She hunched herself, wanting to disappear again.

‘Perhaps it would be best if I phoned your mum. Do you know her mobile number?’

It was as if she hadn’t heard him. Then her hand shot to her scalp and her fingernails dug in. Nits? She coughed, and it left her weak.

Hirsch said, ‘I don’t think you’re very well. Let’s get you to Doctor Pillai in Redruth. Do you know her? She’s nice.’

Lydia Jarmyn shook her head. ‘Stay here.’

‘I’ll leave a note at the house to explain.’

‘Stay here,’ she croaked, and coughed again, sad and feeble and helpless against it. Worn out, she fell against Hirsch.

He wrapped her deep within his arms and the grimy blanket and carried her out into the air and some kind of future. Her struggles were those of an old dog insisting she be allowed to walk. The air was a rejuvenating force around them, with only a faint underlay of the child’s wastes. Then just as Hirsch passed from the shed gloom to the wintry sun a pinprick of red caught his eye. A CCTV camera was trained on the caravan.

Oh well, he thought. I’m the cops, so you can fuck off. And he hoped that if there was film of him snatching Lydia, there was also film of those who’d harmed her.

Note to self: obtain CCTV footage.

He belted Lydia Jarmyn into the passenger seat, cracked open the window a couple of centimetres and rolled down the hill and out onto the highway. The sky was vast above the shallow valley and an eagle hung there and sunlight glinted on a distant windscreen. The world was washed clean.

He glanced often at the child as he made his calls, steering with one hand. Dr Pillai, at the Redruth Medical Centre, suggested he take the girl to the town’s little hospital. ‘Text me as soon as you arrive.’

‘Will do.’

Then his boss at Redruth, Hilary Brandl, who wanted a lot more detail.

With a glance at Lydia, Hirsch said, ‘In due course, sergeant.’

A pause. ‘She’s there? She’s listening?’

‘That’s correct.’

Another pause. ‘I’d like to check the place with my own eyes before I get Child Protection or CIB involved.’

‘Understood.’

‘Jarmyn, Hawker Road?’

‘Yes.’

Hirsch heard the clack of a keyboard. ‘Checking now… No callouts to that address. No outstanding warrants, no traffic offences…Nothing.’

‘We should see what the neighbours have to say.’

‘Yes, Constable Hirschhausen.’

Uh-oh. Telling her how to do her job. But she’d said it warmly. They’d grown to trust each other. There were those in the force who didn’t trust Hirsch.

‘What’s your gut feeling?’ she said. ‘Neglect, or something worse?’

She meant sexual abuse, slavery…‘I don’t know, sergeant,’ Hirsch said. With a glance at Lydia he said, ‘I think there could be at least one other child living there.’