DCI Miller jumped in: the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency had provided details of current Passat owners, but these four were the only owners from South Yorkshire with criminal records. There was the whole country to check. Not all Passat owners would be in police files. Some cars might have been sold on or scrapped without paperwork being updated. These searches would take time. And although they had no such reports so far, it was likely that the target Passat was stolen, which would make all owner traces useless. No good news yet, in other words. Did they recognise any of the faces?

‘No,’ Nick said, and Anna agreed. ‘So you’ve got nothing, have you?’

For the first time, the unflappable DCI gave him an annoyed look.

‘So tell us what you’ve got,’ he said by way of an apology.

‘The run from the lock-up garage to here, where this photo was taken, is southeast, and if we continue that way, we hit the M1 at Junction 32.’

‘So they went to the motorway?’ Anna said, visibly deflating in her seat. ‘So Josie could be anywhere? Anywhere in Britain? You don’t know that until you’ve searched Brinsworth more. No, you’re wrong.’

Miller rubbed Anna’s shoulder and sat beside her. Anna wiped wet eyes.

‘I’m sorry. Please carry on.’

A pair of cell towers about twenty miles south alongside the M1 picked up the first phone call to the house, at 5 a.m., from a new device, not Nick’s now-dead mobile. The call originated on the A38 heading east off Junction 28. The signal wasn’t picked up leapfrogging towers, so the kidnappers probably stopped their vehicle to make the call. The A38 ran between Sutton-in-Ashfield and Kirkby-in-Ashfield, both market towns. They were being scrutinised for, amongst other things, abandoned buildings and recently rented properties – the kind of place kidnappers might hold someone. And the kind of people who might do the holding.

The next call, to Anna at the hospital, was made from the village of Nuthall, west off Junction 26, about eight miles south of the previous call. On a photo, someone had marked the route from the lock-up garages, across the M1 and into the two Ashfield towns, and then across the motorway again to Nuthall, creating a ˃ symbol with the M1 running down its middle.

‘Brinsworth, then these other towns, then Nuthall?’ Anna moaned. ‘You have no idea, do you?’