Cora relapsed into thought. ‘I didn’t know him very well. Gardener … but he had a drink problem. Lost his job, lost his flat. For a time, he was selling the Big Issue at the top of Langley Street. Then he went missing.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Used to see him every Wednesday lunchtime, when I went shopping,’ Cora said. ‘He was a nice man, when he was sober.’

‘What do you mean, “He went missing”?’

‘One week he just wasn’t there. A week later, there was a young girl selling it. I asked her what had happened to Walter. She said she didn’t know. They thought he’d just moved on. But he wouldn’t have moved on, I’ll tell you. He was a Crowley man. Been here all his life.’

‘And did no one report this disappearance?’ Lucy asked.

‘Like who? He didn’t have a family, didn’t have any friends.’

‘So, there’s no actual evidence that anything bad happened to him?’

‘No, but let’s be fair, Lucy … if I was to tell you this about a neighbour, someone who actually lived in a house and paid their taxes, I reckon the next thing you’d do as a police officer would be to knock on their door, to see what was what.’

Lucy mulled this over and was sad to admit that it was probably true.

Homelessness was a major story in Britain today, and rightly so given that it was a national disgrace. At one time, you’d only see those poor wretches in the forgotten backstreets of big cities, but now they were everywhere, right under society’s nose. And yet so few people even noticed them.

‘I’m sorry, love …’ Cora reached out and patted her daughter’s hand. ‘You’re a good police officer. It’s not your fault.’

Lucy didn’t reply. For a moment, all she could think about was Stan Beardmore’s comment the previous day: They’re just dogs … we’ve got a longer list of missing people who we haven’t got time to look for.

That ‘list’ comprised dozens of missing persons posters, each one depicting a grainy photograph of some poor individual – and there were all ages there, all races, all classes – who had dropped out of sight, never to be seen again. In many cases, it was so long ago that their posters had yellowed and curled. And it was the same story in police station foyers all over the UK.

And now they had more people vanishing from Lucy’s own streets, and yet it had taken a homeless heroin addict dressed as a nun, and an off-handed comment from her mother, to draw her attention to them.

‘No, it’s not our fault,’ Lucy agreed. ‘But maybe we can do a better job than we are doing.’

Chapter 6

Mick Shallicker lounged in the penthouse suite of the Astarte Hotel in central Manchester.