‘I’ll start with you, Lydia. Tell me what’s been going on with your husband Daniel. Take your time. Don’t be afraid of silence if you need time to think.’

‘Daniel left for work as usual yesterday morning. He seemed perfectly all right, up-beat even, talking about what we were going to have from the Chinese takeaway because it was Friday night and he had the Saturday off. The last thing he said to me was I’ll see you at six. Have a great day.

‘Six o’clock came and went and he didn’t arrive home. If he’s running late he always calls and tells me.’

Lydia Ball took a tissue from the box on the table and dabbed the corners of her eyes. Her first minutes in Interview Suite 1 had been spent sobbing and, although she felt very sorry for the woman opposite her, Clay’s impatient streak had been tweaked.

‘I called him on his mobile but it was turned off. I got in touch with Janine because I thought maybe, maybe he might have gone round to his big sister’s.’

‘He wasn’t with me,’ said Janine. ‘I called him on his mobile but it was turned off. It just wasn’t like him. He never turns his phone off.’

‘I called our girls but they hadn’t heard from their dad,’ said Lydia. ‘I started to get really worried so I called Norma Maguire on her home number. I asked her if everything was OK with Daniel.’

‘What did Norma say?’

‘She was quiet, didn’t say a word for a few moments. But then she said, Daniel wasn’t in work today.’

‘Norma Maguire said, Daniel wasn’t in work today?’ Clay double-checked, as the vivid memory of him opening the office for her with a set of keys played out in her recent memory.

‘Yes, she did. Is there something wrong with that?’

‘No, no, I’m just checking, Lydia. Go on.’

‘She told me he’d booked leave and Daniel had said to her we were going away for a break. I couldn’t believe my ears. I asked if she was sure he’d said that. She told me she was one hundred per cent positive. I asked her was anything wrong? Had he been having problems in the office? I was crying at this point and she tried to reassure me that everything was fine, everything was normal, no problems other than the niggling little things that happen all the time. There was nothing going on in his working life that could make him want to behave strangely and disappear.’

Lydia took a sip of water and Clay made a pointed mental note. Norma Maguire had not only misled Lydia Ball about Daniel’s presence in the office during the previous day, she’d failed to mention the fact that the police had descended on Maguire Holdings, and had made informational demands on her husband.