Did he hate her? Certainly tendrils of hatred had coiled around his heart, but it was no longer the dominant feeling. The most powerful emotion was one of being expelled from the household that he had thought he headed, like a piece of waste. For the last few days since their monumental row, he and Mel had avoided each other. Him tiptoeing, her slamming. It really should have been the other way round. Wasn’t he the innocent party? Wasn’t it him that had been wronged?

He had in his shed just the weapon to bring Mel to her senses. The temptation to march into the kitchen and toss Vanessa’s cards onto the kitchen table would undoubtedly bring Mel’s affair with Halliday to a crashing end. But he retained just enough sense to know that his wife would not thank him for bringing her this terrible news. She would hate him all the more for it. Shooting the messenger. And in all this, he knew that he didn’t want there to be any more hatred between them. Despite her infidelity and her cruelty, despite everything, Perry still loved her. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep and wake up to find that Halliday’s emotional carpet bombing of his family had all been a nightmare.

So when he walked into the kitchen at 10.45 p.m. he said nothing about his discovery. He simply gave a neutral greeting and then asked: ‘Have you heard from Vanessa?’

‘No.’

‘I’m thinking we should report her missing,’ he said.

She looked at him, and raised the cup of camomile tea to her lips. ‘You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you? You know she’s been away this long before, and always comes back. But if you bring in all your mates from the police station, you’re back in control, aren’t you? Detective Inspector John bloody Perry.’

‘Mel, they won’t put me in charge of the case. I would have thought you would have welcomed this.’

‘The bloody press will be on it, though, won’t they? A policeman’s daughter gone missing. Let’s dig into the family. Let’s see who’s got the big secret. My love life will be in the tabloids.’

He looked at her with fresh eyes. ‘I never realised how selfish you were.’

She stared levelly at him. ‘It’s about her, not me, you idiot. We’ll lose her forever, don’t you see? You don’t begin to understand our daughter. She’s got some of my streak of independence, and dragging her back home when she is not ready—’

‘Mel! None of her friends have seen her either. Not Becky, not Steve. When she went off on one of her grand disappearances in the past, at least one of her friends knew where she was.’

‘Well, maybe she’s got a new exciting boyfriend,’ Mel said, one eyebrow raised provocatively.

Perry shook his head. If only you knew.

Claire Mulholland watched DCS Rajinder Otara set up the incident room meeting for one a.m. in Mount Browne’s biggest conference room. On three separate whiteboards he had written up everything they knew about the four interlinked crimes: the abduction and murder of Beatrice Ulbricht, the discovery of the body of Jane Morris, the attack on Trish Gibson, found bludgeoned in her car, and finally the abduction of Samantha Gillard. On a fifth board, at the centre of the room, he had written everything that they knew about the abductor. The one thing they were missing was a decent photo. Research specialists had dug up some old photos of Gary Harrison, when he was in the army, and later amongst a row of cooks in a South London college. Nothing recent. They were now trying to find his old army pals to see if they had any. It was a slow process, even with their resources, and they just didn’t have any time.