DS Anderson ushered her past the front desk and through to a large and busy area where several officers worked, either on phones or tapping away at computers. Nobody glanced up as she arrived, and Anderson led her to a corner desk and nodded for her to sit. There was something different about him today, she thought: a businesslike briskness, a grim purposefulness that made her uneasy. She sat without a word, bracing herself for whatever was coming.
Taking a seat next to her, he pressed the mouse of his computer and the screen flickered into life. “Okay,” he said. “This is CCTV footage of—”
“Duck Lane,” Clara finished for him, peering closely at the screen. The slightly hazy, bleached-out film showed the narrow dead-end road off Broadwick Street that ran behind the string of office buildings, shops, and cafés lining Brindle Press’s part of Wardour Street. It was used by delivery vans to off-load their supplies to the various businesses’ back entrances—as well as being where Brindle employees came to smoke, make private phone calls, or take part in periodic fire drills.
“Okay, so this is footage from seven thirty-six on Tuesday evening,” Anderson went on. “If you watch, you’ll see Luke leave the building and walk toward Broadwick Street.”
The sudden shock of seeing Luke’s image, his posture and gait so familiar, so loved, triggered such a rush of longing that her eyes swam. She stared hard at the screen, watching as he left Brindle and turned to call something over his shoulder, giving a brief wave. “George,” she murmured. “He’s waving good-bye to George, the security guard.”
Anderson nodded. “Okay. Keep watching.”
At that moment, a blue van appeared, approaching Luke from behind. The second it passed him, it stopped, obscuring him from view. She glanced up at Anderson in confusion. “What . . . ?”
“Wait,” he said. “The van stops for eight seconds. . . . Okay, now it’s moving off again.” Sure enough, the van continued on its journey to the end of Duck Lane, whereupon it turned right and disappeared from view. Next, Anderson leaned forward and with a few clicks of the mouse called up a different camera angle, this time giving a view of Broadwick Street. “As you can see, Luke doesn’t reappear, either just before, during, or at any time after those eight seconds that the van stopped for.”
“Well, didn’t he just turn right?” she asked. “Toward Wardour Street, I mean?”
Anderson shook his head. “We’ve checked all the CCTV footage and Luke doesn’t reappear again anywhere in the vicinity, on any of the surrounding streets.”
Clara stared at him. “So . . . he got into the van?”
“There’s nowhere else he could have gone.”
Her mind raced. “Then it must have been a friend of his driving—or at least someone he knew?”
“Possibly.” Anderson leaned back and folded his arms. “The van stops for eight seconds. We have no way of knowing why Luke got inside.” He paused and looked at Clara. “What we do know is that the van was stolen from a business address in Ealing, late on Monday evening.”
“Stolen? But . . .”
“We managed to track its onward journey as far as the M20, but we lose ANPR coverage of it shortly after it leaves the motorway and heads in the direction of the Kent Downs, not far from Dover.”
She tried to make sense of what he was telling her, mentally searching for possible explanations, but found none. She shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t . . .”
Anderson switched off the computer and took the seat next to hers, his eyes focused on her face. “We’re doing everything we can to find the van, Clara. And we will find it. But in the meantime we’re appealing for witnesses who might have been in the vicinity when Luke disappeared.”
Panic climbed in her chest. “What about the e-mails?” she asked at last. “Do you have any idea who sent them?”
“Not yet, no. We’ve traced them to several different servers belonging to various Internet cafés across London. Not one of them had working CCTV, which might be coincidence but probably isn’t. We still have no way of knowing whether the person who sent them is connected to Luke’s disappearance. What we do know is that Luke hasn’t withdrawn any money from his account since last Tuesday, nor did he take out any significant sums in the days leading up to his disappearance, which indicates that he hadn’t been planning to go anywhere for any length of time. As you know, he didn’t take his passport or credit card.”
It was only then that she remembered Luke’s sweatshirt. “I saw something,” she said. “In my neighbor’s flat.”
Anderson listened patiently as she told her story. “It might not have been his, of course,” she added, “but it’s pretty distinctive.” Her eyes searched the detective’s face uncertainly. “I don’t know if . . .”
“We’ll look into it,” Anderson told her as he got up, and nodded at her to follow. “We were intending to speak to your neighbors again anyway. I’ll let you know what we find out.”
And then that was it. She was alone again, standing in the street, looking back at the black bricks of the police station. She turned and began to walk home. Had Luke known the driver of the van? If
