Tap-tap.
I make my way slowly downstairs, the thin gray light of morning coming halfheartedly through the windows by the front door. There is no one on the drive. I pat the pocket of my jeans absently before realizing I’ve left my phone upstairs on the bedside table. I listen for the noise again, but there is nothing. Even Steve, our cat—who would normally be appealing noisily for an early breakfast at this hour—is nowhere to be seen. Standing on the cold tiled floor of the kitchen, I strain my ears, trying to locate the source of the tapping. Probably Steve somewhere with a mouse, or an overhanging tree branch slapping against a window: there is a ton of foliage in the front and back gardens that I need to cut back. My pulse steadies, slowing down to something near normal.
I fill the kettle and set it to boil, fetching two mugs down from the cupboard. I’m awake now and know I won’t be able to get back to sleep before the children stir. I find my slippers and heft the big four-pinter of milk out of the fridge-freezer, nudging the door shut with my elbow—
A dark figure looms beyond the frosted glass of the back door.
“Jesus!”
My own voice is loud in the silence of my kitchen and I almost drop the milk, heart leaping into my throat.
The figure raises a hand. A word of greeting muffled behind the glass.
It takes me a few seconds to register who it is, standing at my back door at six fifteen in the morning. Fumbling for the handle, I open up to a rush of cool morning air and gesture for him to come into the kitchen.
“Dom,” I say. “Hi.”
My brother-in-law is a big man, thick through the chest and waist, with close-cropped dark hair and a bushy beard.In old family album pictures of him and Jess as small children, there was a faint facial resemblance, but since then, they’ve grown into the chalk-and-cheese kind of siblings you wouldn’t put together even when stood side by side. Now, Dom cuts an imposing figure in the dark navy uniform he wears for work, where he’s a security supervisor overseeing a couple of thousand students on the university’s three-hundred-acre parkland campus. His battered green Skoda Estate hadn’t been parked on the front drive just now; presumably he’s left it on the street.
“Morning, Adam,” he says cheerily. “Just come off a night shift, didn’t want to ring the doorbell and disturb the kiddies. Didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No,” I say. “I was up and about anyway. Lots to be getting on with.”
“So, this is the new pad, is it?” He lets out a low whistle. “Very posh, very fancy. Do I need to start calling you the lord of the manor now?”
As always with Jess’s older brother, I can never quite tell whether he’s teasing, or whether that’s just the way he talks to his team members at work—and everyone else.
I shake my head. “We got a key cut for you, by the way. It’s around here somewhere.”
He leans back against the counter, arms folded over his big chest, and takes in the high ceiling, the pantry, the door to the cellar. The generalsizeof everything, the grand scale of Victorian architecture, the elaborate cornices, the expanse of the garden outside.
“Jess asked me to pop by and have a look at a camera you found?”
“Thanks—it’s in the garage. But first I need some caffeine.” I reach down a third mug from the cupboard. “Tea or coffee?”
Dom and I make small talk while the coffee brews and then take our mugs into the garage, where most of the pitted concrete floor is still taken up with empty boxes and odd bits of furniture I’ve still not found a home for after the move. The garden shears, saws, and anything else with a blade that I want to keep out of Callum’s reach—as well as the bird box—are on the highest shelf against the far wall.
“Jess didn’t want the camera in the house,” I say to my brother-in-law. “So I put it up here instead.”
I stretch up, feeling next to the bowsaw, but my fingers can’t quite reach high enough. Must have pushed it right to the back of the shelf. Pulling out a plastic packing crate, I step up onto it and reach up with both hands.
But the shelf is empty.
The camera, and the bird box, are gone.
15
“I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head. “I put it up here yesterday afternoon.Right here, the box as well.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“I noticed that the padlock on that side door was unlocked when we came in just now,” Dom says, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb. “Did you secure it last night?”
“I… think so? I mean, probably.” Thinking back to last night, the day had been so full, my mind racing with so much that was new, that I couldn’t actually remember doing it. “Ninety percent sure I locked it.”
He raises an eyebrow at that, but lets it go without comment. As a single man with no family of his own, he’s always been very protective of his little sister and of the kids in particular. He often seems to give the impression—either deliberately or otherwise—that he’s not sure I’d be up to the job of looking after them on my own, if push ever came to shove.
