So she was born in London, presumably grew up in London, and then went to university in London too. What could have led Patrick to her? Had they met at some stage? Could she have been based in the north for a period of time? In 1987, at the time of her disappearance, Patrick would have been twenty-two, so was it possible they were involved romantically?

‘Are we done?’ Quinn asked, disrupting my train of thought.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I just need one more thing from you.’

Quinn made a sound: he knew what was coming.

‘I’d like the file on Beatrix Steards.’

He took a moment, drawing in a breath that crackled down the line, and then he said, ‘Look, if I do this for you, I don’t ever want to hear from you again, you got it? I just about managed to survive this whole shitstorm by the skin of my teeth the first time round because investigators up north never looked back far enough into Perry’s phone calls. I got sloppy back then, letting him call me at work like that, but it’s never happening again. It felt like I didn’t sleep for months when that was going on. So if I send this to you, that’s it. You get the file, you delete my number, and it’s goodnight.’

‘I told you at the start that was what I’d do.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve heard of you before, Raker – you’re like a swear word in this place – so forgive me if I find it hard to believe the word of a man the Met despises.’

I didn’t bother trying to defend myself or argue the point, because I’d already got what I wanted and attempting to convince a cop polluted by the opinions of other cops was an unwinnable battle. I’d worked cases that had ruffled feathers at the Met. I’d picked up and solved missing persons searches that had long been consigned to a drawer there. That had made me enemies in London I hadn’t intended, didn’t want, but had to accept. So I asked Quinn to get me a digital version of Beatrix Steards’s missing persons file and gave him the URL and password to a website where he could drop the file securely. He grunted in response and hung up.

The rain started lashing down again.