horrible stitched-on smile in front of her. Twitches his head left and right, like he’s having a fit. Like that girl in primary three they have to watch in case she bites off her tongue.
‘So what, you’re chickening out?’ DAVID pokes COLIN in the chest.
‘I’m …’ He looks at his feet. ‘You know what? Yeah, I’m chickening out. I’ve had it. I’ve had it with this whole fucked up—’
DAVID moves fast as a tiger. Grabs COLIN and thumps him into the scribbly wall. BANG – the room goes left to right for a couple of twists.
‘You listen to me, you rancid little wanker: you don’t get to chicken out. You do what your fucking told, understand?’
‘You can’t make me—’
DAVID slams him into the wall again. And again. Then punches him in the tummy.
‘DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?’ DAVID’s robot voice fizzes and crackles.
He lets go, and COLIN falls to his knees, crying. Holding his head in his purple hands.
DAVID backs away. ‘Do your bit.’
TOM twitches, then walks over and puts his arm around COLIN. ‘Come on, you just need a bit of air, yeah? Yeah, course. We’ll go outside, get you a can of Coke, or something, OK?’
He helps COLIN to his feet and out the door. It slams shut like a fist.
DAVID rolls his shoulders back, then walks over, till he’s standing over Mummy, looking down at them both. Breath hissing in and out.
Mummy’s voice wobbles. ‘Please, she’s not feeling—’
‘The antibiotics will take down her fever. She’ll be fine.’ DAVID tilts his head to one side. ‘As long as you both do as you’re told.’
‘But she—’
‘Misbehave, and I’ll execute the pair of you. Do you understand?’
‘We—’
‘Do we need to have another fucking talk about how this works?’ Silence. ‘Well, do we?’
He throws an arm out, it leaves oily trails in the air. ‘Sylvester: key.’
SYLVESTER shuffles his feet. ‘Are you—’
‘Give me the fucking key!’
SYLVESTER holds out a little bit of metal and DAVID snatches it, then grabs Mummy’s ankle and unlocks the padlock that holds the chain around her ankle.
‘I didn’t mean any—’
‘You’re not on TV now.’ He grabs her arm and hauls her off the bed. ‘This is my house, and in my house you do what you’re fucking told.’
The rooms spins.
Teddy Gordon smiles his horrible smile.
Jenny’s missing toes throb.
‘Oh yeah.’ DAVID drags Mummy away. ‘I’m going to enjoy this.’
‘Please! I don’t—’
The door bangs shut. Like the lid on Daddy’s box.
Jenny feels warm tears rolling down her cheeks.
SYLVESTER’s chin drops against his chest. ‘Fuck …’
The room lurches like a drunk man.
‘Well?’ Finnie folded his arms and stared around the room.
Logan tore another sliver of Sellotape from the roll and fixed up the last sheet of A3. ‘That wall over there,’ he waved a hand at the dusty plastic sheeting covering the exposed breezeblocks and cabling, ‘is all the notes and transcripts of the videos. That wall,’ he pointed at the corkboards he’d managed to salvage from the builder’s skip out the back, ‘is all the door-to-doors. Next to it you’ve got the interviews with Alison’s friends, colleagues, and the people on her university course. Then it’s the TV people …’
He took two steps back, arms held out wide. ‘And this is the timeline. Well, as much of it as we can piece together. Starts over there – underneath the window – three weeks before the kidnapping and ends with the toes being delivered to the BBC yesterday.’
Superintendent Green pointed at the whiteboard propped up by the door. ‘And this?’
‘Kidnappers. We know there’s at least three of them because of the first video – one to hold the camera, one to haul Alison McGregor down the stairs, one to hit her over the back of the head. I’m assuming there’s one more to drive the getaway car. We’ll need to go through every report of a stolen vehicle for the last week: I don’t see them being stupid enough to use their own car or van. We might get lucky.’
Logan nodded at the whiteboard, split into four vertical columns headed: ‘DAVID’, ‘TOM’, ‘#3’, ‘#4’ with a small list of bullet points below each. ‘One of them has medical training and access to a hospital or veterinary pharmacy. One’s probably a hacker, or an IT security specialist – that’s how they can send the emails and post footage to YouTube without leaving a trail. One’s highly forensically aware, which is why we’ve got no DNA, fingerprints, or trace evidence.’
Green folded his arms across his broad chest, the fingertips of his right hand stroking the dimple in his chin staring at the list of bullet points under the #4 heading. ‘Who’s “Ralph”?’
Logan tapped the whiteboard. ‘Not who, what. “Ralph” is one of the text-to-speech voices that come bundled with the Macintosh operating system. It’s the voice they use on the videos.’
‘I see …’ Green sniffed. ‘And is this all you’ve done?’
Logan gritted his teeth. ‘Next I’m going to cross-reference the individual skills with every registered sex offender in—’
‘You see, that’s the trouble with never having investigated a kidnapping before. All this unfocused energy, flailing out in all directions.’
He stared at Finnie, but the head of CID just rolled his eyes. Play nice. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t tell Superintendent Green to go ram a filing cabinet up his arse.
Logan cleared his throat. ‘And what would you do, sir? With your wealth of experience?’
Either Green wasn’t very good at sarcasm, or he just didn’t care. ‘I’d go back to the start.’
What?
‘With all due respect,’ – you posing tosser – ‘that’s what I’ve been doing.’
A smile. ‘No, Sergeant, not the start of the investigation, the start of the crime. Dig into similar events: not just in
