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  ‘Why would you come here unannounced?’ said Barnes. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘We’ve spoken to Stuart Pierson. He told us what you requested, Brenda,’ said Lambert.

  Genuine puzzlement came over the woman’s face. ‘What did that shit say?’ she demanded.

  ‘That you asked for his help to free your husband.’

  Lambert was surprised when the woman started laughing. ‘I’ve met some men in my time,’ she said, ‘my husband being one of them, but I’ve never met a man so full of shit as Stuart Pierson. He’s lying to you, protecting himself.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Lambert. ‘He was pretty convincing.’

  ‘Oh yes, he can be.’

  ‘And I saw you, Brenda,’ said Sarah.

  ‘You saw me?’ said Barnes.

  ‘Outside The Bistro in St Albans.’

  Barnes furrowed her brow. ‘Was it just coincidental or were you following me?’

  ‘I was following Pierson, working on the Peter Saunders’ case.’

  Barnes paused, before surprising them by lowering her gun.

  ‘It wasn’t even loaded,’ she said. ‘Now tell me why you’re really here.’

  Lambert got to his feet, confused by Barnes’ reaction. ‘Pierson said you were crying and pleading for his help,’ said Lambert.

  ‘And I saw you, Brenda, you were crying.’

  ‘Oh Christ, you saw that. Not my finest hour, I agree, but it wasn’t because of my husband. Believe me, do you really think I’d want him back in my life? I told you when you interviewed me, everything that happened in that godforsaken place was a shock. Well, a shock doesn’t fully describe it. It was like a death. The man I thought I loved, the man I had children with, was not the man I knew at all. He was worse than an animal. All those deaths, all those children. It was like I was responsible. That’s why I came here, I left the force, brought my children out to the countryside in the hope we could somehow put the past behind us, put all that animal had done behind us.’

  ‘So why the tears?’ said Lambert.

  Brenda puffed out her cheeks. ‘Because we were lovers. I can pick them, can’t I? I knew Stuart from before. We worked in the same patch. I’d taken prisoners into him. I regret to say it but I was having an affair, even before Jonathan was arrested. I kept it quiet at the time, and now I couldn’t care less, obviously.’

  ‘And you were crying because?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Because he’d broken it off. I knew he was seeing some other women. The worst thing is it’s all Jonathan’s fault.’

  ‘In what way?’ said Lambert.

  ‘Stuart couldn’t accept I’d been married to such a man, that I had his children. He deals with perverts on a daily basis and though he handled it to begin with, it slowly ate away at him until he wanted to see less and less of me. That’s why I was crying that day at the restaurant, one last pathetic attempt to get a man to stay with me, the man who thought I was a monster. How pathetic is that?’

  ‘We need to check the barn,’ said Lambert.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Lambert kept his hand close to his gun, as Barnes opened the barn door.

  They searched the space but it was empty. ‘It’s just haystacks. All we have is the horses and some poultry. I’m not a farmer, my kids up and left me to go to university in September. So I’m all alone, apart from the odd volunteer who comes to help.’

  Lambert had sympathy for the woman; her life had been destroyed by the actions of her husband but it didn’t explain why Pierson had lied to them.

  ‘Do you think Pierson had anything to do with Peter Saunders’ disappearance?’ said Lambert.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. I was wrong about Jonathan and I was wrong about Stuart. What I can say is the only person he truly cares about is himself. For that reason, I’d be surprised if he had anything to do with Saunders escaping. It’s ruined his career.

  ‘I’m not stupid, DCI Lambert. There must be more to you coming here than the word of Stuart Pierson?’

  They explained about the murders, missing out the details of Sophie and Jane’s abduction.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d help you if I could,’ said Barnes.

  ‘Why would Pierson lie to us?’ said Lambert.

  ‘You’ll have to ask him. He’s not stupid though. I imagine incriminating me diverted your attention from questioning him?’

  Lambert grimaced, thankful Tillman still had the man in custody. He called his boss and reported back what Brenda had told him.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get the truth from him,’ said Tillman, hanging up.

  * * *

  They reconvened back at Lambert’s house. Sarah was pouring coffee as Tillman arrived. ‘We’ve questioned him again. He admitted he was lying about Brenda Barnes wanting to get her husband out of jail.’

  ‘Why the hell did he lie about that?’ said Lambert.

  ‘Claims he was nervous. Not thinking straight. I’ve left a team watching Brenda and will release Pierson later in the day. We can see if they arrange to meet.’

  Lambert drank the offered coffee, guilty at enjoying the taste. The three of them sat in silence. Lambert imagined the other two were thinking the same as him: they had so little to go on.

  Despite which, Lambert had far from given up hope. There was an explanation out there and he knew if he could relax his mind the answer would come. Whoever had taken Sophie and Jane would not leave it at this. There would be an endgame, even if it was a failed attempt to spring Jonathan Barnes from prison.

  ‘Log me onto the System again,’ he said to Tillman.

  Tillman wrote down his passwords on a piece of paper.

  Lambert took the paper and sprinted upstairs with his laptop, past photos of Sophie and Jane and Chloe. He would always blame himself for losing Chloe and refused to allow the same thing to happen again.

  He would save Jane and Sophie.

  In his office, he dragged up every piece of information he had on the three killings. Using Tillman’s passwords he logged onto the System and opened the files on Waverly Manor. What was he missing?

  One of Lambert’s strengths was determining patterns in a seemingly random order of events. The only downside to such an approach was a lack of methodology; it happened, and he had no way of forcing it.

  He studied each victim one by one on the large whiteboard above his desk. He wrote Alistair Beckinsale’s name first and listed the potential suspects, repeating the process with Lance Jenkins and Inspector Duggan.

  He went back to the beginning and wrote Thomas Powell and Dominic Webster. Last, he reluctantly wrote the name of the disgraced former officer Jonathan Barnes, circling the name as if it tainted the others by its presence.

  He stood back from the board, stared hard at the six names and the list of smaller names beneath. He scrubbed out Jonathan Barnes to aid his concentration, and looked again.

  He was reaching for something: a word, a phrase, a witness, something explaining or linking the five men on the board. He tried to think logically, starting with the basic facts he knew. Each of the five victims were male; three were under thirty, two over thirty. Beckinsale and Jenkins had suffered some form of abuse either by family members or from outside the family. There was a potential link to the Manor, but it was conjecture at best.

  Could the victims be linked somehow? Inspector Duggan had his part to play in the arrest of Jonathan Barnes. So Lambert ticked his name. Next to Beckinsale and Jenkins he made a smaller tick: both had suffered some form of ordeal as a child, though he had no clarification of this yet. Next to Webster and Powell he put a question mark. Powell had been killed by his aunt but there was no suggestion of abuse. Webster was the anomaly. He was an abuser, not a victim, but there was a reason for him being there.

  The frustration increased. It was like having a word on the tip of his tongue, something ordinary and everyday he inexplicably couldn’t remember. Lambert concentrated, reading the names on the board out loud, add
ing extra ones as files and snapshots from Waverley Manor scrolled past on his laptop.

  He added Brenda Barnes, Stuart Pierson, Peter Saunders and the MI5 agent, Partridge. He closed his eyes and pinched his forehead; he needed to clear the clutter of information scrolling through his head. There was a pattern there, he was sure of it.

  He clicked on Inspector Duggan’s file, the first time he’d had access to it since the man’s death. The picture of the murder scene flashed up and Lambert froze it on the screen. At times he’d hated Duggan, but he’d not deserved this. It was an extraordinary replica of Jonathan Barnes’ injuries, almost perfect in its accuracy.

  He scrolled through some more pages, the answer beginning to unravel.

  Inspector Duggan was survived by one elderly relative, Frank Duggan, an eighty-seven-year-old retiree who lived in Wales.

  He went through the other victims. Alistair Beckinsale was survived by his mother and father, Lance Jenkins by his parents. Of the old cases, Thomas Powell was survived by his mother, his father having committed suicide. The only anomaly was Dominic Webster, murdered by his family.

  But wasn’t that the point? Everything centred around the family.

  Lambert turned to the sixth victim, the one he’d scrubbed out, the one still alive, the former DCI Jonathan Barnes. Incarcerated, he’d left behind a wife, a daughter and – most importantly, Lambert was now convinced – a son. He rushed downstairs. ‘Parents and their children,’ he screamed at Tillman and Sarah.

  ‘Slow down, Michael,’ said Sarah.

  Lambert took a deep breath and explained his theory, listing the victims and those who survived them.

  ‘Brenda Barnes doesn’t want her husband back in her life. It’s the son, Edmund Barnes. He’s the one we’re after.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sophie reached out in the near-darkness, her hands grabbing her daughter. Jane didn’t respond so she pulled her nearer, tearful as she felt the steady heartbeat of her child. ‘Jane, can you hear me, baby?’ she whispered into the child’s ear, but Jane didn’t open her eyes.

  A bottle of water rolled away as she adjusted her position on the stone floor. Sophie unscrewed the cap and sniffed the contents. It was odourless but she replaced the cap without drinking.

  Her head was a thick sponge, her thinking muddled. She searched for a memory but her amnesia was total. Her last memory was parking the car. She couldn’t even remember leaving the vehicle and entering the house. A vague memory of raised voices was just out of reach. It was like the worst ever hangover magnified by a thousand. How could she have let this happen? She was supposed to protect Jane.

  She let the child slip from her grasp. Removing her pullover she used it as a pillow for Jane’s head. Maybe she would sleep through all this; Michael would arrive any minute and Jane would never know.

  Sophie stretched and paced the room. She calculated the dimensions by placing one foot in front of the other, the space approximately fifty metres by thirty. There were no windows, only a locked door with the thinnest shard of light slipping through the opening at the bottom.

  A memory of falling down stairs came to her and she winced, her hand reaching for the tender bruise on her left shoulder.

  They were in a basement. ‘Hello?’ she screamed, pulling at the edges of the door, the noise reverberating in her head. She tried to blink away the pain but it was worse than any migraine she’d ever experienced.

  ‘Think,’ she said to herself, but it was much easier said than done. She wasn’t herself. ‘But at least I’m aware of that. They’ve drugged me,’ she mumbled, glancing at the bottle of water.

  Dizzy, she sat next to Jane and blinked her eyes, fighting the fatigue. ‘Must stay awake,’ she said, falling asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The last time Lambert saw Edmund Barnes he’d been a gangly teenager sitting next to his sister in court listening to the heinous crimes being attributed to his father. Lambert had felt sorry for the pair. Both stared ahead as the sentence was read out, hardly reacting as Brenda Barnes hugged them. Why had she brought them to the courthouse? Had it been to support Jonathan Barnes, or a means to explain to her children what their father really was, the monster he’d become?

  If Lambert’s theory was correct, whatever the reasoning behind taking her children to court, its effect on Edmund Barnes was detrimental.

  Lambert explained his thinking to Tillman and Sarah. If they thought he was grasping at straws they didn’t give it voice.

  ‘How old is he now?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Nineteen, I believe. In his first year of criminology at the University of Kent,’ said Lambert, accessing the boy’s file on the System.

  ‘Criminology,’ said Tillman, full of disdain.

  ‘We have an address for him. Canterbury.’ The photo on his file didn’t remind Lambert of Jonathan Barnes. The boy was stick thin. In the picture at least, his eyes looked vacant and dull. Could this really be the killer? Lambert drummed his fingers on the dining room table. He was desperate to move, to find Sophie and Jane. His colleagues noticed his tension.

  Sarah moved towards him. Lambert sensed she would have touched him had Tillman not been there. ‘There’s one more person we need to speak to. I spoke to Paul Guthrie from Woolwich prison when Saunders escaped. If Pierson isn’t involved then maybe Guthrie had more of a role to play. He’ll be in charge of Barnes’ transfer, so we should question him.’

  ‘Glenn, you know that guard at Woolwich. Any information on the Governor?’ asked Lambert.

  ‘He’s less hands-on than Pierson, that’s why it was easy to get access the other night. We could question him but I think our resources are best directed to tracking Barnes junior.’

  Lambert looked at Sarah. ‘I’ll speak to him,’ she said. ‘You two get to Canterbury.’

  Tillman drove, refusing to allow Lambert behind the wheel. ‘Try to rest, Michael,’ he said, knowing his words were redundant.

  Lambert was painfully alert, as if he’d drunk a litre of coffee. His mind replayed the information he’d scrolled through back at the house, verifying the conclusions he’d reached, searching for vital clues he and Sarah had missed while thoughts of Sophie and Jane overran his mind.

  Hard as he tried, he couldn’t help but imagine them suffering. He pictured narrow corridors, dungeons, darkness and chains. He came close to sobbing as he pictured Jane separated from her mother, alone in the darkness, confused and terrified. It was his fault, and although he vowed to do anything humanly possible to find them, a pessimistic part of him worried he would never get the chance.

  They made good time to Canterbury, driving against the traffic to the cathedral city in east Kent. The roads and pavements on the outskirts were coated in rain. Edmund Barnes lived in the student area and, it being Christmas, most residents were at home with their families. They decided not to contact Brenda Barnes in case she warned her son, and so far had kept Matilda out of it. Lambert didn’t want to give Sophie and Jane’s abductor the slightest reason to fulfil his threat.

  ‘This is it,’ said Tillman, driving past a three-storey Edwardian house.

  They parked down the road and moved back towards the house. Lambert peered through one of the downstairs windows where the curtains were drawn. Inside he saw a communal room. It was typical student digs, a beige carpet strewn with discarded dinner plates and cutlery, empty beer cans and brimming ashtrays. Posters of female celebrities Lambert didn’t recognize adorned the walls, suggesting Edmund Barnes shared the house with other males.

  A porch was tacked onto the front of the house, an ugly modern addition. Lambert tried the door, surprised it was open. The second internal door was locked. Lambert looked at Tillman, who took out his toolkit from his jacket without speaking.

  Lambert waited until they were inside to withdraw his gun. He risked spooking one of the students but was beyond such concerns. They secured the living room and the kitchen before moving towards the bedrooms.

 
There were two rooms to the side of the downstairs hall, both empty. The first contained nothing more than a bare double mattress, ancient looking and resplendent with various dark stains, and a lone desk and chair. A large double bed took up most of the second room, its mattress covered by a thick duvet. Paintings and posters lined the walls, arranged in perfect symmetry as if the occupant had a mild case of OCD. A montage of photographs covered the noticeboard by the desk. Lambert studied the photos while Tillman kept guard. Smiling youths beamed back at him, so young Lambert thought it incredible they were at university. He searched for a glimpse of Edmund but couldn’t see the boy’s dark eyes in any of the photos. Lambert signalled Tillman, pointing upstairs.

  Both of the rooms on the second floor were vacant. The first room contained a single bed, its only other contents a weights bench and a bumper pack of man-sized tissues. The second room contained two beds, each with duvets and pillows. The room had posters but no photos. The wardrobes were all but empty, two pairs of trainers in one, a pack of unopened cornflakes in the other. If Edmund was staying in either room then he’d gone home for Christmas. He regretted not asking Brenda Barnes at the farmhouse.

  Lambert led the way up the third staircase to the loft area. He baulked on opening the first door. An airless bathroom was covered from floor to ceiling in some form of green fungus. Tillman pushed the door to the last room and Lambert burst through with his gun raised. Damp, flowered-patterned wallpaper drooped from the walls. A sturdy wooden desk heaped with pamphlets and books sat next to a metal-framed bed covered by a single beige sheet. Lambert sifted through the mess until he found a letter dressed to Edmund Barnes. ‘Looks like his room,’ said Lambert.

  Lambert checked the wardrobe and a small wood-panelled chest of drawers. If Edmund had left he hadn’t packed, as both items of furniture were full of clothes’

  They looked through the books on the desk, mainly criminology textbooks. Lambert flicked through a couple of true crime tomes. There was nothing unusual about the books. They could be picked up easily online or at a local bookshop, but Lambert wondered if Edmund had bought them for other reasons.