Nick took the pizza from the oven, opened a bottle of water, and started eating. There was always pizza in the freezer, and it always tasted the same. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered taking it out of the box: the pizza tasted of cardboard, so he might as well eat the whole thing.

On the stereo, he was playing Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” a song that had been among his and Mary’s favorites. They’d played it at their wedding, and he’d played it to Sarah when she was a baby: there was something about the harmonies that seemed to help to get her to sleep. “Silver girl,” he thought to himself as he listened to the final verse of the song. It was where his nickname for her had come from. “Sail on, silver girl, sail on by,” crooned Art Garfunkel. “Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way.”

He glanced through the two-bedroom cottage. He’d bought it with Mary, but she’d died before they had time to decorate it. He’d thrown some magnolia paint on the walls, and in the study he’d kept a few mementos of his time in the Regiment, but otherwise it could have been a rented cottage. Tonight it looks even emptier than usual, Nick thought. It was missing something. Sarah. She wasn’t here very often, but there was always the sense that she might come home for a visit. Just the fact that she had a room made a difference, even if it was empty most of the time.

Right now, it doesn’t look like she’s coming back anytime soon.

He’d checked the phone as soon as he stepped through the door. Nothing. He’d checked the mail, but there was nothing apart from the usual bills, credit-card offers, and a letter from the agency confirming his next shift on the rigs.

Finishing the pizza, he walked up to Sarah’s room. It was next to his own bedroom, and he’d left it almost exactly as it was when she was a teenager: there were some posters of Blur and Pulp on the wall, an easel where she liked to paint, and bookshelves crammed with all the books she’d needed for her A levels. Nothing else, just like her room in Cambridge. Sarah left little of herself in any of the places she stayed. She took everything with her.

Her diary, thought Nick. It must be around here somewhere.

He found it in the drawer of her desk. He skipped past the writing— she’d only kept it for about six months when she was seventeen—toward the phone numbers. There was a list of about twenty of them, all written in her neat, black lettering—Sarah updated it occasionally when she came to stay so she could call her friends locally, but she hadn’t touched it for at least two years now. It was a long shot, he knew. Sarah wasn’t necessarily in contact with any of these people now. But when somebody vanishes off the face of the earth, where else do you start?

“Is that Louise?” he said into the phone as soon as it was answered.
“Yes.”
The woman sounded tired and stressed. Somewhere in the background, he could hear a baby screaming. “It’s Nick Scott, Sarah’s dad.”
There was a pause while she tried to place the names. “OK,” she said.
“I was just wondering if you had heard from Sarah at all?”
“Is she OK?”
“I don’t know,” said Nick. “No one has heard from her for a week or so. I was just wondering if she might be with one of her old friends.”
“I haven’t seen her for almost two years,” said Louise.
“Sorry to trouble you.”
“Jesus, I hope she’s OK.”
“So do I.”
Nick put the phone down and glanced out of the window. It was a cold but clear night. The cottage was halfway up a hill, with a view onto the Black Mountains beyond. A three-quarter moon was hanging in the sky, sending pale shafts of silvery light into the gray-green hillside. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a car, but it was half a mile to the next house, and tonight, like every night, the hills were cloaked in silence. Nick tried the next number on his list. Emma had been Sarah’s best friend at school, the pair of them inseparable from the ages of fifteen to seventeen, although her mother, keen for her daughter to climb the heights of Herefordshire society, hadn’t liked Sarah much and approved of Nick even less. Last he’d heard, Emma was working in London on a women’s magazine. He tried her on the mobile number. No, she told him. She hadn’t heard anything of Sarah. In fact, she hadn’t spoken to her for six months. Emma had called her asking if she could be a case study for a magazine feature about how brains stopped a girl from getting a proper boyfriend, and, to use Emma’s phrase, “she seemed a bit miffed about it.” So, no, she hadn’t heard from Sarah recently. Nick put the phone down and looked out the window again. He felt desperate for a drink and was thankful that there was nothing in the cottage: if he’d been in town, nothing would have stopped him nipping out to the off-license. He tried another number: James, a guy Sarah had dated when she stopped seeing Jed for about a year in her early twenties. No luck there. He’d changed his address, and the person answering the phone didn’t know where he’d moved to. Bugger it, thought Nick. A brick wall would be more help than this.

Again he looked out of the window. Something was moving. A shadow maybe. Nick looked closer. He could hear a rustling, but that might just have been the wind blowing through trees. No, he decided. Tonight was just like every other night on the edge of the Black Mountains. Empty. Still. Abandoned.

He tried another number. Gill was one of Sarah’s friends from university: she was now working in Manchester as a doctor. Nick knew that Sarah sometimes went up to stay with her for the weekend. They’d spend twenty-four hours getting wasted on the clubbing scene. Maybe she was just crashing there for a few days. Perhaps she’d just forgotten to take her mobile charger with her. It was easy enough to do. Nick sometimes forgot to charge up his mobile before leaving for the rigs.

No, said Gill. She’d been up for the weekend about a month ago. She seemed her usual self: strung out like a wire, babbling about work, drinking too much, always looking for the next party, the same old Sarah. There had been a text a couple of weeks ago, but since then Gill had heard nothing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

With a sinking feeling, Nick put the phone down. He was running out of options. None of her friends knew where the hell she was. Her professor was acting evasively. She had a hundred grand in her bank account. What the hell has happened to her?

Suddenly, Nick could feel how cold the cottage was. It was a few weeks since he’d been here, and a cold snap meant its old stone walls had frozen solid: they were like ice cubes, freezing everything around them. He’d put the heating on, but it would take a couple of days for the place to thaw out again. He looked out of the window again, trying to remember if the BP station on the road into Hereford sold beer or wine, and whether it might be open at this time of night. Just one drink, he thought to himself. To get me through the next few days.

Another movement. Something was out there. Somebody. He was certain of it.

Nick remained still. The expression on his face was relaxed, impassive, as if he were just admiring the shapes the moon and the clouds were creating on the hills. But inside his mind was working furiously. Someone is out there, he told himself. Somebody is watching me.

He started moving away from the window. Whoever they were, he didn’t want them to know they’d been spotted. Just act casual, like you have no idea they’re out there.

Flicking on the TV, he caught the closing headlines on the ITV news. Blair was talking some rubbish about the threat of Saddam Hussein supplying biological weapons to terrorists. Nick turned the sound down. If anyone was watching the house right now, they’d think he was just slumped in front of the box. No threat to anyone.

Quietly, he slipped away to the phone. He picked up the receiver and started to dial, but used only eight digits instead of nine. The phone just made a rapid bleeping sound. That was fine. Nick didn’t want to speak to anyone right now. Still holding the phone to his lips, he turned his back to the window. Kneeling down, he started to unscrew the back of the phone. It was a cheap receiver he’d bought in Argos for a tenner: the back came away simply enough. Inside, he could see a small black chip measuring one centimeter lengthwise and half a centimeter across. Nick recognized it at once.

A bug.
Someone was listening to his calls.
He screwed the receiver back into place, then dialed Sarah’s mobile number again, just for a number to ring. Whoever was listening in on the calls, he didn’t want them to know they’d been found out. Not yet.

“Hiya, silver girl, it’s me,” he said when he got the voicemail message that was now tediously familiar. “Give us a ring when you can.”

Slowly he moved back toward the TV.A Clint Eastwood film was just starting. Perhaps he’d watch it. After all, there wasn’t much chance of sleeping tonight; maybe just crash out in front of the box. Let them think I haven’t seen them.

The listening device was familiar to Nick. One of the first things you learned on the security circuit was how to sweep a room for bugs. This was nothing special: a simple plug-in device you could buy from a couple of dozen firms that sold them over the Internet. It took the phone call and transmitted it over a shortwave radio signal to a listening post nearby. Its range was about half a mile, depending on the terrain. In these hills, maybe less. That meant they were close by.

Glancing up at the silent screen, Nick could see Clint pulling his Magnum from its holster. Somebody is watching me. And my phone is tapped. Nick repeated the same two phrases to himself somberly.

Well, mate, all I know is this. You picked the wrong fight this time. You’ve got a hell of beating coming to you.