multiple sources – a refund, an invitation, a letter, an apology – messages on WhatsApp, direct messages on social media, all looking reasonably genuine and carrying the same link with the same payload. All the parents had to do was click on that link once, on any of their devices. It didn’t matter if they ignored, blocked, deleted most of them, because sooner or later they would click on one in a moment of distraction, or tiredness, or boredom – and then he was in. The payload delivered a small piece of malware giving him remote access to that device, and from that point on he was no longer on the outside looking in.
He was on the inside.
He hadn’t even been looking for it, not exactly. He just wanted to get inside their heads after their daughter had been taken. Get the inside track.
That was how he had found out. They’d used coded terms at first, even with each other, but over time it became clear that there was something in their family that no one else knew about. Something they had kept hidden.
A terrible, dangerous secret.
A baby.
The shiver of excitement was still fresh. The thrill of discovery, of knowing before anyone else, being in the unique position to do something about it. The knowledge of the danger she represented, the danger she would be in.
The baby is the answer, the thing around which all the rest of us are in orbit.
She was the key to all of it.
And that was why her picture was destined to end up on his wall.
26
I drive slowly, the engine grumbling in third gear. The staggered junction is little more than a trim triangle of grass, a carved wooden signpost across the way pointing to nearby villages, a black-painted barn on the left and a high stone wall facing me on the far side. I steer through the slow turn and catch sight of the barmaid further up the road. Beamond End Lane. The road is narrower here and the footpath has disappeared so she’s walking along the road, beside a neatly-clipped hedge. Still on her phone. I brake and pull in again behind a Mercedes estate parked on the left.
If she’s spotted me, she gives no sign of it. About a hundred metres up she crosses the road and walks into a driveway, disappearing from view. I pull out again and drive closer, slowing to a crawl as I pass a row of ivy-covered cottages that ends in an open wooden gate, a sign for Silverdale Barn. The drive leads into a courtyard where a couple of cars are parked, a two-storey barn conversion on the far side. Two front doors on the ground floor. Flats? The barmaid is trotting up a wooden staircase at the end of the barn, to another door on the first floor.
There. She knocks on the door and I pull away again in case she turns and sees me.
Another barn conversion stands opposite, with another large courtyard. No cars, no animals, no signs of life in the windows. Hopefully they are at work, at whatever City hedge fund or investment bank that means they can afford to live in this little corner of home counties paradise. I pull into the courtyard, gravel crunching noisily under my car tyres, and kill the engine. Grab the AA map book from the back seat of my car and open it across the steering wheel to give the impression of a wayward traveller, angling the rearview mirror so I can see the barmaid at the top of the wooden staircase. She’s talking to someone, but she’s side-on to me so I can’t see who’s answered the door. I say a little prayer that it’s Kathryn, that she’s standing on the doorstep bouncing Mia on her hip, that she’ll look at the handbag and shake her head, wondering what’s going on. Nope, sorry, the bag’s not mine, never seen it before.
The barmaid hands over the bag, gives a little wave to whoever’s at the door and makes her way down the staircase again. I watch in the mirror as she ambles across the courtyard towards the road, towards me, before turning left to retrace her steps to the Red Lion. She’s back on her phone again, head down, thumbs flying over the screen.
I give her a minute to get to the crossroads before unclipping my seatbelt. I’m about to get out of the car when there is more movement in the mirror. The