I called Nightingale once we were on our way.

‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’ll be returning soon?’

I thought about the unicorns and Hugh the bee man and his memories of Ettersberg. I thought about coincidences and moon paths and the fact that at that moment nothing which had happened made any sense whatsoever.

‘I think there are some loose ends I want to tie up first,’ I said.

‘Jolly good,’ said Nightingale. ‘Try not to take more than a week.’

An investigation like Operation Manticore doesn’t end when you find the missing kids – but it does get a lot less fraught. Afterwards, you’re looking to discover what happened to the poor little mites and feel the collar of whatever despicable scrote turned out to have been responsible. Then you’ve got to get enough evidence to send them up the steps to court and, if you’re lucky, perhaps arrange to have them fall down a few steps on the way there. In fact, from the point of view of DCI Windrow and the MIU, finding the girls was just the start. So it wasn’t unusual that me and Dominic had to give statements immediately. What was unusual was that we had to first meet up and discuss exactly what we were going to leave out of the statement. We had that meeting out on the terrace, because then it could be explained away as a cigarette break.

‘We normally do two statements,’ Windrow, who looked horrified. ‘One with all the difficult bits left out and one that goes into our files so we have a complete record – just in case.’

‘Just in case of what?’ asked Dominic.

‘In case it becomes relevant later,’ I said.

Windrow took a drag off his cigarette and nodded.

‘So, what the hell do we say you were doing up there in the middle of the night?’ he asked.

‘Witness trawl,’ I said and nodded at Dominic. ‘After Dom’s success finding Russell Banks we decided it was worth running a quick outreach operation to find any witnesses amongst people who visit the area by night.’

‘Such as?’ asked Windrow.

‘Doggers,’ said Dominic. ‘Birdwatchers.’

‘Amateur astronomers,’ I said.

‘Fox watchers,’ said Dominic.

‘Druids,’ I said.

‘UFO spotters.’

‘Satanists,’ I said.

DCI Windrow gave me a look.

‘Just joking,’ I said quickly. ‘Sir.’

‘It’s flimsy,’ said Windrow.

‘We found Hannah and Nicole,’ said Dominic. ‘Nobody’s going to be interested in why we were up there.’

Windrow put his cigarette out in the flower pot that had become the unofficial senior officer’s fag disposal unit and sighed – he obviously would have liked to light up another one.

‘If that’s the way it’s done,’ he said, ‘that’s what we’ll do.’