He waits until all the locals have dispersed before he starts trying the doors of the cars parked in the street that leads from the bay. He has his pick. No one here locks their car, it would seem. The first in the row is a Mini, too small for him really, so he tries the next, a large BMW. The door opens. He slips into the back seat, curls up and falls quickly into an untroubled sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves against the nearby shore.

CHAPTER

49

NOW

Joanna

Thursday, December 27

HEAVY FOOTSTEPS ON the towpath outside alerted her. Sam lay on the floor of the boat, so Joanna crouched in a position from which she could defend them both. Silently she grabbed a broken bottle and gripped it, ready to strike.

“Boss?”

She relaxed. “Steve. You scared me.”

Atkinson thumped down the stairs into the saloon, shining a heavy-duty torch around the trashed inside of the boat.

“I guess the fugitive beat us to it,” he said. “Did you find Ruby and the girl?”

“No, but I know where they are. On a ferry in the middle of the sea.”

Sam groaned softly.

“Is he alright?”

“Not really.”

Once Sam had been attended to and taken away by the paramedics, Harper and Atkinson climbed into the patrol car and started driving north, heading for the port at Oban. As they joined the motorway, Steve wordlessly handed her his phone, on the screen of which was an email from the mobile phone surveillance system, informing them that Ruby had turned her phone on again and that it was located off the coast, en route to the Western Isles. Such a remote place—why did it have to be there? The alert was from only an hour ago. Jo took out her own phone and tried Ruby’s number, and this time it connected. She listened to it ring three times, four, imagining her daughter holding the phone in her hand, thinking about whether or not she should answer. Then, she did.

“Joanna?”

“Ruby.”

There was a pause as they both choked into tears. Harper searched in her bag for a tissue, ended up wiping her nose on the back of a hand. The distance between Jo and Ruby was huge: six hours driving, six hours on the ferry. It was as if they were on separate planets. Yet just hearing that voice, Joanna felt closer than she had in years.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” said Ruby. “I’m in trouble though. I need to tell you—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Joanna, don’t. I’m trying to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain. I know already.”

“What do you think you know?”

“That you took that child, that you pretended to be someone else.”

“You make it sound like I committed a crime.”