‘Yes, yes,’ Alldridge answered, and caught the ‘sad face’ grimace of his colleague. She would have preferred a Grade One, when she could have put on the blue lights and siren – one of the big bangs all response officers got from the job.

He punched the address the controller gave him into the satnav, then they both listened to the details she had for them as they headed towards Nevill Road.

Seventeen minutes later, Alldridge radioed the controller to confirm they were at the address. Was there any update? he asked.

There wasn’t. That was the end of the controller’s role in this incident and they now held the baton.

13

Monday 2 September

Niall Paternoster heard the doorbell chime. He hadn’t been expecting the police to arrive so quickly. The call handler had said an hour, which he’d taken to mean two hours, or three, or whenever we can be bothered to send someone. This was around half an hour. He hastily downed the rest of his second Red Bull and dumped both cans in the kitchen bin, dug a mint gum from his shorts pocket and popped it in his mouth.

Chewing hard, he hurried through into the lounge and peered out of the window. He saw a police car, the blue-and-yellow Battenberg paintwork gleaming in the bright sunlight. Two figures, partly obscured by a rose bush, stood on the doorstep. He heard a faint staccato, crackly burst of voices.

Opening the front door, he was greeted by a short, black female uniformed officer in her early thirties with spiky black hair and a chubby, impish face, and a tall, burly uniformed white male, in his late forties, with a genial, slightly apologetic expression. Both of them were bulked out by their stab vests and batteries of kit.

‘Mr Niall Paternoster?’ the woman officer asked.

‘Yes.’

The tall officer fiddled with the radio clipped to his chest and the voices of his radio chatter quietened.

‘I’m PC Little and this is PC Alldridge. We understand you’ve reported your wife missing?’

‘Yes, since yesterday afternoon.’

‘May we come in, sir?’

‘Please,’ he said, stepping aside and ushering them forward. ‘Thank you for—’ He finished the sentence by windmilling his hands.

Closing the door, walking with a confident swagger, Niall led the way into the modern, minimalist lounge at the front of the house. Directing the officers to a sofa, he sat in the identical one facing them, across the glass coffee table with the chessboard. ‘Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, coffee, water?’

Holly glanced at her colleague, who shook his head. ‘We’re fine, thank you,’ she said. She could smell the residue of cigarette smoke and had noticed Niall was looking wired as he opened the front door. She studied the man for a moment, who was chewing mint gum – to mask alcohol? In his thirties, she guessed, he was good-looking in a slightly rough way, with short but unruly brown curls, the shape of someone who worked out, and muscular tattooed arms.