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whatsoever about the cards to indicate that they were genuine, and no forensic clues which might have led to the apprehension of the sender. Until then the postmarks had mostly been illegible, but one of the early ones had been posted within easy driving distance of where they lived, and the most recent card had been posted in London, on a date when Jo herself happened to be there – a coincidence which they had remarked upon themselves.
    ‘Kidnappers don’t usually bother to communicate unless they’re asking for a ransom.’ The policeman’s voice was completely without emotion. ‘Then there’s the address. Your wife has moved about quite a bit since it happened; changed her name, too – but these cards have kept on coming.’
    ‘It can’t be that difficult to keep tabs on someone, if you put your mind to it. My wife has never been in hiding.’
    ‘Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, just for a hoax. Can’t quite see the point, can you?’
    ‘Some people are weird,’ Marcus said, as if pronouncing on a subject in which he was well versed. ‘They will go to all sorts of lengths just to feel they are involved in a case that’s in the headlines. Some even confess to murders they haven’t committed, for crying out loud.’
    In his heart of hearts he knew it wasn’t the same thing. Walking into a police station and confessing meant a lot of detectives dancing attendance and maybe your name in the papers. The thrill factor in sending anonymous letters about something currently in the news was harder to fathom, but maybe it gave you a sense of involvement, when you saw the story in the headlines: someone who continued to send things, years after the initial press furore was over … well, that was possibly unprecedented.
    That was the trouble; it had gone on for years and years. He realized now that this was something he had not properly anticipated when he and Jo first got together. He had been drawn by her very vulnerability, fired with a genuine desire to take that fractured life and rebuild it. While he had recognized this as a long-term commitment, perhaps he had not fully understood its open-ended nature, that it could never be over until Jo knew one way or the other what had happened to Lauren – and maybe not even then. Between them they had found the means to accommodate this void in her life. She had thrown herself into the business with a single-minded enthusiasm second only to his own, and with no new leads and nothing further that could be done, the tragedy of Lauren’s disappearance had sometimes lain dormant for months at a time; but then something would happen to provoke the memories. It often began with the arrival of one of these wretched cards. Always the same thing – a scanned photograph of Lauren – the one which had appeared on every front page; the smiling blonde toddler in a sundress, with a glimpse of the sea sparkling behind her. Always the same message on the back, printed in Times New Roman, those same four words: I still have her .
    At the conclusion of the Brontë trip Marcus drove straight to Manchester, where he found his mother much the same. His sister Sandra was much the same too, resentful and monosyllabic, not understanding – or maybe not wanting to understand – how difficult it was for him to get down to visit his mother on a regular basis, with a business to run and responsibilities at home. He usually managed to drive from the hospital to Easter Bridge without a break, but the traffic was so bad that he stopped at the services for an indifferent cup of tea and an overpriced sandwich. The knowledge that when he got home he would have to unpack and repack, in readiness to leave again the following day, did not encourage him to linger. He had often done tours back to back when the schedule demanded it, but he was feeling particularly tired tonight. At least he would have some back-up over the next few days. He and Melissa were managing the next one together – it