He said nothing.

His phone rang again.

“RAF helicopter ETA fifteen minutes. Can you hold on?”

“Yes.”

“Want the good news?”

“What?”

“The kid’s alive.”

“Where?”

“Tied up in the car boot.”

Simon did not look at Edwina Sleightholme. He might have kicked her over the edge on to the rocks below.

“The chopper’ll take you to Scarborough hospital. We’ll get over there as soon as we have it in sight. Hang on to him.”

“Oh, don’t you worry.”

“We’ll make the arrest once the docs have discharged him.”

“Shame.”

“You’ll get your chance.”

“One thing though.”

“What?”

“Ed stands for Edwina.”

He heard a long intake of breath.

Simon glanced sideways at her shoe, a black flat slip-on with a small bit of gold chain across the front. Not a man’s shoe, just as the hands clutching her head were not man’s hands, they were slim, soft, nicely shaped hands with neatly trimmed oval, unpainted nails. The hair he could see between her fingers was shining with rain, dark as a seal’s back.

He had often looked at killers and understood what made them tick, seen violence pent up in their bodies, seen eyes wild with rage in deranged faces. Once or twice he had been puzzled. The Lafferton serial killer had been a psychopath, unable to feel empathy or emotion, self-absorbed, with a hidden agenda of his own. But this time, next to a young woman, terrified, sick, hunched down into a small slight figure against the wind and rain, this time, he was completely bewildered, lost for any explanation, any link between her and the abduction, torture, murder of young children. He could get no hold on it at all.

They heard the noise long before they could see the yellow bird emerge out of the grey mass of cloud and water. The blades churned up the air, seeming to chop it about and hurl it at them like clods of wet earth.

Sleightholme stood up suddenly.

“Get down. Stay absolutely still.”

“I’m not going in that fuckin’ thing, I’ll jump off here before that.” Her face was streaming with water, but her mouth was set, her eyes looking wildly about.

“Stay STILL.”

She lunged out without warning and grabbed at Serrailler’s shoulder and he rocked, desperately trying to steady them both. Above them, the noise of the helicopter seemed to have broken through his eardrums into his skull. She jabbed out a hand again, fingers clasped open like a claw. He caught it and wrenched her wrist back so that he saw her mouth open in pain. He needed handcuffs and had none.

Then the helicopter began to retreat, the noise muffled in the cloud bank again.

“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted.

Seconds later his phone rang. He was holding on to the woman and his hand was slippery, so that he all but dropped it.

“Yes?”

“They’ve backed off because they need to know whether there is any chance she’d be a threat to safety if she’s winched on board. Any weapon or potential weapon?”

“How do I bloody know?”

“Well, ask, dammit. Cigarette lighter, pen even c”

“Better assume so then.”

“OK. They saw a struggle c We’ve no view of you from up here. Is that correct?”

“Nothing serious. Just tell them to get us off this bloody ledge.”

“They won’t take someone who is a risk to the safety of the crew and the chopper. Can you vouch that the woman is not?”

Serrailler hesitated. He could not. Ed was a woman, small and slight, easily overpowered, but she was also furious and terrified, and without much to lose. He knew he ought not to guarantee anything, but if he didn’t, then what? There was no other way they could be brought to safety. It would be some hours yet before the tide had receded enough for them to be able to clamber down to the sand.

He clicked off his phone and turned to the woman.

“Listen. I have to guarantee that you have no weapon, and that you will not behave in a manner calculated to jeopardise anyone’s safety—mine and that of the helicopter crew. I must be bloody mad to ask for your word on that.”

“And if you don’t? If I don’t?” She looked at him and he saw a flash of malice in her eyes. It had not been there before.

“If you refuse to cooperate?”

She nodded.

“I’ll knock you out.”

She blinked.

“Or else they’ll take me and leave you.”

“They wouldn’t bloody dare.”

“Oh yes they would. That’s what the call was about. So?”

He saw her thinking furiously. Looking down over the cliff. Thinking. Looking at him. Thinking.

“OK.”

“What?”

“OK, I said.”

He hesitated. He had to go with it. Trust her. Jesus. He called Chapman.

“Can you get the pilot to talk to me?”

“Disconnect. I’ll ask.”

The rain came in a squall, battering at the side of the cliff and drenching them.

It was several minutes before the phone rang.

“Flight Sergeant Cuff, RAF 202 Squadron.”

“DCI Serrailler. I understand your concerns, Sergeant. It’ll be fine.”

“Do you take full responsibility? It’s your call, Chief Inspector.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t see any threat to my crew?”

“No.”

A split second. Then, “OK, we’re coming back in. The winchman will be on his way down. But I can’t get closer than fifteen feet in to the cliff and conditions are difficult. It may take some time. He will come on to the ledge and you will be strapped together—we can’t risk taking the prisoner separately. Any injuries?”

“Minor.”

“OK. Hang on.”

Serrailler had known it before. Once a rescue was under way, once safety was almost his, the tension increased rather than slackened. The time it took for the chopper to get close enough to the cliff to send down the winchman seemed to be far greater than the time they had already been stranded on the ledge. The helicopter hovered above, driving cold air on to them, then pulled up and away, before coming in again at a different angle, swerved, backed off. Now Serrailler and the woman were crouching and he had hold of her wrist. Her arm was limp, her expression flat and tired. The rain had plastered her short hair to her head like a cap.

“They can’t get us, can they?”

“They’ll get us.”

The helicopter came in again slightly lower, and swung round against the wind. It hovered. Steadied. Then the door slid open. The winchman stepped on to the ledge and raised his arm as he swung. The winch went slack. He bent forward and gestured. The wind blew in a wild gust and almost knocked him off his feet, and it was several more minutes before he had reached Serrailler and Sleightholme and lashed them securely together.

Minutes later, they were being hauled over the ledge into the body of the chopper. Simon remembered how large the RAF rescue helicopters were inside, with room enough for a dozen stretcher cases as well as paramedics and crew. It was noisy, and the tilting and swaying unnerving.

Edwina Sleightholme slumped, head down, staring at the floor.

The winchman was back and the doors were closed and secured.

“We’re taking you to the hospital. You’ll meet up with DCS Chapman there. ETA four minutes.”

“Thanks. God, I mean it.”

“No probs. Wondered if we’d get close enough for a minute. Let’s see your hand.”

“I’m fine.”

They both looked at the woman, sitting hunched forwards. Simon shook his head, then, in a moment of revulsion, turned away from Sleightholme, to stare out of the helicopter window at the churning sea and sky.

Thirteen

“I’m fine,” Cat Deerbon said, “I’m fine. I ought to be able to see off a young thug like that c”

Sister Noakes took the cup of tea from her before Cat’s shaking hand sent it on to the floor.

Something had happened as she had stepped through the doors of Imogen House into the nighttime quietness. The muscles and bones inside her legs felt as if they had dissolved, and she had been saved by one of the nurses as she had started to crumple. Now, she sat in Penny Noakes’s room, feeling a fool.