He swivelled round, his face startled and anxious. A thick mop of dark hair framed the pale skin of a teenage boy-cave dweller. Wide blue eyes with dark smudges beneath, a prominent wedge of nose, a narrow mouth with incongruous rosebud lips under the faintest shadow of what might one day become a moustache. Paula cross-checked the mental catalogue against her memory and ticked all the boxes. No mistake here.

The tightness round his eyes relaxed a little. ‘I know you. You’ve been to our house. With the doctor.’ He frowned, struggling for a memory. ‘Elinor. From casualty.’

Paula nodded. ‘That’s right. We came round for dinner. Your mum and Elinor are mates from work. I’m Paula.’ She smiled at the small grey man behind the counter as she produced her ID from her jacket pocket. ‘Detective Sergeant McIntyre, CID – DCI Fielding’s team.’

The man nodded. ‘I’m telling this lad, there’s nothing we can do for him till his mum’s been missing for twenty-four hours.’

‘Missing?’ Paula’s question was drowned by Torin McAndrew’s frustrated riposte.

‘And I’m telling this…’ He breathed heavily through his nose. ‘… this man that you can’t treat every case the same because everybody’s different and my mum doesn’t stay out all night.’

Paula didn’t know Bev McAndrew well, but she’d heard plenty about the chief pharmacist from Elinor Blessing, her partner and the senior registrar in A&E at Bradfield Cross Hospital. And nothing she’d heard tended to contradict Bev’s son’s adamantine certainty. None of which would cut any ice with the civilian behind the counter.

‘I’m going to have a chat with Torin here,’ she said firmly. ‘Have you got an interview room?’ The man nodded towards a door on the other side of the barren waiting area. ‘Thanks. Please call up to CID and let DCI Fielding know I’m on the premises and I’ll be up shortly.’

He didn’t look thrilled, but he did pick up the phone. Paula gestured with her thumb towards the interview room. ‘Let’s have a sit-down and you can tell me what’s going on,’ she said, leading the way.

‘’Kay.’ Torin followed her, shuffling his oversized trainers across the floor in the typical slouch of an adolescent who’s still not quite accustomed to the margins of his body.

Paula opened the door on a tiny boxroom with barely enough space for a table and three steel-framed chairs upholstered in a zingy blue-and-black pattern. Seen worse, she thought, ushering Torin to a seat. She sat opposite him, pulling from her shoulder bag a spiral notebook with a pen rammed down its metal spine.

‘Right then, Torin. Why don’t you start at the beginning?’