“OK c Jesus, help c”

“We can get up there. Don’t panic. Take a deep breath. Right, I’m going up. Follow me exactly.”

His own voice sounded confident, he thought, authoritative. She would believe he knew exactly what he was doing. He reached for the first handhold in the cliff, grasped it and swung himself up, scrabbling carefully with his feet to find a firm base.

Below him, he heard the woman’s fast, whimpering breaths.

“It’s fine. Wait. Now the next.”

It took a hundred years. It took two minutes. Once, some of the rock pulled away in his hand, almost taking him down with it, but he slid sideways and grasped another outcrop which stayed firm.

Simon reached the ledge, hauled himself carefully on to it, and then lay down on his stomach and reached out his hand to pull the woman up.

The sea had come racing on to the strip of sand, over the low rocks, into the mouth of the cave. The sky was a sullen, sulphurous grey, but for now the lightning had ceased.

“Press back against the cliff. You won’t get blown away like that.”

She managed it, weeping with fear, her hands bleeding, face ashen.

Simon waited until she was next to him, back against the cliff, pressing herself into it as if she could make it open up to admit her body.

He looked at her.

Ordinary. Neither attractive nor plain, neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. An average smallish woman with cropped hair. Ordinary.

“I’m DCI Simon Serrailler from Lafferton Police. Your name?”

She gaped at him as if he had spoken in another language.

“What’s your name?” He raised his voice above the crash and boom of a wave below.

It came out at last, her mouth moving queerly, pushed sideways as if she had had a stroke.

“Ed.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Edwina. Edwina Sleightholme.”

She looked at him. “What will happen?”

“You’ll be taken in for questioning in connection with the abduction of Amy Sudden.”

“Now, for Christ’s sake, now, what’s going to happen here, now?”

She crouched and bent her head. He heard her sobs of fear.

He could not see what was happening above them, nor turn to look up. Once, he thought he heard a shout, but it was swept away by the noise of the sea.

He was strangely calm. He was alone here, with the woman. But on the clifftop he had back-up, and they would have called for assistance; he had no idea how long it would take to come. When would the tide turn?

Ed Sleightholme moved suddenly, edging her body forward.

“Don’t be so bloody stupid.”

“I might as well, I might as well.”

“Why?”

Her body was shaking.

Simon waited, then said, “Nasty way to die.”

“Who’d care?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea. Are you married?”

A slight shake of her head.

“Parents alive?”

Silence. Then the slightest movement again, an inch further forward.

“Friends?”

It sickened him to imagine it. But the family and friends wouldn’t know. They never did. She might have taken and murdered these children and half a dozen more and still have had good friends, lovers, people who cared about her, simply because they did not know.

She said something.

“What?”

Again.

“I can’t hear you.”

He had thought the storm had eased and drifted inland, but now there was a bolt of lightning so close to them Simon thought it had struck the cliff only a few feet away. The thunder made him duck his head. She cowered back, pressing into the cliff again, and grabbed his arm with such strength he thought she would pull him over the cliff with her.

“It’s OK,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “We’re OK. It can’t touch us, the rocks will conduct any lightning downwards.”

He had no idea if it were true but he knew that he had sounded convincing when she loosened her grip on him.

“I didn’t c know that c”

“So long as we keep our backs in contact with the cliff. Just don’t move away from that contact for a second.”

He looked sideways and saw that she had believed him and was pressing her body backwards as if her life depended on it. She had her eyes tight shut.

Simon forced himself to look away from her and to turn his mind to other places, other things c He imagined his nephew Sam at the wicket, face upturned eagerly to the bowler. The sun sifted between the poplar trees at the edge of the cricket field. There was the taste of home-brewed beer in his mouth. He went on painting the picture, animating it, making the film run, the cricket game continue. Anything to keep himself from remembering who was next to him, inches away on the narrow ledge and why and what she had almost certainly done. If he thought of that, he knew he might make a single movement to send her over the edge of the cliff.

He had seen Sam raise his bat to acknowledge the applause for his half-century, when there was a sudden noise which, after a moment, he recognised as the beep of his mobile, buried in his inside pocket.

“Simon? What the hell are you doing?” The line crackled, the voice breaking up.

Simon told Jim Chapman in half a sentence. As he spoke, he saw the woman’s back stiffen.

“Bloody lucky you’re alive.”

“Yes.”

“Right, coastguard’s been alerted and he’s just come back to say RAF 202 Squadron have scrambled a rescue helicopter. On its way.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Any injuries?”

“Nothing much c I’m restraining myself.”

“Right, well, you go on doing that, we want this one whole.”

“Too right. Anything up there?”

A fraction of a pause. Then Chapman said quickly, “You’ll get a full briefing later,” and cut off.

Simon had been close to violent criminals often enough, close to murderers and wife-beaters, handcuffed to them, his own flesh touching theirs, making his skin crawl. But this was different. He had complete authority and complete power over Edwina Sleightholme, barring the fact that she might still make a sudden bid to leap off the ledge to her death. But he did not think she would do that now. Fear was paralysing her.

He wondered how long they would be here before the helicopter arrived, and whether he could summon up the will to have a conversation with her. If it was a question of minutes, he had no need to, but if they were to be here for hours, he would have to talk, keep her going, keep her awake.

He looked at her legs, in the black jeans, her cap of dark hair falling forwards over the knees. Had she taken those children and killed them? How could this be? The profile was all wrong. This was not a woman’s crime. This should have been a man.

If she was innocent, why had she failed to stop for the patrol car, why had she tried to break her neck, and theirs, racing for this coast? What else would have made her dive down the precipitous cliff path to get away from them, except guilt and fear of arrest?

The ledge was cold and his back ached. His arms were stiff and his cut hand throbbed.

The storm was grumbling away inland now and the sky had lightened to a paler grey over the sea. It began to rain again, at first lightly, blown into their faces with the sea spray, but then hard pins of rain lashing them to the cliff. But Simon was conscious of something inside himself that he had missed, something he had once known and almost lost touch with. His tension and excitement were under control, the buzz was helping him not blurring his focus.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t lean over, lean back. Close your eyes.”

“Makes it worse.”

“Look down at the bit of rock in front of you.”

“I’m scared shitless.”

He could have pounced then, asked her how she liked it, whether she realised this was how the children had felt, but worse, a thousand times worse. He wanted to put her through it, describe them to her as he had seen them on the conference-room wall, the pictures of three bright, cheerful, hopeful young faces, to tell her how it had been for the parents, to c