The Toy Taker. Luke Delaney

their very beauty that had attracted the monster in the first place. Was McKenzie visually driven – irresistibly drawn by the physical beauty of the family? Sally’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

      ‘Ready when you are,’ she told him. Sean nodded and walked into the main office, all eyes immediately falling on him as the image of George Bridgeman continued to burn itself into his conscience.

      ‘For those of you who spent all of yesterday back at Peckham, I understand you’re probably not yet up to running speed on our new case.’

      ‘Another MISPER, isn’t it?’ DC Tony Summers asked in his husky Manchester accent.

      ‘It is,’ Sean confirmed.

      ‘Not again,’ moaned DC Tony Summers whose size and thick blond hair had earned him the nickname Thor amongst his colleagues.

      ‘The last case we had started as a MISPER,’ Sean warned them, ‘and we all know how that one ended. This time, for those of you who don’t already know, the missing person is a four-year-old boy called George Bridgeman. We have limited time to find him before everyone’s going to start assuming the worst and before the media are either informed or find out about it themselves. When that happens, we need to stay focused and separate from the inevitable circus – let Press Bureau do their job and we’ll get on with ours. Understand?’ His team nodded that they did. ‘We’ve had night-duty teams searching the streets around the family house, but nothing so far. Now we’ve got daylight, further teams will continue the search and expand it on to Hampstead Heath. We’ll be using dogs and India 99 will be searching from above if the weather stays fine. OK – updates. Dave, anything from Forensics yet?’

      Donnelly remained seated, pausing to clear his throat before speaking. ‘They worked through the night at the family home of the missing boy and have lifted multiple prints, including some shoe prints, and fibres. They’ve seized a few items the suspect may have touched to get to the boy and will be submitting them to the lab this morning for a DNA sweep, but there’s been a ton of people through the house – not just the family, but their cleaner, nanny, the removal men, the estate agent and any one they showed around the house when they were trying to sell it. And no doubt there’ll still be traces of the previous family all over the place too. Basically we’re looking at dozens of sets of prints, and the same for DNA. Other than that – no traces of blood or signs of a break-in.’

      ‘So we know our suspect entered, took the boy and left without leaving any obvious trace, other than possibly prints and/or DNA.’

      Cahill winced. ‘If the media get hold of that they’re going to start making him into some sort of urban bogeyman.’

      ‘They don’t need the details of the break-in,’ Sean assured her.

      ‘What break-in?’ Donnelly reminded him.

      ‘You know what I mean,’ Sean answered. ‘Tell Forensics not to waste their time trying to compare the prints to the family, etc. Just get them all up to Fingerprints and have them run against sets already in their database. Maybe we’ll strike lucky and get a hit against someone with previous convictions.’