‘You told me already. Look, anyone I pissed off recently, I didn’t give them my name and address, okay?’

‘How about your job? You do gardens. Easy to trace you through a business. Anyone unhappy with the finished product?’

‘Now and then. Bit extreme, don’t you think?’

‘I could tell you my snowball story, which I use at times like this. Tell me about the latest unhappy garden fanatic.’

‘She was about eighty years old.’

‘Prison is full of vicious young thugs with eighty-year-old grandmothers they love dearly.’

‘Look, Detective Bennet, I keep to myself and I’m nice and sweet on days when my daughter hasn’t been kidnapped. No enemies. No one pissed off enough to do this. This is about money and they know Anna’s dad has enough to spare.’

‘Anyone at all you’ve had recent contact with, even if it didn’t seem as if you got on their wrong side?’

Nick sighed. ‘Couple of weeks back, a guy a street over had to brake coming out his garden because he didn’t see my van. A corner shop owner in Mexborough accused me of buying alcohol for teenagers hanging around outside. Some girl the other day knocked on the door and tried to get me to buy organic pizzas. You want to chase these people? Like I said before, someone has done this because they want money and know Anna’s dad has enough to spare.’

Bennet nodded. ‘Okay, Nick. Seems your memory is back nice and fine. So let’s run through the story again, if you don’t mind.’

‘Fine. But is there a point to me retelling this? After all, you guys swear by your B: believe no one.’

After the story was told, again, Nick found Anna in the playroom. She was at the painting table with her back to him and didn’t turn when he entered. But she knew he was there.

‘I hoped this time of day might be easiest. Because Josie’s usually at school. So she’s not normally here anyway. But for some reason it’s worse.’

Nick took the seat opposite. He didn’t know what to say, and it wasn’t just because of the nightmare they shared. This was the first time in a long time that they’d been alone together in a place with no distractions like a TV or a road to watch or a five-year-old backing vocalist. He was still thinking about taking a bellyful of whiskey and it influenced what popped into his head:

‘I hope they’re feeding her.’

His line teased a sensitive nerve because the left side of Anna’s face twitched. She tried to rub the feeling away. Done, her fingers crawled to her raw neck, but didn’t scratch the scaly rash. ‘We need a holiday when she gets back. All of us.’