She moved sideways to give Maggie a better view. ‘Nothing that rings alarm bells,’ she said. ‘It’s what you’d expect – pictures of her and her mates at parties and pubs, a couple of weddings, the occasional cat video or viral thing of someone doing something stupid. Nothing provocative, no bikini pictures or underwear-posing. I’ve been through all the comments for the past two years and there’s no one creepy or over-keen, nothing that struck me as dodgy. Almost everyone appears in pictures from several different occasions, and I cross-referenced the less regular ones, who all seem bona fide, friends of friends, etc. I found Nick.’

‘Show me?’

Robin scrolled back to September and a picture of a man in jeans and a maroon Adidas top. He was about thirty with curly hair cut short at the sides, left longer on top. Possibly – local pride – he’d been going for the Peaky Blinders look but it came off more Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables. The darkness of it made his skin look slightly vitamin-deficient by contrast but he was attractive, tall and fit, muscle visible round the shoulders under the burgundy nylon.

‘Hm. Is there just Facebook?’

‘No, Instagram too.’ Robin toggled to @BeccaWoods95’s curated vision of the world. Birmingham, UK. Food, books, fashion, design. 152 posts, 95 followers, 241 following.

‘The last thing was this, four days before she disappeared.’ She moved the cursor over a picture of a bowl of spiced chickpea soup reposted from a cooking blog. ‘About half of the posts are food-related, mostly photos of things she made, with little comments.’ She clicked on a square captioned ‘Sacher torte – worth every one of the 174,329 calories!’

The rest was books and arty shots of silhouettes and trees, a few bits of interior design – nice chairs and rugs and kitchens – and then fashion, all pretty standard stuff. A woman in a green backless evening gown on a moonlit terrace was hashtagged Goals but the handful of reposts from fashion blogs were down to earth otherwise: women in superior combinations of boots, skinny jeans and enormous cardigans. It was a sort of rose-tinted, better-dressed version of real life. ‘And only three solo selfies – nothing by prevailing standards.’ A couple of weeks ago, in Shepherd’s Bush, Robin had seen a woman pouting into her phone by the green veg at Tesco.

‘Hm. What time did she say, again – Lucy?’

‘Four.’

‘I’ve just had an email from Roger Hanley; he can do four thirty at his office.’

The Jewellery Quarter. ‘You take him, then; I’ll take her?’

Maggie looked at her. ‘I thought – just for now – we could work together.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m fully trained.’

‘That wasn’t why I—’

‘It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not going to fall apart.’ Brooking no argument.