The woman was called Janet Dawson, and she was het up. Lucy met her at her father’s house just after ten that morning. She was in early middle age and tubby, with curly fair hair running to grey, and a pale, worried face.

The address was 8, Atkinson Row, and it belonged to an OAP called Harry Hopkins.

‘I’ve been ringing Dad for the last three days,’ she said, ushering Lucy down a short hall into the interior of a terraced house so neat and tidy it could have passed for a show home. ‘I’ve been asking around too. His friends and the locals down the pub. No one’s seen him.’

‘He keeps a tidy home,’ Lucy said, looking around the lounge and then heading upstairs.

‘Oh, yes.’ The woman followed. ‘He’s always been very house-proud.’

‘There’s absolutely nothing out of place?’ Lucy asked, looking into the two bedrooms.

‘Nothing obvious. Oh … apart from out at the back. Do you know about that already?’

‘Yeah, I was told about that before I got here.’

What had really panicked Janet Dawson, on calling to see her father this morning and discovering the house empty, had been the back door and back gate, which were both wide open. She’d quickly called the police. Uniform had arrived first and, not liking it either, had passed the info to CID.

‘We’ll look down at the back in a sec,’ Lucy said, still checking around upstairs.

She noticed a large, circular cushion on the carpet next to Harry’s bed. A well-chewed rubber bone sat in the middle of it.

‘Your dad has a dog?’

‘Yes. Milly … she’s a Pekingese.’

‘Does he take her out a lot?’

‘Yeah. She gets at least two walks a day. But he leaves her in when he’s off to the pub or the bookies, or something like that.’ The woman’s voice trembled as she spoke.

Lucy pondered. She didn’t say it aloud, because she simply wasn’t sure, but the absence of the dog made foul play a little less likely. If you were going to abduct someone, would you really go to the trouble of abducting their pet too? It seemed more possible that something had happened to the old guy while he was out walking the dog, but if there’d been an accident, or he’d dropped dead from a heart attack, someone ought to have found him by now. And then there was the mystery surrounding the back door and the back gate.

‘Could your father have left her here, forgotten to lock up at the back, and she’s just run away?’ she asked.

‘I honestly don’t think she’d run away,’ the woman replied. ‘And I’ve never known Dad make a mistake like that before. Plus, why would he go out without his hat and coat?’