He recounted the scant facts, his ears whistling as he went through the details. The stress was causing his tinnitus to go crazy. Last night when he’d got home he had dragged his quilt and a couple of cushions into Bonnie’s room and slept on the pink furry rug beside her bed, listening to her breathe and make little snuffling noises in her sleep. Gill used to do that too, though they were more snores than snuffles.

Lying on his daughter’s bedroom floor he had drifted back in time to the days when his wife was pregnant, during the second trimester, before the discomfort and constant urge to pee kicked in. He would lie behind her, his arm draped over her, resting lightly on her swollen belly, and they would talk about names and all the exciting things they would do with their daughter when she was born. Some days, when he allowed himself to think about it, he felt furious with Gill for robbing them of that life. Last night though, he had simply felt an ache in his chest, grief for those lost experiences.

Eventually, he’d fallen asleep and was awoken by his mum coming into the room, asking what on earth he was doing, Bonnie already sitting up in bed giggling at her silly daddy.

‘So we have the fact that Alice was almost certainly lying about Larry being there that night. We have the unlocked back door and the strange drawing of a face looking through a window – though that may be of no significance whatsoever.’

‘What’s your feeling about what happened, Pat?’ Suzanne asked.

‘I think there are three possibilities. Firstly, abduction by a stranger. It seems like a huge coincidence that we could have two sets of child abductors active in the same small area at the same time.’

‘Unless it’s a copycat,’ Carmella said.

Patrick nodded, although he had previously dismissed that option. ‘Someone who got the idea, or felt inspired by, what had already happened to Liam and Isabel. Or there’s the chance that we have a predator who knew we would assume that the children were all taken by the same person and saw an opportunity – a ready-made smokescreen.’

‘What are the other two possibilities?’ Suzanne asked.

Patrick was momentarily distracted by the pigeon that had appeared on the windowsill behind her.

‘The second possibility is that Sean and/or Helen are involved. We need to look at them more closely. And the third, which to me is the hot favourite scenario, is this: Alice and Larry killed Frankie, maybe accidentally, and covered it up.’