He checked it, but there was no signal. ‘Okay, Jess, follow this path upwards until you get to the road,’ he whispered, handing her the phone. ‘Keep to the edge so you can get out of sight if you need to, and keep moving, whatever you do. As soon as you get a signal, dial 999. Understood? Now go. I’ll try and distract them.’

They could both hear the sound of movement coming up from behind them. It would only be a matter of seconds until they were back in the sights of the gunmen. Jess nodded. ‘Find her,’ she said, then turned and started running up the gentle incline, until seconds later she rounded a corner and was swallowed up by the forest.

The sound of pursuit was coming closer now. Scope could hear their footfalls in the trees, some distance apart as the men fanned out, and he moved across the path and into the thick wall of pine trees that bordered it on the far side, weaving between them until he found a spot from which he could no longer be seen. Grabbing a thick branch from the deep carpet of pine needles on the ground, he waited a few seconds until a big shadowy figure appeared on the other side of the path, stepping onto it carefully as he slowly looked round. Scope didn’t have a very good view of him, but he could see he was well over six foot tall, and was holding a shotgun.

Scope dropped the branch onto the ground. Not too hard, because he didn’t want to make what he was planning too obvious, but not too softly either, because he wanted to be heard.

And he was heard all right. The gunman immediately cocked his head, then motioned to someone else out of sight. He was already pointing the shotgun in the direction where the noise had come from when Scope took off, making as much noise as possible, running roughly parallel to the path in the opposite direction to the one the girl had taken. He heard shouting behind him and then a shot rang out, passing a good few yards behind him.

Keeping low, he continued his sprint, knowing he could outrun them, but knowing too that it was unlikely Jess could. He had to buy her time. A second shot rang out. This time it ricocheted off a tree, only a couple of yards to his left. Stealing a rapid glance, he saw that he’d strayed too close to the path, and the gunman was running down it, not quite keeping pace but not needing to, suddenly only about fifteen yards away.

Scope did a rapid turn further into the trees and sprinted for his life, half expecting to take a shot in the back at any time.

But no shot came, and a minute later he was back deep within the forest. Slowing up, he risked a glance over his shoulder, saw no one there, and turned in the direction of the river. He’d done what he could, and risked his life, to buy time for a girl he’d never met to escape from pursuers who were after her for a reason he’d probably never know. Now he was going to double back and try to find her sister somewhere in one of the biggest, loneliest forests in the country.

He no longer had any bullets in his gun. He had no means of communication. In reality, getting involved in all this was madness. Yet, Jesus, it felt good.

And if he could find that little girl, it would make it all worth it.

If he could find her . . .

Thirty-four

Last night

MIKE BOLT SANK his first pint of the week before the barman had even come back with his change.

It tasted that good.

It was just after 6.30 on a chilly Friday evening, and Bolt was in the bar of his local pub, The Pheasant, just down the road from the loft apartment in Clerkenwell that had been his home for more than seven years now. The place was full, but mainly with the local after-work crowd, and Bolt only recognized a couple of faces. He tended to get in the pub a couple of times a week, and he knew a few of the locals well enough to chat to, but they were acquaintances, not friends. He didn’t really have friends as such, not even among those he’d worked with in the Force down the years. Everyone was an acquaintance. He liked to think that it suited him just fine like that, but deep down, he knew it didn’t. The fact was, he was afraid of getting too close to people – a reaction, he supposed, to what had happened to his wife, Mikaela.

He thought of Mo Khan, who would be back home with his wife and kids, while he was sitting here alone downing pints of lager, waiting to spot someone he knew well enough to snatch a conversation with. Mo often told him that his own life wasn’t all fun and laughter. ‘Sometimes I’d give my right arm for a few minutes of peace and quiet’ was one of his typical refrains, delivered while rolling his eyes at how frenetic his existence was, but Bolt knew that Mo wouldn’t change a thing about his own life, and was only saying these things to make him feel better.

‘Needed that, eh?’ said the barman as he returned with the change. He was a young Polish guy called Marius with big tattooed arms, who Bolt occasionally saw doing weights in the gym. ‘Must have been a hard week.’ He looked at the yellowing bruise on Bolt’s left cheek where he’d been struck by Leonard Hope during his escape four days earlier, and which still hurt like hell even though nothing was broken.

‘Hard enough,’ answered Bolt, ordering a second pint. He didn’t think Marius knew that he was the SIO on the Disciple case, even though it was currently the most high-profile murder investigation in the country. He’d only worked behind the bar for about three months, and Bolt tried to keep his personal and professional life as separate as possible. Those people who knew him in here were aware that he was a senior cop, but they never questioned him about it, which suited him just fine.

But Marius the barman was right. It had been a hard week. Leonard Hope’s name and photo had been all over the news, and yet four days on from the discovery of evidence at his home that inextricably linked him to the Disciple murders, he’d still not been arrested. Nor had there been even a single sighting. It was almost as if he’d never existed, a situation that was unheard of in these days of blanket media coverage and security cameras on every corner.

The fact that they’d come so close to catching Hope didn’t help either. It made them look incompetent, and none more so than Bolt himself who, it was reported in the papers, had got to within a yard of Hope, only to lose him when the suspect had turned and knocked him out with a killer punch. The coverage was lurid, and though not entirely true, it had had the desired effect. It had made Bolt look stupid, and he’d wondered several times in the intervening days how long he was going to last as the head of the inquiry.

The realization that he might be ousted from it frustrated him more than anything else about the whole case. It was unfinished business now. He had to be the one who brought down Hope, especially after what they’d found in his loft. A small tin box hidden under the floorboards had revealed a number of items of jewellery belonging to the female victims, some of it bloodstained. Alongside them in the box, in a clear plastic freezer bag and wrapped in clingfilm, had been the left-hand little fingers of the first three female victims. Even more gruesome had been the film footage found hidden away in a file on Hope’s PC. There were three separate films taken at each of the first three murder scenes. They were all very short and concentrated on the torture of the female victims by the man wielding the camera. Bolt had managed to sit through all the footage – seven, interminably long minutes in total – and the horror of it would stay with him for the rest of his days. He’d become used to the savagery of his fellow human beings, having been involved in far too many murder investigations over the years, but he’d never become immune to it, and he’d never come across anything like the extreme sadism that Leonard Hope exhibited. It was for this reason that Bolt wanted to stay involved in this case. He wanted to be the man who read that bastard his rights.