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restaurant and a games room. The cloakrooms, which were all Ed really knew, were jazzed up with horrendous wallpaper, fat blue roses and vivid green vines.
    “BRIAN?”
    Keep your nerve, that was the thing. Business as usual. Act normal.
    At first, that had been scary but it had sorted everything out the year before.
    “Bri …”
    “All right, I’m bloody here—Oh. It’s you. Do you have to bloody shout the place down?”
    “Thought you was in the cellar. OK, what’d you need?”
    “How the hell should I know? Your job to go and find out.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to the cloakrooms. I meant what else?”
    “What you got?”
    All the stock had been in the boot earlier, before it had happened, but now Ed had put the boxes on the back seat, covered with an old dog rug.
    “Marlboro, Silk Cut, B & H. Oh and a few Hamlets.”
    “How much?”
    “Same as last time.”
    “How many?”
    “I can let you have five hundred.”
    “Ay, go on then. You get t’ cloakrooms sorted, I’ll get your money.”
    The door behind Ed opened and a couple of men came in. They’d walked past the car then, they … No. They hadn’t. The car was closed and locked, everything covered up, looking like any other car.
    “You do coffees?”
    “Just the filter.”
    “Right, two filters.”
    “Owt for you, Ed?”
    Yes, be best to hang about a bit, chat, not seem too bothered about rushing off.
    “White, one sugar. Thanks.”
    The cloakroom machines were easily sorted. Two of condoms needed, one of tampons, still plenty of tights in there, not much call for those at the Holly Bush. The profits weren’t that great, even if the goods came at knock-off prices. It was the cigarettes that fetched the money. They went into a cardboard box labelled Tomato Soup, all sealed up.
    One of the men came in. Had a quick look. Ed went on filling up the tower of packets inside the machine, head bent. The man laughed.
    “Helping to keep the birth rate down?”
    In the bar, the coffee was on the counter, next to a flat tin. Ed glanced around but the other man was deep in the Racing Post , didn’t even look up. Thecoffee was all right, though, and Brian had gone into the back so there was no need to chat.
    “See you,” Ed shouted. There was a grunt from somewhere.
    The stuff on the seat had to be covered up again. Later, it could go back into the boot. Later.
    The thought of what was in the car boot now sent the old, longed-for surge of electricity up through Ed’s body. When it came, there was nothing, nothing like it, no other excitement to touch it, nothing so utterly satisfying. Where did it come from, this urge that was like no other, this craving that, when answered, brought the deepest of pleasures? To other people, a child was a son or a daughter, a pretty little kid passing in the street, or a wailing nuisance, something to be taught the alphabet and dressed up, something smelly, snotty or cute, whatever. To Ed, a child was all of those things. But, every so often came the craving. When it did, a child was an opportunity.
    The car turned out of the Holly Bush and accelerated on to the dual carriageway, just as the petrol warning light flashed amber.
    “Bugger.” There was a service station at Kitby. Don’t chance it, don’t risk running out. Jesus, the thought was enough. OK, slow down, eke it out, don’t burn up the bloody fuel.
    Kitby petrol station was a lifetime coming.

Seven
    Simon Serrailler sat with Jim Chapman in his office. They were both silent, both thinking. Simon had not gone back to Lafferton. Because he hoped the action was going to be here, and to end here, a result for him as well as for the North Riding force. And because his mood had lifted and he was enjoying his involvement.
    Chapman sat, fingers tip to tip in front of his nose, looking down on his desk. The visit to the village where the abducted child lived had been as agonising as they had expected. Serrailler had had David Angus’s parents at the front of his