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He sighed. ‘Just be careful.’

‘I will. Listen, I’ll call you back in a minute. Can you go online, get some more information about Vine? Thanks.’

If he had been lucky on the way up, with clear roads and a lack of roadworks, he was now paying the price. It was gridlock all the way out of town, but at least the slow-moving traffic gave him a chance to get his thoughts together and prepare for his encounter with Vine.

Ten minutes into the journey, he called Bob using the hands-free kit on his phone.

‘I’m really sorry to do this to you on your day off. Can you talk me through what you found out?’

‘It’s OK. Although we could have picked a better day for it. Isobel wants to try for another baby and today’s the day. She’s in bed reading
Fifty Shades of Grey
and getting in the mood. I hope she doesn’t want to try anything too scary.’

Declan couldn’t help but smile.

‘OK,’ Bob continued. ‘Here’s Lewis Vine’s
Wikipedia
page. Hmmm … Dotcom millionaire, born 12 February 1974. Grew up in north London, raised by a single mother. He didn’t go to university – apparently, he caused some minor controversy by saying that uni is a waste of time. He set up his first dotcom business in 1997, a games site called SilverJoystick.com. Then he expanded into gambling – had one of the first British poker sites. Wow.’

‘What is it?’

‘He sold them both in January 2000 for six million quid. Just before the bubble burst. Clever bastard – cashed in just in time. Then he seemed to disappear for a little while before setting up BulletProofClub.com in 2003. He sold that a few years later after it became the UK’s biggest lifestyle site for men. He hasn’t given any interviews for years, apparently, but he now works as a consultant.’

OK, so he was a good businessman. Declan knew that already.

‘What about his personal life?’

He watched the cars rush past on the opposite side of the road, every one of them well over the 50-mph limit.

‘Hold on. Nothing about him being married or having any kids. He seems to keep a pretty low profile. Hmm, we need to check if he’s got a record.’

‘Can you do that urgently?’

‘As soon as I’ve put the phone down. Isobel’s going to be looking for someone else to fertilize her … Right, there’s a link here to an interview with him on
Forbes
, from 2002. Let’s see if there’s anything interesting on there.’

Declan waited while Bob clicked and skim-read the article. ‘This is quite interesting. Apparently, his mother died when he was fifteen, a few days before his sixteenth birthday. She committed suicide. He says he looked after himself from that point – I guess he must have turned sixteen and avoided the care system – and in this interview, he says that he’s been independent and driven from that point on. The interviewer asks him if he’s got a special woman in his life now and he refuses to answer. Doesn’t seem to be anything else interesting about him.’

‘Thanks, Bob. I’ll let you get back to Isobel now. After you’ve checked if Vine has a record.’

‘Yeah, all this stuff about dotcom millionaires and suicidal mothers has, like, really got me in the mood.’

‘Take care, Bob. I’ll talk to you later.’ He hung up.

So Vine was a loner with no family, driven to succeed after his mum killed herself. Declan had learned that a lot of successful businessmen had psychopathic tendencies because it made them ruthless, able to make hard decisions that other people might balk at. Was Lewis Vine one of those people? Of course, only a fraction of psychopaths actually murder people. But so far, nothing he had learned about him had made him think he was anything less than his prime suspect.

He passed the sign for Claygate, turned off the A3 and soon found himself on a quiet country road. After five minutes, he pulled up outside a huge house in a secluded spot on a quiet lane. Mock-Tudor, Declan decided, and enormous, with gables and surely too many chimneys. It must have easily been worth four million. The house was set a long way back from the road, which had no pedestrian traffic. A secluded spot, far from prying eyes.

He got out of the car and walked up to the stable gate that blocked the entrance of the circular drive.

He could hear banging and someone shouting so he pushed open the gate and hurried up the drive. As the front of the house came into view, he saw a man standing by the front door, banging on it and shouting, ‘
Lewis!
’

Declan walked as quickly as he could, his shoes crunching on the path, making the man turn round. He was tall and annoyingly good-looking, though his eyes were wide with anxiety.

Declan wished he’d got Bob to text him a photo of Vine, but this obviously wasn’t him, unless he was calling his own name.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

The man looked him up and down. ‘Who are you? Neighbourhood Watch?’

Declan flashed his warrant card. ‘Police. Can I take your name?’

‘It’s Gary Davidson. I was just about to call your lot when—’

He was interrupted by a noise from inside the house. A scream.

As Lewis went to fasten her to the bed again, Amy said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom again.’

‘What? You’ve just been.’

‘I know. But I couldn’t go. I was too scared.’

He stroked her cheek. ‘You don’t need to be afraid, Amy. I’m going to take care of you.’

She shuddered at his touch but was relieved when he gestured towards the bathroom door. She scurried through. She didn’t really need to pee. She wanted to delay the moment when he put the cuffs on her as long as possible. She needed space to think.

How the hell was she going to get out of here?

Once again, he looked around the bathroom, taking in everything, looking for a crumbling brick, something she could use for a weapon. There was nothing. Just the toilet and the sink – both sturdy and solid. She rattled the loo seat, wondering if she could get it off so she could attempt to hit Lewis with it, but it was firmly attached. Could she try to scald him with hot water from the tap? No, she had nothing to transport it in.

Then she noticed, set high in the wall, a small vent. Looking over her shoulder, nervous that Lewis would open the door at any moment, she lowered the toilet lid and stood on it, reaching up. But the vent was still six inches beyond her reach, and it didn’t look as if it would open anyway, even if she could somehow get to it.

As she stood on the toilet, a wave of fresh fear crashed over her. She was stuck here with a madman. There was no way out. Her only hope was that Gary had got her message and had managed to use the Find My iPhone app, or that some other passer-by might come miraculously to her aid.

She screamed as loudly as she could, aiming the blast in the direction of the vent.

Lewis rushed into the room, swearing, and grabbed her, pulling her roughly off the toilet and through the door. He pushed her onto the bed.

‘There’s no one around,’ he said, a little out of breath. ‘No neighbours. No one ever walks past this house. But if you do that again, I’ll be forced to hurt you.’ He grabbed her left wrist and cuffed it to the bedpost, then her right.

‘OK?’

She turned her face away.

Lewis returned later, unlocking the door and backing in, carrying a small card table that he set down on the floor at the foot of the bed. He smiled coldly at her then went out and fetched two ladderback chairs, which he set up on either side of the table. On his next trip, he came in carrying a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, which he lay across the table, and a tray on which were two small stainless-steel plate covers, crystal wineglasses and a bottle of wine. He set these on top of the cloth. Finally, he moved one of the candles from beside the bed onto the table.

Then he walked back across the room towards Amy.

‘Let me go, Lewis,’ she said, trying to stop her voice wobbling. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

The room was so dim that Amy could hardly see his face, but she heard him breathing: quick, shallow breaths. He said something, so quietly that she couldn’t make it out.

‘I can’t understand you.’

He took a step closer to the bed and Amy saw that he was wearing a cheap suit that looked two sizes too small for him. Weird, she thought. When she met him before he had been dressed sharply.

‘I said, “You’re beautiful.”’

He came closer still and Amy had to remind herself to breathe, as though his fast breaths were using up her own allowance of air.

‘So beautiful.’

She tried to smile at him, to make some connection. ‘Why …?’ Her mouth was so dry, her tongue felt like a slug that had been drenched in salt. Must be the aftereffects of the chloroform, she thought. ‘Why don’t you unfasten the cuffs? My arms really hurt.’

He sat down on the corner of the bed, reeking of aftershave, as if he had tipped a bottle over himself. ‘That’s exactly what I plan to do, Amy.’

He reached out and touched the inside of her thigh. His palm was rough and dry and she pulled up her legs, trying to squirm away from him, but the quilt was so smooth she couldn’t get any purchase on it and she slipped, the cuffs pulling her arms, tugging at the sockets.

Shaking his head slightly, he took the key from his pocket again and unfastened the handcuffs from her wrists, left then right. Amy immediately crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her upper arms, trying to massage away the cramps. He reached across her and she shrank away, but he grabbed hold of her hand and tugged her.

Amy looked over at the door, wondering if she could hit him this time, push him over, make a break for it. But her arms were so sore and weak, and he had locked the door again, the key in his pocket.

He sat her down at the table and pulled up the opposite chair. He smiled at her, that same sick, queasy smile that was as cold as the Arctic. There was a CD player in the room and he picked up the remote control and pressed Play, filling the room with cheesy eighties music.

He opened the bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. He took a sip from his glass, then lifted the other glass and put it to Amy’s lips. She drank. The wine was thick, bloody, probably very expensive, but her taste buds felt shot from the chloroform and the fear. She gulped down a mouthful but it didn’t quench her thirst. Maybe it would help numb the pain, she thought.

He suddenly snatched the glass from her and threw it across the room. Amy heard it smash against the wall behind her. Then he grabbed her by the throat.

‘You swallowed.’

‘What?’ She could hardly speak. Hardly breathe. But he wasn’t squeezing, didn’t appear to be trying to strangle her. Not yet.

‘You weren’t supposed to swallow.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He removed his hand from her throat and his voice changed, became gentle. He stroked her cheek with a finger. ‘Let me show you, sweetheart.’

Sweetheart.

He lifted his own glass and took a gulp, keeping the liquid in his mouth. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. Amy kept her mouth shut at first, but he jabbed her beneath the table in her churning stomach with his fingers, hard, and her lips opened involuntarily.

The warm wine poured from his mouth into hers.

She wanted to spit it out, to spit it in his face, but she forced herself to swallow. Another cold wave of nausea rolled through her and she had to stop herself from puking.

‘That’s the way. Delicious?’ he said, pulling away.

Amy nodded, her stomach roiling, tears rolling down her cheeks.

He set aside the glass and studied her. ‘So like your sister. Beautiful – except for
that
.’

He looked down at her tummy and she pulled it in, as though trying to make it disappear. What was wrong with her stomach? Her skin was covered with goose bumps, even though it was so hot in the room. He moved around the table and crouched beside her chair, thrusting his hand with difficulty down the front of the sheer corset until he grasped between his finger and thumb her gold belly bar, the little star with the tiny diamond that usually made her feel so sexy. So that was what he had seen through the fabric, seen and disapproved of. Glancing down, Amy thought his hand looked like an alien moving under the front of the corset, or a child rummaging in a Christmas stocking. She braced herself for him to move his hand further down, between her legs.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said. He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘You shouldn’t have this.’

With sudden force, he ripped it out.

Amy screamed. The pain was searing, making her vision flash white. Blood poured from the hole he’d made, staining the front of the white corset crimson. She could not prevent herself sobbing.

He stood up. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted in her face.

She realized she couldn’t stop. Not this time.

‘Shut the fuck up!’

He stomped away across the room, shouting, ‘You’re ruining it. Shut up!’

Amy looked down, trying to see the damage, trying to be quiet. She sniffed back snot, the taste of his saliva and the wine in her mouth, a great throbbing pain in her belly. Blood blossoming across the corset as though she had been shot in the stomach.

‘Nathan, don’t!’ she cried, without realizing what she’d said. He stiffened. ‘
Nathan?
You don’t even have the courtesy to call me by my right name?’

He came back across the room again, into the candlelight. His face was twisting with tension, as if he was trying to control his anger. He was breathing quickly, loudly, completely different to the suave, controlled man she had met for coffee.

Eventually, he sat back down. Amy’s stomach was throbbing with pain, blood oozing thickly through the silk corset like porridge through a sieve. He noticed and handed her a napkin.

‘I forgive you,’ he said. Then his face twisted into that strange, cold smile again. There was excitement there, but no warmth. ‘I have something for you.’

He went over to the corner of the room, picked up what looked like a suit carrier and unzipped it, producing a dress. Black velvet. He brought it over to Amy, draping it across two hands as if it was the finest fur. It stank, not of mothballs, but of body odour and dust, as though it hadn’t been washed for years. In the half-light, Amy was sure she could see some kind of revolting crispy white stain on the hem.