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seemed to notice. In a corner, a man argued with the receptionist.
    ‘She put him in a bag ?’ Paula stared at the screen.
    ‘Yeah. Now look here.’ The front doors of the hospital sliding back. The woman hurrying out, bag held close to her body. Avril froze the screen. ‘We lose her after that. Basically she was out in about two minutes. She went down the stairs, not the lift. She didn’t park in the car park or anything. She took him and was gone before anyone knew it.’
    ‘She’d have had a car though,’ said Fiacra thoughtfully. ‘Babies are heavy enough to carry, like. And there’s snow on the ground.’
    Gerard shook his head. ‘We got nothing off the traffic cams so far. We’d need a vehicle description or a licence plate or something. Also, Corry said there were no prints on the cot or anything like that. It’d been wiped off, looked like, or she wore gloves. She knew what she was doing.’
    Guy frowned. ‘And no one saw a thing. As you said, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? There must have been hundreds of people on the ward that day.’
    They all fell silent, marvelling at how few leads there could be in a case where someone had walked into a busy place and brazenly taken a baby that wasn’t theirs.
    Paula cleared her throat. ‘She looks very calm doing that, doesn’t she?’
    ‘Yes?’ Guy leapt on this comment. ‘You think that’s significant?’
    ‘Well, you’d be nervous, wouldn’t you, if you were going to walk in and take a child from under his parents’ noses. Unless maybe you felt you had a right to.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    She spoke carefully. ‘If I had to guess . . .’
    ‘Do.’
    ‘I’d say maybe she does work at the hospital. Or used to. Can we question all the staff on that floor? Someone will have seen her, but if she works there they might not have realised she was the abductor. Hiding in plain sight, you know.’
    Guy said, ‘It’s the snow that’s the issue here. Half the staff didn’t even make it in that day, and apparently they were phoning round to get people in from leave and so on. So we can’t be sure who was even there. Corry’s brought in a police artist to work with the husband, try to get a face. We can get this footage enhanced too. Send it over to Tech, Avril.’
    ‘It’s been done,’ said Gerard gloomily. ‘Corry.’
    Guy looked annoyed. ‘Paula? What’s your progress with a profile?’
    ‘As we’ve seen, it’s almost certainly a woman, and I would say someone with a connection to the hospital. It’s also someone who wants a child and doesn’t have one for some reason. I’d look at present and recent staff, in particular anyone who may have lost a child. Maternity leave records should show if anyone recently had a baby.’
    ‘Unless it was a miscarriage,’ Avril offered. ‘There’d be no record then.’
    Paula nodded. That was good thinking. ‘All staff should be asked if they know who might recently have been pregnant or lost a baby.’
    ‘We can do that.’ Guy was hungry, clearly desperate to hang onto the case. ‘What else?’
    Paula looked at her notes, made while awake till three a.m. the night before. ‘We’ve discussed that they may have done it before. We should put out an appeal – see if any families with young children noticed someone hanging about, taking an unusual interest in their babies. Also see if anyone knows someone who’s suddenly come home with a newborn.’
    ‘So anyone with a baby could be a suspect.’ Gerard was picking at his cuticles.
    ‘Essentially, yes.’ Paula waited for him to contradict her, which he duly did, turning to Guy.
    ‘Boss – you don’t think maybe it’s to do with them being Polish?’
    Guy looked puzzled at Gerard’s change of topic. ‘Explain?’
    Gerard rested his elbows on the table. ‘The Polish who come here, they’re all Catholics, yeah? And the local UVF fellas, they know that. Last year we had a family burned out of their house.’
    ‘You’re saying this is a