Joe flicked through a few dozen others. Mostly mother and son, a few images taken by mistake, blurred and indecipherable. Then a young woman. Just one shot, a portrait, the background dull, unfocused.

‘Who’s the girl?’

She was young. Pretty, in a devious kind of way, willing the camera to find her unattractive, knowing that it couldn’t. Long black hair, single nose piercing, her make-up dark and severe.

‘What girl?’ she said, fussing with her empty can.

He passed her the phone. She squinted at it briefly, then gave it back to him.

‘Dunno. He lost his phone a few weeks ago. Used mine for a while.’

Joe stood up, took the phone from her.

‘Can I borrow this? I’ll have it back to you in the morning. What’s the password?’

‘One-nine-nine-six.’

He wrote the code in his notebook. Addresses he could remember, passwords not so much. All his passwords were written down on a slip of paper in his wallet.

‘He turned out bad,’ she said, sensing that he was ready to go. ‘Didn’t deserve to.’

‘Craig? Why did he turn out bad?’

She looked at him. For the first time her head was steady.

‘When he were a kid, his mother were a friggin’ junkie. His dad were friggin’ nowhere.’

She paused, looked away, embarrassed at the description of herself, of the world into which she’d brought another human being.

‘Are you gonna find him?’

‘I’m going to try. If I call around tomorrow at ten o’clock will you be sober? We have to do a formal interview.’

‘Could you make it eleven?’

‘Half-ten. Get a good night’s sleep. I’ll find him.’

5

No assumptions should be made about the priority of police action until all the facts are ascertained… If in doubt, think the worst until the contrary is proved.

GUIDANCE ON THE MANAGEMENT, RECORDING AND INVESTIGATION OF MISSING PERSONS

Joe sat at his desk. It wasn’t unusual for him to be in the ops room this late in the evening, and no one on the night shift was surprised to see him there. When he was a young DC he’d been absurdly impressive, working all hours, so dogged and stubborn that cases seemed to get solved simply because he wouldn’t give up, always a new line of enquiry, a new way of looking at things. These days he was on mispers. Cool respect was about all he got. That plus a touch of schadenfreude, after his return from France, tail between his legs.

He thought about giving Sam a ring. Too late? When did parents get so worried about invading their children’s privacy? Sam wasn’t a child, though. He was nineteen and in his first year of Medicine at Edinburgh. He was doing fine, that’s what he said whenever the two of them spoke. Everything’s fine, Dad.