Later, Harper slouched in her office chair, staring glumly at the blinking cursor on a staff-development review, telling herself to let the case go. But she couldn’t do it, not with all the evidence she had; she knew her mind would keep working on it until she’d got some kind of answer—or at least investigated every possibility. From her bag she took out the Mail article from 1976 and read it again. Maybe there was something in it—maybe it was the same perpetrator. It wasn’t unheard of for criminals to have big gaps in their offending history. Forty years was a long time, sure, but maybe whoever it was had been in prison for something else, got out recently and decided to try abducting babies one last time. Harper spent an hour searching the archives for the police report that corresponded to the newspaper report. Frustratingly, there didn’t seem to be anything at all recorded in relation to the incident in question. Perhaps it had been filed incorrectly; the digitization of the archive had been done on the cheap, of course. There might still be a paper copy somewhere that had been overlooked, but if that was the case, it could take weeks to lay hands on what was probably a single thin sheet of A4, tucked behind a box file, somewhere among the towering shelves and stacks of crates in the vast basement storage facility. She gave up looking for the report and spent a while searching for similar incidences of twin-abduction cases with female perpetrators, but also found nothing.

Research was not one of Harper’s best skills; if only Amy were there to help. She checked her phone for messages, but there was still no reply to Harper’s lame apology she’d sent first thing about the way she’d behaved the night before. Then all at once, she knew exactly what to say to get a response.

I need your help on this case. Totally OFF THE RECORD. Are you in?

Within two minutes, the screen lit up with Amy’s reply:

YES. Where shall we meet!?

Chapter 32

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Harper pulled up to the kerb outside the Mail offices so that Amy could jump in.

“I found them,” she said, pushing a piece of paper into Harper’s hands. It contained the contact details for the victims from the 1976 case.

“You’re a bloody genius,” said Harper.

“I wasn’t going to be the first to say it,” said Amy, “but I suppose you’re right.”