aggressive, as if hanging out with single mothers was somehow beneath her. Or maybe she felt just threatened.
‘Have you seen Simon today?’ The question was laced with a mix of hostility and concern.
‘No,’ Rose said tartly, ‘he’s on a day off.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘It’s just that he was supposed to pick the kids up from gym class this afternoon,’ the woman whined, ‘and he hasn’t showed up there.’
‘Well. .’ It was now 5.36. Rose hopped from foot to foot, like a kid needing a wee. She simply had to get going. She had her own problems to sort, and the whereabouts of someone else’s husband wasn’t one of them.
‘I’ve got to go and get them myself.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’ Rose looked at her phone. Why couldn’t she just hit the button to end the call? ‘Have you tried his mobile?’
‘Of course I’ve tried his mobile!’ Claire Merrett snapped. ‘It’s just going to voicemail.’
‘Yes. Of course. Sorry.’ Why was she apologising to this bloody woman? Now 5.37. What was she supposed to do about it, anyway? Simon Merrett had always struck her as fairly reliable — at least, reliable enough to pick up his kids when he was supposed to. But with men you never really knew. ‘I’ll see if I can get hold of him,’ Rose continued, switching her phone from one hand to the other as she struggled to get into her coat and hoist her bag on to her shoulder. ‘I’ll let you know if I manage to contact him.’
It was already 5.38. Checking she had her Oyster card in her pocket, Rose skipped towards the door. There was now only silence on the line. ‘Hello?’ But Claire Merrett had hung up or been cut off or whatever. ‘Stupid woman!’ Rose hissed as she reached the top of the stairs, in too much of a rush to wait for the lift. ‘Find your bloody husband yourself.’ Concentrating on not tripping up and flying arse over tit, she reached ground level and began the lengthy slog towards home.
In the end, it took more than an hour to get back home. Rose arrived at her flat frazzled and penitent, only to discover a scene of domestic serenity: Louise sprawled on the sofa, already fed and bathed, cuddled up to Sasha who was doing her homework.
‘I didn’t even notice the time,’ Sasha smiled as Louise jumped up to give her mother a big kiss.
Rose had to resist the urge to burst into tears.
An hour later, with Louise tucked up in bed and Sasha sent home with an extra tenner in her pocket, Rose stood in the kitchen, sipping from a large glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, staring at her mobile, which lay lifeless on the table. She had texted Simon Merrett on her way into the tube station and left him a voicemail after she exited at the other end. Picking up the handset, she checked the missed-calls log, just in case. Seeing that no one had tried to call her since she had left work, she reluctantly hit Claire Merrett’s number.
The phone barely had time to ring. ‘Have you heard from him?’ were the first words out of Claire Merrett’s mouth.
‘No. And you?’
‘No, nothing. We were supposed to be going out tonight.’ She sounded less in control than earlier, as if she’d been drinking. ‘I can’t understand it.’
Rose tried not to let her own concern show. ‘Maybe something came up at work that I don’t know about,’ she said as soothingly as possible. ‘A new case or something. Let me make a few more calls and see what I can find out.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Rose grimaced at her reflection in the darkened window as soon as the words had left her mouth. It was a stupid thing to say, a kind of hopeless reflex. ‘I’ll phone you if I hear anything.’ Ending the call, she sat down at the kitchen table, wondering exactly who to try first. She pulled up a number for Eric Babel, Head of CEOP Specialist Operations Support. Babel was their ultimate boss, but Rose had only met him twice, and even then only for a combined total of something like thirty-five seconds. She therefore didn’t know him at all. Ringing him up with a false alarm would be a major embarrassment.
On the other hand. .
Feeling relieved when Babel’s number promptly went to voicemail, Rose didn’t leave a message. Putting down the handset, she tried to focus on her last conversation with Simon Merrett the day before. It had been fairly inconclusive. Still embarrassed by the debacle at the London Eye, Merrett wanted to press ahead with the prosecution of the wretched Sandra Scott. That would give them at least something to show for their efforts. As for Shen, they still couldn’t make up their minds what to do there. Yawning, Rose’s thoughts turned to a bath, followed by bed. First, however, she pulled a notebook out of her bag and rifled through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Then, punching a new number into her handset, she made the call.
‘You are the guy from the London Eye.’
Simon Merrett shifted uneasily on the bare concrete floor. Squatting in front of him, Ihor held an expensive- looking Canon camera, slowly going through a series of digital images of Merrett receiving medical attention from the paramedic outside City Hall. He gestured to the cast on Merrett’s broken wrist. ‘Does it still hurt?’
Handcuffed to a metal ring set into the floor, Merrett said nothing. After they had bundled him out of the Palermo, he had been forced into the back of a silver Mercedes with tinted windows, and driven straight here. They had emptied his pockets, taken his mobile, his keys, his wallet and sat him down on the top floor of an unfinished office block somewhere in North London. Through the floor-to-ceiling window, he could see the transmission mast at Alexandra Palace blinking in the darkness. He was cold and hungry and his arse was numb. He wondered how he had managed to get himself into this mess. His guts spasmed as he realised that he had passed up his only chance of trying to make a break for freedom, when they had been in a public space. Now he was completely at their mercy.
‘Of course,’ Ihor Chepoyak smiled, ‘now that we know who you are, we don’t need the photos.’ He began deleting the images, stopping at one showing Rose Scripps patting him on the arm. ‘Who is the woman?’
Merrett bit down on his fear. ‘Fuck off.’
The smaller man stepped forward, fists raised.
Ihor raised a hand. ‘No, Artem. No need.’ He deleted the image and stood up. ‘We can find out easily enough. Why is Child Protection interested in all of this?’
Despite everything, Merrett laughed. ‘Why do you think? You do what you do. We do what we do — which is to try and stop it.’
Ihor nodded at the reasonableness of it all. ‘How did you find out about it?’
Merrett shrugged. Telling them the truth couldn’t make much difference to anything. ‘One of the Eye workers was selling the security tapes on the internet. She gave you up straight away.’
Ihor turned to Artem and said something Merrett didn’t understand. Then he slipped back into English. ‘Stupid woman. And Shen. Is he involved in this?’
Merrett gazed out of the window. ‘Who?’
Ihor stepped forward and tapped his cast gently with the toe of his shoe. ‘Don’t lie,’ he said gently. ‘You weren’t following me. You were following him.’
Merrett said nothing.
‘Interesting. You are investigating a police officer.’ Ihor stroked his chin in mock deliberation. ‘You must think he is part of this. Corrupt.’
‘Is he?’ Merrett couldn’t help himself.
‘Come on, Detective.’ Ihor smiled. ‘I am not here to answer
Sitting in the darkness, Merrett had a half-hearted tug at the handcuffs and felt a sharp pain shoot through his broken wrist. He touched the cast where his daughter had drawn a little heart and scribbled
