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officer, but because he had genuinely wanted a career in which he could make a difference – however small – to the world. In recent years, excited by all the technological developments, he now had one overriding ambition. That the perpetrators behind the victims whose files filled all these crates would one day be brought to justice. Every damn one of them. And at the very top of his current list was the creepy Shoe Man.
    One day.
    One day the Shoe Man would wish he had never been born.

8
    Lynn left the doctor’s surgery in a daze. She walked up the street to her clapped-out little orange Peugeot, which had one odd wheel with a missing hubcap, opened the door and climbed inside. She usually left it unlocked in the – as yet unrequited – hope that someone might steal it and she could collect on the insurance.
    Last year, the man at the garage had told her that it would never get through its next MOT safety and emissions test without major work, and that it would cost more to put right than the car was worth. Now that test was due in just over a week’s time and she was dreading it.
    Mal would have been able to fix the car himself – he could mend anything. God, how she missed that. And someone to talk to now. Someone who could have supported her in the conversation she was about to have – and was utterly dreading – with her daughter.
    She pulled her mobile phone from her bag and dialled her best friend, Sue Shackleton, blinking hard, crushing tears from her eyes. Like herself, Sue was a divorcee and now a single mother with four kids. What’s more, she always seemed to be irrepressibly cheerful.
    As Lynn spoke, she watched a traffic warden swaggering down the pavement, but she did not need to worry as there was over an hour yet to run on her pay-and-display sticker on the window. Sue was, as ever, sympathetic but realistic.
    ‘Sometimes in life these things happen, darling. I know someone who had a kidney transplant, what, must be seven years ago now, and he’s fine.’
    Lynn nodded at the mention of Sue’s friend, whom she had met. ‘Yes, but this is a bit different. You can survive on dialysis for years without a kidney transplant, but not with a failing liver. There is no other option. I’m frightened for her, Sue. This is a massive operation. So much could go wrong. And Dr Hunter said he couldn’t guarantee it would be successful. I mean, shit, she’s only
fifteen
, for Christ’s sake!’
    ‘So what’s the alternative?’
    ‘That’s the point, there isn’t one.’
    ‘Your choice is simple, then. Do you want her to live or to die?’
    ‘Of course I want her to live.’
    ‘So accept what has to happen and be strong and confident for her. The last thing she needs right now is you throwing a wobbly.’
    Those words were still ringing in her ears five minutes later as she ended the call, promising to meet Sue later in the day for a coffee, if she was able to leave Caitlin.
    Be strong and confident for her.
    Easy to say.
    She dialled Mal’s mobile, unsure where he was at the moment. His ship moved around from time to time and recently he had been working out of Wales in the Bristol Channel. Their relationship was amicable, if a little stilted and formal.
    He answered on the third ring, on a very crackly line.
    ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Off Shoreham. We’re ten miles out of the harbour mouth, heading to the dredge area. Be out of range in a few minutes – what’s up?’
    ‘I need to talk to you. Caitlin’s deteriorated – she’s very ill. Desperately ill.’
    ‘Shit,’ he said, his voice already sounding fainter as the crackling got worse. ‘Tell me.’
    She blurted out the gist of the diagnosis, knowing from past experience how quickly the signal could fade. She was just about able to make out his reply – the ship would be back in Shoreham in about seven hours, he would call her then, he told her.
    Next, she phoned her mother, who was at a coffee morning at her