Bloom took out her iPad, opened a new section of the storyboard and started with Lana. She typed Lana’s key characteristics into the left-hand column.

Emotionally unstable with (possible) PTSD/depression. Impulsive. Goes out, stays out, drinks too much. Extroverted. Likes social media, partying, and being in the pub.

Bloom supposed the latter two could also be symptomatic of alcoholism. In the right-hand column she listed the things she knew about Lana’s circumstances.

Rents a small house in Wembley so must have, or have had, some income. Goes away for long periods of time, up to six months, but not with the military. Has one dependent child, 16-year-old Jane, and has been a single mother since Jane’s father left or perhaps was kicked out.

Bloom stopped and looked at that last sentence again. Something didn’t quite add up. Jane had talked about Lana being abandoned and forced to cope alone, and then, only a moment or two later, had described her mother as a heroine booting out an abusive father. In both narratives, Lana came out looking good. Which wasn’t necessarily unusual – we all tend to cast ourselves as the leading actor in our own stories. But Lana was known to be erratic and impulsive. Would she have had the wherewithal to successfully rebuild their lives, or, alternatively, to escape from an abusive ex?

Bloom didn’t have the answer, but she knew not to ignore the question. She often spotted important gaps and links long before she could explain why they were significant. The trick was to note these gut feelings (as Jameson would call them) and to examine them ruthlessly.

As the train pulled into her station, Bloom made one last note.

Find Jane’s father.

16

Rural towns and villages had parks filled with mummies and their buggies and walkers with their dogs. But Russell Square moved at a pace. Even the woman doing yoga on the grass was moving as quickly as possible from one position to the next. Outside the green oasis of the square, the hum of traffic coming and going, starting and stopping, provided a percussion accompaniment that never stopped. Inside the square, the constant flow of people entering and exiting at all four corners, dodging other walkers while flicking through their messages or talking incessantly into their phones, throbbed to the beat of the traffic. This was a place where things happened. Perhaps not literally, but in the minds and digital realities of the square’s brief visitors.

She looked around. There were only two types of people who inhabited the square for any length of time: the workers employed to keep everything clean and serve drinks in the cafe at the northeast corner, and the watchers. The watchers sat at the few tables outside the cafe, sipping flat whites or loose-leaf tea as they took time to think or simply to watch the world pass by in a flurry of feet.