His body felt as if it did not belong to him; he could feel his legs wobbling beneath him. It was like being completely drunk, only his mind was fully functioning – it was just his body that would not respond in the way he wanted it to.

He tried to flag down a car. When he spoke his mouth and lips were numb, like having had an injection at the dentist. His arms flailed around uselessly. A couple of cars slowed down, but as soon as they heard him speak and saw his jerky, uncoordinated movements, they decided he was a drunk and wouldn’t risk opening their doors to him.

Jack was close to giving up when he spotted the phone box on the other side of the street. He staggered across, narrowly avoiding being struck by a speeding vehicle, to reach it.

Without his mobile he had no idea of Stacey’s mobile number and could not call her on that. Like most people of his age, he had lost the ability to remember numbers long ago. Most of the time he could not even remember his own number without writing it down.

His first call to directory inquiries got the number of the main police station in her area. He hoped to be able to leave an urgent message for her but was surprised to get through directly.

Now he was having trouble speaking but somehow he had to force her to understand the urgency of the situation.

‘It’s Sophie,’ he said, his voice becoming clear at last. ‘Someone’s taken her.’

Less than three minutes later Stacey Collins and two other officers were in a patrol car, blues and twos blazing, as they made their way to the park. Other uniformed teams were already on their way.

She knew exactly what had happened. She asked Jack for a description of his attacker and knew immediately that Jessica Matthews was behind the abduction – but what on earth did she want with Sophie?

By the time she arrived at the park Jack had almost fully recovered from his drug ordeal; he was now suffering from the guilt that had descended on him for failing to protect Sophie.

She instructed him to say nothing. As far as the officers at the scene were concerned, Stanley was merely an eyewitness. He had seen the girl being taken away and was able to describe the woman. No one knew it was his daughter. He was just a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The girl had clearly been taken against her will.

‘What the hell’s going on, Stacey? Who was that woman?’

Jack Stanley’s face was twisted with pain and distress.

‘She’s the killer we’ve been looking for.’

‘Why did she take Sophie?’

‘To get to me.’

‘Jesus.’

The irony of the situation did not escape her. She had wanted Sophie to stop seeing Jack because of the problems it would cause for her at work, but also because it was too dangerous, because she was worried about him being attacked while Sophie was around. She did not want her daughter to get hurt because of something Jack had done. Rival gangs might try to kidnap or snatch Sophie in order to extract leverage from Jack.

But here they were, and the fact was it was her fault that Sophie had been taken; it was her actions that had led to her daughter’s being put into jeopardy.

She called Anderson. ‘She’s taken Sophie, my daughter.’

‘Who has?’

‘Jessica Matthews. She’s taken my daughter. I don’t know where.’

‘Why? Why would she do that? It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t follow any of the patterns of behaviour that we’ve experienced so far.’

‘For fuck’s sake, sir. We’re talking about a woman who kills people by taking out their organs while they’re still awake, who gets off on dead bodies big time, who pretends to be normal during her daily working life. What the hell makes you think she’s going to be rational? She’s a fucking lunatic. Nothing she does makes any sense. Why would it? All I know is that she’s got my daughter and I have to get her back. She just likes killing people. It makes her happy. There’s nothing more to it than that.

‘Of course it doesn’t make sense. It isn’t supposed to make sense. She had bodies safely hidden away for years and no one knew anything about what she had been getting up to. And then she exposes herself by dumping them in a car in the middle of town, inviting all the police and public attention that would never have existed if she hadn’t done so. She keeps their heads and does God knows what to their internal organs. And all the time she’s playing at being the competent professional with the very people who are trying to track her down. Why? Because she’s a fucking nutter. No matter how much fancy psycho babble you want to attach to it, that’s what it comes down to. The woman is insane, so why should anything she does make any sense?’

‘Why would she go after your daughter?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t care why. That’s not important. We just need to do something. I need to get my little girl back.’

‘Come on, Collins. I need you to focus. I need you to do your job. That’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere with this.’

Collins bit her lip and counted to five. ‘I guess she sees this as personal. She blames me for exposing her. I guess I was the one who realized she was behind the killings. Now that the net is closing in, she’s trying to get revenge.’

Anderson’s face became deadly serious. ‘Stacey, I don’t know if I can allow you to work this case. I mean, you must know what the possibilities are. Protocol demands that you be taken off all duties. This is a very difficult situation.’

‘For fuck’s sake, this is my daughter we’re talking about. You don’t really expect me to sit around on my arse all day and do nothing. And if you don’t let me work this case officially, you know that I’ll just go off and continue on my own. I have plenty of friends in the department who’ll pass information on.’

Anderson shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ said Collins, exploding in fury. ‘You told me that no one was better placed to handle this case than me. You said that my special relationship with Matthews was the reason that this case was going to get solved. And now you’re telling me that none of that matters – that I should just abandon the case.’

‘This changes everything,’ said Anderson. ‘When I said those things you weren’t personally involved the way you are now. It’s your own daughter that’s been taken. How can anyone else on your team trust you to get their back, to look out for them, if you’re looking out for her all the time?’

‘Look, sir, we know the timescale here. We know it isn’t very long. If this follows the same pattern as that of the police officer she snatched, we only have a matter of hours to track her down.’

‘But, Collins, we don’t know if her intentions are the same. Sophie doesn’t fit in with her usual pattern at all. For one thing she’s a child and for another she’s female.’

‘But nothing fits in with the pattern any more. The pattern has completely changed. Chadwick wasn’t a paedophile; he was probably someone who just pissed her off. Detective Sergeant O’Neill wasn’t a paedophile, he was a serving police officer, and we know she would have checked his wallet and papers before she killed him, but that didn’t put her off either.’

Collins shut her eyes. Immediately the ghastly pictures – of the bodies in the back of the car, the open ribcages, the marbled flesh, the tiny white maggots gathered around the neck where the head had been severed – came into her mind. Would that be how she would find Sophie?

‘I think we’ve reached the point where she’s so unstable that we can’t rely on her to do anything that she has in the past. I think we have to assume the worst.’

Anderson sighed. He could see he wasn’t going to win this argument. ‘Is there anyone else you need to contact – Sophie’s father for instance?’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said softly. ‘He already knows.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need some time to deal with this?’