The next one was particularly heavy, particularly hard to hear, even if it came from her own mind. Something she’d learned from one of those many true crime podcasts, something she never thought she’d need to know. The voice in her head repeated it to her plainly, no pauses, no panic: if you are ever abducted, you must do everything you can to avoid them taking you to a secondary location. Once you are in a second location, your chances of survival go down to less than one per cent.

Pip was being taken to a second location right now. She’d missed her chance, that small window of survival in the first few seconds.

Less than one per cent.

But for some reason, that number didn’t bring back the terror. Pip felt calmer, somehow. A strange quieting, as though putting a number to it made it easier for her to accept.

It wasn’t that she was going to die, but that she was very, very likely to die. An almost certainty, not enough left over for hope.

OK, she breathed. So, what could she do about it?

She wasn’t at the second location yet.

Did she have her phone on her? No. She’d dropped it when he grabbed her, heard it crack on the road. Pip raised her head and surveyed the boot, juddering as they swung down a rougher road. There was nothing in here except her. He must have taken her rucksack. OK, what next?

She should have been trying to visualize the route they were taking, make a mental note of the turns the car made. She’d been taken at the far end of Cross Lane, where the trees grew thick. She’d heard him start the engine, and she hadn’t felt the car turning so he must have carried on down that road. But that terror, it had blinded everything else while she’d flickered in and out, and she hadn’t been paying attention to the journey. She would guess they’d been driving for five minutes already. They might not even be in Little Kilton any more. But Pip didn’t see how any of that could help her.

OK, so what could help her? Come on, think. Keep her mind busy, so it didn’t go looking for that dark place at the back, where the terror lived. But a different question occurred to her instead. That question.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Now she’d never know the answer, because she’d be dead. But, no, that wasn’t right, she told herself, shuffling on to her side to release the pressure on her arms. She did know the answer, a knowledge that was bone-deep, a knowledge that would outlive her. Ravi would look for her. Her mum. Her dad. Her baby brother. Cara, more a sister than a friend. Naomi Ward. Connor Reynolds. Jamie Reynolds, just as she’d looked for him. Nat da Silva. Becca Bell, even.

Pip was lucky. So lucky. Why hadn’t she ever stopped to think about how lucky she was? All those people who cared about her, whether she deserved them or not.

A new feeling now. Not panic. It was less bright than that, heavier, sadder, slow-moving, but it hurt so much more. She was never going to see them again. Any of them. Not Ravi’s lopsided smile or his ridiculous laugh, or any of the hundred ways he had of telling her he loved her. Never hear him call her Sarge again. Never see her family, not her friends. All those last moments with all of them, and Pip hadn’t known those were her final goodbyes.

Her eyes welled up and spilled over, running down her cheeks to the rough carpet. Why couldn’t she sink through the ground now, disappear, but disappear to somewhere DT couldn’t get to her?

At least she’d told her mum she loved her before she walked out the door. At least her mum had that small moment to hold on to. But what about her dad? When had she last said it to him, or Josh? Would Josh even remember what she looked like, when he was all grown up? And what about Ravi – when was the last time she told Ravi she loved him? Not enough, never enough. What if he didn’t truly know? This was going to destroy him. Pip cried harder, tears gathering around the tape across her mouth. Please don’t let him blame himself. He was her best thing, and now she would always be the worst thing that had happened to him. A pain in his chest he’d never forget.

But he would look for her. And he wouldn’t find her, but he would find her killer, Pip was sure of it. Ravi would do that for her. Justice: that slippery word, but they would need it, so they could all eventually learn to move on without her, lay flowers at her grave once a year. Wait, what was the date today? She didn’t even know the date of the day she was going to die.

She cried and cried harder, until those more rational parts of herself took over, pulled her back from despair. Yes, Ravi would find her killer, would know who he was. But there was a difference between knowing and being able to prove it. A world of difference between those two things; Pip had learned the hard way.

That was something she could do, though. A plan, to keep her mind busy. Pip could help them to find her killer, to lock him away in a cage. She just needed to leave enough of herself behind, in this boot. Hair. Skin. Anything with her DNA. Cover his car with the last remaining traces of her, her final mark upon the world, an arrow straight to him.

Yes, she could do that. That was something she could do. She stretched back and rubbed her head against the carpet. Harder. Harder, until it hurt and she could feel the hairs pulling from her scalp. She shuffled lower and did it again.

Next: skin. There wasn’t much exposed that she could use. But she had her face and she had her hands. She twisted her neck, pushed her cheek into the carpet, and she grated it back and forward. It hurt and she cried but she kept going, the bone in her cheek raw and grazed. If it bled that was even better. Leave blood behind, see him try to get away with that. Then her hands, moving awkwardly against the duct tape. She scraped her knuckles into the carpet, and against the backs of the passenger seats.

What else could she do? She cast her mind back through all the cases she’d ever studied. Three syllables came to her, a word so obvious she didn’t know how she hadn’t thought of it first. Fingerprints. The police already had her fingerprints on file, to eliminate her after Stanley died. Yes, that was it. The swirling, spiderweb prints of her fingers would be the net she left behind, to tighten and tighten around DT until he was caught. But she needed a hard surface; carpet wouldn’t work.

Pip glanced around. There was the back window, but she couldn’t get to it because of the dark cover slanting down over the boot. Wait. The sides of the car by her head and her feet were encased in plastic. That would work. Pip drew her legs in close and pushed her trainers against the carpet, sliding herself up and round, and again, until she was curled up small against the side, the plastic within reach of her bound hands.

She did one hand at a time. Placing and pressing each finger into the plastic, several times. Up and down, wherever she could reach. The thumbs were the hardest, because of the tape, but she managed to make contact with the very tops of them. That was a partial print, at least.

OK, what next? The car itself seemed to answer, jumping as the wheels drove over something. Another sharp turn. How long had they been driving now? And what would Ravi’s face look like when he was told she was dead? No, stop that. She didn’t want that image in her head. She wanted to remember him smiling, in her last hours.

He’d told her she was the bravest person he knew. Pip didn’t feel brave now. Not at all. But at least the version that lived in Ravi’s head was, the one he turned to to ask, what would Pip do now? Pip tried it herself, with the Ravi that lived inside her head. She turned to him and she asked, ‘What would you tell me to do, if you were here with me?’