Simon Kernick - Deadline

As Bolt got out of the car he saw a shadow move across one of the upstairs windows of the house opposite. It had been turned into an observation post by the surveillance team, giving them a perfect view of the portion of the street to the front of Andrea's house.

Bolt let Andrea lead the way, with Marie bringing up the rear. He thought about how much Andrea had moved on since the old days when he'd first known her. It was all down to her own efforts as well. He admired her for that, but then she'd never been short of spirit and drive. It was spirit she was going to need now.

'We've got something called a trace/intercept set up on your landline,' he told her as she pressed the buzzer on the security gate and waited for Turner to let them in. 'It means that if they make a call to your home, we'll be able to pinpoint the location of the caller very quickly.'

'I don't want you to do anything that risks hurting Emma, Mike.'

'We won't,' said Bolt, but it was a lie, and he knew it. Whatever they did, they risked hurting Emma.

Matt Turner buzzed them in, and as they stepped inside the gate Bolt was immediately struck by the strong scent of flowers. The garden was a riot of colour, well kept with neat flowerbeds bordering the house's exterior wall. It was also very well stocked, with thick walls of greenery rising all round the terraced lawn. His wife Mikaela would have loved this place. She'd always wanted to live in a big, rambling house with a couple of kids and a couple of dogs and plenty of space, somewhere that with his copper's salary and hers as a primary school teacher they were never going to be able to afford.

Turner met them both at the door, greeting Andrea with a formal 'Mrs Devern' and moving out of the way to let her pass.

The front door led into a rather grand tiled hallway with a flight of stairs disappearing up to the next floor. The decor was all very neutral, with off-white colours dominating, which in Bolt's opinion gave it a rather soulless feel – not that he was any kind of expert in interior design. Straight ahead of him, above a vase containing partially wilted orchids, was a large professional portrait photograph of Andrea and Emma. It was a good shot of both mother and daughter, who were smiling widely at the camera, their faces side by side and touching, and the twinkle was firmly in Andrea's eye. Emma was a pretty kid with dark blonde hair down to her shoulders and a cute button nose. She looked young in the picture, probably no more than ten.

Bolt looked away quickly, not wanting to draw attention to the photo. Marie asked whether anyone would like a cup of tea.

Bolt smiled at her. 'I'll take coffee, thanks, if it's going.'

Turner said he'd have the same.

Andrea didn't appear to have heard her. She was staring at the picture.

'What do you think of her, Mike? Isn't she beautiful?'

'Yes,' he said, keen to keep Andrea's spirits up. 'She's beautiful. And we're going to bring her back.'

'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.'

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.