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He’d never forget the day he found her – never forget the sight of her poor mutilated body, as they pulled her out of the river.
    Never
forget
it?
    Twenty years on from the case, and he couldn’t even stop himself from
dreaming
about it!
    â€˜We’re doin’ all we can,’ he said. ‘If it’s humanly possible to return your daughter safely to you, then you can rest assured we’ll do it.’
    It wasn’t enough for them. He knew it wasn’t enough. But what else could he say?

Four
    T he basement of Whitebridge Police Headquarters had a dual role. For most of the time it was a dumping place for unwanted or redundant equipment – traffic signs, police barriers, and the like – but when there was a serious crime it came into its own as the only room in the entire building which was big enough to accommodate a large team of investigators. A couple of hours earlier, it had still been in its dumping-ground phase, but by the time Woodend reached it to address his new team, its transformation had been completed.
    The chief inspector looked around him – at the desks laid out in a horseshoe, at the eager faces of the detective constables, pulled in from all over Central Lancs to work on the case.
    By Christ, they all looked so young, Woodend thought. In fact, each new team seemed to be younger than the last. Give it a couple of years, and he’d find himself addressing babies.
    He cleared his throat. ‘We don’t
know
, for certain, that this poor kid’s been grabbed by a pervert,’ he said, ‘but given that she seems a steady, responsible lass, an’ that her parents are nowhere near rich enough to pay a sizeable ransom, it seems more than likely that that’s exactly what happened. Which means that speed is of the essence. Or to put it another way, we have to collar this bastard before he’s had time to do his victim too much damage.’
    The detective constables all nodded sombrely – but also hopefully.
    They didn’t question for a moment the idea that the abductor
could
be caught before he’d done too much damage, Woodend thought. They were still labouring under the illusion that right and justice always triumph. Well, there was nothing wrong with hope – when that was all you had. And in many ways, it was a pity that after a couple of years at the sharp end – after they’d seen for themselves just what one human being can do to another – they’d discover that hope was being elbowed out of the way by disillusionment and cynicism.
    â€˜We haven’t yet got any leads as such,’ the chief inspector continued, ‘but there are areas of possible investigation which might
give
us leads. For a start, there’s the park itself. Everyone who was there has already been interviewed by the uniformed branch, but they’re not trained detectives like you are, and they may have missed something.’ He paused, noticing the new arrival in the doorway, then continued, ‘Isn’t that right, Inspector Rutter?’
    Bob Rutter nodded. ‘In this job, you soon learn that you never cover the ground just once,’ he said. ‘You go over it again and again, until you’re absolutely certain there’s nothing more to be extracted from it.’
    â€˜Which means that all those people will be re-interviewed by you lads,’ Woodend said. ‘Next there’s the car park to look at. It’s more than likely that the kidnapper left his vehicle there – which is why he chose to attack the girl where he did – so we need to find out which cars
were
parked there at the time, an’ follow them up. Detective Constable Beresford will be supervisin’ both those operations. We’ll also have a team, led by Inspector Rutter, goin’ over every inch of the area around the bushes, to make sure the kidnapper didn’t leave any clues behind.’ He lit up a Capstan Full