He left the kitchen and, after a brief look round downstairs, went up to the first floor. Frankie’s room was the second door on the left, immediately identifiable from the picture of a cartoon fairy on the door. Pushing it open gently, he went inside and looked down at the bed. Unmade, a small dent in the pillow, a pair of teddies at the foot of the quilt, presumably neither of them the treasured Red Ted. Forensics would need to do a thorough examination of this room – assuming Frankie didn’t turn up in the next few hours – so he didn’t want to disturb anything, but his eyes were drawn to a little desk beneath the window, with an equally miniature chair. An art desk, piled high with crayons and felt-tips and a big pile of colouring books.

There were a few sheets of paper in the centre of the desk, pens left next to them with their lids off. With everything else in the room so neat and tidy, Patrick wondered if Frankie had done these drawings since her mum and dad went out.

He picked up the top picture, holding it between gloved forefinger and thumb. A picture of what he thought was supposed to be a cat, drawn in orange. The very cat that was miaowing outside the back door now.

The picture beneath this one, though, was more intriguing. He crouched down to look at it better. A large square, with a cross through it – the universal child’s rendition of a window. In one corner of the window, an imperfect circle. A circle with two more circles inside it, a line and a curve.

Eyes, a nose and a mouth.

It was, Patrick realised, a picture of a face looking through a window.

But looking out – or in?

Chapter 5

Chapter 5
Helen – Day 1

‘What was your name again?’

Helen squinted at the detective as though she’d never seen him before, even though he had been in her house not half an hour earlier. She had automatically asked his name – cooperative, polite, the well–brought up girl who knew her manners . . . as if good manners would make any difference! Fuck it, she would have shattered every pane of glass in the building with her screaming, if screaming was the way to return her daughter to her.