Then she was still, her eyes fastened on him.

George wiped the blade on the dirt beside him, then he stood up and rearranged his clothes. Picking up his overcoat, he slipped off the white cotton gloves and pushed them into the pocket. He walked to his car.

James was crying hard. He had woken up in a strange car with a strange smell and his mother was gone. He huddled into her coat, trying to breathe in his mother’s perfume.

George opened the door and scooped him up. Then he walked back to Cynthia with him.

The child struggled, and George held him tighter.

‘Be quiet!’

James gulped in a large draught of air and screamed. George dropped him on to the leaf-covered ground. The child was stamping his feet and screaming and he watched, fascinated at the strength in the little body. At the determination to get whatever it was he wanted.

He watched him stumbling around on fat little legs, trying to find something familiar. Fear and panic were making him clumsy. Then George tried to grasp his hand but the child would not let him.

He pulled his arms away, screaming louder and louder until finally George began to hit him.

On his way to the hotel George started humming again.

Patrick and Willy pulled into Bychester Terrace at two fifteen. As Patrick walked up the path, he felt a loosening in his bowels. He would be facing the murderer of his daughter in next to no time. He felt a heat inside him as he thought about it. The few hours with Kate had been tinged with despair. Now she was gone from his mind. All he could think about, all he could see, was the future without Mandy. His child.

He knew as he walked to the front door that the house was empty. It had that deserted air. He knocked anyway and waited.

The anger was back. The burning anger that started in his chest and wormed its way through his body, seeping into sinew and bone. Maddening him.

He wanted George Markham. He wanted to strangle the life from him slowly. He wanted to castrate him. He wanted to hurt him more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

This man had used his daughter as if she was a piece of dirt, and Patrick Kelly would see that justice was meted out.

He walked around the back of the house, Willy following. As they passed the overflow pipe a trickle of water splashed on to them.

‘Bollocks! That water’s bloody freezing.’ Willy’s voice was a whisper.

Taking a glass cutter from his pocket he cut a hole in the back door. Within seconds they were inside the house.

It was empty all right.

Patrick cursed under his breath.