But something was winking at him through the mist, like a single point of light.

George’s phone rang. He gestured apologetically and moved into the kitchen with it. As Paul continued to stare around his bedroom, the home phone also trilled. He broke from his trance and dashed into the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Is that Paul?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Emma Brighton.”

Their downstairs neighbor? She spoke softly, struggling to make herself heard over a background din that sounded, from Paul’s recent experience, very much like a hospital.

“You’re home,” she said, seeming relieved. “Steph was afraid you were gone too.”

“She’s gone.”

“I think I know where she is.”

Paul clenched the receiver. “Seriously?”

“And I . . . I think you need to get to her before the police do.”

His heartbeat ramped up. He listened for a moment to check George was still occupied in another room, then pressed the phone close to his lips. “Where is she?”

Emma recited an address. Paul grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote it down. He’d never heard of the place, knew nobody who lived in that area. “Why would Steph be there?”

“I don’t know. She gave me the address yesterday. Asked me to nudge the police toward it in their search for Freya—”

“Freya?” He couldn’t stop the soar of his voice, and feared he’d alerted George, but he could hear that he was still deep in his own conversation. “Is she connected to this place too?”

“I’m not sure how. Steph didn’t seem to want anyone to know about it. But then Freya’s coat was found and things changed and I . . .”

Emma’s words were fragmenting, but it wasn’t the line: It was the thundering that had started in Paul’s skull.

“Freya’s coat was found?” he interrupted her.

There was a moment of silence. “You didn’t know?”

Paul gripped the back of a kitchen chair. “When? Where?”

“Yesterday. In the countryside, somewhere near Slough, I think. It was . . . buried.”

Paul’s breath left him. Why hadn’t anybody told him this? Presumably George and the other officers had assumed he knew. Paul began pacing with the phone, short distances back and forth. “Buried?” he echoed, and suddenly his cheeks were wet, his gut was hollow.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “It—it had blood on it. But that doesn’t mean . . . There was no . . .” He could almost feel her scrabbling for the right things to say. “God, I’m just so sorry.”

She sounded like she was crying too. Paul closed his eyes. Why did his neighbor seem so invested in his daughter’s fate all of a sudden? Everything was confused. He could hear George wrapping up his call. There was barely any time, but all he could think about now was a grave with his daughter’s jacket in it.