A loud thud on the ceiling above her made Lucy open her eyes. She blinked, not recognising the room around her. The rough cotton material that had been tied tightly around her mouth made her gag. Trying to move her arms and legs, she couldn’t, and was wondering what had happened to her until she felt the coarse rope tighten against her skin. She looked around the empty room until her gaze fell on the stack of cardboard packing boxes, and she felt panic flood her chest. It was Patrick: she was at his house and he was the killer.

There was another loud thud, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor upstairs. She had to get out of here before he came back down. Twisting her arms and legs to try to loosen the ropes, she did her best not to cry out as they burnt into her flesh. She rolled off the sofa onto the hard oak floor with a thump and felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. She knew she couldn’t be sick with the gag around her mouth; she’d choke to death. She lay still, waiting to see if he would come running back down, but he didn’t – he carried on dragging whatever or whoever it was.

She looked for a weapon, something she could use to cut the ropes free. In the movies there was always a piece of glass or a knife to hand, but as she frantically searched the room, snapping her head from side to side, she wanted to scream. There wasn’t so much as a speck of dust. This room was nothing but an empty shell. She shuffled over towards the boxes, praying there would be something inside them she could use to free herself.

* * *

Patrick rolled Waite’s body into the bedsheet and was dragging him towards the stairs; there was no way he was carrying him. Considering that he was nothing but skin and bones, he was still bloody heavy. He’d just have to roll him down to the garage. He couldn’t carry out his original plan, which had been to get him into the drum of acid and leave him in the car park of the police station. For one thing, it would have to be in the early hours of the morning when the station was dead, and for another, there was the problem of Lucy. He also hadn’t taken into account the sheer weight of the drum when it was half full of sulphuric acid, along with the mass of a dead body. Christ, the Incredible Hulk would struggle to lift it.

If she didn’t call in soon, that fool whom she so clearly liked would be out searching for her, along with the rest of the station. He had no idea who she might have told about him, or that she was coming here. What he would have to do is to dump Waite’s body in the acid in the garage and just leave him. He could grab his suitcase and use the van to escape; he supposed that Lucy would be fine if he left her tied up here. He was pretty sure she would use her own devices to get rescued. If not – well, she wouldn’t have died at his hands, would she? It would be a tragic accident. He let go of the sheet and stood up straight, his back clicking. He was getting too old for this; he shouldn’t have left it so late to kill Waite. He could have been long gone and avoided all of this mess.

* * *

Mattie drove as fast as he could in the unmarked Ford Focus with no lights or sirens to clear the traffic for them. He’d never been honked at so much in his life as he’d turned onto the promenade. Browning was busy on the phone and Toby was sitting on the back seat with his eyes wide open, staring in horror as the world passed by in a blur.

Mattie cleared his throat. ‘What’s the plan of action when we get there – shouldn’t we have armed officers attending?’ He didn’t take his eyes off the road; he waited for Browning to answer his question.

‘Yes, they’re on the way. From a job on the M6 north-bound – they’ll be around twenty-five minutes.’

‘You’re having me on?’

‘We do, however, have a couple of Taser-trained officers making their way over; they might get there before we do, although they don’t really know what’s going on and we don’t want to storm in if we’ve got it wrong. Lucy would never forgive either of us – you know that, don’t you?’

Mattie nodded. ‘It’s a small price to pay.’

Toby looked at the two men, a grudging respect for them emerging from the anger that had filled his chest. They didn’t care about their own safety; all they cared about was Lucy’s, which was nice. He had always wondered how it must feel to be part of a team, where none of them would think twice about putting their lives on the line to help a colleague. And now he knew, he was glad to be a part of it.