Clara sat back and closed her eyes, the wine she’d gulped swilling queasily now in her empty stomach. At that moment, her phone began to ring. It was Anderson’s name flashing across her screen and her heart instantly leapt as she picked it up.

‘Clara? We’ve found the van,’ he told her.

She sat up. ‘Where?’

‘It was abandoned in a car park on the edge of the Kent Downs.’

She could scarcely breathe. ‘And Luke?’

‘The vehicle was empty, Luke and whoever was driving were long gone. However …’ he paused, ‘I have to tell you we found a significant amount of blood on the passenger seat.’

She closed her eyes, the floor seeming to pitch and roll beneath her.

‘It will take us a few days to confirm that it’s Luke’s blood, but—’

‘Oh God, oh my God.’

‘Clara, we—’

‘Is he, do you think he’s …’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

There was a pause. ‘The amount of blood suggests a significant flesh wound, but it’s impossible to tell whether it was a fatal one. We also found blood on the ground within a few feet of the van, which indicates that Luke may have been moved to another vehicle.’

Anderson’s words seemed to be coming from somewhere far away, the room felt entirely airless. ‘I have to tell you, we are assuming the blood to be Luke’s, Clara. The Major Incident Team will be handling the case from now. Which means more officers working on it, a televised appeal, an intensifying of the search …’

‘You think he’s dead, don’t you?’ Clara blurted. ‘You think he’s been murdered.’

‘No. That is not what I’m saying. But we have to consider it a possibility, which is why we’re escalating the search. I will, of course, remain your first point of contact, and if you need to speak to either me or DC Mansfield, please …’

Clara barely listened as Anderson’s voice rumbled on. When she finally put the phone down, Zoe was standing in the doorway, looking at her in dismay. ‘Oh God,’ she said, crossing the room in seconds. ‘Clara, what is it? What’s happened?’

Long after Zoe had reluctantly gone upstairs, unable to fight her exhaustion any longer, Clara sat up on her makeshift bed on the sofa, wide awake as the night rolled slowly past. Though she was desperate to drive straight home, the wine she’d had still sloshed sickeningly in her stomach, and after trying and failing to get some sleep, she grimly drank coffee after coffee, trying to sober herself up. When Oscar woke for a feed at 5 a.m. and Zoe tiptoed down to the kitchen, she found Clara shrugging on her coat.