‘I woke before my alarm went off. At first I thought it was Mum moving around that had woken me, but it wasn’t. I went through to her room, and the bed was still made.’ He chewed his lip again, dark eyes troubled. ‘She hadn’t come home. And she just doesn’t do shit like that. One of my mates, his mum sometimes stops out all night without telling him. And that geezer on the front counter there, you could tell he was thinking, “Poor mutt, his mum’s a slapper and he’s the last to know it.”’ He was on a roll now, words tumbling into one another. ‘But I’m telling you, my mum’s not like that. She’s really not. Totally. Not. Plus it’s, like, a house rule. We always text each other if we’re going to be late. Like, if I’ve missed the bus or somebody’s parent’s late picking us up. Or she’s been held up at work. Whatever.’ He ran out of steam abruptly.

‘And so you came down here.’

His shoulders slumped. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do. But you lot don’t care, do you?’

‘If that was true, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, Torin. Usually, we wait twenty-four hours to start a missing person inquiry, it’s true.’ Unless there’s a vulnerable individual in the picture. ‘But not when it’s someone like your mum, someone who has responsibility for a child or an old person, for example. What I need to do now is take down some details about you and your mum so I can set the ball rolling.’

A tap at the door interrupted Paula’s flow. Before she could say anything, the front-counter officer stuck his head round the door. ‘DCI Fielding wants to know how long you’re going to be.’ He didn’t do any kind of job of hiding his self-satisfaction.

Paula dismissed him with a pitying look. ‘I’m interviewing a witness. It’s what I’m trained to do. Please tell the DCI I’ll be with her as soon as I’ve finished here.’

‘I’ll pass the message on.’

Torin gave him a look of contempt as the door closed. ‘You in the shit now? For talking to me?’

‘I’m doing my job, Torin. That’s what matters. Now, I’m going to need some background information.’

It didn’t take long. Torin, fourteen. Pupil at Kenton Vale School. Bev, thirty-seven, chief pharmacist at Bradfield Cross Hospital, divorced eight years ago from Tom, currently serving at Camp Bastian. Torin and Bev shared a semi-detached house at 17 Grecian Rise, Kenton, Bradfield. No known reason why Bev wasn’t where she should be. No history of mental illness or depression. No known financial pressures, other than the ones everyone in the public sector lived with these days.