‘You’re well out of it,’ said Sasha, thinking about Kev’s recent behaviour, but Karin’s smile stiffened and she realized it must have sounded flippant. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘You don’t have to apologize. Do you have kids?’

‘Three.’ Sasha lifted her coffee cup to her mouth before she quietly corrected herself. ‘Two. We have two.’

‘I like my life. I like being… independent.’ Sasha sensed there were few people in Karin’s life she could talk to; few people in her life, full stop. She was probably as much of a loner as Simon. ‘I’m not looking for a relationship, I’m happy in my own company. There are men I see for… convenience, but I prefer being on my own.’

Sasha, who had always been surrounded by family and friends, listened, fascinated, but then her phone rang, and she answered it.

‘Yes, Craig.’ Karin watched the early evening traffic rushing past until Sasha finished her call and dropped her phone in her bag, saying, ‘Simon just spoke to my DS and he confirmed he doesn’t get the money from Michelle for himself, but someone else. Jim Haskell.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Karin’s face darkened. ‘He’s Becky’s brother.’

Sasha recognized the surname. ‘Do you know him well?’

‘No, he… doesn’t like me, or any of us, very much.’

Sasha Dawson drained her coffee. ‘You know another thing about child abductors, Karin? They get a compulsion for it, they can become… addicted to the act. We don’t know if Sammi is safe, we don’t know how long she has before this person does it again, but I’m not going to let what happened to Becky happen all over again. I need to find her.’ A minibus approached, travelling towards Priory Park. ‘Where is she, Karin, where is Sammi?’

‘I don’t know.’ Karin watched the minibus full of laughing children speed past. ‘All I know is, wherever she is, she’ll be absolutely terrified.’

19

The Second Day…

They clung to each other, their fingers slippery with heat and sweat, despite the cold of the basement.

It had sunk in now. They were trapped in this cold place below the earth, in a room filled with shadow. The feeble light from the one naked bulb, protected by a twisted wire cage, barely reached as far as the room’s four walls. The dank brickwork was slimy to the touch and greasy water trickled in one corner. Plaster had fallen in chunks to the floor, and damp stained the remaining clumps that clung to the brick. A snaking network of wires and rusting pipes raced across the rotting beams above their heads.

A jumble of stiff, musty blankets lay in a cardboard box sagging with mildew. The basement stank of blocked drains. But the concrete floor was perfectly smooth, as if it had been recently laid, and, except for where the plaster had fallen, swept clean.