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man had taken his daughter, though knowing he had put his hands upon other men’s daughters made it hard to ease the gun away from the skull below him.
‘If you warn your friends, if you breathe one word of my visit to anyone, I will come back. And, with God as my witness, I swear I will use this.’ The father dug the handgun into
Robert’s temple hard enough to make him cry out.

FIVE
    ‘Did you move?’
    ‘Yes. This morning.’
    ‘Where are you now?’
    ‘Back in my room.’
    ‘Good. Stay there.’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘Until I know if Robert East reports you.’
    Since the morning’s move he’d come to the conclusion that some detached part of his mind had overseen his seemingly effortless extraction – the removal of cuffs from Robert
East’s pale wrists and ankles, the final threat of reprisals, the unhooding of the twitching man, the walk to the car through warm, dusty, yellow air, the slow drive through a sun’s
brightness that carried false hopes of happiness, to transport him away from Cockington and to his dim temporary lodgings further down the coast in Paignton. Keeping him on the road, regulating the
twitches, ticks and sighs that threatened to well up in waves and crash to panic or remorse, while adrenaline drained like sewage and made his hands shake: all such reactions and activities of body
and mind were managed and governed by an unfeeling administrator of his functions. Perhaps part of his jittery inner parliament now relegated more compassionate impulses to the back benches of his
mind. There they could only whistle and jeer, as the
mover
and
shaker
was driven home and put to bed without judgement.
    He was also getting fitter over the terrain and distance too. Not sluggish with aches, or anxious to the point of nausea, like he’d been on the first three moves; he was not so delicate
now, or so skittish in the head, not quite an athlete, but a keener amateur.
    ‘What did you get?’
    ‘All of his gear. The usual stuff, passwords, names . . .’
    ‘Good. Leave it with the hotel reception. Someone will collect it today. Was he hurt?’
    ‘I used the immobilizer, gas too. I don’t think . . .’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I don’t think it was him.’
    ‘No, but there might be something, a connection, a trace, some small detail amongst what you have taken. We will be thorough. You did a good thing today, but you have to stay strong.
We’re doing as much as we can.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘And I have someone else.’
    ‘Who? Let me get—’
    ‘I have to go. But I’ll call you soon with all the details.’
    ‘Name? What’s his name?’
    ‘Bowles. Murray Bowles.’ She finished the call.
    The father called his contact Scarlett Johansson because he’d never met her and had become familiar only with her voice. The first time they had spoken her faint American accent had struck
him as immediately distinctive and reminded him of an old film star in her younger roles. And because his handler only ever referred to herself as a ‘friend of the family’, in the early
days of their association he told the woman who her voice reminded him of. She had laughed and told the father that he should call her that. His contact had remained Scarlett Johansson ever
since.
    Over the last year few people had contacted the father; not even the colleagues he’d worked so closely with for fifteen years, nor his old friends from university. Whenever he saw an
unrecognized caller on a screen, he picked up in case it was Scarlett. She contacted him at accounts that she provided; these, and her own idents, constantly changed.
    Who was she? He didn’t really know, but guessed that Scarlett was a police officer and a member of an overwhelmed Child Protection Team, somewhere in the counties of the south-west. He
knew one protection team was still attached to every police force in the country, but the teams were rarely made up of more than two people. Sometimes, one man or woman now worked alone.
    Maybe