'You've got to.'
The hallway fell silent and Marie and Turner went into the kitchen, leaving Bolt and Andrea alone. She ran a hand through her hair, turning away from the photo.
'I don't know what to do, Mike. It's the waiting.
It's killing me.'
'Why don't you lie down for a bit?' He felt uneasy standing so close to her. 'We'll let you know of any developments.'
She nodded, and started up the staircase.
Bolt watched her go, then went to get his coffee.
The kitchen was large and modern with a breakfast island in the middle, and gleaming pots and pans hanging from hooks all around. Again, he thought about how much Mikaela would have loved a place like this. She'd been a great cook, but had had to do all her cooking in a place about a quarter of this size.
Marie and Turner were at the far end of the room, talking while she poured boiling water into the cups. Turner was approaching thirty and still resolutely single, a situation he seemed increasingly desperate to remedy. He tended to get first dates – he was a proud member of at least a dozen internet agencies, so was always getting introductions – but second ones proved a lot more elusive, which Bolt thought was a pity. Prematurely balding with a long hangdog face designed for frowning, and an obsession with the technical, the guy was definitely the kind of acquired taste a lot of people never get round to acquiring, but Bolt liked him. Turner might have had a geeky exterior, but he also had a bone-dry sense of humour, he never moaned, and there was a certain vulnerability about him that Bolt found endearing. Lately, he'd been smiling a lot more, as if he'd been taking charm lessons.
When Bolt walked in, Marie was laughing at something Turner had said, and he almost felt as if he was interrupting something. They both stopped speaking and turned his way, and Marie looked a bit sheepish.
'Andrea's gone to lie down,' he told them with a smile to show he hadn't seen or heard anything untoward.
He took the coffee cup from Marie and added a couple of sugars to it. There was another photo of Emma attached to the cupboard above the kettle, this time just a snapshot. In it she was flanked by her mother on one side and a lean, good-looking guy with unkempt brown hair on the other. They looked like a typical family. It made Bolt feel slightly jealous, although he wasn't a hundred per cent sure why.
'Do you think the husband's involved, sir?' asked Turner, seeing Bolt looking at the photo.
'Part of me says definitely,' he answered quietly, aware that he had to be careful what he said in front of Marie, who wasn't officially part of this inquiry, 'because it would explain how the kidnappers knew Emma's movements. But the other part says that if he is, why on earth did he then disappear? Surely he'd have known it would only arouse suspicion. It'd be far better to let the kidnappers know when and where to make the snatch, then act completely innocent. Even if we suspected him, there'd be nothing we could do about it.'
'That's what I was thinking,' said Turner. 'It's all wrong somehow, isn't it?'
Bolt was about to tell him not to speculate too much out loud when he heard a rapid set of footfalls on the stairs, and Andrea came rushing into the room dressed in a full-length dressing gown, her mobile phone in her right hand.
'They've called.'
'When? Just now?'
'Yes. On the mobile.'
'What did they say?'
'He asked if I was getting the money together for tomorrow night. I said I was, and he told me to turn my computer on and check my emails.'
She took a deep breath, and Bolt could tell she was using all her strength to hold things together.
'They said they've sent me a warning.'
Fifteen
While Andrea fetched her laptop and turned it on, Matt Turner called in to HQ and asked them to run an urgent trace on the last number to call Andrea's mobile. 'They'll get back to us in five,' he said as he and Bolt followed Andrea through the hallway and into a large, spacious study at the back of the house.
Andrea set the laptop down on a desk at the far end of the room which faced out on to the back lawn, and sat down to wait while it booted up. Bolt and Turner stood behind her while Marie Cohen remained further back, in the doorway. The desk itself was expensive mahogany and scrupulously tidy. There were two framed photos on it: one of Emma as a toddler, dressed in a pink swimming costume and playing with a hosepipe, laughing at the camera; another more recent one of mother and daughter smiling.
'What do you think they mean by sending me a warning?' asked Andrea, turning round in her seat and looking up at Bolt.
'Let's just see,' he said calmly.
'That's easy for you to say, isn't it?' she snapped, turning back and double-clicking on her internet icon.
Bolt didn't answer. The problem was that he wasn't very good around victims of crime. He never had been. He much preferred the process of detective work, of breaking up criminal enterprises. Of identifying targets and hitting them. He might have suffered his own private tragedy but the fact remained that he wasn't trained for this, and being intimately acquainted with this particular victim wasn't helping either. He looked over at Marie Cohen, wondering if she was going to intervene with soothing words, but she remained silent, motioning him just to leave it.
Andrea's homepage appeared on the screen and she clicked on her emails. There were a dozen or so unread messages but it was the one at the top, sent from a numbered hotmail account, which was the one they wanted. The word WARNING was written in block capitals in the subject column, and there was an mpeg attachment.
Without speaking, Andrea opened it. The message said simply WATCH THE FILM.
'Oh God,' she whispered.
Bolt tensed. 'Maybe it's best if we watch it first, Andrea,' he told her, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He didn't add 'just in case', but he knew he might as well have done.
She took another deep breath. 'No. She's my daughter. I've got to watch it.'
'It might not be a good idea, Andrea,' said Marie, moving into the study.
'I am going to watch it. End of story.' Her words were loud and decisive, cutting across the room.
She clicked on the mpeg file and waited the twenty seconds while it downloaded. The room was silent, with just the peaceful sound of birdsong coming from outside. With trembling fingers, Andrea pressed play.
Immediately the screen was filled with the top half of a person sitting against a wall in a darkened room lit by a bulb somewhere off camera. The quality of the recording was very good, and Bolt knew that he was looking at Emma even though she had a black hood over her head. The arms beneath the black T-shirt she was wearing were pale and skinny – kid's arms.
Andrea let out an audible gasp.
For two or three seconds Emma sat there, absolutely still, then very slowly she lifted a copy of The Times until it was in full view. The main headline was about the run on the Northern Rock bank. The camera panned forward until it was fixed on the date in the top right-hand corner. It was today's.
'See, Andrea, she's alive,' said Bolt, trying to sound positive. 'And it's in their interests to keep her that way.'
Andrea didn't reply, but her shoulders were shaking, and he realized she was crying silently as she stared at the screen.
The camera panned back so that Emma's upper body filled the screen again, and then the camera suddenly jerked as the cameraman reached forward with a gloved hand and roughly removed the hood, revealing the pretty teenage girl with the dark blonde hair and blue eyes whose photo was all over Andrea's house.