6

'Is that it?' David Philips demanded, staring at the image on the screen of his wife's laptop. They were sitting side by side in the bedroom-cum-study in their modest semidetached in Canterbury.

Kirsty nodded. Her eyes were red-rimmed and streaks of tears marred the smoothness of her cheeks.

'It doesn't look like much. Are you certain that's what your mother picked up?'

His wife nodded again, but this time she found her voice. 'That's what she found in the souk. She said that was what the man dropped.'

'It looks like a piece of junk to me.'

'Look, David, all I can tell you is what she told me. This is what fell out of the man's pocket as he ran past them.'

Philips leant back from the screen and sat in thought for a few moments. Then he stuck a blank CD into the disk drive and clicked the touchpad button a couple of times.

'What are you doing?' Kirsty asked.

'There's one easy way to find out what this tablet is,' Philips said. 'I'll give this photograph to Richard and tellhim what happened out there. He can write a story about it and do the research for us.'

'Is that really a good idea, David? We've got to get out to Rabat tomorrow morning, and I've not even packed anything yet.'

'I'll call him right now,' Philips insisted. 'It'll take me ten minutes to drop off the CD at his office. I'll pick up something for lunch while I'm out, and you can start sorting the stuff we'll need in Morocco so we're ready to leave first thing tomorrow. We should only be out there for a couple of days – can't we manage with a couple of carry-on bags?'

Kirsty dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, and her husband wrapped his arms around her. 'Look, my love,' he said. 'I'll be out for maybe twenty minutes, then we'll have lunch and do our packing. We'll get to Rabat tomorrow and sort everything out. And I'm still happy to go there on my own if you'd rather stay at home. I know how hard this must be for you.'

'No.' Kirsty shook her head. 'I don't want to be left here by myself. I don't want to go to Morocco either, but I know that we have to.' She paused and her eyes filled with tears again. 'I just can't believe they've gone and that I'll never see them again. Mum seemed so happy in her email, and really excited by what she'd found. And then this happens to them. How could everything have gone so wrong, so quickly?'