DI Hicks glanced at his fellow detective, who looked down at her wrist. ‘Six-fifteen p.m.,’ she said, then went back to writing on her notepad.

‘I need another hour.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ DI Hicks said, shaking his head. He reached across and turned off the recorder, the numbered lights pausing in place. ‘Look, we’ve seen this before. Both of us. We understand…’

‘No, you don’t,’ Mark said, his shoulders slumping down as he waited for the inevitable.

‘We’ve spoken to your friends in Liverpool,’ DI Hicks continued, as if Mark hadn’t interrupted. ‘They’ve told us how much strain you’ve been under. It’s understandable. We just don’t understand how you found her body. What you know about it. We don’t think you killed her. So, how did you find her?’

Mark sighed deeply, feeling it all fall away from him. He could only hope that it had been enough. He could stay silent for another hour, but he didn’t think there would be much use. They had already decided what they were going to do.

They thought they would be helping him. A fellow detective.

‘Information from John Redwood led me there,’ Mark said quietly, thinking about how to word it. ‘I’m guessing he didn’t talk.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard the name mentioned.’

John’s mother hadn’t called, as he’d instructed. As he’d expected her to. He shook his head at believing she would. Based on an assumption about where she lived. He should have known that her bond to her son would be greater. He wondered how long it would have taken to just do that small thing, call DS Cavanagh. Even if that meant Natasha would be dead already.

If she wasn’t all along and he had just been played with.

The dice had been loaded. The cards marked. He never had a shot.

‘What happens next?’

‘You tell us who John Redwood is, for starters.’

Mark explained how he had found the boy. His story. He could see the doubt in their faces, the pity. They seemed to accept enough of it to not push him too far.

‘But, why have you pretended to kill eight people, Mark?’ DI Hicks asked, concern dripping from every syllable. ‘What’s made you do that?’

There wasn’t an easy answer. Not without leaving him with zero chance of finding Natasha alive. He would tell them all once he found her. Alive or dead. For now, he had to shift his plan a little. That was all. Even with so little sleep in the previous few days, his mind was still working sharply. Connecting things together, making clear decisions.