied by a Hyundai hatchback with a disabled sticker on the rear windscreen.

Naylor parks in the vacant space and unlocks her phone. There are a couple of new emails, but nothing so far from Hagen in Wolverhampton. She checks her face in the rear-view mirror, applies lipstick and climbs from the car.