her without it, so he probably gives her another dose before trying to move her – but not too much, he doesn’t want to knock her out and end up with a dead weight. He’s not strong enough – if he was, he wouldn’t be so reliant on weapons and drugs – he’d physically overpower her instead. Once he transfers her to his own car, he locks hers and takes the keys with him. He doesn’t stop to wipe any prints or check for anything else he might have left behind because he doesn’t care whether we find it or not. He has what he wants, the one thing that he cares about. He has her. He closes the hatch door and carefully drives away. Have you checked for CCTV?’
‘There is none,’ Donnelly told him.
‘Then he knew there wasn’t,’ Sean insisted. ‘He’s a planner. None of this happened by accident. Have the access road checked for cameras. You won’t find any, but check anyway.’
‘It’ll be done,’ Donnelly promised.
Sean closed the hatch door carefully. He looked into the woods, just as the suspect would have done when he was checking the car cark before moving her. He still couldn’t see the man’s face, but already he felt as if he would recognize him in a second if he saw him. Something he didn’t yet fully understand would enable him to pick this one out in a crowd if only he could get close enough. That’s what he had to do now: let the evidence, let the facts get him close enough to allow the dark thing inside of him to take him the rest of the way to finding this madman.
In the early spring the trees still looked wintery and foreboding. Sean felt himself shiver, as if he was being watched. As if he was being watched from the inside by some spectre he knew he would eventually find himself face to face with.
‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one,’ he confessed to Donnelly. ‘I don’t think it’s going to end well.’ He pinched his temples between the middle finger and thumb of one hand and tried to squeeze the growing pressure in his head away before it exploded into a full migraine. ‘You wait here with the motor,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to the office and start trying to piece all this together. People are going to be sticking their noses into our business, so we might as well be ready with a few answers. When Roddis gets here, leave him with the car and head back to Peckham for a scrum-down.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Sean didn’t hear Donnelly’s reply; he was already climbing into his car looking for Superintendent Featherstone’s mobile number with one hand while starting the ignition, releasing the hand brake and fastening his seat belt with the other. He still hadn’t got around to setting his phone up to be hands-free. Again he cursed the uneven road as he bounced along, driving too fast and making it even worse. He had to wait longer than he’d wanted to before Featherstone answered.
‘Boss, it’s Sean.’
‘Problem?’ Featherstone asked bluntly.
‘Your missing person case,’ said Sean. ‘I’m afraid it’s an abduction case now.’
‘Any idea who took her?’
‘Whoever it was, I don’t think she knew them.’
‘A stranger attack,’ Featherstone said. ‘That does not bode well.’
‘No, sir,’ Sean agreed. ‘It does not.’
‘What do you need from me?’
‘Have you got anyone in the media who owes you a favour?’
‘Maybe,’ Featherstone answered cagily.
‘I need to get an appeal out tonight,’ Sean explained. ‘Ask for public assistance. He took her in broad daylight and transferred her from one vehicle to another in a public place. It’s possible someone saw something.’
‘If someone has taken her, won’t an appeal spook him?’ said Featherstone. ‘We don’t want to force his hand. I don’t want to push him into—’
‘I understand,’ Sean agreed, eager to cut to the chase, ‘but I have no choice. Her family have already worked out what’s happened, and now we’ve found her car dumped close to a wood in Bromley. If we don’t pull out all the stops to find her, we’re leaving ourselves wide open. It’s a shitty call to have to make, but we have no choice.’
‘All right,’ Featherstone reluctantly agreed. ‘I’ll call in a few favours, see if I can get my face on the telly tonight – but no promises. I’ll catch up with you later.’ He hung up before Sean could reply.
He tossed his phone into the centre console, finally controlling the car with two hands, relieved to be back on a smooth road, suddenly remembering he needed to call Sally, again cursing himself for not having set up his hands-free system. He found Sally in his contacts and called her number while pushing his car through the increasingly dense traffic, all the while wishing he had more time – more time to simply sit and think, to try to become the thing he had to stop. The sooner he did, the sooner they would catch the man who dumped Louise Russell’s car near the wood. The man who Sean knew would soon dump her body as casually as he’d abandoned her car, unless he could find him first. Find him and stop him, any way he knew how.
Sally paced up and down the street outside the Russells’ home under the pretence of checking on the door-to-door team’s progress, but in truth she just needed to get out of the office and get some fresh air, to be away from sympathetic and suspicious eyes alike. She knew Sean was trying to prevent her becoming involved in the main body of the investigation, his way of protecting her, but it wasn’t making her feel any better.
She spotted DC Paulo Zukov walking along the street towards her. ‘All right there, Sarge?’ Zukov asked in his usual chirpy, mischievous manner.
‘You’re not in uniform any more,’ Sally reminded him. ‘You call me Sally now. Remember?’
‘Just being respectful,’ Zukov teased. ‘But seriously, how are you?’
‘Don’t try and sound genuine and caring,’ Sally chided him unfairly. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
It was water off a duck’s back for Zukov. He’d only been in the police six years, but it had been more than enough to harden his shell. ‘Harsh, but fair,’ he replied with a grin, pleased she perceived him as some cynical old detective, despite his young years and short length of service.
‘Have you finished the door-to-door yet?’ Sally asked.
‘Not quite, but we ain’t getting anything interesting anyway and I don’t suppose we will. Door-to-door, waste of bloody time if you ask me.’
‘No one did,’ Sally reprimanded him, her phone vibrating in her hand distracting her from their tête-à-tête. Caller ID told her who it was. ‘Yes, guv’nor.’
‘We found Russell’s car.’
‘Any sign of Louise?’ Sally knew he’d have said so right out if there had been, but she asked anyway.
‘No,’ Sean replied. ‘The official line is that she’s been taken. That’s what I believe.’
‘What’s our next move?’
‘As much media coverage as we can get, roadblocks, start canvassing a wider area and wait for forensics to
