She heard Jack cross to the door, open it. And then all the hair on her arms and neck went upright in a spasm of fear when she heard Nipper’s voice say: ‘Hi, I don’t know if you can help but I’m looking all round this area for my sister. She’s run away from home and we think she was heading down here. The folks used to holiday here and she always liked it so we think she might have come back. Good-looking girl. Blonde. Brown eyes. Mum’s going off her nut, she’s so worried. You seen her?’

‘What’s her name?’ asked Jack.

‘Belle. I’m her brother, Neil.’

‘Nah. Sorry, mate. Haven’t seen her.’

‘You’re sure? She always liked this area, so we thought . . .’

‘No. I haven’t seen her. Sorry.’

Belle heard Jack shut the door.

Presently he came to where she was hiding and pushed the door open. ‘You OK?’ he said.

Belle was sweating, literally gasping for air.

‘You can relax,’ said Jack. ‘He’s gone. I take it you haven’t got a brother called Neil?’

Belle shook her head and tried to start breathing again. ‘That was Nipper. One of Harlan’s cronies. I recognized his voice.’

‘He’s gone,’ Jack repeated.

‘What if he comes back?’

‘Then we deal with it.’

120

They’d been checking the farms and smallholdings and all the hospitals around the area. They checked the lanes again, went miles out of their way and still she was nowhere to be found and frankly Ludo was now getting shit-scared. Harlan wasn’t the type to tolerate failure, and he knew his threat of a trip to the caiman pool hadn’t been an idle one. Ludo understood Harlan’s concerns, he understood the wisdom of the scorched-earth policy, a total wipe-out of the old guard and their kin. You had to leave nothing. No single family member. Well, the others were gone. There was only Belle now.

‘We got to find that bitch,’ he told Nipper.

‘Yeah, where?’ Nipper demanded.

They were sitting in Ludo’s flash motor staring morosely at the steady rain blurring the scenery beyond the windscreen. Ludo glanced in irritation at his colleague, who was lounging back, his feet up on the dash.

‘Feet off the dashboard,’ said Ludo, swiping at Nipper’s expensive footwear. He sniffed. ‘And what the fuck is that odour, man? You step in something?’

Nipper sat up. ‘I fucking hate the country. Damned sure I’ve stepped in something, I’ve been traipsing around farmers’ fields and yards – you seen those places? They got nothin’ but mud and cow shit, and Christ knows what else. There ain’t nowhere clean around a farmyard, I’m tellin’ you.’

Ludo was incensed. ‘Then you put the damned things up on my dashboard? I just had this beauty valeted, you do not do that.’