Jane knelt and took her hand. It was cold and her mother’s pulse was weak, but she was conscious.

“Jane c?”

“How long have you been here? Who did this to you? Oh God, you rang me and I didn’t realise.”

“I, I think c this morning? Someone rang the doorbell and c just c I couldn’t manage to get up again to the phone c I c thought you might c”

“Darling, I’m going to call the ambulance and the police. I’ll get a blanket but I won’t move you, they’d better do that c hold on a moment.”

Every room that she glanced into as she ran upstairs had been ransacked and overturned. She felt sick.

“This will keep you warm. They’ll be here soon.”

“I am not going to hospital—”

But Jane was already calling the emergency services.

“I’ll die if I go to hospital.”

“Much more likely to die if you don’t.”

Jane sat on the floor and took her mother’s hand. She was a tall, strong woman, with grey hair usually coiled up into an idiosyncratic bun. Now, it was down and anyhow; her features, so full of character, so well defined, with the beaky nose and high cheekbones and forehead, seemed to have sunk in, so that she looked closer to eighty than the sixty-eight she was. In a few hours, old age and vulnerability had come upon her, changing her terribly.

“Are you in pain?”

“It’s c hard to tell c I feel numb c”

“What kind of man was it? How did it happen for goodness’ sake?”

“Two c youths c I heard a car c It’s difficult to remember.”

“Don’t worry. I’m just angry with myself that I didn’t come sooner.”

It was only then that the old look crossed her mother’s face, the one which Jane had come to know so well over the past few years. Magda’s eyes fell, briefly, on her collar and there it was, even now, after everything that had happened—the look of scorn and of disbelief.

Magda Fitzroy was an atheist of the old school. Atheist, socialist, psychiatrist, rationalist, formed in the classic Hampstead mould. Where her daughter’s Christianity, let alone her desire to be ordained a priest, had come from was to her both a mystery and a matter for ridicule. And then the look was gone. Her mother lay, hurt and afraid, in shock and Jane felt for her; she let the paramedics in and told them the little she knew.

One of them examined the cuts on Magda’s head. “I’m Larry,” he said, “and this is Al. What’s your name, my love?”

“I am Dr Magda Fitzroy and I am not your love.”

“Aw, pity about that, Magda.”

“Dr Fitzroy.”

He glanced up at Jane. “She always like this?”

“Oh yes. Ignore her at your peril.”

“You all right?”

Jane had sat down suddenly, hit by the realisation that her mother had been robbed and attacked in her home one quiet weekday morning while the world went about its business, and that she might well have been dead. She began to cry.

Six

The Holly Bush was like something out of a Hammer Horror film, Ed thought, driving up the steep slope to the forecourt. It stood above the fast main road, ugly, turreted and, at night, lit with neon and strings of fairy lights. At Christmas, an illuminated Santa with sleigh and reindeer leered out at the passing traffic, outlined in lights that chased each other endlessly round. Enough to give you a bloody migraine if you stared at them long enough. Only no one did. They shot past, or they were up the slope and in through the door.

It smelled the way that kind of place always smelled, and in the day it looked frowsty and peeling. At least at night the lights gave it a bit of glamour. Not that Ed had been there more than a couple of times at night. Work and pleasure, such pleasure as there was coming to drink in the Holly Bush, didn’t mix.

“Brian?”

Someone was whistling at the back. There had been one vehicle in the car park. It wasn’t a time of year for the sort of people who stopped overnight at the Holly Bush, the reps and lower-pond-life businessmen. The hotel had five bedrooms, which Ed had never seen, three bars, a restaurant and a games room. The cloakrooms, which were all Ed really knew, were jazzed up with horrendous wallpaper, fat blue roses and vivid green vines.

“BRIAN?”

Keep your nerve, that was the thing. Business as usual. Act normal.

At first, that had been scary but it had sorted everything out the year before.

“Bri c”

“All right, I’m bloody here—Oh. It’s you. Do you have to bloody shout the place down?”

“Thought you was in the cellar. OK, what’d you need?”

“How the hell should I know? Your job to go and find out.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to the cloakrooms. I meant what else?”

“What you got?”

All the stock had been in the boot earlier, before it had happened, but now Ed had put the boxes on the back seat, covered with an old dog rug.

“Marlboro, Silk Cut, B & H. Oh and a few Hamlets.”

“How much?”

“Same as last time.”

“How many?”

“I can let you have five hundred.”

“Ay, go on then. You get t’ cloakrooms sorted, I’ll get your money.”

The door behind Ed opened and a couple of men came in. They’d walked past the car then, they c No. They hadn’t. The car was closed and locked, everything covered up, looking like any other car.

“You do coffees?”

“Just the filter.”

“Right, two filters.”

“Owt for you, Ed?”

Yes, be best to hang about a bit, chat, not seem too bothered about rushing off.

“White, one sugar. Thanks.”

The cloakroom machines were easily sorted. Two of condoms needed, one of tampons, still plenty of tights in there, not much call for those at the Holly Bush. The profits weren’t that great, even if the goods came at knock-off prices. It was the cigarettes that fetched the money. They went into a cardboard box labelled Tomato Soup, all sealed up.

One of the men came in. Had a quick look. Ed went on filling up the tower of packets inside the machine, head bent. The man laughed.

“Helping to keep the birth rate down?”

In the bar, the coffee was on the counter, next to a flat tin. Ed glanced around but the other man was deep in the Racing Post, didn’t even look up. The coffee was all right, though, and Brian had gone into the back so there was no need to chat.

“See you,” Ed shouted. There was a grunt from somewhere.

The stuff on the seat had to be covered up again. Later, it could go back into the boot. Later.

The thought of what was in the car boot now sent the old, longed-for surge of electricity up through Ed’s body. When it came, there was nothing, nothing like it, no other excitement to touch it, nothing so utterly satisfying. Where did it come from, this urge that was like no other, this craving that, when answered, brought the deepest of pleasures? To other people, a child was a son or a daughter, a pretty little kid passing in the street, or a wailing nuisance, something to be taught the alphabet and dressed up, something smelly, snotty or cute, whatever. To Ed, a child was all of those things. But, every so often came the craving. When it did, a child was an opportunity.

The car turned out of the Holly Bush and accelerated on to the dual carriageway, just as the petrol warning light flashed amber.

“Bugger.” There was a service station at Kitby. Don’t chance it, don’t risk running out. Jesus, the thought was enough. OK, slow down, eke it out, don’t burn up the bloody fuel.

Kitby petrol station was a lifetime coming.

Seven

Simon Serrailler sat with Jim Chapman in his office. They were both silent, both thinking. Simon had not gone back to Lafferton. Because he hoped the action was going to be here, and to end here, a result for him as well as for the North Riding force. And because his mood had lifted and he was enjoying his involvement.