‘She has a birthmark! I’ve seen it. It’s in the photo. And I saw her with him once, after her yoga class. Are you lying to me now as well?’

‘Whether he knows her or not, it doesn’t mean Elspeth did the things he’s saying,’ Connie soothed. She paused the video then rewound to the start where Nick Bowlzer had split his screen and was displaying a photo of Elspeth in the shower – a few body parts blurred with a crude editing tool, but enough on show to prove his point.

‘I think she knows him really bloody well,’ he growled. ‘She misled me. Elspeth’s my wife! You don’t think she ought to have told me about this? You think I’d have chosen her if I’d known?’

‘People make mistakes …’

‘Fucking right,’ he said. ‘Elspeth just made one she’ll regret forever.’

The line went dead.

‘He’s going to kill her,’ Connie said. ‘Get that fucking attention-seeking prick off the air right now. Do whatever you have to do to get that video off every server.’

‘Shit!’ Connie shouted. She scrolled forward to the end of the video, where Nick Bowlzer had his name, email address and social media tags displayed across the bottom of the screen. ‘That little son of a bitch is doing this to get media likes, not to mention the money he’ll be demanding to give a kiss-and-tell story to the gutter press.’

‘We have to focus on what we’ve got. Did he say anything that might help? A name? An idea of what he’s doing with his hostages?’ Baarda asked.

‘Nothing. Did MIT manage to trace the call?’

‘No, the number was from a burner mobile, and the call wasn’t long enough to triangulate. He’s in Edinburgh city limits somewhere. That’s the best they could do. At least we have his voice now. If we pick him up, we’ll be able to confirm his identity immediately.’

‘No voice changer,’ Connie said. ‘No speech impediment. I’d put him in his thirties, which fits the previous descriptions of him.’

‘He was angry this time, though. At the sports centre, when he killed Danny, the witness said it was as if he was on autopilot, like he felt nothing at all when he used the knife. This is his trigger. So what do we know?’

‘He wouldn’t have made that call from his home address,’ Connie said. ‘He’s delusional but still functioning. We need officers on the street looking for someone driving badly. He’s lost control, and he’ll be trying to make his way back to Elspeth as fast as possible. If he’s on foot or on public transport, he’ll be visibly agitated, possibly confrontational. In this state, he poses an immediate threat to anyone who approaches him. We need an all-agencies alert, contain but do not approach. Assume he’s armed.’