Gary smiled. ‘I can. I’m going to reply to any messages, so that it appears she has left here. I’ll drive near to her place, so it looks like she’s gone home, then I’ll turn off the phone. Then I’ll nip back home through some back routes away from the road cameras. I’ll leave the car in Mum’s garage, and we can move her to the shed without being seen.’

‘You can’t leave that car at Mum’s! She’ll go spare.’

‘She doesn’t have to know. It’ll only be for a few hours. When it’s dark, I’ll take it out somewhere and burn it.’

Verity nodded.

Gary looked up at her and said: ‘I saw a pair of water voles at Hurst Meadows yesterday.’

‘Do I look like I give a fuck?’

‘You can be horrible sometimes,’ he said, shouldering the heavy bag.

Verity folded her arms. ‘Yeah, says the man who is going off to kill my colleague!’

The first Leticia knew was coldness, dark and pain. Everything hurt, especially her head. The next was the discovery that she was bound and gagged, still clothed, but spreadeagled on an old single bed frame. There were cable ties on her wrists and ankles that held her to the metal grid. There was something in her mouth too, hard like a golf ball, which made her jaw ache and rattled against her teeth. She couldn’t push it out because of the gag. The darkness settled out into shadows and shapes, radiating from a skylight above her, where a faint orange glow indicated streetlamps not far away. It was set in a pitched wooden roof full of cobwebs. Turning her head a little, she mapped out a large wooden shed. Spiky silhouettes distilled into a lawnmower, a rake and a hoe, plus smaller tools hanging from nails in the walls. Her head was muzzy, as if she had been drugged. Yes, the handkerchief.