Anna slept well. A dreamless, restful sleep for once.

She got up at six thirty, walked Lexi and fed her. Then she fed herself, showered and brushed her teeth, loading the toothpaste as she always did, three minutes of brushing wired into the electric handle – and there it was. Suddenly, like flicking a channel and seeing a single frozen frame from a familiar movie and knowing it for what it was in an instant.

Krastev’s link to Ryegrove.

It was too early to ring anyone, but not too early to text.

She sent Khosa a message, dressed and set off for HQ.

---

She wasn’t the first one in for a change. Khosa was already at her desk, looking busy. Dawes and Holder were loitering outside her office, the sergeant holding a cardboard box as if it contained something alive. The two male detectives followed Anna in and Dawes put the box on the desk.

‘I hope they’re fresh eggs from your trip to the country,’ Anna said.

‘No, ma’am. Guess again.’ Dawes peeled back the cardboard. Inside were dozens, if not hundreds, of small paper figures.

‘Golems,’ Anna said.

Holder nodded. ‘We got nothing questioning the neighbours and the staff in the local shops. Last sighting was at least three months ago. He’d started wearing lots of clothes. And I mean lots of clothes. He’d grown his hair and a beard. The whole mountain-man thing. But that’s it. No one has seen him lately. We spoke to the local nick. They haven’t seen him either.’

‘So much for shared intelligence,’ Anna muttered.

She reached in and removed two of the paper golems. The folding was intricate. The legs were splayed, like a frog’s. At the end of the appendages the paper was flattened out into spear-shaped feet and hands. The torso was thin, the head a shallow bowl surrounded by the ‘hair’ that looked more like a folded cowl.

‘How long do you think it takes him to make one of these?’ Anna said, holding one of the figures up to the light.

Dawes shrugged. ‘He’s made thousands. He could probably fold one up in a few minutes.’

Anna placed the paper figure on the desk on its back and slowly began to unfold the paper. It wasn’t particularly thick, but she was careful not to tear anything. Gradually, it opened out. There was nothing inside. At least nothing physical. Dawes and Holder were leaning over, staring avidly and it was Holder who noted the small marks. ‘What are those?’

‘It’s a word, isn’t it?’ Dawes said.

Holder said, ‘I see an “I” an “L” and an “A”—’

‘Ali,’ Anna said abruptly. ‘Ali for Alison written backwards.’

They each took another golem and began unfolding. It was a random sample. Even so, two sets of letters predominated: ila was one, the other Hteb.

‘Beth.’ Dawes said.

Holder was the first to find the third. Just one letter, a ‘K’ with a tiny crown drawn above it. A jagged crown.

‘King,’ Anna said once she saw it.

They stopped what they were doing and looked at each other. Dawes broke the silence. ‘Bloody hell.’

Khosa appeared at the door, stared at the desk littered with paper but decided not to comment. There was a strange light in her eyes. ‘Regarding your early morning text, ma’am. I think we’ve got something.’

Holder and Dawes looked expectantly at Khosa but Anna stood and said, ‘We’ll do this as a team. Justin, go and get the super.’

They trooped out. Trisha was standing at the whiteboard; Khosa joined her just as Rainsford walked into the room with Holder and took up his customary position at the back.

Khosa wrote the word ‘KRASTEV’ on the board before pivoting to speak to the others.

‘At the time he was working at Ryegrove, Krastev got stopped in a routine traffic check and was found to be driving someone else’s car.’ Khosa glanced at Anna. ‘This morning DI Gwynne suggested I run a check on the car’s owner.’

The others all glanced at Anna. ‘A hunch,’ she said.

‘Ah, one of those,’ Holder said. He turned to Khosa and they both grinned.

‘So, what did you find?’ Dawes asked.

‘It checked out,’ Khosa said. ‘The loan of the car was genuine.’ She turned back to the board and wrote a name as she spoke it out loud. ‘The owner was a Joshua Dorell. A twenty-eight-year-old from North Devon. He confirmed that they were friends and had given his permission for Krastev, aka Mihai Petran, to use the car.’

Anna waited. From the glint in Khosa’s eye, she clearly wasn’t finished yet. ‘I gave the name to Trisha, who ran a search on Dorell. He had no record at the time. But the name rang a Trisha bell. She’d seen it on a patient list from the time of Alison Johnson’s disappearance. A Miranda Dorell, twenty-seven, and the sister of Joshua.’

Anna smiled and gave Trisha a little nod of acknowledgement. This was good teamwork.

‘Why was she in Ryegrove?’ Holder asked.

‘Long history of very disturbed behaviour,’ Khosa explained. ‘Detained at Ryegrove indefinitely for stabbing her ex foster-mother nine times in 1999 but was deemed fit for discharge after just three years and released in 2002. The official diagnosis was schizo-affective disorder. Two years later she was readmitted after stabbing two teenagers and attempting to decapitate one.’

‘Where is she now?’ Anna asked.

‘I’m still on that, ma’am. Following trial, she was admitted to Broadmoor and then the Becton secure unit in Greenwich – part of Oxleas NHS Trust. I’m in the process of contacting them now.’

‘Nice hunch, ma’am,’ Holder said.

Dawes looked bemused. ‘You get these often, ma’am?’

Anna shrugged. ‘I have my moments, Phil.’

He stared at her with his head at an angle before exhaling. ‘I’m impressed. So we can definitely link Krastev with this Dorell woman through her brother.’

‘I think it’s safe to assume that,’ Anna said.

‘So there’s Norcott and his weird paper golems and now a class A nutcase in this girl Dorell.’ Holder shook his head.

‘But neither sounds capable of being the Black Squid,’ Dawes said.

Anna bit back a rejoinder. She felt like telling Dawes to shut up, that she knew all of this, and him reminding her of it didn’t help. Better they work with what they had. She turned to Trisha. ‘Can we pull up Norcott’s sketch on the monitor?’

Trisha went back to her desk and, a minute later, the large flat screen TV next to the whiteboard flickered into life and filled with the sketch Norcott had made on his barn wall.

‘That’s the fence,’ Khosa said. ‘A hundred per cent.’

Anna nodded. ‘Then it all comes back to Ryegrove, doesn’t it? Why did Norcott draw that sketch on his barn wall? And why is he writing those three names inside his golem dolls?’

‘Are you getting the feeling someone isn’t telling us something, ma’am?’ Dawes said.

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself. I think I’d like to speak to King and Beth Farlow again.’

‘Shall I get them in, ma’am?’ Holder said.

‘No. Let’s go to them. Keep them on their toes.’ She turned to Trisha. ‘Chase up the secure unit in Greenwich. I want to know if Miranda Dorell is still there, and see if you can get an address for the brother.’

‘What about Norcott?’ Dawes said.

‘Have a word with Dyfed-Powys Police. Say we’re interested in finding him. Just in case he comes up on their radar.’

Holder nodded.

‘Once that’s done, we go back to Ryegrove.’