Bloom chose not to take issue with the concept of a woman having to earn her place. This was not the time. ‘I still don’t understand why you need my help.’

‘Scarlett is my sister’s only child. Greta raised her alone. They saw each other daily until Scarlett went to university, and then everything changed. Over the course of that year Greta had less and less contact with her, and it has now been nearly ten years since they last spoke.’

Bloom raised her eyebrows. It wasn’t unusual for the relationship between parents and children to change when the latter left for university, but this was a bit different. Bloom wondered at the nature of the mother-daughter relationship. Was their apparent closeness healthy, or was there something Scarlett might feel aggrieved about, enough to cut all family ties?

‘You want me to reconcile your sister and your niece?’

‘I hear you are something of an expert when it comes to uncovering why people go missing. Scarlett not only fell out of contact with her family but also all of her friends.’

‘Have you asked Scarlett yourself? Perhaps there was a good reason she chose to cut ties with her past.’

‘I received one email from her about five years ago, saying she wanted to make her own way in the world and Artemis was her family now.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘I didn’t have a problem with it but I now understand that no one in the family has been able to reach her for a number of years. Her phone and email are all defunct. You think it lax of me not to have helped sooner?’ he said in response to Bloom’s silence. ‘In my defence, Greta can be somewhat drawn to the dramatic and we have not always seen eye to eye. But the time comes when you face the kind of thing that leads you to make amends.’

Bloom wondered if this was whatever DCI Mirza was so keen to talk to the MP about.

‘Have you or Greta spoken to the police?’

Porter narrowed his eyes. ‘I made it clear. No police. Police mean press. That’s why you’re here. I want this investigated quietly. Scarlett’s father passed away when she was a child, but he was a wealthy man and he left her a cool £2 million to be accessed at the age of twenty-one. Greta tells me this is no longer in the trust-fund account. Can you believe she never bloody checked the money was still there until I told her to? In all these years of bleating on about Scarlett.’

‘When was it moved?’

‘Not long after her twenty-first.’

‘Could she have simply placed it in a personal account?’

‘Of course, that’s possible – but if this group has defrauded my niece I can’t afford for that to become common knowledge. Am I making myself clear?’