A few ART members had worked alongside Kelly on the mountainside on Monday, and she listened, comforted by their familiar voices. Armed divisions were relatively small in constabularies, and Kelly had got to know most of the personnel in recent years, during various raids. She had every confidence in them, and they in her. They used blues and twos, as was standard procedure when vulnerable children were involved with any crime. The hunt for the girls had taken an unexpected and sinister twist since yesterday, and Kelly was now more immediately worried for their physical safety. They were material witnesses to serious crimes, and it was quite certain that whoever killed Bartholomew Kennedy-Craig wasn’t messing around: what difference would killing a couple of schoolgirls make?

It was on the way to the address that Kelly was notified by Eden House that Nellie Lowther had been found hanged from a beam in her house, by a forensic officer who’d gone in through the open back door to search for her when she didn’t answer the knocking at the front.

‘Jesus,’ she whispered. Kelly’s first thought was homicide. Nellie was a major witness in her investigation and, after yesterday’s findings, could have been pivotal to her case. But the forensic officer was also a crime scene officer, and an experienced one at that, and he said he reckoned that from the burn marks on her neck, and the set-up of the rope and stool, it looked to him like suicide. Kelly wasn’t willing to rule anything out and it would take Ted to convince her either way. Until then, she was unhappy to discount anything. It also put a menacing twist on the fact that they were failing to locate Paul Edderbridge.

As they travelled to the address across town, a short distance from Eden House, squad cars had been sent to put a perimeter in place around the apartment block. Officers stood on corners, banged on doors above and below the floor they were heading for, and the transit of pedestrians was closed off. Kelly was informed that the line of sight to the flat in question was as secure as logistics and geography allowed.

This was it.

She’d jumped into the front of a squad car and held on to the hand strap attached to the ceiling. The speed of the cars, as well as the lights and sirens, startled members of the public, who stopped and stared; kids ran away, and cars let them through. Kelly was in constant communication with the three ARTs and she heard when they’d arrived at their separate locations at the front and rear of the flat.