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involved.’
    Penny shuddered. ‘I’m going outside for a cigarette,’ she said.
    ‘Why don’t you go and keep her company?’ Ruth suggested, and Derek got up and followed his wife.
    Left alone, Ruth slipped on latex gloves and slit open the envelopes. One was a card from Derek’s mum, apologising and begging forgiveness. Another was from Derek’s workmates, offering sympathy and pledging support. The other two were in the same vein as the letter received the day before, although without the unpleasant extra ingredient. Ruth sealed them into evidence bags and put them in her handbag: she would take them to the station later in the day.
    Sipping her tea, she realised Tina was missing. The little girl had scampered up the stairs as soon as they got home. Ruth went up to find her.
    The Snowdon girls had the luxury of a bedroom each. Ruth found Tina in Annie’s room, curled up on the bed with her bunny. Ruth sat on the bed beside her, didn’t speak, just rested her hand on Tina’s arm. Rather than cherishing the child they still had, Derek, and especially Penny, seemed to be ignoring her. The kid had spent far too many hours on her own, guilt eating into her, loneliness biting hard, with no one taking the time to reassure her that she was still loved. After a time, Tina sat up, wriggled round and cuddled into Ruth. Ruth felt rather than heard her sobbing quietly, and comforted her.
    ‘There, there, pet,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ They both knew that was probably a lie, but for now it was the best Ruth could do.
     
    ***
     
    Tuesday dragged by. Nothing new was turned up by the investigative team, even though they took Cotter’s house apart. His wife had protested, then simply given up and made a phone call. Minutes later, the pastor’s wife had arrived and whisked her away. The team had been glad to see her go. They were sick of her getting underfoot, complaining about their search techniques and sneezing all over everyone. She would be questioned further, but it certainly seemed to be the case that she had no idea what had happened to the missing child or what her husband might have been up to while she was in her sick bed.
    There was one bit of surprising good news: at some point, MC Boyz had picked up on the story and had offered to film an appeal for information about Annie. Something so high profile could only help and Ruth felt it would buoy Tina up – and Annie, too, if she somehow got to hear about it. Ruth was trying desperately hard to think of Annie as a missing child, not a missing body, but with each day that passed, and especially with Cotter locked up, that was becoming harder and harder to do.
    That evening at the family’s house Ruth, Derek and Tina pretended to watch television. Penny had taken to her bed, sleepy after drinking a bottle and a half of wine.
    ‘How long can they keep Cotter in custody?’ Derek asked.
    ‘We can keep him for four days tops, although if we need more than thirty-six hours we’ll have to go to a magistrate for a warrant. After that, we have to either charge him or let him go.’
    ‘Why can’t you charge him now? We know he did it. Tina’s T-shirt was found in his car.’
    Ruth shook her head. ‘We have nothing concrete, Derek. Yes, a T-shirt was found in his car, but there’s nothing to prove it was one of the ones Tina bought. We should get hair and fibre analysis tomorrow and that will hopefully prove that the girls were in the car, but right now, without a confession, all we have are suspicions and some circumstantial evidence.’
    ‘So he might get away with it?’
    ‘You can’t think like that. There’s a team of people doing everything they can to gather the necessary evidence to put him away. Karen Fitzgerald and Rob Winter are doing their utmost to get a confession out of him, even just to trip him up so that he says something that puts him at the scene. They’re all good people, they know what they’re doing and,