Back at the cowshed I had just enough time to change into some respectable clothes before DCI Windrow summoned me back to the nick for ‘a discussion’. Beverley, who seemed to be in no hurry to leave the cowshed while I dressed, waved me off and climbed under my duvet for a nap while I drove all the way back to Leominster.

DCI Windrow was worried, but it was a whole order of magnitude less worried than he’d been before we found the girls. He was also chewing gum, something I’d never seen a senior officer do before in my life. Nicotine gum, I suspected.

‘Nicole remains withdrawn,’ he said.

I asked what that meant – exactly.

‘Withdrawn,’ he said. ‘She’s not talking to anyone, she’s off her feed – unresponsive is what they call it. Indicative of a severe psychological trauma, they say.’

‘Like being kidnapped?’ I asked.

‘You know what modern doctors are like,’ said Windrow. ‘They’re never definite about anything anymore. It’s all “maybe, could be, let’s see what happens”.’

‘I saw Hannah running around last night,’ I said. ‘She didn’t seem particularly traumatised.’

‘She could be exhibiting a different set of symptoms,’ said Windrow. ‘The doctors think she may be repressing the trauma by creating an alternative narrative.’

‘What makes them think that?’

‘There are some fantastical elements in her statement.’

‘Like unicorns?’

He handed me a wodge of hardcopy. ‘I think it would be better if you read it yourself and then gave me your assessment.’

So back I went into Edmondson’s office – where I wasn’t going to contaminate Windrow’s nice rational kidnapping inquiry with any of my sorcerous ways. Someone, probably Edmondson himself because you don’t ever mess with an Inspector’s stuff, had jimmied the office window so that it opened all the way, which at least meant the room was warm but not stuffy. It also meant that the drifts of paperwork had to be held down with makeshift paperweights.

I moved a stack of incident reports that were anchored by a spare Airwave handset and started on – Statement: Hannah Marstowe at Hereford Hospital, 22nd of June.

Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song. This means you have to ask a lot of confirmation questions and then do some intensive cross-referencing to wring out the facts.