He fondly observed his daughter as she watched the TV. She was dressed in her pyjamas and, technically, being a school night, it was well past her bedtime. Joanna would have made sure she’d gone to bed at least two hours earlier. But Isabel had pleaded with him to stay up and watch Frozen, and Frank was a soft touch when it came to anything concerning his daughter. Anyhow, he could see the film was almost drawing to a close; he knew it almost as well as she did by now.

The doorbell rang. He frowned and looked at his watch and wondered who it could be at this time on a Monday evening. It certainly wasn’t going to be Joanna. She wasn’t due to pick up Isabel until the end of the week.

He sighed. He stood up to go and see who was there.

‘Who’s at the door?’ asked Isabel.

‘I’m sure it’s nobody important,’ he said.

73

The powerful three-litre supercharged V6 engine growled angrily as the Range Rover surged through the night with Bailey craned over the wheel giving it everything she had. Trying to keep her eyes on the road, she frantically rummaged through the glovebox in search of a mobile phone or even a firearm… but no such luck.

She knew the Molloys wouldn’t bother chasing after her. She was out in the open and now off their territory and it would be too risky for them to try and do something to her with all the public CCTV and traffic cameras dotted everywhere.

Even so, she made sure to put a decent distance between herself and them before pulling rapidly into a petrol station and demanding to use the phone to make an emergency call to the police.

If the police could get to Frank’s house in time to head off Dale, then maybe it would be okay. This would be a grade one emergency call, the most serious type, and the response times for these kinds of calls averaged less than fifteen minutes.

‘The address is twenty-seven Knowsley Close,’ she gasped down the phone to the 999 operator, as she did her utmost to convey the immense gravity and urgency of the situation.

She would have called Frank directly, but she realised she didn’t actually know his telephone number from memory. After all, when the number was saved in your phone, why bother remembering it? And more to the point, she didn’t have her phone on her. Dale had her phone.

She jumped back in the car to continue onto Frank’s house. She’d be able to coordinate with him and the police once she was there and alert them to Dale’s perfidy. All she could do now was just pray that the police reached Frank before Dale did.

Accelerating down the dual carriageway, she reckoned she could get to Frank’s house in just under half an hour if she really pushed it. He lived in Enfield and she’d been to his place a few times.