she reached the kitchen, her softly tanned skin pale now and her lips a little blue. The nanny saw her first. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Bridgeman?’
Celia spoke without answering the question, her eyes growing ever wilder with thoughts and fears she’d never once in her life imagined having. ‘Have you seen Mr Bridgeman this morning?’
‘No,’ the nanny answered, confusion spreading across her face. ‘I thought he was away on business last night?’
‘He was,’ Sophia answered for her mother.
‘Be quiet, Sophia,’ Celia snapped. ‘Are you sure he didn’t come back very early this morning? Maybe he …?’ Celia suddenly didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say.
‘He wasn’t here when I arrived,’ the nanny told her, ‘and his car wasn’t here either. Is something wrong?’
‘The front door,’ Celia asked, ‘was it locked when you arrived?’
‘Yes,’ the nanny answered.
‘All the locks?’
‘Yes, Mrs Bridgeman. Is there something wrong?’ the nanny asked again.
Celia’s voice almost failed her as she tried to speak, the words weak and wavering. ‘I can’t find George,’ she finally managed to tell them. ‘He’s gone. Someone’s taken him.’
‘That’s not possible,’ the nanny told her, her smile hiding her own rising fears. ‘He must be hiding somewhere.’
‘No,’ she answered, her voice growing ever weaker as she slumped to her knees on the floor. ‘He’s gone. He’s been taken. I can feel it.’
The nanny came to her side and bent over her, trying to encourage her to stand. ‘Let’s look again – together. I know we’ll find him.’
‘No,’ Celia almost shouted, summoning the last of her strength, the tears rolling freely down her face now. ‘Listen to me – he’s gone. He’s been taken. We’ve wasted enough time. I need to phone the police.’
‘I’ll phone Mr Bridgeman,’ the nanny offered.
‘No,’ Celia spat, grabbing the phone. ‘I’ll do it.’
Sean looked from his office into the main office outside and decided that enough of the team had gathered for the meeting to begin. He exhaled, took a deep breath and walked the few steps next door, suddenly aware of the relentless noise; the laughter and loud chatter mixing with the seemingly constant ringing of land and mobile phones. He caught Donnelly’s eye, but his other stalwart detective sergeant, Sally Jones, seemed to be holding a girls-only meeting with the other female detectives in the far corner next to the coffee- and tea-making facilities: a limescale-clogged old kettle and a fridge that smelled like something had died in it.
Donnelly knew his job. ‘All right, all right,’ he boomed across the office in his Glaswegian-tinged-with-London accent. ‘This office meeting is officially open, so park your bums and listen up.’ He seemed to make eye contact with everyone in the room while he waited for total silence, not speaking again until he had it, turning to Sean. ‘Guv’nor – all yours.’
But before Sean could start, a dissenting voice spoke up.
‘Guv’nor,’ DC Alan Jesson asked in his Liverpudlian accent, ‘when we gonna get a new case? I’m fucking skint. I need the overtime just to make ends meet here, you know.’ The murmur of approval from the others told Sean they were all feeling pretty much the same way.
‘Something will be coming our way soon enough,’ Sean tried to assure them.
‘How d’you know?’ Sally asked. ‘How can you be sure it’ll be sooner rather than later?’
‘Because the sea we fish in just got a whole lot bigger,’ Sean answered in a voice almost too quiet to hear.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sally replied. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘We’re no longer a south-east London Murder Investigation Team, we’re a London-wide Murder Investigation Team.’ He watched the silent, blank faces trying to understand what he’d just told them.
‘Excuse me?’ Donnelly finally broke the stunned silence. ‘We’re a what?’
‘We’ve just gone London-wide,’ Sean explained. ‘Express orders of Assistant Commissioner Addis. Featherstone told me earlier this morning – the Commissioner’s agreed to it, so that’s that. As of now, anything a bit special comes our way. Potential serial offenders, child murders by strangers, sexually motivated murders – all the good stuff’s going to land on our desk. It won’t be easy, but it will be interesting. Anybody not up for it needs to have the applications for a transfer on my desk by this time tomorrow. I’m sure HR can find you all suitable posts on division. You could even stay here at Peckham.’
‘Stay?’ Donnelly said. ‘Then by inference if we decide to stay part of this team we’ll be moving?’
‘Yes,’ Sean told him, beginning to enjoy the game.
‘D’you mind telling us where to?’
‘The Yard.’
Donnelly closed his eyes and groaned as he leaned back in his chair so much he risked over-balancing. ‘Jesus. Not the fucking Yard. How am I supposed to get there from Swanley every day? And there’s nowhere to park.’
‘They’ve reserved us a few spaces in the underground car park.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Donnelly said sarcastically.
‘Sounds great to me,’ Sally chipped in with a mischievous grin, keen to kick Donnelly while he was down.
‘Aye,’ Donnelly continued. ‘It’s all right for you, living in Putney. Putney to Victoria every day – lovely.
‘Sorry, Dave,’ Sally told him, her grin turning into a fully fledged smile.
‘I’m all right, Jack, eh?’
‘All right,’ Sean broke it up, ‘enough of the table tennis. Let’s make this official – if you don’t want to come with me, put your hand up.’ He scanned the room, but saw no raised hands. ‘I promise you there’ll be no hard feelings. Many of you have wives, husbands, kids, so if the nature of the work or the travelling’s too much I’ll understand.’ Still no raised hands. ‘Dave?’
‘Aye, fuck-it – why not? But there’d better be plenty overtime.’
‘More than you could possibly spend.’
‘Aye, there better be.’
‘Right,’ Sean snapped to attention, ‘we’re moving today.’ The groans almost drowned him out. ‘So let’s get everything packed up and over to the Yard – Room 714, seventh floor in the North Tower. Take everything that’s not screwed down and even stuff that is, if it’s of any use. Take the computers, chairs, phones – everything we’ll need to be up and running straight away.’
‘Pickfords
