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The whole of his life seemed to crystallize in that moment. There were two possible futures, the left fork of illness and treatment and maybe the premature loss of his wife and the right fork of good health – for now, at least – and travel and growing old together.

And then there was Maggie. He didn’t dare believe it yet, but if she was alive and Wynne could find her, what would she come home to? Would she be reunited with her mum, only to lose her again? It seemed impossible that the universe could be so cruel, but Martin had learned from bitter experience never to underestimate the capacity of the universe for cruelty.

He took a step into the room.

‘So?’ he said.

Sandra smiled.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m clear. I guess it really was just an upset stomach.’

Wynne

There were no lights, but in the beam of the torches they could see that the building was empty. It was a warehouse of some description, and, apart from a thick layer of dust, an unpleasant, animal smell and a stack of pallets in the far corner, there was nothing.

‘There are offices at the front,’ Wynne said. ‘Where the reception is. Check those.’

Two officers – a man and a woman – headed for the front, their torches bobbing in the darkness. It was not long before they called out that there was nothing – and nobody – there.

Wynne and Chan walked out into the sunshine.

‘Not in that building,’ Chan said.

‘There are three more,’ Wynne said.

‘I know.’ Chan looked around. ‘But there’s no one here. No one’s been here for years. You can tell.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

‘No, but why would they go into one of these buildings? They’d be trapped,’ Chan said. ‘There’s no way out. This place’ll be crawling with uniforms soon.’ He shook his head. ‘Best wouldn’t be here. He knows he’d get caught.’

Wynne nodded. ‘Unless he doesn’t care about that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe being caught makes no difference to him. Maybe he brought them here to end it.’

‘To kill them?’

‘Murder–suicide,’ Wynne said. ‘It makes sense. Because if that isn’t why he came here, then I don’t know what the hell his reason could be.’

An hour later there were eight squad cars in the car park and every building had been searched.

There was no sign of Best, or Maggie, or a child, whether alive or dead, and there was no sign any of them had been in any of the buildings.

Wynne stood in the car park and tried to think. Chan walked over with a coffee and handed it to her.

‘Why did he come here?’ she said. ‘Why come to this place in particular? What’s special about it?’

‘Maybe it’s something close to here,’ Chan said. ‘A house? Or something else?’

Wynne turned to look at him. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Which means this is not his destination. It’s a stopping point. He must have known that one day he might need to run. And he would have had a plan. He’d know that we would be looking for his car, so he’d need a new one. That’s what this is. It’s where he kept another vehicle, and that’s where he is now. In some nondescript car on his way to wherever he’s going to hide.’

She inhaled deeply.

‘We need to go through everything in his life. Every document in his house, every photo, every record of anywhere he’s been and anything he’s done. Get his bank records. See if there are transactions clustered in a particular place. Cash withdrawals. We need to find somewhere he’s visited more than normal. He’s going to need a place, property of some sort. If he has property there’ll be a record of it. Something he inherited, maybe.’

Chan nodded. ‘Or somewhere he has access to that nobody knows about. Something abandoned.’