Simon Kernick - Deadline

'So, Phelan's Range Rover could have been abandoned round here somewhere,' said Bolt, prodding the map near to the final cross.

'Could have been, but it's also possible that if they turned off the A1 and took back roads, they could have driven miles without being picked up by cameras. I'll keep on to Hendon, see if we can come up with any more sightings, but I wouldn't hold out much hope.'

'We'll also have a word with the local police, see if they've got any reports of the car being abandoned on their manor,' Barry said. He turned to Obanje. 'Thanks, Kris. Keep up with the good work.'

'It's coming along,' he said. 'She's a sweet looking kid. We all want to get her back.' He picked up the papers and left the room, the other two watching him go.

The tightness in Bolt's stomach had eased just a little. If the man in the back of the Range Rover had got in the car in the dentist's car park, then it was possible he might have been seen by a passerby. It wasn't much, but it represented a chink of hope.

He stood up. He needed to get out of Barry's stifling office. 'I'll get a couple of the team to go down to the surgery,' he said, and went outside.

But he didn't go back to the incident room straight away. Instead, he walked down the empty corridor and into the toilet. He splashed water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror.

He wasn't a bad-looking guy. His hair was still more blond than grey, although turning faster than he'd have liked, and he had a long, lean face with well-defined features and the kind of strong jaw that would stand up in a fight. Even the scars – an S-shaped slash on his chin, two small ragged lumps on his left cheek – added to rather than detracted from his appearance, and their effect was softened by his eyes. 'Laughing eyes' Mikaela used to call them. They were a bright, lively blue, and shone with a friendly and disarming interest.

But today they were duller, more brooding, and Bolt could see that he looked haggard and stressed. All his adult life he'd had to cope with pressure. The pressure of being a young man in uniform policing the streets of modern-day London had given way to the pressure of chasing some of the capital's most dangerous armed robbers during the ten years he'd spent with the Flying Squad. He'd been involved in some extremely dangerous operations, but the difference was that in those days he'd been part of a team, sharing the tension with a group of men and women who knew exactly how he was feeling, their support always providing a measure of comfort. Today he was completely on his own as the investigation into the kidnapping of the girl who could be his daughter went on around him.

He'd been operating pretty much on autopilot all afternoon, constantly turning over the various scenarios in his head, thinking back to those long ago days when he and Andrea had had their brief and passionate affair, trying to work out whether he really was the father of someone he'd never met, and whose first fourteen years he'd completely missed. Wondering now whether he was ever going to meet her, or whether he'd be the man staring down at her dead, broken body. Every time this last thought took hold, he felt himself wince and his heart pound faster.

He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. They desperately needed a break, a single mistake by the kidnappers that would provide them with a clue to their identity, and hopefully their whereabouts. But if no one had seen the kidnapper get into Pat Phelan's Range Rover in the surgery car park, it was looking less and less likely that they were going to get one.

For a long moment, Bolt stood there watching the water drip down his face, listening to the constant drumbeat of his heart, knowing that whatever happened today, his life would never be the same again. 'Pull yourself together,' he whispered. 'She needs you.' And he vowed then and there that if he got Emma out of this, he was going to introduce himself to her, and if he was her father – and Christ knows he might never know for sure – he was going to make her part of his life whether Andrea liked it or not.

But in the meantime, he had to force her out of his mind.

His mobile started to ring. He looked at his watch. Twenty past four. He pulled it from his pocket.

It was Tina calling.

From the moment the cruel one had run the blade of the knife across her face, smiling behind the balaclava at her fear, Emma knew there was no way he was ever going to let her go.

Afterwards, when he'd turned off the camera, he'd stared at her for a long time with his dead fish eyes. 'I think you're lying, you little bitch. You saw my face, didn't you?' He leaned forward so his face was almost touching hers, and sniffed loudly. 'I can smell the bullshit on you,' he whispered.

She promised him again that she wasn't lying, even sworn on her mum's life. Because it was true, she hadn't really seen anything – only that he had dark hair. But he didn't believe her, and just kept staring until finally she shut her eyes because she couldn't bear to see him looking at her like that any more.

'If you are lying, you little bitch, then you're going to fucking die,' he said as he headed towards the steps.

She shouted again that she wasn't, honestly, that he had to believe her, but he didn't reply and a few seconds later he was gone, locking the basement door behind him.

For a long time afterwards she sat hunched up on the bed, her knees pressed against her chest, too shocked and terrified to move, wondering why he wanted to kill her when it must have been obvious that she was telling the truth. Why did he have to be so cruel? She'd never done anything bad to him. She'd never done anything bad to anyone. Her mum called her a carer, and she was. She looked after people. There was a girl at school, Natalie, who was getting picked on by some of the Year 12 girls, and Emma had stepped in, even squared up to one of them to get them to stop (and they had: they'd backed off, even though they were bigger), because she didn't like people being bullied.

But now none of this counted for anything.

When she realized that this was it, that the cruel one really might kill her, the fear was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, far worse than the previous days when she'd at least had some kind of hope that the nightmare might end with her being reunited with her mum. Now she was sure this wasn't going to be the case. As soon as she was no longer needed, that'd be it. The cruel one would get rid of her, and there'd be nothing she could do about it, because she was totally helpless down here.

She wondered how they were going to do it. With a gun, or a pillow over her head? Or maybe with that knife of his? She couldn't bear that. To be stabbed to death. It would be slow, horrible, and there'd be blood everywhere. She couldn't bear the idea of her mum having to identify her in some morgue somewhere when they finally discovered her body. If they ever did find it, of course. She might end up missing for ever, like one of those kids who disappear and are never heard from again. If they had to do it, she hoped they'd give her pills so she could just go to sleep, and that would be the end of everything. It would be awful, and she'd miss her mum and her friends, and even her teachers – well, a couple of them – but at least it would be painless.

But she didn't want to die. God, she didn't. And just thinking about it made her cry again.

And then, as she sat there all alone, something within her changed. She realized that she couldn't just lie there weeping. She had to do something, anything. There was a topic they'd covered in history when she was in Year 9. It was about British prisoners in Germany during the Second World War and how they were always trying to escape. How often they weren't successful, and got punished for it, but how they kept on trying, and some – quite a few – even managed it.