Snow.

So that’s one mistake you made, but that’s not the only one. You said, ‘Snow had a pretty good time of it when she was a kid, living in a nice house on Station Road with her mum and dad, and going to a good Catholic school,’ or something like that.

You said, ‘It wasn’t like her sister, who had to grow up in the orphanage,’ and boo-hoo.

I’ve got to tell you, Jack, when I read that I thought, ‘So that’s how he thinks things work, is it?’ I had a mum and dad so my life must have been perfect, and Agnes got left in an orphanage so she deserves all the sympathy?

That might be how things work in your world, Jack, but they aren’t how things work in mine, and if you can’t understand that maybe I just shouldn’t write to you any more.

Yours sincerely,

Snow

Chapter Two

If someone had told me in September 2009 that I was about to spend two years investigating a missing person’s case, I wouldn’t have believed it. Missing persons cases aren’t really my bag, and that’s because it’s hard to get stories about missing people in the paper, and that’s because a couple of thousand people go missing every year and 98 per cent of them turn up.

Those who don’t, generally don’t want to be found or will never be found. It’s that last group that you sometimes hear about, but only a handful of those cases are ever interesting enough to capture the public’s imagination, such as when a kid gets taken from their bed, as happens about once every five years.

It was my editor at the Times, Tyrone O’Brien, who asked me to have a look at the case of Snow’s missing sister, Agnes Moore. From memory, his exact words were, ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Tap –’ my first name is Jack but my colleagues tend to call me Tap, since my last name is Fawcett ‘– but apparently a British tourist, an old lady, went missing in that dust storm we had a few weeks back. The cops want to put out an appeal for anyone who might have seen her, so can I get you to go out to the Rose Bay cop shop?’

I knew O’Brien wouldn’t be asking if he didn’t think the story had potential, so I jumped in a cab and headed out to the Rose Bay cop shop, which isn’t actually such a bad place to visit on a sunny day. It’s right on the water and there’s usually the odd pelican standing around.

The press conference was held in what the cops call the ‘ante-room’ – a little room off the main hallway. I’ve been in it a thousand times. There was a female copper standing by the door handing out press packs, so I took one of those and pulled up a seat in front of the little stage. From memory, I was one of maybe seven reporters there that day. We sat around exchanging a bit of chit-chat, and then a detective from Rose Bay – his name was Garry Croft – came walking in, with Mrs Moore’s daughter, Ruby Moore, not far behind him.