‘Hello, Hannah. Surprised to see me?’
It was Katherine’s voice – her tormentor and jailer.
‘Don’t be. I’m not the sadistic type, so I’ve decided to spare you.’
Mickery looked up at her, unable to process what she was hearing.
‘But I need you to do one little thing for me first.’
Hannah waited. Reeling as she was, she knew straight away that she would do anything Katherine asked. She wanted to live more than she’d ever wanted anything before.
As the car drove off, Hannah found herself smiling. Something – she didn’t know what – had happened. And she had been delivered from purgatory. Any price – any – was worth paying for that.
It never even occurred to her to wonder what had happened to Sandy. He didn’t exist any more as far as she was concerned.
Would she ever stop laughing at them? Mickery and Morten constituted the fifth forced abduction and still the killer didn’t put a foot wrong. Sanderson, Grounds and McAndrew had supervised diligent house-to-house enquiries, hoping to find a witness to this latest abduction. Whittaker had allocated them extra uniformed officers – but all to no avail. Charlie and Bridges had spent the day at the Morten family home supervising the crime scene but not a single shred of forensic evidence had been found. The trio had obviously been drinking champagne – two sedative-laced flutes lay where they had fallen on the floor and the imprint of another was dusted up on the coffee table – but the third glass and the bottle had vanished. Charlie fielded an angry call from Whittaker and was forced to admit she had no positive developments to give him.
Bold to do it in the victim’s home. Sandy’s wife had been abroad visiting relatives, but even so. Was the killer untouchable? It was beginning to look that way. The Morten house was a noisy, stressful place – the forensics circus was in town and there in the background was the wife – Sheila – who refused to go and stay with friends, feeling no doubt that her belated presence there, or at the very least her refusal to desert the family home, would somehow guarantee Sandy’s safe return. It wouldn’t, Charlie knew that, though she obviously couldn’t say anything to the wife. Sandy would return in a body bag or as a traumatized, gibbering wreck. The whole atmosphere was oppressive and as another wave of nausea struck, Charlie hurried outside.
She’d just about made it out of sight when she hurled. A big, feisty regurgitation of her breakfast. Charlie had felt sick all day and in more ways than one. There was something profoundly odd and disquieting about bringing a new life into this dark world. She and Steve had been so looking forward to starting a family, but now Charlie was full of doubts. What right did she have to bring a baby into