"Oh, easy, Moss, easy!" Ash fended off his loyal friend's ecstatic welcome home and headed inside to the kitchen, where Moss was torn between joy at his master's return and the anticipation of some food. Whining excitedly and racing back and forth between his bowl and Ash, he finally settled down to his dinner, but still kept a wary eye open in case he should be left alone again.

Ash had stayed with Stacie until she had fallen asleep, emotionally exhausted, on her sofa. He had covered her gently with a blanket and left her a note promising that he would be back later. Now he sat on his own couch and wondered where on earth this was all taking them – both the investigation into Frank's case, and the relationship with Stacie. He left it as long as he in all conscience felt was right, having taken Moss for a good walk, then got in the car and drove over to her flat.

Just as they arrived, a neighbour was making her way out, and she kindly held the door to the apartment block open for Ash. When he reached Stacie's second-floor flat, the hair on the back of his neck started to prickle. The door was very slightly ajar, moving to and fro in the wind. Ash looked down at Moss, who had stopped clowning around and was standing very still, staring fixedly ahead. Ash gripped him by the collar and, pushing the door, entered the apartment as quietly as he could. They checked each room as they progressed along the hallway. Stacie was nowhere to be seen.

The condition of the living room confirmed Ash's worst fears. A lamp and several plants were lying smashed on the floor. Much of the furniture was askew or out of place. Ash stood helplessly in the middle of the room, his heart racing as if he had run the 100m and beaten Usain Bolt into second place.

"It's no good, Moss, I'm gonna have to call the police." Something in Ash's instincts told him that the officer who had dealt with Frank's case was the person to speak to. He now knew that the police had been just as hoodwinked as everyone else by Charlie Stanmore and Janice Monroe, and that Inspector Clark would be easier to convince that there was a connection between his own enquiries and Stacie's disappearance.

He was able to get hold of Clark with surprising speed, and his succinct account of the facts produced an instant response. "I'll be with you in fifteen minutes, Mr. Morgan. Please go outside and wait in your car, and don't touch anything in the flat."

In less than ten, several police cars with flashing lights had appeared, and Ash got out to meet them.

"Inspector Clark?" he said, as a forty-something, fair-haired uniformed officer approached the apartments.

The woman shook Ash's hand. "You must be Mr. Morgan. Which is Miss Monroe's flat?"

"Second floor, on the left. Apartment E. I'll show you..."

"If you wouldn't mind waiting here, sir, I'll get one of my officers to take your statement, and I'll send someone down for you if we need to ask anything about the flat. Thank you." Clark signalled to her team to go upstairs.

A uniformed sergeant stood at Ash's side. "Come and sit in our car, sir, and we'll take care of your statement," he invited. Noting Moss's excitable presence in the BMW, he asked, "Will your dog be all right?"

"He's fine. I've left the window down a bit for him," replied Ash as he followed the officer to a patrol car.

The next hour passed in what seemed like slow motion. After Ash had given his statement, he was escorted back up to Stacie's apartment and shown through to the living room, where Inspector Clark asked him to look about and see if he thought anything was missing. He had to be honest and say he'd only been there twice and hadn't really paid attention to the fixtures and fittings. Then something occurred to him.

"You know, she was having a rest on the sofa here," Ash told Clark, "and she had a blanket over her...but I don't see it anywhere." He turned to look round the room. "Nope. It's gone. It was a Burberry pattern," he added, in anticipation of the inspector's next question.

"Good, thank you for that." She nodded at an officer who was taking notes from Stacie's address book, and who proceeded to broadcast the information about the blanket via her two-way set. "Anything else strike you as different, or unusual for Miss Monroe?"

Ash thought as he cast about for something. "You are checking up on Charlie Stanmore, aren't you? He's got to be behind this."

Clark remained impassive but sympathetic. "We'll pursue every angle we deem appropriate, Mr. Morgan. If there's nothing more you can think of..."

"Her phone. If I give you her number, you can try and trace it, can't you, if it's been left switched on?"

"We can certainly try. Give Constable Roberts her number, and yours, as well as your address. And do you know who she banks with?"

Ash shook his head. "No, but I expect she'll have some statements filed away, she's very methodical when it comes to finances."

"Right, I'll have my people check it out, and see if her accounts have been accessed. I appreciate your help, Mr. Morgan, and I promise we will do everything we can to find Miss Monroe. Constable, can you show Mr. Morgan out, please?"

It irked Ash that he was so obviously surplus to requirements, used as he was to being in control of information-gathering. However, he was glad to get back outside and find Moss sleeping contentedly in the back seat of the car. After another brief happy reunion, they returned to the Reigate cottage where Ash spent an extraordinarily sleepless night. He either paced the floor, or searched the Internet for something, anything, that would further his understanding of Charlie Stanmore and his world.

At about 5.30am, when the sun was almost properly up, he took Moss for a walk, and was on his way back to the cottage when his phone rang. His initial response was that it must be a wrong number at that time of the morning, but he froze when he saw Stacie's caller ID. The thought that it might be Stacie herself to say she was safe and sound never crossed his mind.

He pressed the answer button and said, "Hello?" in as non-committal a tone as he could manage.

"Ash?" said a male voice.

"Yes," he replied.

"We have your friend Stacie." This was obviously meant to elicit some kind of response: shock, anger, fear.

"And?"

This was not the answer the caller had expected and Ash could tell he was momentarily thrown off balance.

"Uh...if you want to see her again, you will do exactly as I say."

"I'll be the judge of that," Ash replied. "First, I want to be sure that she's well, so I need to speak to her. Then we can discuss terms."

"Listen, pal, I'm in charge here..."

"I talk to her, or you go away empty-handed. Take it or leave it." Ash knew this wasn't Charlie Stanmore he was speaking to, it was a younger man's voice, so this had to be one of Stanmore's goons. There was a heavy silence, and then he heard Stacie.

"Ash? Are you OK?" Trust Stacie! She was the one who'd been abducted, and here she was concerned for him.

"I'm fine, Stace. Have those bastards hurt you?"

"No, but I'm really scared, Ash. Help me..."

The phone was snatched away from her and Ash closed his eyes as if in an attempt to block out the pain of hearing her distress.

The man spoke again, harshly. "That's enough. Satisfied?"

"So what now?" Ash was determined to give no quarter, to make this thug work for his pay.

"You...you bring all the paperwork you have on Frank Monroe – photos, tapes too if you have them – to a meeting place later today. The address and time will be texted to you. And I don't need to tell you that if you involve the police, you won't see Miss Monroe again."

"And then I'll take everything I have to the police and you'll be back at square one, plus a kidnapping charge hanging over you. What would be the point of that?"

"Just bring the stuff!" raged the erstwhile abductor in Ash's ear, and hung up.

Ash jogged back to the cottage and sat down heavily in front of his computer, head in hands. Two paws were placed on his lap as Moss tried to comfort him, and he patted the dog absent-mindedly. What to do next? As Ash recovered from the shock of the phone call, something dawned on him. What had the bloke said? "...if you involve the police..." So he didn't know that the police were already involved. Stanmore must be running a fairly low-tech operation here; apparently nobody had been watching Stacie's place after they'd taken her, so there was little chance of any electronic surveillance such as phone hacking. That was a plus.

Ash looked at the time; it was almost 7 a.m. He had to let Inspector Clark know about the kidnappers' demands, and so rang her number.

"I'll come to you," the inspector assured Ash. "We can't assume they won't follow you, so if you came here...I'll be with you in half an hour, and I promise nobody will know who I am."

Clark was as good as her word when, a short time later, she turned up at Whetstone Cottage in a blue van, dressed as a gas engineer. Ash gave a wry smile as he saw the uniform, given the number of times he had used exactly that disguise on a con. He showed her through to the living room and she unpacked her toolbox, revealing a gadget that Ash recognised as a digital recorder, which she hooked up to his mobile.

She then used her own phone to call someone. "Jez, can you make sure Mr. Morgan's mobile provider have a track on any incoming calls he receives, please? Thank you. Have you had any luck tracing Miss Monroe's phone? Right...OK, bye." She turned to a hopeful-looking Ash. "Unfortunately, the person who called you from Miss Monroe's phone knew enough to keep the phone active only for a short time, and he appears to have switched it on long enough to talk to you, and then switched it off again."

"Where was he calling from?"

"Waterloo Station. So even if we looked at CCTV footage, it would be well-nigh impossible to identify the caller; it's a very busy area."

Ash nodded in agreement. "I'm happy to meet whoever this is and hand over what they want. It's no big deal, we don't really have that much information to give, and anything incriminating we've learned about Charlie Stanmore is purely hearsay. In fact," he went on as the thought occurred to him, "it might be an idea if you check the whereabouts and good health of Brendan Lawrence, a journalist at the East London Gazette – he's the one who led us to Stanmore, and he seems to have been under pressure to try and make Frank Monroe's appeal go away."

Clark raised an eyebrow at this. "You haven't seen the news this morning, I take it?" When Ash shook his head, she continued, "Brendan Lawrence was found beaten nearly to a pulp last night, near his home in Stratford. He's in intensive care with a 30-70 chance of survival."

Ash blew his cheeks out in despair and frustration. "Can't say I'm surprised. He was very reluctant to say anything about Stanmore and kept claiming that he would be in trouble if he did."

"Somebody is pretty anxious to keep the status quo on this case, it would seem," remarked the inspector. They both jumped as Ash's text alert sounded.

"It's from Stacie's number," he said, looking up at Clark. He opened the message and read aloud, "Be at the main pond on Wandsworth Common at 2.30pm today. Bring every piece of information you have relating to your recent enquiries."

"Well, that's not from the bloke I spoke to earlier," said Ash decidedly. "Too literate."

Inspector Clark had called her people the moment Ash had received the text, and they were busy trying to pinpoint the phone's location. She sighed as she ended her call.

"Waterloo again?" said Ash, more in desperation than in hope.

"Blackfriars this time," replied Clark. "We haven't a hope of finding them this way; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they dispose of Miss Monroe's phone now that they've used it to make themselves known to you."

"So the only answer is for me to do as they say. But you have to catch them, inspector, or this could happen all over again. Stacie and her family won't be safe until Stanmore's out of the picture."

Clark thought for a moment, then said, "I visited her mother yesterday to tell her what had happened, and it was the most bizarre conversation I've ever had with the parent of someone who's been abducted. It was almost as if she didn't care. At first I thought it was shock, but she couldn't get rid of myself and my colleague fast enough. Obviously that made me quite suspicious, so I arranged for her phone to be monitored, and we've been hearing some rather interesting conversations. I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than that – I've probably said more than I should have already – but I believe we may have some good solid evidence to convict Mr. Stanmore."

While this was music to Ash's ears, he wasn't sure how Stacie would take the news that her mother was a person of interest in a police investigation. This was precisely what she had wanted to avoid. However, it was no longer something he had any control over, and he was surprised at the relief he now felt.

"Right, so I get everything I have relating to Frank Monroe's conviction and Charlie Stanmore, put it in an envelope or something...do you have any tracking devices I could use? I don't actually have any recordings of Lawrence or anything, but I could put a tape in if you need something to plant a tracker on."

"That sounds like a good idea, Mr. Morgan. Let me just have a look in this box of tricks that our surveillance team have put together..."

"I think that's one there," said Ash helpfully, pointing at a small black and silver square-shaped thing that looked like a plastic sticker.

Inspector Clark looked at him curiously. "I don't think I ever asked what you do for a living, Mr. Morgan. Are you in IT?"

"Retired," replied Ash economically. "May I?" He picked up the tracking device and examined it, then disappeared into another room. He returned in a few moments with a cassette tape, produced a pen and scribbled "Interview" on the tape label. He didn't want whoever got their hands on it to be too interested in it, lest they play it, realise it was useless, and bin it straight away. He then stuck the tracker on the casing, in a place where it blended in with the design of the cassette.

"Impressive," said Clark, unable to hide her admiration. "Might I suggest that rather than an envelope, you use some kind of plastic wallet? It would be less likely to rip and lose the tape." She rummaged once more in her kit and produced a blue zip folder, into which Ash placed his notes, the tape, and a few other documents to pad the package out and hopefully distract the kidnappers.

"That should do it," he said, and checked his watch. "We've got five hours." He looked expectantly at Clark.

"I plan to have plain clothes officers surrounding the drop location," she said. "Do you know the area at all?"

Ash turned to his laptop and found Google Maps. He typed in "Wandsworth Common" and clicked on the aerial view to see where the pond was located. "There's no vehicular access as far as I can tell," he said. "This stone bridge looks like a good place to try and draw them onto, then their escape route's limited."

"You'll pardon me if I'm wrong, but you sound as if you've done this kind of thing before." It was more of a question than a statement, but Ash refused to be drawn.

Instead, he asked, "How many people will you have on the ground?"

With a slight smile, Inspector Clark looked back at the computer screen and assessed the terrain. "Let me go and get that organised now," she said, and, having closed up her tool-kit, headed for the door. "I won't tell you how many officers there will be, or in what disguises – I don't want your body language giving any cues to the kidnappers. But be assured that I will put as many people as I have at my disposal on this, and you will be as safe there as you would be here. Remember, the kidnappers may well be watching you, following you to the meeting place to make sure you don't bring anyone with you. I'll call you again in an hour or so to confirm arrangements, and of course you'll let me know if you hear anything more from them?"

"Of course," agreed Ash. "And thank you." As he closed the door he felt a wave of nausea hit him, a combination of worry and a lack of sleep and food. He headed into the kitchen to get a quick bite to eat and then got his head down for forty winks before everything kicked off.