Gulping in air, she sat there until her bowels had emptied and her gut spasms started to relax their iron grip on her belly. A recent copy of Metro caught her eye, left on the wicker basket full of toilet rolls next to the loo. She picked it up and stared at the headline: SUN NEWSPAPER OFFERS £100,000 REWARD FOR SAFE RETURN OF LIAM AND IZZY.

One hundred grand? She read on. The £100K wasn’t even for physically finding the kids and returning them to their families, it was for ‘information leading to the safe return of either of them.’ Georgia thought hard. Obviously she didn’t have any idea where Liam and Izzy were. She entertained a brief fantasy that Jerome had snatched them and she not only got the reward – would it be two hundred grand for the two? – when she told the police that the kids were in the estate somewhere, but she also managed to get Jerome locked up . . .

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. But a plan started to form in her mind. She made a mental list:

1. The police think Liam and Izzy have been snatched by the same person/people – which they could well have been, since they were both taken from this area.
2. What if another toddler of the same age happened to vanish, from around here? It was obvious what conclusions the police would draw.
3. If The Sun were offering £100K when two kids had gone, how much more would they, or another tabloid, offer once a third one disappeared?
4. The reward was for ‘information leading to . . .’
5. What if she had that information?

Her stomach clenched again – this time with nervous excitement. She knew how she could get her hands on the reward – and save her own miserable life.

Chapter 37

Chapter 37
Patrick – Day 6

Patrick had chewed his e-cigarette so hard on the drive over to Georgia Hardy-Wilson’s house that there were teeth marks in it. He chucked it onto the dashboard, left the blissful air-conditioned sanctuary of the car and stepped out into the suffocating heat. It was 32 degrees in London, even with the evening drawing in.

A middle-aged woman with long blonde hair and a golden tan was in the front garden of what was yet another huge, expensive house, attacking an overgrown vine with a set of shears. Sweat streaked her face as she hacked at the plants, the way she wielded the shears making Patrick want to cross his legs.

‘Mrs Hardy-Wilson?’ He spoke to her over the gate.

She turned and pushed her sunglasses onto her head. ‘Just Hardy. My daughter’s the only Hardy-Wilson. Yes?’

A flash of his badge. ‘DI Patrick Lennon. It’s your daughter I’m after, actually.’

She dropped the shears into a flowerbed and came closer, waving away a bee that zig-zagged across her path.

‘Georgia? She’s not here . . . Has something happened?’