Bloom continued, ‘We’ve made a request to West Yorkshire Police to send us the contact details of all three eye witnesses at the incident, but if you could speed things up that’d be helpful.’

‘I’ll speak to them,’ said DC Raj Akhtar.

Bloom nodded. ‘Then finally we have the disappearance of Lana Reid on March the ninth, again her birthday, and this is where we came in. Lana’s daughter Jane approached us for help.’

‘I’ve known Jane since she was a child,’ said Jameson. ‘My sister often took care of her when Lana Reid was deployed overseas in the Army. Except we’ve recently discovered that Lana doesn’t and never has worked for the military in any capacity.’

‘So what was she doing?’ asked Barker.

‘We’ve no idea.’ Jameson picked up a pen from the desk beside him and turned it over in his right hand. ‘It’s a mystery.’

‘So what are our working theories?’

Jameson looked at Bloom. He clearly wasn’t planning to participate in this part of the briefing.

‘As far as we can tell,’ began Bloom, ‘there’s nothing circumstantial linking the four missing people. They are different ages, different genders and have different professions. Some have children, some don’t. They were born and live in different locations and, according to their families, they don’t know each other. There is some suggestion that they were all unhappy, but we have no evidence of significant problems such as debt, depression or mental health issues. What we do know is that they were all living a lie. As Marcus said, Lana was not really in the military, Grayson was failing his degree, Stuart has no known history beyond the two years he has been with his fiancée, and Faye told her employers she was happy at home but her husband said she was vile.’

‘Standard,’ said DS Green.

Jameson smiled.

Bloom continued, ‘What I’ve been asking myself is why they would take up a dare just because a random birthday card challenges them to. Why leave their lives to play this game? And I think there are three options. The first is blackmail. Someone has discovered their secrets and is threatening to expose them. Faye Graham might have decided to call the blackmailer’s bluff by killing her husband.’

‘Harsh, but I’ve seen crazier things,’ said DI Mathers. ‘We should dig deeper into their pasts, see what dirt we can find.’

Bloom nodded. ‘The second theory is that these people play the game because it promises them something. If we lay this theory on Faye, it could be that she wanted to kill her husband, and this game prepared her mentally and physically for that challenge.’

‘In which case, we might have other innocent victims coming our way. And the third theory?’ said Chief Superintendent Barker.

‘This is where things get a little more concerning,’ said Bloom.