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the man as Leka.

CHAPTER 4
    As usual, the splendour of the five-star hotel was lost on Rosie. By the time she arrived at the Puente Romano in the heart of Marbella, her head was already buzzing, thinking how she could take the story forward so she’d have a good line for Monday’s paper.
    Since the kid went missing yesterday, a formidable pack of big hitters from UK newspapers and television would be there already. They would be all over this story, pushing for exclusives, while theories and motives on the kidnapping were aired and dissected over hearty dinners by journalists on bloated expense accounts. They were always bloated when they went out of town on a job – especially on a foreign. Most hacks saw expenses as a kind of fine for taking you away from your own bed, your family, and what the rest of the world call a life, and replacing it with the frenetic round-the-clock graft of an assignment abroad.
    The bottom line for Rosie was this: if she was abroad on a story, someone was dead – usually, a lot of peoplewere dead. That kind of shit got to you after a while. So what if she ate some decent lobster washed down with a glass or two of vintage wine. It was by way of compensation for making her the dysfunctional human being that all frontline journalists eventually became.
    At the hotel reception, she checked in and had a quick shufti round the main bar to see if there were any other hacks around. If there were, she didn’t recognise them. Rosie didn’t like working with the press pack when there was a big story on the go. There was the one advantage that you never missed anything, but it also meant you had to share, and she didn’t like sharing – in case she managed to dig up something by herself. She’d once said she was a lucky reporter when, as a youngster, she’d had a great run of exclusives against the odds. But a wily old news editor told her you made your own luck in this game. Always keep two steps ahead of the pack and you wouldn’t miss out, he’d said. It was good advice.
    In her beachfront room, she threw open the doors leading to the private terrace and took in the view of the tantalising deep-blue sea. The room was luxurious and massive, with a bed that would take at least five people – all of it perfect if you were here for a few days pampering. Rosie plugged in her laptop and connected to the hotel’s internet.
    Two emails. One from Marion confirming the cash, and the other from McGuire with forwarded copy from the newsdesk. McGuire’s message was curt: ‘This is all we have so far. Hope you can do better. x’
    The copy was more detailed. There were three coupleson this holiday, each with a villa about a ten-minute walk from the others. The men had all gone to university together and had been friends for fifteen years. The missing kid was called Amy Lennon, only daughter of Jenny and Martin. The dad, a property dealer, was boss of Lennon Properties, a Glasgow family estate agents with interests in Scotland and abroad. He took over from his father, Martin senior, who had died six months ago. That didn’t ring any bells with Rosie. The mum was an insurance broker. Amy would be four at the end of August. The story was that the little girl had been sound asleep in her bedroom at the beach-side villa the couple were renting on Mijas Costa. The mother was having a shower while her husband was out on his four-mile morning jog. When she came out of the shower, Amy was gone. As she read those particular words, Rosie winced, imagining the mother’s horror when she discovered her child was gone. She read on.
    The next name was one she did recognise – Jamie O’Hara. A well-known Glasgow criminal lawyer, he’d made his name getting crooks off the hook for everything from murder to drugs to extortion. O’Hara was a big shot who relished the limelight, and though he was not yet forty he’d already made pots of money defending the kind of arseholes Rosie would gladly have strung up. She knew