be following you and another quite different person would snatch your kids, wasn’t it? A sudden image of Ricky Kemp flashed into his head. I know some really bad people.
And for all Jackson knew, there was a third person who was leaving the threatening messages. Some of the little grey cells had fainted with the effort of understanding and were being fanned by other little grey cells.
‘Well …’ she said.
‘Well what?’
‘They’re sort of related and they’re sort of not related.’
‘Oh, good, that makes everything really clear. Crystal-clear, that is. Are they working in tandem? These people, whoever they are? Are they even aware of each other? What did you do to bring about all this, for God’s sake?’
‘Questions, questions,’ Crystal said.
‘Well, how about answers, answers?’ Jackson said. ‘Or we can go to the police, which is what any sensible, law-abiding person would have done by now if their children had been abducted.’
‘I’m not going to the police. I’m not putting my kids at risk.’
‘I would say they’re already at risk.’
‘Further risk. And anyway, for all I know the police are involved.’
Jackson sighed. He was about to object – he didn’t have much time for conspiracy theories – but then the phone in Crystal’s hand pinged to announce the arrival of a text. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘It’s from Harry. No, not Harry,’ she amended and gave a low moan of despair. She held the phone aloft so Jackson could see the photo of a furious-looking Harry holding Candy in his arms. ‘Same message,’ she said dully.
‘Keep your mouth shut?’
‘And more.’
‘What more?’
‘Keep your mouth shut or you’ll never see your kids alive again.’
It seemed to Jackson to be an overly melodramatic message. Kidnappers who held people hostage were rare, unless they were terrorists or pirates, neither of which seemed likely in this case. And kidnappers who killed their hostages were even rarer. And common-or-garden kidnappings were about money or custody, not ensuring someone’s silence (and who on earth would want a three-year-old on their hands?), but there’d been no ransom demand, no request for anything. Just intimidation. It was all a bit Cosa Nostra. Was it possible, he wondered, that Crystal was in some kind of witness protection?
‘What about your friend?’
‘Friend?’
‘The woman you went to see today. The one who lives above the betting shop. Is she part of this whole mysterious Q-but-no-A thing you’ve got going on? And answer gave she none,’ Jackson murmured as Crystal continued to gaze silently at her phone. And then he said what all good TV cops say at this point – Collier himself was particularly fond of the phrase: ‘If you want me to help you, you’re going to have to tell me everything.’
‘It’s not a pretty story.’
‘It never is.’
And it wasn’t. It was a long and winding tale and it took them all the way to Flamborough Head.
They were both quiet as they drove up towards the headland. Jackson was thinking about the cliffs there – very high cliffs – and he suspected that Crystal was thinking about them as well. No place to bring kidnapped kids. Flamborough Head was a known suicide spot and he supposed that a place where people jumped off cliffs was also a good place to push people off. He had a sudden picture of Vince Ives going over the edge.
There was the lighthouse and there was a café and nothing else much, but this was where Harry’s beacon had stopped moving nearly fifteen minutes ago. There were a few cars in the car park. Walkers came here to brave the wind and take in the view. ‘Looks like they’re in the café,’ Crystal said, peering at the phone.
No sign of them in the café, of course. The likelihood of simply coming across the kidnappers eating toasted teacakes and rendering up the children was remote in the extreme, but Crystal was already running towards a bloke who was sitting at a table with his back to them, nursing a mug of something.
To the guy’s surprise, to put it mildly, before he could do anything about it Crystal had her arm round his neck and was holding him in a chokehold. The contents of his mug – tomato soup, unfortunately – went everywhere, but mostly in his lap.
When Jackson had managed to prise Crystal off the guy – she had a grip like a boa constrictor – she indicated a mobile sitting on the table. It had one of those personalized covers on which Jackson could see a photo of