‘Damn right,’ said Claire. Sarah nodded at the stairwell where two police officers had just emerged. The car-park attendant was walking towards them, gesturing at the rope and harness.

‘The police are here. I have to go.’

‘What do we tell them?’ said Sarah, as the three men walked their way.

‘The truth.’

63

What had the message said? Bloom scrolled back through the conversation.

Lana certainly seemed to be the most damaged and irresponsible member of the group: the drug use, the alcohol abuse, the sexual promiscuity. Her exact psychopathic profile might reveal more susceptibility to boredom and impulsivity than fearlessness. Bloom looked out on to her mother’s once neatly landscaped, now overgrown garden.

There was one question she’d been asking herself since the very beginning, one that she still didn’t have the answer to. Why would someone recruit psychopaths?

But perhaps that was the wrong question. What if she’d been looking at it from the wrong end of the lens the whole time?

She called Jameson, but he didn’t answer. She hung up without leaving a message. He was probably with the police. She grabbed her coat and handbag, checked the back door was locked and left for the station. She’d head to Leeds and tell Jameson and Sarah her theory in person.

Parents and their children were crowded on to the green in front of the house, enjoying the warm spring evening. She remembered watching Penny cross it on that dreadful evening as she headed back to her empty home. How unlucky Penny had been. To struggle for so long for a child, and then to have Seraphine. She hadn’t heard from Penny in years. Her mother had tried to keep in touch after the suicide, but Penny found it too hard to be around the family she blamed for pushing her daughter towards death. Did Penny have any idea that her daughter might still be alive? That she might have been out there since the age of fourteen, charming others, manipulating them into providing her with a new life?

Her phone rang. She was expecting Jameson, but it was DS Green.

‘Here’s a turn-up for the books,’ Green said, in his usual dry tone. ‘Grayson Taylor has been arrested in Peterborough, of all places. DC Logan has some fancy way to track arrest reports.’

Had whoever was controlling the game let him go? It was unlikely. They hadn’t yet delivered on their promise to return Lana and Stuart. ‘What was he arrested for?’

‘Identity theft and fraud. He was using the details of a young woman he was living with to obtain money by deception. By all accounts she’s some wealthy heiress whose daddy got suspicious.’

‘Is he at the police station?’

‘Peterborough, yeah.’

‘You need to keep him there.’

‘Well, he’ll be interviewed and if he’s guilty he’ll be charged, then bailed to appear in court.’