‘Because my daughter’s in danger.’ He grabbed Bennet’s iPad from the empty driver’s seat. He’d earlier been shown a series of aerial photographs of the site, with Xs to mark intriguing spots. Three of those had been walls of smashed cars, but there were a couple of outhouses, a metal shed by a stream, and the main house, where the owners lived. And what Nick looked at now: a rotting old caravan in a shrubbery-infested corner. It looked abandoned, except that it was connected to a generator and gas tanks.

Suddenly, he was certain Josie was being kept there. But that location was at the far end of the site, easily two hundred metres from the entrance. Not even trained cops on motorbikes could get there quick enough to stop someone slicing Josie’s throat, and Anna’s, when they heard the front gate booted in.

‘Let me go in alone. I’ll sneak in, and I’ll say I ran from you, so no one gets in trouble. I’ll get into that caravan before – why not?’

She’d been slowly shaking her head. ‘I know you feel a bit impotent, but we need to preserve evidence, especially if Josie isn’t present. These people cannot be allowed a chance to destroy that evidence. So both sites go down at once. After that, we’ll go in. You’re not here, Nick, to kick open doors. You’re here so Josie, if she’s here, can ride home right there on the comfy back seat with her dad instead of a bunch of strangers.’

Nick didn’t miss that she hadn’t painted Anna on to that comfy back seat. ‘So it’s nothing to do with needing me to negotiate with my wife in case of some stand-off?’

Miller’s lack of answer was answer enough.

The team way up in Fatfield, Sunderland was ready to rock, so the order came through and engines kicked into life. The bikes were faster, but they held back bar one, whose rider would determine if the gate was locked, and if it was, a van would change that. It was only a thirty-second trip.

The compound was inside a flimsy corrugated iron fence held up by wooden posts, the gate thick and sturdy but also secured only by wood driven into earth. But there was no need to smash it open.

As the strike team rounded the last corner, a mechanic who’d just slipped out for a cigarette, froze and watched what seemed like an entire police force bearing down on him. Tyres screeched, doors opened, and an army emerged. Miller’s car pulled into the other side of the road.