She entered the room, checked in the en suite bathroom, and then looked out of the window. There was absolutely no sign of either of them. There was no back gate, and the sturdy wood-panelled fence was six feet high. It was one of the things that she had checked on her first day, when they were worried about Francesca Arrowsmith being targeted. The officer who’d come to assess the security had been equally reassuring that there was only one way in and out, and that was out of the front drive.

So how had they got away?

Soraya checked the time, and realised that DI Nowak was due in fifteen minutes to interview Kelvin Arrowsmith. If Soraya had let them escape she would be as deep in the unmentionable as Arrowsmith himself had been. With a rising sense of panic, she went through the rooms upstairs, opening every door. Then downstairs: the lounge, the sun lounge, Arrowsmith’s private office. She made an urgent call to the control room with the bad news, then went back to PC Woodward on the doorstep. He turned round smiling, expecting tea. What he got was something different.

‘They’ve disappeared, Ollie.’

‘You’re joking! How?’

‘I don’t know. You’ve got to come and help me find them. I’ve got the key to the garage, but let’s look at the fence first.’

The two officers made their way around the garden, until they reached a shed. There was a gap of eighteen inches between the shed and the fence, and it was in this spot, invisible from the house, that they discovered a pair of aluminium stepladders. Woodward climbed the ladder, and looked over the fence. ‘It goes into another garden, but it’s shielded from that house by some big laurel bushes. There is a wooden gate into a street, and it’s open.’

The sound of a vehicle approaching at the front of the house made them turn.

‘Shit! It’s Nowak,’ said Soraya. ‘He’s early.’

‘We are going to get fired for this,’ Woodward said.

‘It’s my fault, you were only on the door. It was my job to keep them in view.’

Gillard was driving home after the meal when he took a call from Stella Anderson. ‘I’ve got some bad news, Craig.’

‘Bad enough that I should pull over to hear it?’

She laughed. ‘Not that bad, but bad enough. Kelvin Arrowsmith and his wife have disappeared from under the noses of Thames Valley Police.’

‘Abducted again?’