But who was he?

Reaching for her purse on the sofa next to her, she took out the picture of Mister Snigiss that her father had given her. Unfolding the delicate paper, she examined the crude felt-tip drawing, seeing it in a new light now, seeing it as her father saw it – as some clue to Mister Snigiss’s identity. But it was no e-fit, that was for sure. A stick figure in a little fedora hat with his pet cobra wriggling along beside him, drawn by an eight-year-old girl who’d never been particularly strong at art. How could Bailey even begin to identify Mister Snigiss on the basis of this?

You can’t see Mister Snigiss, but Mister Snigiss can see you.

Jennifer’s tinkling voice now returned to Bailey like a childhood taunt. It had frustrated Bailey all those years ago that she’d never been able to see Mister Snigiss, and now that same frustration resurfaced.

She traced her fingertips over Jennifer’s spidery handwriting, over the name ‘Mister Snigiss’ that was scrawled beneath the loping hat-wearing stick figure and his pet snake. What kind of name was ‘Mister Snigiss’ anyway? Ever since she was young, Bailey had never really liked the way it sounded. ‘Snigiss’ sounded like the cross between a snigger and a hiss. And with her father characterising him as some sinister abductor of children, and now Dale implying that he was this underworld pimp, the disagreeable connotations of the name seemed more apt than ever.

She stared down at the picture, battling to make sense of it. A part of her seriously wanted to reject the whole thing, to stubbornly maintain the view she’d held all these years that her father’s theories had been baseless and crazy and nothing more. But this time she knew that there was something in it.

Much as she was reluctant to pursue Mister Snigiss, her conscience was telling her otherwise. Her filial loyalty to her dead sister arose from deep within to override any other considerations. This new revelation presented the tantalising possibility of finding out what had really happened to Jennifer and maybe even the hope of exacting some kind of justice. Surely she owed her sister’s memory that much. And as for her father, it was the least she could do for him… and probably the last thing she could do for him.

31

Going back to Bromley always depressed Bailey. The drab suburban streets with the rows of pebble-dashed houses with their net curtains seemed to try their utmost to crush her spirit. But in lieu of talking to her father, returning to the landscape of her childhood seemed like the next best thing in terms of unearthing further information about Mister Snigiss.

It was ironic that at the very time she most needed to discuss Mister Snigiss with her father, she was prevented from doing so due to his poor health. It wasn’t that he was physically unable to talk, at least not yet; it was more that she didn’t want to unduly excite him, in his weakened state, with something that could in fact lead to nothing. And, at any rate, she would be unable to discuss any matters pertaining to Adrian, as those formed part of an ongoing undercover operation and were thus totally confidential. As a matter of course, she never revealed anything more than the most cursory details of her job to her parents.