Craig Dunn

Who they are

The guard left in charge of Catherine Standish at The farmhouse: young, tattooed, northern, patient enough to bring her meals and evasive about his past. For most of the book he has no name at all — Catherine privately christens him “Bailey” (she thanks him as “David Bailey”, the photographer, and the joke sticks because, as she puts it, information you make up yourself still gives you a handle on what is going on).

The chapters eventually supply the real one. The driving licence Jackson Lamb reads over his unconscious body in C13 says Craig Dunn, which makes him Alison Dunn’s brother — one of the family the whole kidnapping was mounted for.

Book 3 — Real Tigers

• C02 — Cuffs, gags and photographs her with her own phone for Donovan’s text, then leaves without a word; she names him for her own convenience.
• C04 — Posted out front while the operation runs; Catherine hears the padlock and expects him, and gets the second soldier instead.
• C07 — Brings lunch — sandwich, apple, flapjack, a small bottle of Pinot Grigio — says she will not be held long, and will not say whether he was a soldier.
• C12 — Left in charge at the door; Lamb floors him on the way in, and Catherine asks what became of Bailey.
• C13 — Comes round on the farmhouse floor as Craig Dunn, identified from his licence; Catherine insists on an ambulance for him.
• C15 — Catherine’s defence of him to Lamb is the one line that joins the nickname to a name: he had been going to let her go anyway, and Lamb’s contribution was to batter him senseless.

Tells

The tray with something extra on it — a bottle of wine left with the food. The refusal to answer a straight question about the army, which Catherine reads as an answer. The tattoos and the northern vowels she uses to fix him in her mind.

Open questions

Whether he knew what his employers intended for the woman he was feeding and photographing, and whether the ambulance Catherine insisted on actually reached him. He is the one member of the Dunn family the book leaves alive and unpunished, which is its own kind of comment.