It was a morning people remembered, for the silver-blue clear sky and the early-morning sunshine and the fact that everything was fresh. They relaxed and felt suddenly untroubled and strangers spoke to one another, passing in the street.

Natalie Coombs would remember it too.

“I can hear Ed’s car.”

“No you can’t, it’s Mr Hardisty’s, and get downstairs, we’ll be late.”

“I want to wave to Ed.”

“You can wave to Ed from here.”

“No, I—”

“Get DOWNSTAIRS.”

Kyra’s hair was all over her face, tangled after sleep. She was barefoot.

“Shit, Kyra, can’t you do anything for your bloody self? c Where’s your hairbrush, where’s your shoes?”

But Kyra had gone to the front room to peer out of the window, waiting.

Natalie poured Chocolate Frosties into a blue bowl. She had eleven minutes—get Kyra ready, finish off her own face, find her stuff, make sure the bloody guinea pig had food and water, go. What had she been thinking. I want to keep this baby?

“There’s Ed, there’s Ed c”

She knew better than to interrupt Kyra. It was a morning thing.

“Bye, Ed c Ed c” Kyra was banging on the window.

Ed had turned from locking the front door. Kyra waved. Ed waved.

“Bye, Kyra c”

“Can I come and see you tonight, Ed?”

But the car had started. Kyra was shouting to herself.

“Stop being a pest.”

“Ed doesn’t mind.”

“You heard. Eat your cereal.”

But Kyra was still waving, waving and waving as Ed’s car turned the corner and out of sight. What the hell was it about bloody Ed? Natalie wondered. Still, it might give her a half-hour to herself tonight, if Kyra could wangle her way next door, to help with the plant-watering or eat a Mars bar in front of Ed’s telly.

“Don’t slosh the milk out like that, Kyra, now look c”

Kyra sighed.

For a six-year-old, Natalie thought, she had a diva’s line in sighs.

The sun shone. People called out to one another, getting into their cars.

“Look, look,” Kyra said, dragging on Natalie’s arm. “Look in Ed’s window, the rainbow thing is going round, look, it’s all pretty colours moving.”

Natalie slammed the car door, opened it again, slammed it for the second time, which was what she always had to do, otherwise it didn’t stay closed.

“Can we have one of them rainbow-making things in our window? They’re like fairyland.”

“Shit.” Natalie screeched to a halt at the junction. “Watch where you’re going, dickhead.”

Kyra sighed and thought about Ed, who never shouted and never swore. She thought she would go round tonight and ask if they could make pancakes.

It was the sun, brilliant on the white wall, that woke Max Jameson, a sheet of light through the glass. He had bought the loft because of the light—even on a dull day the space was full of it. When he had first brought Lizzie here she had gazed around her in delight.

“The Old Ribbon Factory,” she had said. “Why?”

“Because they made ribbons. Lafferton ribbons were famous.”

Lizzie had walked a few steps before doing a little dance in the middle of the room.

That was the loft—one room plus an open-tread staircase to the bedroom and bathroom. One vast room.

“It’s like a ship,” she had said.

Max closed his eyes, seeing her there, head back, dark hair hanging down.

There was a wall of glass. No blind, no curtain. At night the lamps glowed in the narrow street below. There was nothing beyond the Old Ribbon Factory except the towpath and then the canal. The second time, he had brought Lizzie here at night. She had gone straight to the window.

“It’s Victorian England.”

“Phoney.”

“No. No, it really is. It feels right.”

On the wall at the far end of the room was her picture. He had taken the shot of Lizzie, alone beside the lake in her wedding dress, her head back in that same way, hair down but this time threaded with white flowers. She was looking up and she was laughing. The picture was blown up twelve feet high and ten feet wide on the white wall. When Lizzie had first seen it, she had been neither startled nor embarrassed, only thoughtful.

“It’s the best memory,” she had said at last.

Max opened his eyes again and the sunlight burned into them. He heard her.

“Lizzie?” He flung the clothes off the bed in panic at her absence. “Lizzie c?”

She was halfway down the staircase, vomiting.

He tried to help her, to lead her back to safety, but her unsteadiness made it difficult, and he was afraid they would both fall. Then she stared into his face, her eyes wide and terrified, and screamed at him.

“Lizzie, it’s OK, I’m here, it’s me. I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you. Lizzie c”

Somehow he struggled with her to the bed and got her to lie down. She curled away from him making small angry sounds inside her throat like a cat growling. Max ran to the bathroom and sluiced cold water over his head and neck, scrubbed his teeth, keeping the door open. He could see the bed through the medicine cabinet mirror. She had not stirred again. He pulled on jeans and a shirt, ran down into the brilliant room and switched on the kettle. He was breathing hard, tense with panic, his hands sweating. Like a bitter taste, the fear was in his mouth and throat all the time now.

The crash came. He swung round in time to see Lizzie sliding in terrible slow motion from the top of the stairs to the foot, lying with one leg under her body, arms outstretched, roaring in pain and fright like a furious child.

The kettle gushed out steam and the sunlight caught the glass door of the wall cupboard like fire.

Max felt tears running down his face. The kettle was too full and splashed as he poured it, the water scalding his hand.

At the foot of the stairs, Lizzie lay still and the sound that came from her was the bellow of some animal, not any noise that she would make, not Lizzie, not his wife.

Cat Deerbon heard it, holding the telephone.

“Max, you’ll have to speak more slowly c what’s happened?”

But all she could make out, apart from the noise in the background, were a few incoherent, drowned words.

“Max, hold on c I’m coming now. Hold on c”

Felix was crawling along the landing towards the stairgate, smelling of dirty nappy. Cat scooped him up and into the bathroom, where Chris was shaving.

“That was Max Jameson,” she said. “Lizzie c I’ve got to go. Make Hannah help you.”

She ran, zipping up her skirt as she went, avoiding his look.

Outside, the air smelled of hay and the grey pony was cantering round the paddock, tail swishing with pleasure. Cat was out of the drive and fast down the lane, planning what had to be done, how she could make Max Jameson understand, finally, that he could not keep Lizzie at home to die.

Two

Serrailler was in the room without a fly. With him were the senior members of the CID team investigating the child-abduction case.

DCS Jim Chapman was the SIO. Not far from retirement, amiable, experienced and shrewd, he had been a policeman in the north of England all his working life, and in different parts of Yorkshire for most of it. The rest were considerably younger. DS Sally Nelmes was small, neat, serious and a highflyer. DC Marion Coopey, very much in the same mould, had been newly transferred from the Thames Valley. During the session she had spoken least, but what she had said had been sharp and to the point. The other Yorkshireman, Lester Hicks, was a long-term colleague of Jim Chapman and also his son-in-law.

They had been welcoming to a member of an outside force when they might have been suspicious or resentful. They were focused and energetic, and Serrailler had been impressed, but at the same time he recognised the incipient signs of frustration and discouragement he had known in the Lafferton team working under him on the David Angus case. He understood it absolutely but he could not let his sympathy create any sense of impotence, let alone defeatism.