intruder inched through the darkness of the living room, past the decorated tree, past the array of early Christmas cards on the mantelpiece, past the framed photograph of Ben and Sharon on their wedding day, smiling blissfully, revelling in their big day, and revelling too in the start of what was sure to be a long and joyful life together. Whatever the future had in store for them, it would be wonderful. Wonderful.
Reaching the hallway, the black figure stopped at the foot of the staircase and glared silently up towards the first-floor landing and the closed bedroom door just visible there.
The intruder paused.
A gloved hand clutched the wooden handle of a hatchet.
From behind the blank face of a balaclava came slow, regular breathing.
The breathing got faster. Faster, and more guttural, more animal-like.
A thick gobbet of saliva fell against the ragged mouth hole of the balaclava and soaked into the black material.
And then, suddenly, as if reacting to a starting pistol no one else could hear, the intruder charged forward, pounding up the stairs at full speed, taking them two at a time, careless of the racket made by heavy boots on the wooden treads.
It was that thundering of boots on the stairs that awoke Ben Steiner, bringing him suddenly bolt upright in bed.
And it was the crash of the bedroom door flying open that awoke Sharon Steiner, bringing her as suddenly bolt upright, as wide-eyed and terrified as her husband.
The black figure was on them before they had a chance, pounding across the bedroom in three huge strides, looming over them, raising the hatchet and bringing it down with sickening force. The axe blade embedded itself into Ben Steiner’s rib cage and jammed there so firmly that when Ben jerked and convulsed from the bed, he took the hatchet with him. It remained jutting from his chest even as he sprawled onto the floor, drumming and thrashing amid a dark torrent of blood.
Sharon Steiner opened her mouth to scream, but the black-gloved hand struck her like a hammer – once, twice, three times, then again – silencing her.
The intruder did not want her to scream.
Not tonight. Not here.
The screaming was all to come later, in the place that had been prepared for her.
And she would not be screaming alone.
‘I want to find her, Guv,’ Anna Vaughan said firmly. ‘I want to find her while she’s still alive – and I want to find the bastard who took her.’
Anna was in her editor’s office – if this cramped and chaotic room strewn with papers and files, unwashed coffee cups and overflowing rubbish bins, battered laptops and tangled computer wires could be called anything as grand as an ‘office’. But it served its purpose. It was from here – five floors up in a ramshackle building tucked away in London’s Soho district – that the investigative digital newspaper After-Dark was run. The editor – known to everyone as The Guv - was incapable of cleaning her desk or sorting out clutter, but she damn well knew how to get stories online – good stories, exclusive stories. In the three years Anna had worked here as a journalist, After-Dark had exposed corporate corruption in the Square Mile solved cold murder cases, brought down two serving members of Parliament by exposing their sordid pasts, uncovered terrorist cells and paedophile rings and people traffickers, and more besides. The Guv, and most of the journalists who worked for her, had been threatened, intimidated, even attacked. But they had never been silenced. After-Dark continued to speak up, speak out, speak the truth about the darkest and vilest corners of society.
‘You think Sharon Steiner is still alive?’ the Guv asked, glaring fiercely from behind the heaps of chaos on her desk.
‘Yes, I think she’s alive. I think Santa took her, and he never kills his female victims until Christmas Day. Look.’ And Anna held out a sheaf of papers, her research into the serial killer the police had nicknamed Santa. ‘Twelve years ago, first week of December, Kelly Nicholson and her husband Ross are attacked in their bed while sleeping. Ross is killed, Kelly is abducted, the police make no progress, and Kelly turns up dead just before New Year. Two years later, exactly the same pattern with Patricia and Michael Reading. Then again two years after that with Laura and Daniel Sayles. Then again, and again, and always the same pattern – a young couple attacked in their bed in early December, the husband killed, the wife abducted, the police floundering, and the wife’s body left out to be discovered by the New Year. And every time the pathologist’s report conclusively states that the female victim was killed no sooner than Christmas Day. The Christmas Day killer. That’s why they called him Santa.’
‘You’ve certainly been doing your homework.’
‘If it’s Santa who’s taken Sharon Steiner, then he’ll keep her alive until the twenty-fifth. And that means there’s a chance I can find her and save her.’
‘Fifteen days,’ the Guv said. ‘You think you can manage it in fifteen days?’
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s Santa sets the time limit, not me. Somebody has to find Steiner, Guv. CID are getting nowhere. No clues, no leads, no suspects. They’re incompetent. I’ve got sources inside the police tipping me off about how hopeless CID is. They’re the Keystone Kops. Now, the DI in charge of the Steiner case is holding a press conference this afternoon. It’s the perfect opportunity for me to confront him face to face with what this whistleblower inside the police has been telling me. It’ll really put a rocket up him, maybe even shake him and his department up enough to start doing their jobs properly. Then, when I’ve woken CID up, I’ll set out to pick up Sharon Steiner’s trail for myself, track her down, and find her.’
‘Whatever’s left of her.’
‘Her and the psycho who took her. If CID can’t manage it, I will.’
The Guv shrugged and nodded: ‘Well, I can’t deny you earned your stripes with this sort of thing. You did an amazing job last summer covering the Underwood story.’
The Underwood story. A missing boy, a stalled police investigation going nowhere, and Anna Vaughan right there in the middle of it, finding little Josh Underwood alive, revealing his father as the abductor, and deeply embarrassing CID by obliging an investigative journalist to do their job for them. It had all made great copy for After-Dark and boosted Anna’s reputation as a reporter who really got things done – but it had also soured relations between her and the police. Those relations were not destined to become any more cordial, not after she publicly confronted them with the insider information she had received from her anonymous whistleblower inside the police.
‘You know I’m the right person for this story, Guv,’ Anna insisted.
‘This Steiner business is a far cry from the Underwood case,’ the Guv warned her. ‘It’s far more violent, far more dangerous.’
‘All the more reason to find that missing girl as soon as possible. I know I can do it, Guv. I know I can get a result.’
The Guv eyed her keenly for a moment, then said: ‘You’re a first-rate hack, no doubt about it. And you pulled a blinder with the Underwood story. But nobody gets it right all the time. There are no guarantees, God knows not in this business, Anna.’
‘I know that, Guv.’
‘And you’ve rattled CID’s cage once already this year. You won’t find a warm welcome there if you go waltzing in shouting the odds about them yet again.’
‘I’m not looking for a warm welcome, I’m looking for Sharon Steiner and the man who took her. That’s all that matters.’
‘Possibly,’ the Guv said, almost to herself. Then she