“We don’t know that the child isn’t somewhere with her mother,” protested Inspector Bell.

“We don’t know that Tony Novak didn’t bash his wife over the head in the ten minutes he was inside her house. We won’t know until we get the search warrant. If you want to be useful instead of obstructive, why don’t you see if you can hurry the damned thing up?”

“Excuse me, ma’am.” Bell’s sergeant had appeared at her elbow. “A Mrs. Teasdale is here to see you. She says she’s Chloe Yarwood’s mother.”

When Bell hesitated, Kincaid said, “You’ve got another interview room?” At her nod, he went on. “I’ll take her up personally. We’ll have to put Novak on hold until we see what the former Mrs. Yarwood has to say – in fact, cut Novak loose when he’s signed his statement, but have a constable keep an eye on him. I’d just as soon wait to talk to him again until we’ve searched his wife’s house, but I don’t want him disappearing on us.”

“Is there – is there any news on Chloe Yarwood, sir?” asked the sergeant, with a quick glance at her boss.

“Not yet. The lab hasn’t finished running the match, and I hate to think what Konnie Mueller is going to say when I ask him to run a sample from Laura Novak’s flat.”

Gemma and Cullen had joined them and were listening intently.

“Sir – ma’am-” said the sergeant, obviously having difficulties with the issue of temporary authority, “that warrant’s just come through. I was coming to tell you when the duty sergeant rang up about Mrs. Teasdale.”

Kincaid considered, trying to work out the most expedient division of labor with the least amount of territorial pissing on Bell’s part. “Doug, why don’t you and Gemma go along to Laura Novak’s house with the uniforms? Maura, you and I will talk to Mrs. Teasdale. Then when we’ve finished we’ll meet the others at Park Street.” Bell might think she’d drawn the plum job, but the truth was that he trusted Gemma’s assessment of whatever they might find at the Novak house as well as his own.

Maura Bell drew breath as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. Turning to the sergeant, she said, “Right. You’ll need a locksmith-”

“No, we won’t.” Gemma’s lips curved in a very small smile. “We’ve got Tony Novak’s keys.”

Sundays were supposed to be civilized, Rose thought grumpily as she hung her turnout coat on the drying rack for the second time that day. A day of rest, a day of roast beef and Yorkshire pud, of dozing in front of the telly or taking the kiddies to the park.

God knows she’d hoped for a quiet day after a night of dream-haunted, interrupted sleep, but instead they’d had half a dozen road traffic accidents, as many medical calls, and two fires. Both had been nuisance fires, one in a rubbish skip, the other brush set alight on waste ground at the edge of a park, but both times when she’d seen the smoke her mouth had gone dry and her hands had been unsteady as she pulled on her gear.

Surely she was just tired, and not losing her nerve, she thought as she pushed a stray hair from her face with a grubby hand. What she felt seemed more a bone-deep foreboding than fear.

There was certainly no one she could talk to about it. Even if she had been tempted to confess to Simms, he’d been distant and abrupt with her all day. Last night’s phone call hung unmentioned between them.

Nor had she heard from Station Officer Farrell, and she’d begun to think she’d made a complete ass of herself. She’d meant to talk to her own guv’nor about her theory, but as the day went by the prospect seemed less and less appealing. If she had any sense, she’d take Wilcox’s advice and forget the whole thing.

When she’d washed up, she wandered into the kitchen. Their lunch had been interrupted by the bells an hour ago, and bowls of congealing chili con carne still stood on the table. Steven Winston came in, whistling tunelessly, and popped his into the microwave, but after a moment’s hesitation Rose scraped hers into the bin. The smell made her feel nauseous, and the last thing she needed was to sick up her lunch on the next shout.

She made up her mind to speak to Bryan Simms, see if she could clear the air between them. At least she could tell him she appreciated his concern. She left the control room and went down to the turnout bay, where she found Bryan washing the mud off the appliance from the last shout.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing a towel and following along behind him.

“Hey, yourself.” His voice was casual, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

“Busy day, yeah?” she offered, but this brilliant sally met with no more than a nod.

She stopped in midswipe. “Look, Bryan. About last night. It’s not that I – It just wasn’t a good-”

“You two are gluttons for punishment,” said a voice behind her, and she spun round, startled. It was Simon Forney, the other half of Castor and Pollux, and the look he gave her was speculative. He was assigned to the pump ladder, and had not been needed on the last shout. “Someone rang you while you were out. Station Officer Farrell, the arson bloke. Said you didn’t answer your mobile. He left a number where you could reach him.” Simon handed her a Post-it with an unidentified number scribbled on it.

Rose felt a flush of excitement, quickly dampened by the wary looks on both men’s faces. She’d left her bloody mobile in her locker. She’d have to retrieve it, then hope she could snatch some privacy to ring Farrell back. “Bloody nuisance,” she said, thinking quickly. She made a face. “I’ve already told him everything I-”

The bells went with a deafening clamor, and the men turned away, running for their gear. After an instant’s hesitation, Rose followed, feeling more alone than she had since her first day at Southwark station.

14

HARRIET WOKE AS the room began almost imperceptibly to lighten. She lay in the narrow bed, watching as the shadows gradually took on familiar shapes, and as the square of window grew from a slightly lighter black, to pearly rose, to a dull gray. It was funny, she’d never realized how long it took for night to become day, and vice versa, because she was always doing other things.

When she could see well enough, she climbed out of bed and used the pail. Then she stood at the window, her face pressed to the murky glass. She heard church bells, faintly, and then the whoop of a fire engine’s siren. Were they coming for her? But the sound grew fainter until at last she heard only the echo in her mind.

After a bit, as the light grew stronger, she began to prowl the room, reexamining every nook and cranny, as if something different might have materialized in the night.

She was now more certain than ever that the room had once belonged to a child. There was the small bed, with its odor of old and secret accidents. There was the wooden stool, which she found, on closer inspection, bore the faint remnants of a painted design. In one of the drawers of the chest beneath the window, she discovered a chipped wooden horse and a yellowed deck of playing cards.

And of course there were the books, all worn and fragile, as if the pages had been turned again and again, as she had turned them the past two days. It was in Peter Pan, on the blank page before the back cover, that she found the writing. Tiny and cramped, done with a dull pencil, each line the exact repetition of the next.

I promise I will be good.

The words made Harriet feel sad and frightened, but nothing frightened her as much as the scratches around the keyhole of the door. What had happened to the child who tried to get out of this place?