Never Seen Again

by Paul Finch

Genres: Conspiracy Thrillers

Synopsis

'Finch is a born storyteller' PETER JAMES
'Guaranteed to elevate your heart rate' DAVID JACKSON

A GRIPPING AND EXPLOSIVE NEW THRILLER FROM THE MILLION COPY SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A message no one was supposed to hear.

Jodie Martindale's disappearance remains a mystery, unsolved to this day.

A message that will change everything.

David Kelman covered the story. But he made a huge mistake, which cost someone their life.

A message from the missing.

Now, he has evidence he shouldn't have. It's a message from Jodie - who has been missing for six years - but sent just two weeks ago...

'A spine-chilling mystery from the master of suspense' M.J. ARLIDGE

'This might be Finch's best yet ... Grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. If you only buy one crime novel this year, make sure it's Never Seen Again' P.L. KANE

'Exceptional crime writing. Paul Finch continues to raise the bar.' M.W. CRAVEN

'A cracking crime thriller that builds to an action-packed finale. Guaranteed to elevate your heart rate!' DAVID JACKSON

READERS LOVE PAUL FINCH

5 stars 'So bloody good... Pace, twists and what a plot!!'
5 stars 'More twists & turns than a funfair ride. The author definitely knows his police stuff'
5 stars '[A] gripping, breath-holding up-all-nighter'
5 stars 'Fast paced and seems to get faster with every page'
5 stars 'Paul Finch is an absolute must have in your collection'

Release date: March 17, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 480

Sample

Freddie didn’t know why Jodie and Rick were so glum. As they pulled away from the multiplex, his head was filled with the movie’s mind-blowing final images. Bond and his latest girl jumping hand-in-hand down the central section of an abandoned building. The chase along the Thames, Bond in a speedboat, Blofeld in a helicopter. At first, Freddie thought that Rick had quite liked it, his sister’s fiancé muttering as they’d left the cinema about it being ‘derivative of earlier 007s,’ whatever that meant, ‘but still a bit of fun.’

Now though, the silence filling the car was heavy.

‘Everything OK, Jode?’ Freddie ventured.

Jodie didn’t look around from the front passenger seat. ‘Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.’

Freddie glanced from the Audi’s window. It was past ten on an October night, wind whipping the shrivelled leaves along the verges. If they were genuinely cross, it couldn’t have been about the movie, and at no point this evening had he noticed them having words about anything else. Which left one possibility.

They were cross with him.

And yet Jodie had just said that everything was fine. Which wouldn’t have been the case if Freddie had annoyed her. She was twenty-three and he was thirteen – she’d have told him off in no uncertain terms.

‘See you later,’ she’d told everyone earlier that evening, when Rick had arrived. ‘We’re off to see the new Bond.’

Freddie had immediately protested, and the usual strained conversation had followed; their mother attempting to guilt-trip Jodie into taking him along, Jodie resisting more forcefully than usual. Freddie wondered about that. It wasn’t as if he was a difficult kid. And he got on with Rick. Well, the guy was a bit boring – he was training to be a lawyer, and how naff did that sound? – but they ribbed each other a lot, and they both supported Ipswich Town.

But they’d been OK during the actual movie, eating popcorn and chatting …

And then it struck him.

Had Jodie and Rick been planning to do something else? Something they weren’t willing to mention? Freddie couldn’t believe it.

Surely they hadn’t been intending to park up the way they’d used to when they were teenagers? He felt a pang of indignation. All this moodiness because he’d got in the way of that? Though it still didn’t make sense. Not when Rick had his own flat.

They pulled up on a quiet lane, parking at the farthest end of it, a horseshoe of thick bushes, overhanging trees and mountains of dead leaves turning it into a cluttered, shadow-filled cul-de-sac. Rick switched the engine off.

Jodie turned around. ‘Do you want to go for a little walk, Freddie?’

‘No. It’s wet.’

‘It’s not wet. It hasn’t rained since yesterday morning.’

‘It’s cold then.’

Jodie looked to the front again. ‘Don’t you fancy some fish and chips?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘I fancy some.’

‘Go and get some, then.’

‘Don’t be silly, Freddie!’ Her tone was sharp, irritable, which surprised him. They used to play this game years ago, Freddie finding that his status as official gooseberry could be quite lucrative, though the negotiations had usually been good-natured.

‘I don’t see a chippie round here,’ Freddie said.

Jodie readopted her patient tone. ‘If you walk back along the road, there’s a path through the woods on your left.’

‘Through the woods?’ Freddie was unhappy about that. He wasn’t a baby anymore, but the thought of cutting through a wood at night on his own …

‘It’s not real woods,’ she said. ‘Just a belt of trees. Then you’re on the Black Brook golf course.’

‘Golf course?’ Freddie was puzzled.

‘You don’t have to go all the way across it,’ Rick said. ‘If you cut left, you’ll see a sign saying public footpath. Follow that, and it’ll take you to the clubhouse. On the other side of that, you’ll see Wildeve Avenue. Turn right, walk for five minutes and there’re a couple of cottages, a newsagent and a chippie.’

‘I’ll have a saveloy and chips,’ Jodie said, handing him a twenty.

‘Cod and chips for me,’ Rick said. ‘Get yourself anything you want. Keep the change.’

Thoughtfully, Freddie rolled the £20 note between his fingers.

Jodie regarded him through the rear-view mirror. ‘OK … how much?’

Freddie pursed his lips. ‘Thirty at least.’

She swung around in her seat.

‘Thirty’s fine,’ Rick cut in, putting a hand on Jodie’s shoulder. ‘Thirty’s absolutely fine.’ He adjusted his glasses and reached under his leather jacket, filching out a wallet, opening it and extricating a twenty. He passed it back. ‘Because we’re springing this on you, let’s call it forty. In fact,’ he dug out an extra tenner, ‘let’s not be stingy. It’s no small thing we’re asking at this time of night, Fredster … so let’s call it fifty.’

Freddie goggled as the additional note was placed in his open palm.

He pulled on his anorak, zipped it, and stepped out into the dank wind. It was twenty yards to the nearest streetlight, its glow repeatedly obscured as semi-naked branches danced around it. Not far after that, he found the path on the left and cut down it, the flickery light fading behind him. He emerged at the foot of a short but steep embankment. At the top, Black Brook golf course unrolled before him. Overhead, the clouds were grey smudges scudding across the moon, but there was sufficient light for him to see the flat prairie of neatly mown grass. Veering left, he came to a cruciform signpost stencilled with the words PUBLIC FOOTPATH and an arrowhead. Beyond that, the ground tilted gently upward. At the top, it flattened off and there was another sign: BEWARE LOW-FLYING GOLF BALLS.

Freddie pivoted around as if one such missile might be hurtling at him right now. His eyes were attuning, and here and there sat clutches of shrubbery. Ahead stood a third signpost. It directed him to the mouth of a narrow alley between two deep rows of thickets, into which the wind funnelled gusts of spinning leaves. Freddie ventured along this nervously, but after that it was open again and all downhill, and about a hundred yards to his left he saw a squat, single-storey building against a row of bright yellow streetlights. The clubhouse.

No lights shone out as he circled around it, while all the windows were shielded by steel lattices. The car park lay empty and on the far side stood a pair of barred double-gates. They were padlocked closed, but there was a single gate alongside them, hanging open.

Turning down Wildeve Avenue, the only sound was the wind. As promised, when Freddie rounded the first bend, he saw a row of buildings on the right. But something about them jumped out straight away.

No lights. At least, not from either of the two shops.

His dismay deepened as he approached. The newsagent and the fish-and-chip shop stood in total darkness. The notice hanging inside the chippie’s glass door read: CLOSED.

He stamped back along Wildeve Avenue. At first he was fuming, but then he remembered the money in his pocket, and it dawned on him that he hadn’t been too badly done to. Basically, they’d wanted him to take a half-hour walk, and had paid him well for it.

He re-crossed the clubhouse car park and re-entered the golf course. His eyes adjusted more quickly this time, and when he found the passage through the thickets, he entered boldly, determined to ignore any scary rustlings or creakings. However, when he was about ten yards in, there was a blood-curdling scream.

He stopped in his tracks.

It had been short but intense.

An idea occurred to him that it might have been a vixen; he’d heard such sounds in the woods near his home. A vixen then … a harmless fox.

Or maybe not.

Freddie raced out of the thicket onto the open fairway, heading downhill. The signposts flickered by, the outer line of trees visible a couple of hundred yards ahead.

There was another intense scream. This one broke off abruptly.

Freddie jumped the small embankment and sped along the path to the road, but as the filtered glow from the streetlight grew brighter, he decelerated, mainly because he didn’t want to look a soppy kid in front of Rick. Even so, he didn’t slow to an actual walk until he was back on the pavement mopping sweat from his brow.

But when he was still fifty yards from Rick’s Audi, he saw that another vehicle was parked alongside it, a van, with its rear double-doors hanging open. And that figures were in motion. Freddie squinted through the tumbling shadows. With thirty yards to go, he realised that a couple of the figures were wearing green boiler suits. He part-relaxed. Paramedics. The van was an ambulance.

Only for new fear to strike him.

Was someone hurt?

He hurried forward, belatedly puzzled that the ambulance, which was clearly marked as such, was dark inside. Its back doors were open, but there was no warmly lit interior.

Another scream ripped the darkness. The same as before: a wailing shriek from the bottom of someone’s soul. And that someone, he now knew without doubt, was not a vixen calling for a mate, but his sister, crying out in sheer terror.

Freddie slid to a halt, watching from ten yards away as three figures in green manhandled someone to the rear of that so-called ambulance and threw them inside it.

‘Jodie!’ he croaked.

Two of the figures glanced round.

There was another scream as a second struggling shape was bundled into the back of the vehicle. This one had to be Rick because he was putting up more of a fight, and it was several seconds before one of the men in green was able to tear himself away and lurch towards Freddie, one hand upraised.

‘OK, son!’ he shouted in an accent Freddie couldn’t place. ‘There is accident.’

Freddie didn’t know which he found the more chilling. That the guy approaching, who had lost one of his gloves in the struggle, was now showing a palm bearing the tattoo of what looked like a huge black spider. Or that his face was blacker still, blotted out by a ski-mask.

Freddie bolted, but not along the lane. The nearest houses that way were miles off. Instead, he went left, crashing into the bushes, trying to dodge his way through. He’d covered twenty yards when he heard angry shouts, and an explosive CRACK.

A slug zipped past him, ripping through the foliage.

It goaded him to maniacal efforts, ignoring the branches that whipped and snagged him. As he reached the other side, he heard a heavy crashing of leafage as larger bodies entered the trees.

‘Mara!’ a gruff voice yelled. ‘This way!’

This voice was different from the first. With another CRACK, a second shot was fired.

It clipped Freddie’s left earlobe.

Though it stung, he didn’t so much as yelp as he staggered up the short embankment. He knew that he’d need all the breath he could muster. But common sense was vital too. If he headed left towards the clubhouse and the road beyond, they’d see him, his dark shape a moving target on the moonlit grass. So, he went right, hugging the treeline as he sprinted.

In no time he was two hundred yards away. He risked a backward glance.

They were in close pursuit. One masked figure only fifty yards behind, another twenty yards further back than that. Freddie swerved left.

A third shot sounded.

A divot of grass was kicked up close by. But Freddie was already into the rough, the terrain dropping downhill towards an ornamental pond and then sweeping up to the first fairway. He sobbed for breath as he galloped around the edge of the water, risking yet another backward glance. The pursuers were still close. Even as he looked, light flickered, there was another CRACK, and a leaden wasp whipped past his head. Freddie stumbled on, cresting a low rise onto flatter ground. He dug for his phone, wondering if it would be possible to place a call at the same time as going pell-mell through this half-darkness. But his vision was too filmed with sweat, his fingers too slimy with blood from his ear.

Metal clicked behind him. Directly behind him.

Just as the landscape tilted downward.

A vista Freddie hadn’t previously seen unfolded below him, at its heart the linear glow of a major road. He could even see the headlights moving back and forth. The slope steepened, making it easier; he found new strength.

‘Shit!’ someone shouted.

Freddie glanced back. Their two black shapes were on the higher ground, framed against the night. They’d stopped chasing, though one was pointing down at him. Freddie thought to zigzag, but was travelling at such speed that he feared he’d trip.

A CRACK split the night.

The smashing blow of the bullet was the worst pain he’d ever known …

‘Course, it’s not a problem these days,’ Connie said. ‘Being a shirt-lifter.’

‘We’re not exposing Sleaman because he’s a closet gay,’ David replied. ‘We’re exposing him because he’s been doing the dirty on his wife and kids.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Connie’s raspy cackle sounded especially unpleasant through his in-car speakers. ‘Who’d have thought it? Barry Sleaman … How long’s this been going on?’

‘I doubt it’s just started,’ David replied. ‘But that doesn’t matter, does it? The fact remains I’ve caught him on film. And it’s clear as a bell. He has no deniability whatsoever.’

‘And let me get this straight … you staked out his house in Beaconsfield and followed him every evening he went out until you caught him?’

‘It was only five times.’

‘Even so, darling. Tailing someone from Beaconsfield to Soho. No one can say you don’t earn your money.’

‘You’re happy, then?’

‘How could I not be? You’re getting the front cover and a centre-spread. Love your intro, by the way.’

He’d known that she would. The road divided; he went left towards Tesco.

‘“TV tough guy busts a different kind of nut,”’ Connie read aloud. ‘“Brit-grit film and TV star, Barry Sleaman, famous for his roles as hardcase cops hunting lowlifes through the backstreets of Broken Britain, has this week revealed that he’s got more than a professional interest in those backstreets, not to mention those self-same lowlifes. The burly, bearded actor may be known worldwide as a fearless confronter of hardmen everywhere, but today Scandalous can exclusively report that confronting ‘hard men’ means much more to him than a mere profession. The Yorkshire-born Sleaman (48), who is married and has three children, has long been renowned for his portrayal of macho but tortured heroes, characters with shady pasts but a firm grasp on their personal principles. However, according to Scandalous reporter, David Kelman, it now seems that Sleaman doesn’t just have a shady past but a shady present too, though when it comes to personal principles, he is distinctly lacking. What he has a firm grasp on at present we can only surmise, but last Saturday night it was a young man called Sid, who cheerfully admitted to our intrepid news-hunter: ‘Getting some action from a good-looking celeb like Sleaman was fantastic. I know he’s on the scene a lot. He’d never admit that, but he is. But what a coup for someone like me. I only usually get the scrag-ends …’”’ Connie broke off reading. ‘This guy Sid proved talkative, didn’t he?’

‘Spoke to him in the bar after Sleaman had gone home,’ David said. ‘You’d be amazed how much lads like him’ll tell you once you’ve bunged them a few quid.’

‘Whatever, darling … This is very impressive work.’

Again, he didn’t need her to tell him. The zip-filed photos and videos he’d sent with the story had only been compiled after a considerable expenditure of time; after waiting for hours, night after night, at different points along the suburban avenue where Sleaman’s family resided in their seven-bedroom villa, hoping against hope that each night would be the night. That said, when it finally was the night and the big guy came outside unusually late, it had been comparatively easy tailing his classic MG soft-top the forty miles to Stanmore, where the actor had left it at a row of clapped-out garages, and continued his journey to London in a rickety old Renault Clio.

‘Where’s Sleaman now?’ Connie asked.

‘Lanzarote. The rest of the family went over for the summer hols. Sleaman couldn’t go with them then because he had to do some pick-ups for his latest picture.’

She chuckled again. ‘Pick-ups of one sort or another, that’s for sure. Well, I imagine he’ll be back home pretty quick once this story breaks. You’ll want your usual rate, I take it?’

‘You can take it and shove it.’ David pulled into the supermarket car park. ‘We’re talking double, or I’m going straight to Tittle-Tattle.’

‘Double?’ Even the unshockable Constance Curzon sounded shocked.

‘Connie, I didn’t just shoot Sleaman smooching this kid on The Men’s Room dancefloor; I got him banging the little bastard over a dustbin out back.’

‘David, daaahling …’ She only usually stretched her vowels when she was angry but trying to keep a lid on it because she respected (or needed) the other party. ‘I love you dearly, but I was not expecting to have to pay double.’

‘How do you think I got this scoop? I have big enough overheads as it is. This time there were lots of extras. I had to pay the doorman at The Men’s Room, had to hire different cars. And like I say, Oli Hubert at Tittle-Tattle will always talk to me …’

‘I get you!’ she said curtly. ‘Just don’t make a habit of this. It’s a nasty trick.’

‘Isn’t that the name of this game?’

She cut the call and David drove into the first space he came to. Locking his red Fiesta, he set off on foot.

It was nasty. The whole thing. There were times when he didn’t like to think just how nasty. At one time, he’d used his skills to hunt real stories, to track down people who hadn’t just morally lapsed or had a distant past they’d rather forget, but who were an active menace to society. It was quite a comedown for a once-infamous investigative reporter, even if the work itself was easy.

Sleaman had looked like a frightened rabbit as he’d emerged from that broken-down garage in Stanmore, wearing a disguise that would have fooled no one: jeans, a hoodie and shades. Shades! When it was already mid-evening and the sun almost down. How easy he’d been to follow and photograph. DI Crankworth, the hard-drinking, ass-kicking Murder Squad detective he’d played in Blood City would have sussed that he had a tail in two minutes. Barry Sleaman, predictably, hadn’t. Not even when David had shadowed him on foot from the multi-storey at the bottom end of the Edgware Road. The big oaf had even gone into The Men’s Room through its front door. Any of that would have been good enough for David to make a bob or two, but for the idiot to then have taken his latest squeeze out round the back …

Of course, just because the bloke lacked any of the animal instincts that made his TV persona so appealing was no reason to dislike him. Not when there were four other reasons: his wife and three young children.

Not that that excuse would cut it. A story like this was hardly in the public interest. So, it would sound pretty lame if they tried to sell that line as justification. Irritated by the ever-insoluble nature of the issue, David did what he usually did: wrote all these characters off as dirty, deceiving bastards and put them from his mind.

Inside Tesco, he grabbed a basketful of groceries before meandering to the magazines section. This week’s edition of Scandalous was on the topmost shelf, its plastic-sheathed front page unmistakable as it depicted Sally Ripley, a popular TV weather girl, seated in a crowded pub, grinning bleary-eyed while pulling up her sweater and bra. Her breasts would have been clearly exposed had the magazine not pixelated them out.

RIPLEY RAT-LEGGED

ran the 60-point headline. Below that, the strap added:

Barflies goggle as tipsy totty celebrates big 3-0 by flashing her big 3-8s

And in smaller print:

Uncensored images inside

Down in the bottom corner, a smaller sub-header:

Soap queen’s mob links?

sat above the screen-grab of an older but well-regarded television actress, captured snarling during an intense moment from one of her recent dramas.

Did popular TV postmistress strut her sexy stuff with gangland killers?

the caption asked.

David Kelman gets on the case.

David wheeled his basket to the counter, where, after paying, he stripped off the mag’s plastic cover and flicked his way in until he’d reached his story.

In truth, there hadn’t been much to it. It was common knowledge that faded glamour-puss, Edna Fairchild, once the buxom fall-girl to innuendo-specialists of the 1970s like Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd, had enjoyed a racy past. She’d been married several times and back during her heyday was for three years the wife of Adam Vaughn, a one-time associate of the Krays, though stories had been rife for decades that during the course of this wild youth, Fairchild had attended functions where numerous underworld figures were present.

David had simply regurgitated much of what was already known, but had spiced it up by visiting a few East End bars, where several inebriated old lags, now able to gossip because no one else from that era was left, had elaborated on some of the crazy booze-ups their one-time associates had hosted, which had often involved drug-taking, strip poker, group sex and such, and how it was possible that Vaughn and his then missus had been present.

There’d been so little fact to go on that the double-page splash mostly comprised blown-up photos from Fairchild’s past, needless to say when she was being saucy and provocative, though here and there a few gangsters’ headshots had been inserted for emphasis.

The aged actress, these days a soap opera stalwart and national treasure, would not be happy. But David was no newbie. He’d been careful how he’d worded the story, at no stage suggesting that Fairchild had actually attended any of these lurid events, just stating that people around at the time thought she might have. And if that didn’t prove to be adequate protection, well … that was editor Connie Curzon’s problem.

‘Admiring your latest masterpiece?’ someone asked.

An Indian woman in her early thirties stood alongside him. She was intensely pretty, with dark eyes, firm lips and lush black hair cut square at the shoulder. Such was the trimness of her figure that she even made her boring floor-manager uniform of dark skirt-suit and white, sensibly buttoned blouse look good.

‘How you doing, Nushka?’ he asked.

‘Happy enough.’

‘Yeah?’ David wasn’t sure he could ever trust an employer who insisted you wore a large name-badge on your lapel.

‘It’s life after journalism, David. We take what we can get.’

‘That’s my excuse too.’ He scrolled the mag.

Anushka shook her head. ‘They pay you for that stuff?’

‘Not much for this one. But I’ve got other irons in the fire. How’s Norm keeping? Any closer to finishing his opus?’

‘Think he’s about halfway through the first draft.’

‘He was that far on with it six years ago.’

‘He’s semi-retired, you know.’

David pondered that. It was difficult to conceive of their energetic ex-colleague as being even semi-retired.

‘Should give him a call,’ she said. ‘He’d love to hear from you.’

David eyed her. ‘You genuinely believe that?’

‘Well, can’t hurt, can it?’

‘I don’t think it’s the best idea.’

There was an awkward moment. Anushka had told David what she’d hoped would be the case where Norm and he were concerned. David, for his part, didn’t need to be an arch-cynic to sincerely doubt that any contact with his old mate would be well received.

She looked worried. ‘I take it you’ve heard about …?’

He nodded. ‘Yep. Believe it or not, I sometimes check out the real news too.’

‘So … are you all right?’

‘You mean am I upset because I think it was my fault?’

‘Are you?’

‘I don’t get upset, Anushka. I can’t afford to.’

‘Come on, David …’

‘By all accounts the kid had been leading a pretty risky lifestyle. I’m sure there were lots of other factors involved.’

‘That’s probably true,’ she conceded. ‘You’re looking fit, anyway.’

‘Thanks. Lots of gym, lots of running.’ He almost added, Gotta find some way to fill the endless empty hours, but resisted. He was glad that she thought he looked good physically. He’d rolled back the years with his recent PE: he was lean and fresh-faced for a forty-year-old, and at six foot three, with a shock of jet-black hair and grey-blue eyes, he might even cut a dash. But Anushka Chawla had been a newshound herself before all this, and wouldn’t be fooled. One look at his shabby jeans and sweatshirt and his scruffy denim jacket, and she’d know that he wasn’t doing well otherwise.

‘How you keeping really?’ she asked.

‘Well … I’m working. Don’t feel sorry for me, Anushka. I’ve got lots going on.’ He headed for the door.

‘See you around, David.’

He waved as he left.

The press room at Colchester Police Station sat in silence as Detective Superintendent Mackeson of the Major Investigations Team spoke from the low platform.

‘We can confirm,’ he said, ‘that the two persons abducted near the Black Brook golf course on Monday night were Jodie Martindale from Dedham, who’s twenty-three years old and the daughter of Ralph Martindale – you’ll all know him, I’m sure. And her fiancé, Richard Tamworth, twenty-five, from Stoke-by-Nayland …’

There was a rush of questions. Mackeson held two palms aloft, shaking his head.

Three other people sat at the table. To his left a handsome mixed-race woman, Assistant Chief Constable Gina Dearborn, unrufflable as ever in her pristine Essex Police uniform; to his right, a studious-looking man in a suit and glasses, with a salt-and-pepper beard and moustache. His name was James Whelks and he was the Martindale family’s solicitor. Last of all, on Whelks’ right, sat a tubby, sandy-haired man, also in a suit, who’d been introduced simply as DCI Thackeray.

‘How’s the little boy?’ was the first question the panel actually heard.

Mackeson nodded to Whelks, who adopted a sombre tone.

‘Freddie’s doing well under the circumstances. As you know, he suffered two bullet-wounds, one of which was relatively minor – it nicked his left ear, and one of which caused a compound fracture of the humerus in his left arm. He underwent surgery yesterday and is expected to return home tomorrow.’

‘Is he talking, sir?’

Mackeson responded to this one. ‘Freddie will be a key witness in this investigation, but it hasn’t been possible to fully interview him yet.’

‘How did he come to be separated from the other two when the abduction occurred?’

‘At present, we’re not really clear on that.’

‘Was he able to tell you anything at all about the assailants?’

‘Only that there were at least two of them, maybe three. And that they were in reasonably good physical condition as they were able to pursue him all the way across Black Brook golf course. We have Scenes of Crime specialists up there as we speak …’

‘So Freddie Martindale wasn’t able to give you any physical detail?’

‘Not so far,’ Mackeson replied. ‘The boy’s done very well to remember what he has, given the amount of blood he lost and the fact that he was in a severe state of shock when he received assistance from passing motorists.’

‘Was he able to describe the vehicle the assailants arrived in?’

‘Only that it was a van of some sort. One of our first lines of enquiry of course has been to check all sources of CCTV footage shot in that area between the hours of nine o’clock in the evening and midnight on Monday 26 October.’

‘May I ask, sir, what DCI Thackeray is doing here?’

Mackeson and ACC Dearborn glanced at the questioner. He was a tallish guy in his early thirties, wearing a shirt and tie under a leather jacket. He had a shock of very dark hair and intense features, and held up a Dictaphone.

‘We have a considerable number of assets at our disposal,’ Mackeson said, ‘and DCI Thackeray has recognised expertise in the field of …’

‘He’s from the Kidnap Squad, isn’t he?’ the questioner interrupted. ‘National Crime Group … New Scotland Yard?’

There were mumbles of surprise.

‘That’s correct,’ Mackeson replied. ‘Sorry, you are …?’

The questioner held up his press badge. ‘David Kelman, Essex Examiner … Crime Beat.’

The body language of both Mackeson and Dearborn tautened. It was ACC Dearborn who spoke next. ‘Mr Kelman, for a respected crime reporter, a man famous for having informants everywhere, you’re surely not surprised that we’ve called in the Kidnap Squad …’

‘It seems very quick, that’s all I’m saying,’ Kelman replied. ‘I mean you’ve already got the Essex Major Investigations Team on the case. They usually handle all serious crime in the county. Unless this isn’t a one-off, of course?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said.

‘Well,’ Kelman gestured, ‘it can’t have gone unnoticed by anyone that one month ago, just outside King’s Lynn, there was a very similar case. Darren Doyle and Cheryl Bryant, another courting couple, snatched from their vehicle while parked up in a lover’s lane area?’

‘There are similarities,’ Mackeson admitted, ‘but