'The guy we're working for,' Peter said, 'wants your husband to sign over his business. You're the price. He's got all the papers ready for him to sign, nice and legal.'

She thought that was absurd and said, 'But that's coercion, it would never stand up in court,' and he laughed and said, 'You're not in your world now, Doctor.' She'd hoped that this was the beginning ofmore conversation between them but he lost interest and nodded at the pen and paper and said, 'So make it good.' She wondered if Neil had known what the people he was dealing with were like and decided he probably had. 'And if he doesn't?' she said. 'If he doesn't sign everything over to your boss, what happens to us?' but he just stared at her as if she wasn't there. So she wrote, 'They are going to kill us ifyou don't do as they say.'

Some time in the early hours on Saturday, John woke her up and gave her the paper and pen again and told her to write something, 'Anything. Time's running out for you,' and then he left the room. She wrote with the Biro, 'Please help us. We don't want to die.' Despite what they said about doctors, she'd always had a neat hand. She crossed the t's and dotted the i's and underlined the 'Please', and when John came back for the note she jammed the pen into his eyeball as hard as she could. It surprised her how far it went in.

She took his pulse. Nothing. The baby slept on. She started to panic, it wouldn't be long before Peter came back. She had to be ready. She searched all over John's body for a weapon but there was nothing. Peter had a knife in an ankle sheath, she'd seen it when he bent down to put food on the floor.

The door opened and Peter said, 'What the fuck?' when he saw her sitting on the floor cradling John in her lap, like a pied. She couldn't get the pen out ofhis eye in time so she had turned his head towards her and half-covered the pen with her hands. 'Something's happened to him,' she said, looking at Peter, 'I don't know what, I thought maybe he'd just fainted, but I'm not sure .. .' She tried to sound professional, like a doctor.

Peter squatted on his haunches and turned John's head towards him and as he did so she rose up, rolling John off her lap and on to the floor, and then slammed the heel of her hand upwards into Peter's windpipe as hard as she could. He fell over backwards, holding his throat, his eyes bulging, and she leaped forward and grabbed the knife from his ankle and sawed through the rope around her own.

She crouched down by his side and watched him. He was having a lot of trouble breathing but he wasn't finished. She could feel her own breathing compromised, the airways constricting and whistling. She was drenched in sweat even though it was so cold in the room.

She didn't let him see the knife but nonetheless he was squirming and wriggling, trying to get away from her. 'Shh,' she said, laying a hand on his arm and then quietly, so he couldn't see it coming, she stuck the knife into his common carotid artery, the left one. And then for good measure she stuck it in his right one as well, and the blood gushed as if she'd struck oil.

The baby woke up and laughed when he saw her and she said, 'Little Tommy Tittlemouse lived in a little house, he caught fishes in other men's ditches.'

A Clean Well-lighted Place THE PRIUS WAS NO LONGER IN THE GARAGE. LIGHTS SPILLED OUT from the back of the house. It was six 0'clock in the morning on a Saturday, perhaps Neil Hunter was up early but it seemed more likely he hadn't been to bed. Through the glass of the French windows she could see him slumped on the living-room sofa, his eyes closed. Louise tapped on the glass, the ghost of Miss Jessel, and Neil Hunter jerked awake, a look of terror on his face which subsided when he recognized her. He got to his feet unsteadily and unlocked the door. 'Don't tell me -you again,' he said. He looked completely burned-out. 'Do you want to tell us who your friends are?' she said, walking into the room, and he laughed grimly and said, 'Friends? What friends? It turns out that I don't have any friends.' The guy looked dead on his feet. 'And your wife? What's happened to her, Mr Hunter? I think we've been messed around enough, don't you? She never rented a car to go down to Yorkshire, there was no phone call from the aunt, in fact -and this is a bit of a clincher -her aunt died two weeks ago.

So what's going on exactly?'

Neil Hunter sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. Louise squatted down beside him and said gently, 'Just tell me, has she been kidnapped, yes or no?' He drew breath noisily and said nothing.

Louise stood up and in her best official voice said, 'Neil Hunter, I am going to ask you some questions. You are not obliged to say anything in response to the questions. but if you do say anything it will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.'

He burst into tears.

Louise stood on the Hunters' front doorstep, breathing in the chilly early morning air. It was at times like this she wished she smoked because then she wouldn't be so badly tempted to raid Neil Hunter's Laphroaig.

It was the middle of the morning and the street was alive with police. Horses, bolts and stable doors came to mind.

Neil Hunter had been taken in for questioning but he wasn't making much sense and the Strathclyde police had knocked up Anderson from his luxury penthouse but he was alllawyered up. No one had any idea where to start looking for Joanna Hunter. They'd picked up the Nissan on the M8 with the registration that Reggie had given them but the guys in it weren't talking either.

Joanna Hunter was dead, Louise was sure. The baby too. Lying in a ditch somewhere or being fed to pigs. Hunter said she was gone when he got home on Wednesday evening and that an hour later he'd received a phone call telling him that if he went to the police he'd never see her again. 'Find the money to pay Anderson or sign over everything,' he said to Louise before they took him down to the station.

'And that was Wednesday?' Louise said. 'And today's Saturday and you didn't simply sign everything over straight away?'

'I was trying to find the money.'

'You didn't sign everything over straight away?'

'Don't make out I don't care about my family.'

'You. Didn't. Sign. Everything. Over. Straight. Away.'

'You don't understand.'

'I do understand -you didn't sign everything over straight away. The documentation would have been laughed out of court. You would have still kept everything and you would have had a chance of getting your wife and baby back.'

'And he would have come after me some other way. Anderson's a maniac, his henchmen are maniacs. Once he gets his teeth into something he doesn't let go. If I took him to court he'd come after us, kill us for sure.'

A uniform came out of the house and said, 'Boss?' He had important news written all over his face and she thought, that's it, Joanna Hunter's dead, but then the uniform broke into a big grin.

'You're not going to believe it, boss. She's back. She's in the house.'

'Who? Dr Hunter?'

'Dr Hunter, and the baby. And a girl.'

'A girl?'

What kind of a magic trick was that? Joanna Hunter was sitting on the sofa in the once-lovely living room. She was wearing clean jeans and a soft pale blue sweater that looked like cashmere. It had little pearl buttons on the cuffs. It was the details that seemed so at odds with everything. She looked scrubbed clean. Her hair was damp as though she'd just had a shower. 'The baby's asleep in his cot,' she said, before Louise asked.

Reggie was sitting on the sofa next to her with a bright, bland expression on her face as if she was determined to say absolutely nothing about anything. Joanna Hunter, on the other hand, was completely relaxed. 'Sorry if I've given you any trouble,' she said as if she was apologizing for being late for a dental appointment.