Statistically speaking, in cases involving missing children, abduction by a stranger comes at the bottom of a long list that starts with having simply run off, continues down through staying overnight at a mate’s without telling their parents and, often, hiding somewhere in the house. In fact, a child is much more likely to be murdered by their parents than be abducted by a stranger. So the first set of actions after arrival involved searching the parents’ houses and gathering names and addresses of friends and family.

But Dominic had been right, and the fact that two girls had gone missing from two separate households on the same night must have caught everyone’s eye. Because by quarter past ten, less than an hour after the initial 999 call, the girls had been designated as HIGH RISK MISPERS and the on-call POLSA had been notified. Standby PSU officers were called out in Hereford, Worcester, Kidderminster and Shrewsbury. By lunchtime, a sizable chunk of West Mercia Police’s available manpower had found itself deployed into the area around Rushpool.

By that time the girls’ computers were on their way to High-Tech to be checked for signs of online grooming, and the requisite applications to track their phones in real time had been made. Had this been London, teams of officers would have been poring through hours of CCTV footage. But out in the wilds the surveillance state was unaccountably thin on the ground.

When you deploy for missing children, if you do so at all, the rule is to deploy fast and in numbers. Even if probability and common sense tells you that they’re going to skip back into their front door later that day. Had they been older, fourteen or over, then West Mercia might have waited another twenty-four hours before literally calling out the dogs. Still, up until six o’clock in the evening, Edmondson probably thought it likely that the girls would return under their own steam.

Then they found the phones. Both immediately identified as belonging to Nicole and Hannah, both with dead batteries. Since an eleven-year-old girl is more likely to relinquish a kidney than her mobile phone, the working hypothesis changed from runaway to abduction and that’s when the fun really started.

Hereford CID was immediately contacted, and the Major Investigation Unit attached to what was now designated OPERATION MANTICORE. Just when most of the detectives had been heading home – they must have loved that. I discovered during a quick trip to the coffee area that despite its fully equipped custody and interview suite, HOLMES-capable offices, canteen, helicopter pad, and not forgetting the famous vibrating chairs, Leominster nick normally only housed the safer neighbourhood team. It was essentially mothballed against future need – presumably an upsurge in cross-border raids by the Welsh. DCI Windrow, Dominic, and all his mates had decamped there from their base in Hereford – which explained why the place was so clean.