She found that there were three Harry O’Connors currently living in Cumbria, and checked their contact details in the phone book: the police still used the ancient tome, and it proved useful for people who were careful to mask their online identities. The general public assumed that the police were in possession of a magic app that could trace anyone in the country. In reality, they based their information on the amount of traffic and CCTV cameras, people’s internet search history and iPhone traceability mentioned in high-profile cases. Mixed with a Big Brother style paranoia pedalled by the national press, the fallacy took hold. In fact, the police found it a challenge to trace somebody who didn’t want to be found. There were all sorts of ways to stay under the radar, and thousands did. Both Harry O’Connor and Kirk Junker had, but Emma had a few ideas; one of them was patience.

She found addresses for the three and looked them up on a map. One of them was registered to a farm near Thirlmere reservoir. When she’d collated the numbers, she called each one. Two gave convincing enough information to be ruled out. The number for the farm near Thirlmere was out of service. She googled it on the off-chance and got a hit straight away. Some farms, facing hard times, had branched out into children’s theme parks, animal feeding or seasonal shows, and a quick search would flag this up. Not so with Great Raven Farm near Thirlmere: it was derelict, and the owner – Harry O’Connor – was dead. The article she’d found was about the demise of stone buildings in the Lakes, and apparently Great Raven Farm was a classic example: the owner ran out of money, mismanaged the estate and failed to save the two-hundred-year-old family business. Harry O’Connor was the freeholder and, as he left no family heirs, the place had been left to ruin.

It was a sad story, and Emma sighed as she went to cross poor Harry off her list. It was another dead end. But she had another idea and found out which officers had been involved in the search around Thirlmere inside the three-mile radius set by DI Porter, and called the desk to see if they were on duty. The search was still ongoing, and she spoke to one pod in the area, and currently making a search of the woodland along the shore of the reservoir.

‘Has anyone been down the Great How Road yet?’ she asked.

‘We were told to concentrate on the eastern shore first.’

Emma tapped her pen. She’d have to get authority from DI Porter to divert already scarce resources.

‘Any news?’ she asked.