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By Root 340 0

with tears. Delaney was too focused, registering the jeans and the jumper with a picture of a large cartoon giraffe on the front of it. He didn’t need to look to know that beneath it there would be a new Chelsea-strip shirt with the word SAMSUNG emblazoned across the front. He looked at the curly hair on the top of the boy’s head, so brown that it was almost black, he looked at the closed eyes that would never sparkle with impish pleasure again. He looked at the smooth skin of the boy’s face, obscenely pale, and he heard his own words in his head, the promises he had made to another abducted child. One he had been in time to save. He felt the muscles in his heart harden and the hands that were thrust deep into his jacket pockets become fists, the pain of his nails, digging into his own flesh, against the tears that threatened to start in his eyes.

Graham Harper ran past him, tears rolling down his face, as Delaney pulled his cigarette packet out and walked out of the marquee into a late afternoon that was already as dark as the black hole he felt forming in his soul.

*

Standing on the iron bridge above the railway track, Delaney put a cigarette in his mouth. Scratching a match alight he lit his cigarette and held the flame close. But he felt no heat from it. He looked out at the black expanse of the railway track as it headed west into the distance and shivered, remembering.

The snow was falling fast now, the fat frozen flakes dancing in the air and floating into Jack’s eyes, blinding him. He wiped his hand across them and struggled as fast as he could along the bank, the worn soles of his boots still sticking in the slippery mud as he ran along the side of the river. ‘Hold on, Siobhan,’ he screamed. ‘I’m coming.’ He could hear her words echoing in his ears as he scanned the swirling waters.

‘Please, Jack. Please. It’s so cold.’

He had said, ‘It’s okay, Shiv. I’ve got you now.’

But he had lied. He hadn’t got her at all. And she had fallen into the icy embrace of the water and had been swept out into the river out of his reach.

‘No,’ cried Jack as he watched his sister’s head bob below the surface of the water.

‘No.’

He ran harder, calling out desperately to his sister. He caught a flash of her faded blue dress as it sank beneath the rough eddies of the water and then she was gone.

And Jack, throwing off his jacket, ran and dived into the river, not even registering the icy cold of it, his arms swept ahead of him and wrapped around his sister, and freeing one arm he splashed and paddled as powerfully as he could to the side. He pushed his sister up above him and clambered up after her onto the riverbank. He ran back to get his jacket and bundled Siobhan up in it and picking her up he cradled her to his chest and set off for home as fast as he could. Siobhan’s teeth were chattering but she laughed as she looked up to him with bright twinkling eyes and said, ‘I knew you’d save me, Jack. You always do.’

*

Delaney snapped out of his reverie. The cigarette had burned to the stub and he realised that Sally Cartwright was standing next to him.

‘It’s not him, sir,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘The boy. It’s not Archie Woods.’

Delaney frowned, trying to take it in, and picked on Sally’s expression. ‘What is it, constable? Who is he?’

‘You’re not going to believe it, sir …’

‘Just tell me, Sally!’

‘It’s Samuel Ramirez.’

She was right. Delaney couldn’t believe it.

Seventeen years after the two children had been abducted, one of the murdered children’s bodies had finally been discovered.

‘Doctor Bowman says the body has been deep-frozen, the skin slightly scalded post-mortem. Rectal damage, and bruising round the throat consistent with strangling.’

‘Peter Garnier.’

‘His MO, sir. Yes.’

‘Someone has kept the body frozen all these years?’

‘It looks that way, sir.’

‘Who, for God’s sake?’

‘The same person who has taken Archie Woods. We need to find him, sir. We need to find him quickly.’

Delaney flared another match and lit a fresh cigarette. He thought of the sister that he had saved, living happily in America now, and