That silenced both men. Jane rubbed her chest in a calming motion, and wiped a tear away. ‘I agree with him, Father. He wants to find Anna before the police do. There’s a chance this is all just wrong. We need to hear Anna’s story before she gets arrested. I think we’d all prefer to see her without being surrounded by police and solicitors. Especially if it’s going to be the last time alone as a family.’

Middleton rubbed his forehead. Nick tried to eject an image of Anna staring at him through the iron bars of a cell as he was forced to walk away – back to an empty home.

Jane said, ‘Nick, what message are you talking about? You said they got a secret message to Anna.’

Middleton said nothing. His chest rose and fell fast. Nick took it as willingness to hear him out, so he said, ‘I think their message gave her the idea for the one she left you.’

Despite her blindness, Jane actually turned in her seat, as if to stare at him. ‘Braille?’

Nick picked up the phone, just as Anna had, and immediately felt stickiness on his fingers. From the inside of the handle. He saw a slight residue, as if from a now-gone sticker. He handed the phone to Jane, standing in the phone box doorway, who ran her fingers along the hard plastic. Behind her, Middleton paced on the pavement.

‘My God,’ Jane said. ‘There was a sticker here. Just like on the kettle. But the message is gone.’

She bent down and ran a hand across the floor. Before Nick could process why, she stood up, and in her fingers was something. Black, the same colour as the receiver. Jane started to unfold it. A little scrap of black tape, scrunched up, and discarded. He saw lumps and bumps, and he just knew. Her fingers ran over its surface.

‘Is it Braille?’ he said, all urgency. ‘What does it say?’

She ignored him, dropped the scrap of tape, and started to feel under the shelf.

‘Silence. Under shelf,’ she said. And then, ‘More stickiness. But there’s nothing here.’

And he believed that, because Jane had a far more sensitive touch. But still he ran his own hands over the underside of the shelf, hoping she was wrong. She wasn’t. No message, and nothing else on the floor. His shoulders slumped. He’d been hoping to find a clue to her location. An idea of what the hell these bastards wanted from Anna. Failure put a painful void in his gut.

‘A bigger message,’ Jane said. ‘Something that wouldn’t fit on the handle. But how would they have known to do that?’

Because they knew all about Anna and her family.

‘They must have returned here to get rid of the message,’ he said. ‘Jesus.’