‘It is indeed. I wouldn’t bother arguing with her about it because you’ll never win. Just accept and it will be much easier for the pair of us.’

‘Thank you; I don’t know what to say. That’s very kind of you both.’

He saw Eleanor come down the stairs and then start running towards him.

‘Oh I’m so glad that you’re here. I’ve been awake all night thinking about you.’

He felt his cheeks burn but he also felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of this beautiful young woman who was so relieved that he was still alive.

James knew that he had been very lucky because he had soon forged a strong friendship with Harold and the rest of Eleanor’s family. When he had told her father his plans to open up a permanent fairground on some land in Manchester he had managed to secure through a private deal, he had thought it was a splendid idea and wanted to know everything about it.

James brought himself back to reality and looked around. Now here he was, eleven years later – a partner in a very successful amusement park, married to the woman he loved and with two beautiful children. God could take it all back this very moment in time if he returned Joe to them safe and sound. He could take back the money, the house, everything – he just wanted his son safe in his arms.

They had checked every inch of the room while James had been in a daydream, but there was still no sign of Joe. The men went over to the drain and lifted the cover off, then leant over to look inside with the lamp, but there was nothing down there except the smell of something gone bad. James looked around at them all.

‘There is no way on God’s earth that Joseph would have been able to lift this cover off, climb down there and pull it back over. Davey and I can only just move it and we’re both grown men. I don’t understand it. Where is he?’

Davey shrugged. ‘Why don’t we start at the top of the house again and go from room to room, leaving no cupboard or trunk unturned. If he’s nowhere to be found then we need to get the police, Mr Beckett, because I don’t know where he can be and boys can’t just disappear into thin air.’

Mrs Beckett nodded her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak because she was on the verge of crying, and if she did, she was afraid she wouldn’t stop. Where was her son whom she had kissed not thirty minutes ago? He would not be so foolish as to hide for this long when everyone was shouting his name and looking for him. All three of them went back upstairs and Davey shut the cellar door.

Everyone shouted Joe’s name and the noise was so loud that Martha had to put her hands over her ears. She knew that he wasn’t coming back or he would have answered by now. He would not disrespect their father by staying silent all for the sake of winning a game of hide-and-seek. Hot, salty tears began to roll down her cheeks for the brother she had loved with all her heart and would not see again. Somehow he had been taken from that cellar, she didn’t know how or why, but she knew that whatever was responsible lived down there, in the dark. Like some monster out of the fairy tales she loved, the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk or the Troll under the bridge in the Three Billy Goats Gruff, she knew that whatever it was liked little boys and girls. It probably liked men and women as well, but children always tasted much better in the fairy tales her mother read to them before bed each night, so why wouldn’t they taste much better in real life as well?

Chapter Five

Will and Stu had attended the shortest post-mortem ever. Watching Beth O’Connor’s husband identify her head had been terrible and left Will feeling drained. He had sobbed and sobbed, wanting to know where the rest of her body was, and Will wished to God he could tell him, but they didn’t have a clue. She had gone missing from a function she’d been attending at the Town Hall, probably around the same time that Annie and Will had been performing their first dance for everyone on their wedding night.

Will left the hospital and went straight back to the station, needing to read the missing person’s report through from start to finish again. After an argument at home her husband had refused to go to the black-tie evening reception held every year for newly elected councillors at the Town Hall, leaving Beth to go on her own. She had gone because she was a very popular woman and had known there would be no shortage of male companions to talk to or buy her drinks all night.

All the witness statements said that she had been having a great evening and hadn’t looked upset. Everyone at the reception knew Beth because she worked in the Town Hall and was popular. Three men who Will had spoken to personally had given statements to say they had gone outside with her for a cigarette, but it was literally a quick smoke and then back inside until one of the women noticed her going outside on her own for a smoke and arguing with someone on the phone, which her husband had confirmed. She’d rung him up after a few too many glasses of wine to have another go at him, he said, and the phone records proved that this was the truth.

It was after that phone call that she disappeared. She never came back into the reception. She didn’t go home, and none of the taxi drivers had picked her up; all the bus drivers had been spoken to and the CCTV checked and there was no sign of her. The town CCTV cameras hadn’t picked her up walking away from the Town Hall. She’d literally disappeared into thin air. After a couple of days a search team and a dog handler had gone into the Town Hall, a massive building, and they had searched it from top to bottom, even going up into the clock tower and attics and down into the basements. The dog had at least picked up her scent outside the rear doors where she’d been in and out to have cigarettes, but it didn’t go any further. All the bins, flower beds and drains around the area had been checked and still there was no sign of Beth O’Connor until you fast forwarded to two days ago when Jake found her well-preserved head all the way over at Bowness.

Will rubbed his forehead. He had to be honest. He didn’t have a clue where her body was or who had taken and killed her. All he could say for sure was that someone had, because it was pretty impossible to cut your own head off and then drive twenty miles to dump it under a boathouse. It was certainly a mystery. Her husband had been questioned several times but, around the time of the last phone call to him, he had had a pizza delivered and the delivery man had given him a watertight alibi. Will had told Stu to make some inquiries to see if they were friends, but the answer was negative. It was the first time he’d ever ordered pizza from this takeaway and had no connection to it whatsoever.

He phoned Annie to see what she was doing. As soon as the job had come in he had asked Cathy, her inspector, not to let her get involved, and she’d laughed so loud at him over the phone he’d had to hold it away from his ear.

‘Will, my friend, do you honestly think I’m going to let her anywhere near this? It’s bad enough I have a severed head right in the middle of the tourist season. The last thing I want is Annie getting involved in this up to her neck – no pun intended – because you and I both know it has the possibility of going horribly wrong if she’s anywhere near.’

He hated it when Annie didn’t answer on the first couple of rings but he knew there was a perfectly good reason when she was working. She couldn’t stop mid arrest or as she was driving to answer her phone. Stu put a mug of coffee down on the desk in front of Will and he gave him a thumb ups while leaving Annie a voicemail to ring him back. He put the phone down.

‘What’s the plan of action for today, boss?’

‘I think we need to speak to someone in Lancashire and ask how they are getting on with locating Henry Smith. Asking them why the bloody hell they haven’t found him yet would be a good start. It’s a huge coincidence that our very own Barrovian born and bred serial killer has escaped and now we have a severed head, but it doesn’t really fit right with his modus operandi, does it? He likes to slit throats, although I suppose severing a head would be the next step up for him. Shit, this could well be him and if it is we have a major problem on our hands because his behaviour is escalating.’