Because standing in the bare driveway, despite it being part of her home, was like being adrift in a vast ocean, she reached for him, meaning to grab an arm with both of hers, to anchor herself. But found the space where he should have been empty. The crunch of gravel told her he was headed back to the garage. Once there herself, she heard the beep of his phone keypad.

‘Father, what are you doing? You can’t call the police.’

‘Anna and that bastard might think they’re trying to save Josie, but their damn vigilante ideas might get her hurt.’

‘No, don’t call the police just yet. Anna will be arrested. Maybe Nick has found something.’ She grabbed his arm.

He shrugged it off. ‘And I intend to know what. I took a picture.’

‘What do you mean?’

What he meant, but didn’t say, was that he’d taken pictures of the garage as it lay following the robbery, to document the damage. Now, he pulled up one he’d taken from roughly this very spot and which captured the entire interior. He held it so he could see picture and subject with only a flick of the eyes.

In this game of spot-the-difference, there was one anomaly. One thing, but not missing, only moved a couple of feet. He stepped inside and picked it up. A velvety A5 folder embossed with JEFFERSON’S, which had been Anna’s way back, when she was Marc Eastman’s PA. It contained a card key and paperwork for a safety box in a private London bank, where Eastman had insisted she stored sensitive files after his office was burgled. The box hadn’t been used since she emptied it and left London; the folder, like other unneeded junk, had gone into a box and made the journey north, but since that day hadn’t budged from its dusty spot in the garage. Until it got tossed on the floor as burglars threw things about while seeking valuables.

And it had moved again when Nick picked it up.

Thirteen

10.58 a.m.

The moment she picks up the receiver in her left hand, what she feels beneath her fingertips is as potent as a live wire. She takes a deep breath and realisation hits.

‘Hello, my master. I am so scared,’ she says. She is reminded of the order to hold the receiver in both hands – not so she can’t press record on a tape machine, but because one hand needs to hold the receiver while the other slides along what she knows is a Braille message on the inside of the handle. Her heart races.

‘Pay careful attention to what you feel. It will help you do the right thing. Remember that any trickery and your kid doesn’t see old age.’

With two hands, one to hold the receiver, and one to read, she says nothing.

‘So you understand the message I’m giving you. Good.’