‘I agree,’ Grace said. ‘For one of my birthdays, Sandy got me a voucher from a tattoo parlour as a present.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I was never brave enough to have it done. She wanted me to have my name and her name with a heart between on my arm.’

‘Lucky you didn’t. Cleo would have been mightily impressed – not!’

Grace grinned. ‘You could say that.’ Then, serious again, he said, ‘It seems that Eden is a successful woman, hard-working, in the prime of her life, with a close circle of friends and work colleagues. It doesn’t make sense that she has just disappeared and we have found no social media activity since her disappearance. Do you agree?’

Glenn Branson nodded his head.

At that moment, Grace’s phone rang again. It was Aiden Gilbert and he sounded puzzled. ‘Can I clarify something, Roy?’ he asked, the phone on loudspeaker.

‘Tell me?’

‘That photograph of the woman in front of the lake you sent me? You said it was taken yesterday, early afternoon?’

‘Yes, correct – from what I was told.’

‘Not according to the digital date stamp, Roy. On first examination, it wasn’t taken yesterday, it was taken at 1.50 p.m. on Saturday August the twenty-fourth. Over a week before.’

‘You are certain, Aiden?’

‘Completely, Roy.’

Ending the call, Grace called Cleo to tell her that they were going to have to postpone the hen husbandry course tomorrow.

24

Monday 2 September

‘It is 6.30 p.m., Monday September the second,’ Roy Grace announced to his freshly assembled team. ‘This is the first briefing meeting of Operation Lagoon, the investigation into the disappearance of Mrs Eden Paternoster, last seen according to the questionable information given by her husband, Niall, shortly after 3.15 p.m. yesterday, Sunday September the first, in the car park of the Tesco Holmbush superstore, pictured behind me. I’m sure some of you are already familiar with that store and use it?’

He noted a few nods.

On one whiteboard behind Grace was pinned the two photographs of Eden Paternoster, the one in front of a Christmas tree and the one in front of the Parham House lake. They were accompanied by several more photographs of her, sent in by her husband.

One was of Eden with Niall, their arms around each other, a couple who seemingly could not be more in love, in front of the beautiful ruins of moated Bodiam Castle. Another was in front of Hangleton church, Niall in a suit, sporting a red carnation and beaming, and Eden in a long wedding dress, holding a bouquet, smiling radiantly.

On the second whiteboard was a sequence of photographs of the interior and exterior of the Tesco superstore, taken by Crime Scene Photographer James Gartrell. Each was labelled. Various angles of the car park, the public front entrance, the staff entrance and the goods receiving bay. The ones of the interior of the store showed the manned and unmanned checkout tills, several aisles and each of the CCTV camera locations. Beneath them was the poor-resolution image of Niall Paternoster in denim shorts and T-shirt, taken from the CCTV, in the entrance to the store at 3.50 p.m. yesterday.