‘Yes, let’s.’ Jameson looked at his message. It was a traffic alert from Google. More spam.

Bloom drove and Jameson called Claire. She’d wanted to come along, but he’d managed to talk her out of it.

She answered after the first ring, sounding more than a little frantic. She kept telling him to hurry up and find Jane – as though he wasn’t doing everything he could. He managed to keep a lid on his irritation. He knew she felt helpless.

‘Is there a tourist information centre in Ilkley?’ Jameson placed his phone beside Bloom’s in the tray behind the gear stick.

‘I haven’t visited for a while, but I think there’s one opposite the station.’

‘Let’s head there first. If they have a town map, we can split it into quadrants, then search section by section.’ They stopped at traffic lights near a BMW dealership. ‘Do you know where the police are making enquiries?’

Bloom pulled on the handbrake and looked his way. ‘Caroline said they’d check with the train and bus stations first, then the taxi rank, then some of the banks and the supermarkets.’

‘So they’re not going door to door?’

The lights changed. ‘I don’t expect so. I left a message for Barker asking him to contact Caroline’s boss and stress the importance of our search, but I’ve not heard back yet from him.’

‘He knows what’s going on here. He needs to stop poncing around in the world of police politics and pull his bloody finger out.’

At the roundabout, Bloom turned right on to a road that curved through fields and quaint villages. As they passed a pub next to a farm shop, her phone buzzed. ‘It might be Caroline with an update. Check it.’

Jameson picked up Bloom’s iPhone and entered her PIN as she said it. ‘That’s weird,’ he said, on reading the message in full.

‘What?’

‘That traffic alert on my phone. It had the shortest route to a place I’d never heard of. I figured it was junk. But you’ve just got a message from Trainline mentioning the same place.’

‘What place?’

‘South Milford. Do you know it?’

Bloom slammed on the brakes so hard Jameson’s seatbelt locked, yanking him back into his seat. She swerved through the smallest gap in the oncoming traffic and into a petrol station.

‘Let me see.’ She took her phone. She looked strange, pale but with flushed cheeks.

‘Augusta?’

She looked up at him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes panicked.

‘Talk to me,’ he said.

She tapped at the screen and then held the phone to her ear.