Every one of her senses had to be put to use. The shed looked fairly new and smelled of creosote. She could not detect any other odour. She listened intently and heard the distant hiss of traffic, plus the movement of the occasional vehicle nearer by. A woman was talking to herself as she walked, her heels clicking on a hard surface, no more than twenty yards away. Two discernible words. ‘Steve’ and ‘pizza’. She was on a mobile. Leticia envied her freedom and her voice. After a fading minute the clicks and voice attenuated to nothing, leaving Leticia bereft, as lonely as an astronaut on the moon as the last Earthbound ship departs. She didn’t even know where she was. Still at Verity’s home or somewhere else? She tested her bonds, rotating her feet and narrowing her hands, checking to see if she could slide them back. No. She was firmly attached to this squeaky bed frame, unable to move even an inch. She bucked her body and found that the frame rattled. But it did not move along the floor.

Oh God. She had been so stupid. She should have gone with her first instinct, which was to tell the police. But when she’d seen Verity that morning, so hung-over, skinny and pallid, it had seemed ridiculous to suspect she was capable of abducting anyone, especially a dangerous man. Only then had she got up the courage to admit to Verity what she had found in the boot. The frosty response, she had assumed, was because her former boss was insulted to even fleetingly be considered a murderer.

Everything changed the moment the big scruffy man arrived. Of course Verity hadn’t been working alone. She was the brains, he the brawn. Someone powerful to seize and kill the captive, and dispose of the body. She had called him Gary. One of the last things she had heard before losing consciousness was: ‘Not so tight, Gary.’ It was when he was tying the gag around her mouth. He was a lumbering scruffy individual, with a bald patch and a mane of long greasy hair around it. There was dandruff on his shoulders. She distinctly remembered seeing it. He couldn’t possibly be her boyfriend. Her brother perhaps? Tina had said they didn’t get on.

Then there was someone else. Someone referred to as the boss.