Agnes Garfield’s mother glowered at them from the doorway. ‘Well, perhaps if you’d done something when we told you she was missing, she’d be home by now.’ Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she fiddled with the ends, teasing them apart with yellow-tipped fingers. A smoker. But instead of stale cigarettes she stank of Ralgex and spearmint.

Posters festooned Agnes Garfield’s bedroom walls: brooding vampires with greasy hair, mono-browed werewolves, Harry-Bloody-Potter. . . Then there were a few for books that looked as if they’d been lifted from the local Waterstones: The Night Circus, Golden Compass, Witchfire, Narnia. . . One wall was completely given over to bookshelves stuffed full of paperbacks, the occasional hardback sticking out like a tombstone.

The window was open a crack, letting in the scent of freshly mown grass and the smoky promise of a back-garden barbecue from somewhere nearby. Agnes’s room was at the back of the house, with a view out over the rooftops towards the sprawling housing estates of Danestone on one side, and rolling countryside on the other. Fields of violent-yellow rapeseed shone like burnished gold in the evening light.

Logan stepped back. The computer desk in the window recess didn’t have a single piece of clutter or dust on it. ‘And they haven’t been in touch at all? ’

Agnes’s mum stuck her chin out. ‘If they had, we’d have said something! Think we kicked up all this fuss trying to get you to do something because we thought it would be fun? ’

‘Girls that age . . . well, they’re not girls any more, are they? Eighteen years old: they’re adults.’

‘Our Agnes would never run away from home. She loves us. She’s safe here. She knows that.’ The yellowed fingers pecked at her hair, like jaundiced crows going after roadkill. ‘It’s that bloody Anthony Chung. He’s done this. Abducted her. I said so, last time you were round, but you didn’t do anything about it, did you? Bloody police. . .’

DS Chalmers patted her on the shoulder. ‘We’re going to do everything we can, Mrs Garfield.’

Agnes’s mother scowled at her. ‘Don’t you patronize me. If you’d taken us seriously and done something in the first—’

‘Why don’t you leave us to it for a bit, and we’ll come down when we’re done? ’

The chin went up again. ‘You won’t find anything. I’ve been through this room a dozen times, there’s nothing here. Agnes has no secrets from me. You need to be out there, hunting down that bloody Chung!’

Chalmers smiled, showing off those pointy little teeth. ‘I know, but you want us to be thorough, don’t you? We’ll be down soon as we’re done.’