‘What makes you think I’m facing darkness? Ahead of me I can see the thing I’ve always wanted. A family. A bright future.’ There was a smile in the psychiatrist’s voice and it struck Patrick that maybe he’d got it all wrong. He had assumed that it was Sharon, with her history of losing her family, who would be so desperate to replace her dead babies that she would have pulled Koppler along with her. But what if it was the other way round? If Koppler was the driving force, the one who wanted the children? To do it, he would need a woman to help, and when he met Sharon he saw the perfect, damaged female, someone who would go along with it.

She was the weak link. She was the one they should be talking to, trying to reason with, not Koppler.

He groped for something to say, to keep the conversation flowing, but before he could, he heard Carmella gasp and turned around to find her staring at the house on one of the TV monitors in the lorry, pointing at movement behind a window. A shot was fired – they heard it even from inside the artic, a sharp pop – and the curtains billowed outwards on the grainy monochrome monitor. A small boy crawled onto the balcony.

‘Go!’ yelled Patrick, and they all piled out of the trailer, running full tilt towards the house.

Chapter 24

Chapter 24
Helen – Day 4

Helen could sense Alice’s mood as soon as she walked into the kitchen to start making a dinner that, in all likelihood, none of them would do more than merely pick at. But she and Sean had decided that they had to at least try to keep a grip on normality, and regular meals were a part of that. Sean had even been in his study most of the day, attempting to catch up on some of his backlog of work emails. That’s what he said, anyway, but every time Helen had stuck her head round the door, he had been staring blankly at his screensaver, a rotating collage of photographs of Frankie and Alice.

Alice had her back to Helen, but Helen could tell the sort of day she was having by the way that Alice was angrily spooning instant coffee into her favourite One Night Only mug. She was still wearing her sleep T-shirt and her black hair was all matted at the back, even though it was five in the afternoon.

‘Hi sweetie,’ Helen said, opening the freezer and wondering if she could defrost and marinate pork chops in the next hour. Remembering how much Frankie liked pork and, in the next second, wondering if someone out there was hurting her. The speed at which her thoughts always immediately returned to Frankie made Helen feel dizzy with pain.