Tom opened Jessica’s bedroom door. Light from the landing spilled in, throwing shadows around. She was fast asleep, her face turned towards him, arm around her large, soft teddy, breathing in, a steady long and slow rhythmic hiss, then out with a sharp phut.

Something gripped his chest like a vice, and his heart. He stood motionless, as if all time in the universe was frozen. This was his daughter. His child. His creature that he had brought into the world. His little person.

Jessica.

God, he loved her to bits. People said that parents had favourites but he didn’t, he could honestly say that.

He blew Max a kiss, closed the door, and with a heavy heart went into his den to finalize the Ron Spacks figures.

When he had checked, then double-checked the email and sent it, he made his way back downstairs. Jonathan Ross on the television was talking about the size of willies. Kellie was now fast asleep, empty wine glass on the floor, a half-eaten box of Milk Tray on the sofa beside her.

After they had put the kids to sleep, he had told her about the website and the subsequent email, and then the photograph of Janie Stretton in the paper tonight.

They had watched the Ten O’Clock News together, and seen the poor young woman featured along with footage of the police search in Peacehaven, and a plea by a Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of the Brighton CID for anyone with information to step forward.

Kellie had really surprised him. He thought he knew her much better than he apparently did. He had imagined she would put the safety of her family first. Particularly after he told her about the threatening email.

She had taken less than a couple of minutes to make up her mind. ‘Imagine that was Jessica in twenty years time,’ she had said. ‘Imagine we were the parents, desperate for justice to be done. Now imagine, knowing all that, you are a witness, maybe the only witness. Your stepping forward might make the difference between the killer being caught – and being prevented from ever killing again – and destroying the lives of all those related to the victim. Imagine if Jessica was murdered by a killer who could have been stopped if only someone had been brave enough to step forward.’

He went through into the kitchen, took out a bottle of his favourite Bowmore whisky and poured himself several fingers. A few hours ago he had made the decision that he would abide by Kelly’s view.

But then he had been expecting her to tell him that he needed to put the safety of the family first. And if that meant doing nothing, that would be preferable to anything that put them in jeopardy. Instead she was completely adamant he should go to the police, regardless of the consequences.

Sitting on a bar stool, he watched his reflection in the window. He saw a hunched man raise a glass of whisky to his lips and drink; he saw the man set the glass back down.

He saw the total despair in the man’s face.

He drained his whisky, then went back into the living room to wake Kellie up. They had to talk more.

They talked long into the night, then finally, exhausted, Tom tried to sleep. But he was still awake at three o’clock. And at four. Tossing. Turning. Fretting, dry, parched, with a searing headache.

Tonight they were safe. Tonight he did not have to worry about threats. Kellie’s view was that the police would protect them. Tom did not share her confidence.

Dawn was breaking. At five he heard a hiss of tyres, a whine, a clank of bottles. In another hour or so the kids would be stirring, running into their bedroom, jumping into their bed. Saturday. Normally he loved Saturdays, his favourite day of the week.

Kellie told him he could give the information to the police in confidence, and that the police would respect that. How would anyone find out he had been talking to them?

‘Are you OK, hon?’ Kellie spoke suddenly.

‘I’m still awake,’ he said. ‘I haven’t slept a wink.’

‘Nor have I.’

He put out his hand, found hers, squeezed it. She squeezed back. ‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you, too.’ Then after a pause, she asked, ‘Have you made a decision?’

He was silent for some moments. Then he said quietly, ‘Yes.’

34

Roy Grace was having a sleepless night, also. An endless list of things he needed to check for Operation Nightingale churned through his brain. As well as the words of Brent Mackenzie.

The thing is, mate, they’re telling me you are in real danger. Something to do with this scarab beetle. You need to watch your back.

What did he mean? Maybe he had just picked up the vibe of the scarab, which was preying heavily on his mind?

Then his thoughts went back to Janie Stretton. He pushed away all the emotion of her distraught father – he had become hardened to those things over the years. Perhaps more hardened than he liked, but maybe that was the only way to cope. He was thinking about what had been done to her. What was the sense in removing her head but leaving a hand? Other than that it was some kind of message? To whom? The police? Or perhaps a sick trophy?

And why the scarab beetle?

For the killer to show off his – or her – intellect?

Then his thoughts turned darkly to the warning from Alison Vosper, and the knowledge that this case was the Last Chance Saloon for him. To keep his job and his life here in Brighton, he needed to find Janie’s killer with no fuck-ups, no newspaper headlines about cops dabbling in the occult and nobody killed in a car chase.

He had to walk on bloody eggshells.

Might be easier, he thought, to walk on water.

By six in the morning Grace had had enough of listening to the dawn chorus, to rattling milk bottles, to a barking dog way off in the distance, to all the damned stuff inside his head.

He pushed back the duvet, swung his legs out of bed and sat still for some moments, his eyes raw from lack of sleep, his head pounding. He had not slept for more than half an hour throughout the entire night, if that. And tonight he had a date. A really, really serious date.

And that too, he knew, was a big part of the reason he had barely slept. Excitement. Like a smitten teenager! He couldn’t help it. He could not remember when he had last felt like this.

He walked to the window, opened the curtains a fraction and stared out. It was going to be a fine day; the sky was a blank, dark blue canvas. Everything felt very still. An enormous thrush was hopping clumsily around the dew-drenched lawn, pecking at the ground in search of worms. Grace stared at the Zen water garden Sandy had created, with its skewed-oval shape and its large, flat stones, and then at all the plants she had put around the borders of the lawn. A lot had died, and the ones that remained were wildly out of control.

He had no idea about gardening; that had always been Sandy’s domain. But he’d enjoyed helping her create her own special garden out of the boring eighth of an acre rectangle of lawn and borders that they had started with. He dug in places she told him to dig, fertilized, watered, lugged bags of peat up and down, weeded, planted, a willing skivvy to Sandy as foreman.

Those had been the good times, when they were building their future, making their home, their nest, cementing their life together.

The garden that Sandy had created and loved so much was neglected now. Even the lawn looked ragged and weed-strewn, and he felt guilty about that, sometimes wondering what she would say if she returned.

Saturday mornings. He remembered how he used to go off for his early run, and come back bringing Sandy an almond croissant from the bakery in Church Road and her Daily Mail.

He drew the curtains right back, and light flooded in. And suddenly, for the first time in almost nine years, he saw the room differently.