‘Sack.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘With respect, Sir, you’re a lightweight! All those muscles and tats, everyone thinks you’re such a hard man, don’t they? But they don’t know what I know – you’re a sensitive little flower at heart, aren’t you?’

He made a mock-scary face at her and she laughed, then looked serious. ‘But I want to know – what do you think?’

Lock them up in the dark forever. Put a bullet through their skulls. Make them pay for the pain they’ve caused. But he didn’t say that. He said, ‘I don’t care what happens to them afterwards. My job is to catch them.’

Carmella raised a dubious eyebrow. She was a pretty woman, thought Patrick. Actually, that wasn’t the word. ‘Pretty’ was a well-kept suburban garden. Carmella was more like a wild meadow into which someone had chucked random handfuls of seeds, with her corkscrewing auburn hair, dark Italian eyes and Dublin accent.

Patrick’s mobile rang.

‘Oh shit.’ All he wanted – all he wanted right now – was his bed. His body screamed at him to ignore the chiming phone.

‘Can you get that?’ he said, nodding at the dashboard where the phone vibrated on the plastic.

She studied the display. ‘It’s Mike.’

DS Mike Staunton was another member of the MIT and part of the team investigating the abductions. He was young, keen, good at his job, slightly irritating.

Carmella held the phone against his ear.

‘Mike.’

‘Sir. Where are you at the moment?’

‘Driving home. Why, what’s happened?’

‘I just got a call from the station – someone’s phoned in and reported seeing a man with a couple of little kids going into an abandoned building on the Kennedy Estate in Whitton. They reckon they can hear kids crying. It’s probably nothing but thought I’d better call you – want me to check it out?’

‘The Kennedy? We’re about five minutes from there. Leave it with us.’

Carmella sat up in her seat. ‘The Kennedy?’

‘Yeah. My favourite place to go just before midnight.’

He fiddled with the CD player, looking for something to buoy his spirits and wake him up. Inbetween Days came on and he turned it up.

Beside him, Carmella groaned. ‘Not this lot again. Haven’t you got anything current?’

He drummed the steering wheel and nodded his head. Passing a bus stop he saw a toddler dash in and out of sight. Another hallucination. ‘Carmella, I’ll make a Cure fan of you if it’s the last thing I do.’