Her eyes were tired and she opened her office window to revive her senses. She couldn’t get twelve-year-old Kevin Good out of her head. He was the boy who’d gone missing from the Ullswater campsite in 2005. He’d be a man now. Most children who disappear around that age, never to be seen again, end up dead within twelve hours of abduction. The family appeared ordinary: caring and without secrets. Police investigations into something as serious as a missing child unearth every skeleton in a family, and at times dig up buried gems that no one wants to resurface. Not so with the family of Kevin Good. He gained positive reports at school, he was a helpful boy around the house, hadn’t rebelled before, and was an innocent twelve years, by all accounts. His older sister had blamed herself, and she probably still did fifteen years later, thought Kelly. The witness statement from her said that they’d gone to swim in the lake at dusk. She’d admitted being more interested in the boys who joined them from the campsite at some time after six p.m. She was sixteen at the time and under pressure to have her younger, annoying sibling tag along, when she was trying to impress. She’d taken her eye off him and couldn’t account for his presence for over an hour before she raised the alarm. The lake had been searched by divers but Kelly noticed that they only covered a hundred square feet off shore, where the kids had been swimming.

It was a sour taste to finish on for the week, and she went into the incident room to see if her team could provide a little light relief. She was overly optimistic.

‘Any good news?’

‘You’ve come to the wrong place, guv.’ Rob Shawcross had his head buried in paperwork, investigating a domestic abuse case. She looked at the rota for the weekend. Kate Umshaw was on call and Rob was on shift tomorrow.

‘Wrap up and go home everyone. It looks like we have a Friday night to ourselves.’

Her announcement was met with smiles and relief, but some of them had more loose ends to tie up than others. As for Kelly, she’d read as much as she wanted to about missing children and bereft families. She looked forward to a glass of wine and thought she might build a fire. She waited for her team to finish off their reports and log off their iPads and computers. The sun hadn’t quite dipped behind the horizon and half-light hung over the offices, but they left the lights on for the cleaners. With everything closed down, Kelly said goodbye and they discussed their plans for the evening.

A telephone inside the office rang and Kelly gazed towards where it was coming from: her office.