A child had gone missing from the town of Herwick. He was eight and a half. At three o’clock on the first Monday after schools had broken up for the summer holiday, Scott Merriman had been walking from his own house to that of his cousin, Lewis Tyler, half a mile away. He had carried a sports bag containing swimming things—Lewis’s father was taking them to a new Water Dome half an hour’s drive away.

Scott had never arrived at the Tyler house. After waiting twenty minutes, Ian Tyler had telephoned the Merrimans’ number and Scott’s own mobile. Scott’s eleven-year-old sister Lauren had told him Scott had left “ages ago.” His mobile was switched off.

The road down which he had walked was mainly a residential one, but it also took traffic on one of the busiest routes out of the town.

No one had come forward to report that they had seen the boy. No body had been found, nor any sports bag.

There was a school photograph of Scott Merriman on the conference-room wall, a foot away from that of David Angus. They were not alike but there was a similar freshness about them, an eagerness of expression which struck Simon Serrailler to the heart. Scott was grinning, showing a gap between his teeth.

A DC came into the room with a tray of tea. Serrailler started to make a calculation of how many plastic cups of beverage he had drunk since joining the police force. Then Chapman was on his feet again. There was something about his expression, something new. He was a measured, steady man but now he seemed to be sharpened up, shot through with a fresh energy. In response to it, Simon sat up and was aware that the others had done the same, straightened their backs, drawn themselves from a slump.

“There is one thing I haven’t done in this inquiry. I’m thinking it’s mebbe time I did. Simon, did Lafferton use forensic psychologists in the David Angus case?”

“As profilers? No. It was discussed but I vetoed it because I thought they simply wouldn’t have enough to work on. All they would be able to give us was the general picture about child abduction—and we know that.”

“I agree. Still, I think we ought to turn this thing on its head. Let’s play profiling. Speculate about the sort of person who may have taken one, or both, of these children—and others for all we know. Do any of you think it would be a useful exercise?”

Sally Nelmes tapped her front teeth with her pen.

“Yes?” Chapman missed nothing.

“We’ve no more to go on ourselves than a profiler would have, is what I was thinking.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“I think we need to get out there, not sit weaving stories.”

“Uniform and CID are still out there. All of us have been out there, and we will be again. This session, with DCI Serrailler’s input, is about the core team taking time out to think c think round, think through, think.” He paused. “THINK,” he said again, louder this time. “Think what has happened. Two young boys have been taken from their homes, their families, their familiar surroundings, and have been terrified, probably subjected to abuse and then almost certainly murdered. Two families have been broken into pieces, have suffered, are suffering, anguish and dread, they’re distraught, their imaginations are working overtime, they don’t sleep, or eat, or function normally, they aren’t relating fully to anyone or anything and they can never go back, nothing will ever return to normal for them. You know all this as well as I do, but you need me to remind you. If we get nowhere and all our thinking and talking produces nothing fresh for us to work on, then I intend to bring in an outside expert.” He sat down and swung his chair round. They formed a rough semicircle.

“Think,” he said, “about what kind of a person did these things.”

There was a moment’s charged silence. Serrailler looked at the DCS with renewed respect. Then the words, the suggestions, the descriptions came, one after the other, snap, snap, snap, from the semicircle, like cards put down on a table in a fast-moving game.

“Paedophile.”

“Loner.”

“Male c strong male.”

“Young c”

“Not a teenager.”

“Driver c well, obviously.”

“Works on his own.”

“Lorry driver c van man, that sort c”

“Repressed c sexually inadequate c”

“Unmarried.”

“Not necessarily c why do you say that?”

“Can’t make relationships c”

“Abused as a child c”

“Been humiliated c”

“It’s a power thing, isn’t it?”

“Low intelligence c class C or below c”

“Dirty c no self-esteem c scruffy c”

“Cunning.”

“No—reckless.”

“Daring, anyway. Big idea of himself.”

“No, no, dead opposite of that. Insecure. Very insecure.”

“Secretive. Good at lying. Covering up c”

On and on they went, the cards snapping down faster and faster. Chapman did not speak, only looked from face to face, following the pattern. Serrailler, too, said nothing, merely watched like the DCS, and with a growing sense of unease. Something was wrong but he could not put his finger on what or why.

Gradually the comments petered out. They had no more cards to snap down. They were slumping back in their chairs again. DS Sally Nelmes kept snatching glances at Serrailler—not especially friendly glances.

“We know what we’re looking for well enough,” she said now.

“But do we?”Marion Coopey bent forward to retrieve a sheet of paper by her feet.

“Well, it’s a pretty familiar type c”

For a second the two women seemed to confront one another. Serrailler hesitated, waiting for the DCS, but Jim Chapman said nothing.

“If I may c”

“Simon?”

“I think I know what DC Coopey means. While everyone was throwing their ideas into the ring I started to feel uneasy c and the trouble is c it’s just a familiar ‘type’ c put everything together and it paints a picture of what you all suppose is your typical child abductor.”

“And isn’t it?” Sally Nelmes challenged.

“Maybe. Some of it will fit, no doubt c I’m just concerned—and this is what always concerns me with profiling when it’s swallowed whole—that we’ll make an identikit and then look for the person who fits it. Great when we really are dealing with identikit and it’s of someone several people may have actually seen. But not here. I wouldn’t want us to become fixated on this ‘familiar type’ and start excluding everyone who doesn’t fit.”

“You’ve got more to go on in Lafferton then?”

He wondered whether DS Nelmes had a chip on her shoulder or had simply taken a dislike to him, but he dealt with it in the way he always did, and which was almost always successful. He turned to her and smiled, an intimate, friendly smile, with eye contact, a smile between themselves.

“Oh, Sally, I wish c” he said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Jim Chapman had registered every nuance of the exchange.

Sally Nelmes shifted slightly, and the trace of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

They broke for lunch, after which Serrailler and Jim Chapman took a walk out of the flat-roofed, 1970s HQ block and down an uninteresting road leading towards the town. In Yorkshire there was no sun and apparently no summer. The sky was curdled grey, the air oddly chemical.

“I’m not being much help,” Simon said.

“I needed to be sure we weren’t missing something.”

“It’s a bugger. Your lot are as frustrated as we’ve been.”

“Just not for so long.”

“These are the ones that get to you.”

They reached the junction with the arterial road and turned back.

“My wife’s expecting you for dinner, by the way.”

Simon’s spirits lifted. He liked Chapman, but it was more than that; he knew no one else up here and the town and its environs were both unfamiliar and unattractive and the hotel into which he had been booked was built in the same style as the police HQ with as much soul. He had half wondered whether to drive back to Lafferton at the end of the day’s work rather than stay there, eating a bad meal alone, but the invitation to the Chapmans’ home cheered him.