‘Come up,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a lot warmer in the office, the guys have got the space heaters blasting as usual, forget the environment. Or the bills.’

They followed him up wide stairs past doors labelled with various vague creative-new-media-type names. The air smelled of fresh plaster and plastic, and Robin heard intermittent hammering – something fine, small-scale, not building work. On the second floor, funked-up bhangra came whirling out of an open door.

Outside Harry’s, a mounted Perspex square read Ragged Staff Digital Planning. The space was a similar size to Maggie’s office but lighter thanks to a metal-framed window almost the width of the room. In front of it a guy and a girl, Indian and white, both Harry’s age, sat at laptops set up on a long trestle table. They were clearly waiting: when he opened the door, they were already looking.

The girl stood, pulling out her earbuds, and shook hands from inside giant baggy jumper-cuffs. ‘Suzanna.’

‘Jas,’ said the guy. ‘You’re the detectives?’

‘Private investigators,’ Maggie said.

‘Is there any news? We’re really worried – we love Becca.’

Maggie glanced at Harry. ‘Nothing yet, I’m afraid, but it’s early days so …’

‘Shall we talk in my office?’ He gestured to a door at the back of the room. ‘The timing’s terrible – we’ve got a job to finish by the end of the week but we’re finding it really hard to concentrate. Especially me.’

‘What is it you do?’ asked Maggie, as he showed them into a room with a glass table and three orange chairs. On the back wall was a pair of fierce graffiti-style illustrations of the Bear and Ragged Staff, the county symbol for Warwickshire.

‘Digital marketing, strategy and design. The three of us do the strategy ourselves and we source the design from outside. This place has been good for that, there’s a lot of good design happening here. A guy downstairs did these.’ He tapped the frame of one of the bears. ‘He’s modifying this one into a logo for us.’

‘How long have you been going? You seem very young to have your own business. And employees.’

‘I’ve been lucky.’ He ran a hand over his hair. ‘Officially, we started in the summer, when I graduated, but really it was before that, at Warwick. Part of my degree – I did a project developing a digital marketing strategy, but then a friend’s sister was launching an app, a kids’ language-learning thing based on her PhD, and she didn’t have much money for promotion so she asked if I’d help. That went really well so other people started getting in touch and it went from there. Jas and Suze were at Warwick, too. Different course – Digital Innovation. Jas and I shared a flat in Leamington; he recommended Suze when we needed a third person.’

‘What was your degree?’ Robin asked.

‘International Business with Spanish.’

‘You speak it?’