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She asks Dad to tell my sister and Luca’s parents, Elena and Roberto. I’ve never been close to my in-laws; they made itclear from the start they wanted their only son to marry a nice Italian girl who’d stay at home and have babies, not an ambitious career woman. They tolerated me while Luca and I were together, but after our divorce I became persona non grata. They haven’t spoken to me, or seen Lottie, since his funeral. But they’re both old and frail: Roberto has serious heart problems and Elena is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, one of the reasons Luca travelled back to see them so often. They deserve to hear this news from family, not to wake up and read it in the papers.
‘Your dad says he and your mum will be on the next flight out,’ Zealy says.
‘What about Harriet?’
‘He’s going to call her now.’
‘They shouldn’t come out,’ I say. ‘Mum hasn’t been well. And by the time they get here, we’ll have found Lottie, anyway.’
‘Of course we will,’ Zealy says, stoutly.
We go back downstairs to find Marc, but Bates intercepts us in the lobby. ‘I’d like you to look at something,’ she says, handing me her phone.
‘What is it? Is it Lottie?’
‘Please.’
The screen is paused on a grainy black and white CCTV image at a petrol station. It’s from last night: the timestamp on the bottom of the screen says 23:42. Bates plays it for me. An overweight, middle-aged man in cargo shorts, flip-flops and a sleeveless T-shirt comes out of the petrol station and heads towards a four-door pickup truck. He leans in through the window of the front passenger seat, as if talking to someone, and then thumps his meaty fist on the vehicle’s roof.
I glance up at Bates. ‘What is this?’
‘Please, just keep watching.’
The man walks around the truck and gets into the driver’sside. Suddenly, one of the rear doors opens. A child starts to get out; a little girl in a full-skirted dress rendered grey by the security camera. Her feet are bare.
Then the child is yanked back inside the vehicle, and the person in the passenger seat – it’s impossible to tell if they are a man or a woman – reaches across the car for the rear door handle and pulls it shut from inside. The car drives off.
The whole scene has taken no more than a few seconds.
