‘I don’t know about that. I’ve not looked into it yet.’

There was a long pause while he considered it.

Lucy had already mentioned the vehicle at the back of Harry Hopkins’s house, but she’d purposely said nothing about a black van. In truth, the thought had occurred to her immediately on hearing about the screeching tyres, but, on reflection, it was a real stretch. Firstly, no evidence had been found that any such vehicle existed. From the outset, the black van had been more legend than fact. They’d gone after Les Mahoney through intel received by the RSPCA. It had seemed possible at the time that there was a connection with this rumoured black van, but it wasn’t the van, or any vehicle in particular, that had led them to his farm. Secondly, even if the black van was real, dog-napping didn’t easily equate to kidnapping. Where was the actual link between the two?

‘Copy Serious in if you want to,’ Beardmore said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘But be careful how you word it. Tell them this whole thing is open-ended as yet, and we’re only marking their card. Underline that we’ve observed nothing thus far to make us suspect that a series of abductions is under way.’

Lucy nodded and Beardmore leaned forward again and cut the call.

Banks stood up. ‘Big difference in MO, that, Luce. Grabbing someone from off the streets and grabbing someone from their own back door.’

‘I know …’ Lucy was equally uncomfortable with it. ‘Hunch, sixth sense, whatever you want to call it.’

‘Well, don’t beat yourself up too much.’ Banks headed back to her own desk. ‘Hunch and sixth sense have caught killers in the past.’

Killers, Lucy thought.

She wouldn’t have used that word herself. Not yet. But there was something disconcerting about all this, and the weirdness didn’t reduce it to merely silly. Despite the arrests at Wellspring Lane, over twenty dog-napping cases were still wide open, along with rumours that a late-night vehicle had been prowling the housing estates where they’d disappeared. And now they had people disappearing as well, and yet another late-night vehicle was possibly involved in that.

It was like an urban myth coming slowly to life right on their doorstep.

But no, no … she resisted that idea strenuously.

They only had fragments of information, none of which necessarily married up. This whole thing could still turn out to be nothing. And the only way they could make firm judgements on that was if they started gathering and collating some real evidence.