She had not even known.

Home. Now. She started the engine and reversed the car. As she turned, she saw a couple of youths peering at her, laughing, fingers raised obscenely. Just don’t ever get ill when I’m around, she thought, don’t call me, don’t have an accident, don’t c

Let it go. She was driving too fast.

The road away from the Dulcie estate took her on to the bypass, after which she skirted a grid of avenues leading to the Hill. Revulsion she had not felt for months, and fear too, rose up in her and seemed to fill her mouth with a bitter taste. She did not want to go near the Hill, where women had been attacked and so swiftly, expertly murdered. There was a stain over the place that would never be erased from Lafferton’s consciousness. Someone had written a book about the case, someone else was making a television documentary, keeping it all alive, keeping the wounds open.

She took a detour round Tenbury Walk. The hospice was at the bottom of here. The lights shone softly behind drawn blinds; a couple of cars were parked at the front. Cat turned into the entrance and pulled up beside them.

Twelve

“Chapman.”

“Call just came in, guv. Natalie Coombs, aged twenty-six, lives in Fimmingham. Reports her next-door neighbour has a silver Mondeo registration XT c something. She suddenly panicked because her six-year-old daughter spends quite a bit of time round there apparently.”

“Has the child said anything?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Neighbour’s name?”

“Ed Sleightholme.”

“Get someone round there. Now.”

“Guv.”

The driver murmured urgently, and Chapman glanced up. “Bugger.”

“They’re turning off, sir.”

The patrol car in front had veered left, leaving the dual carriageway, and was following the Mondeo on to a B-road.

“He’s not going to Scarborough.”

“Where then?”

“Not sure c” The rain had lessened slightly but the clouds were still dark, banking up as they ran towards the sea, and the narrower road was treacherous.

“OK, Katie, let’s not cause a pile-up.”

“Sir.” The driver eased off but ahead of them, the patrol car streaked after the Mondeo, sending up sheets of spray behind it.

“Funny, isn’t it,” Chapman said, leaning back in his seat, relaxed and calm. “Give them a rope and they’ll often hang themselves c If he hadn’t panicked when the boys stepped after him, he’d not have roused any more interest. Now look at him.”

“Have you got enough to arrest him?” asked Simon.

“Just about enough to bring him in for questioning.”

“Jesus.” Simon closed his eyes. He opened them on an empty road ahead. The cars had peeled off on to yet another B-road. Lightning cracked across the sky, out to sea. The Mondeo drove towards it.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the coast, and a stretch of open, scrubby ground off the road.

They jumped out. The patrol car had stopped. The Mondeo was slewed round a few yards away from them and the driver was out and running fast towards the cliff edge.

“Bloody hell.”

“He’s going to kill himself,” Chapman muttered.

“Not if I have anything to do with it he’s bloody not.”

Something made Serrailler run, something that had been building up inside him like the storm and now hit him in the stomach as a burst of fury. The uniformed officers were making across the grass but they were slow, one of them a heavy man, the other seemingly in trouble with his boot. Simon passed them, confident, running easily. What gave him speed was his certainty, cast iron and unwavering, that he was following the murderer of David Angus, Scott Merriman, Amy Sudden c He had to catch the man before he reached the cliff edge and hurtled himself through the air on to the rocks far below.

But as he drew nearer, Serrailler realised that there was a path. He did not look back to see if the others were following. He was on his own now, this was his chase and his arrest.

The man vanished.

Simon reached the cliff edge and hesitated, looking down. The path was narrow and precipitous, cut into the cliff, without any handrail or holding place, but clearly the man knew exactly where to go and what to do after he plunged over the edge.

Simon did not hesitate.

It was the wind which shocked him and almost threw him off balance; rain was driven hard into his face. The sky was livid, lightning forking across it, though still a way off. He calculated that they had some time before the storm posed any threat and by then he intended them to be back up the path and into the cars.

He slithered, caught his breath and tried to grab an outcrop of rock, but the stones slipped out of his hand and rumbled down the cliff, gaining speed. Ahead of him, the man was like a monkey, agile, sure-footed, clambering and scrabbling down. Below them, far below, a narrow ribbon of dark sand, strewn with rocks. Ahead of that, the sea, roaring up, swollen and gathering height. Simon looked back. He had come further than he’d realised. The figures peering down at him from the clifftop seemed miles away. But heights had never bothered him and he was sure-footed now, though the rain was washing debris down the path behind him, and his hand slipped on the rock as he tried to gain a hold. The lower part of the cliff was the hardest to negotiate—the rocks here were jagged, full of crevices and slippery with lime green seaweed. Several times he almost fell and once, in saving himself, gashed his palm on a piece of outcrop. Then they were down and he was in pursuit, the flat sand sucking at his feet. The man was trying to run but they were both slowed now. The wind was full in their faces and the storm was being swept inshore; the lightning streaked down the sky followed within seconds by thunder. But it was not the storm which troubled Simon. It was the tide which was gathering speed and boiling in fast towards them.

They were in a small curved bay, separated from the others by long breakwaters of rocks that stretched out into the sea like the narrowing tails of prehistoric monsters; as he raced and leapt his way along the narrow belt of sand, the bones of the tails were being submerged one by one.

Ahead of him, the man leapt on to a high rock and clambered towards the cliff.

Simon was close now.

Then he saw the cave mouth, a toothless maw in the base of the cliff and guarded by a Cerberus of rocks. Seconds later, he was on to them. The cave smelled of long-dead fish and salt water.

For a moment, he wondered if it might be the entrance to some place of safety out of the tide, set deep in the cliff, but as he bent to get inside, he saw that it did not go far back and that the rock above was so low he would scarcely be able to stand upright. There was no light. He had no torch. Behind, the sea was roaring at one with the thunder.

“Get out of here, you idiot, come back out, the tide’s going to pour in at any minute.”

Nothing. Then a voice that shocked him into complete stillness.

“God. Oh God, it’s the wrong cave. You’ve got to get out. You’re blocking me. Move.”

The voice rose to a hysterical pitch.

“Get out!” the woman screamed.

Serrailler began to back away slowly, holding on to the rocks, the sides of the cave c As he emerged into the greenish light of the storm, he saw that there was one way of escape, a ledge perhaps a dozen feet up against the cliff face, just reachable in three or four carefully placed strides. The tide was swirling a yard away.

“Come out and climb after me c can you do that?” He looked round. The woman was coming out of the cave. Short dark hair. A dark jacket. Black jeans. White, horrified face. Dark sunken eyes.

Forget who it is, concentrate, focus.

“Come on c take one step at a time, do everything I do. Do as you’re told, right?”