Why did his daughter, with her gorgeous blonde wavy hair, need a wig?

He jumped back as the realisation hit him. He went back to the wardrobe, on tiptoe again and pulled out from the back of the top shelf a brimmed hat, a fedora. Holding it out in proper light he could see it was mauve. Maybe Mel was right. He hadn’t clocked it when he first looked.

Vanessa had Beatrice Ulbricht’s hat.

Everything now made sense.

All that exhaustive work to identify the girl on the train, and the answer was so incredibly close to home. It was Vanessa, disguised in a wig. Which meant that Kyle Halliday wasn’t just an immoral wrecker of marriages. He was a murderer. Perry’s own daughter was in love with him, and had helped to foil the investigation of a missing woman.

Gillard hadn’t been sleeping well himself, and had been working the phones until one a.m. To be woken now by a call at 4.45 a.m. made him leap from the bed. At this time it was either going to be very good news about Sam, or very bad news.

When he heard it was Perry on the line, he was unsure which way it would go. ‘Craig, my daughter is missing, and I’ve just discovered a wig and a mauve fedora in her room.’

The detective chief inspector listened with incredulity as the details and implications of Perry’s discovery poured out. ‘Hell, I’d been thinking about Kyle Halliday on and off for days. But now it all makes sense. He’s the man we’re looking for, he’s been sitting there right at the centre of this web of intrigue, and we keep missing him.’

‘I’m so worried about Vanessa. My wife always assumes she can look after herself, but this is something else.’ His voice sounded shaky.

‘All right, John. I’m coming over right now to your home. I’ll be there in less than an hour. In the meantime, call in the details to the incident room. I think Rainy Macintosh is on duty tonight. We are going to need warrant applications for Halliday’s home address, Hallam’s address in Fleet, and the industrial unit. You start the process and I’ll follow up with Rainy on the hands-free to make sure we’ve got everything we need.’

Gillard was already dressing at top speed before he cut the call. Perry had sounded decidedly shaky, which was hardly surprising if you’ve just realised your daughter is in cahoots with one of the most devious and dangerous murderers ever known. They didn’t even dare discuss the awful possibility that she too may have become a victim once she had outlived her usefulness to him.

That put Perry and him in the same boat. Halliday had them both by the short and curlies. In Sam’s case, she had just twelve hours to live unless he could find her.

Chapter Nineteen

Sunday morning

The GCHQ technical boffin arrived at Surrey Police headquarters at dawn, as suddenly as if materialising from another planet. DI Claire Mulholland was just finishing her overnighter on the Sam Gillard abduction, when someone from reception buzzed up to say a Dr Chris Steele was there to see DCS Otara. Claire looked out of the window into the car park. The visitor section was darkened and empty, and she knew most of the vehicles in the staff car park, which was dominated by the new red SUV of Chief Constable Alison Rigby. Intrigued, Claire decided to put aside the paperwork and go down herself rather than try to find Otara.