But it didn’t feel as if it would be. Already they were pulled out. Payne had spent most of that day flogging through endless reams of CCTV footage, not just from the Hollinbrook area but from the various housing estates along the canal. Peabody, meanwhile, had been an actual presence in Hollinbrook, going door-to-door, after which his brief was to prowl the town’s homeless shelters, making enquiries about other potential missing persons. Lawless was midway through chasing all known black or blue transit vans sold in the Greater Manchester area in the last ten years, while Stryker, having interviewed Alex Calderwood at length to see if Lorna Cunningham had made any noteworthy comments recently, perhaps regarding a suspicion that she was being watched or followed, or maybe having trouble with someone, would tomorrow move on to ask similar questions of Cunningham’s other friends and associates (and in their case, to also ask about Calderwood himself).

Later on in the week, Lucy would do the same with the friends and relatives of Harry Hopkins, but that was after she’d personally perused Lorna Cunningham’s phone records, examined the crime scene on the canal bank and liaised with DI Beardmore and the N Division’s official press officer about how the public could best be brought in to assist.

But her last port of call today, now that she’d finally managed to get outside, was to speak again with Sister Cassie, and obtain an actual statement regarding the van she’d seen and the alleged abduction of Fred Holborn. She’d already double-checked the partial VRM written on the condom wrapper, and it had come up again as non-existent. This meant that number-plate recognition software would be next to useless, as the perp would likely have more than one such fake plate and would change them regularly.

As she slowed down to accommodate the late evening traffic on Adolphus Road, Lucy pondered the weirdness of a kidnapper who would start out by snatching vagrants off the streets, then would move on to an OAP outside his home, and finally would pick on a much younger person, an athlete no less. It was weirder still if you considered that this might be the same person, or persons, who’d begun their reign of terror by snatching dogs.

When you voiced it in those terms, it was too nutty for words. But so often with unusual cases, when you finally uncovered a viable explanation it left you kicking yourself at how obvious it had been, at how it had been right under your nose and you’d never once spotted it.