‘Well, boss, Claire Woodhall, the name she checked into the refuge under, seems to have been a pseudonym. I rang Women’s Aid and asked how far women might travel to get to a safe place, and on their advice, I started with our own county and spread out from here. Many travel hundreds of miles to get away, but not all do. Some women don’t want to be too far from family and friends. I’ve found four women named Claire Woodhall in the county, and none match the description of the person we’re looking for. I extended the search to Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and also checked whether it could have been her maiden name, but again, no one tallies.’

‘Kevin? Gary? Anything?’ They shook their heads.

‘I checked the PNC and no one of her description shows up under that name, sir,’ said Kevin.

‘Two things from me, boss,’ Robbie said. ‘The Sky man is definitely a scammer. He’s called on dozens and dozens of addresses in and around Saltern and the surrounding villages. There are no faulty boxes, and the vehicle that Annie described isn’t one of theirs. The logo on all their vans is done professionally. Plus, I’ve been checking out the schools around here looking for a temporary student by the name of Leon, or possibly Teddy.’

‘But nothing.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Zilch, I’m afraid,’ Robbie said. ‘It was an outside chance, I guess.’

‘She took that boy somewhere, didn’t she?’ said Jackman. ‘And given that her pursuer is searching different homes, she placed him into care a while ago. She may have even given him up for adoption. Has anyone spoken to social services?’

‘Without a name or an address, sir, it’s useless,’ said Gary. ‘They have too many cases as it is. We need a whole lot more information before we can ask for their help.’

Gary was right. But this boy appeared to be the root cause of a series of murders. They had to find him.

He sat down heavily on a spare chair. ‘Okay, let’s try something else. We can only assume our killer knows a lot more than us about where Teddy — Leon — actually is. If he’s targeting houses with a connection to ten-year-old boys, he’s narrowed his search down to this specific area. I think we can assume that’s correct so far? One thing we don’t know is how he learned about Nan’s involvement in the boy’s life. He can’t have been following Claire and Leon, or he’d have simply grabbed the child and taken off. No, he discovered it some other way.’