Claire Mulholland munched a tandoori chicken and lettuce sandwich as she watched the chief constable depart. Once Rigby had gone, and most of the other officers dispersed, she closed the door and turned to Craig. ‘How many of us are working on this bloody case?’

‘Fifty, give or take, if you count the civilians.’

She nodded and swallowed the last of the sandwich. ‘Do you remember Yvonne Fairfield?’

‘Name’s familiar.’

‘A nineteen-year-old mixed race woman from Staines. Okay, she’d done drugs, and been cautioned for soliciting. But she’s been missing three years and nine months. She’d been beaten up in the past but wouldn’t identify the assailant, who was probably either a boyfriend or a pimp. We don’t even have a single cop working on her case. I’ve been trying to make enough time to get another look at it. Her mother emails me every single day asking if we’ve made any progress.’

Carl Hoskins, eavesdropping from another desk, nodded in agreement. ‘I’ve got a case of a bloke injured trying to stop some toe-rag stealing his car on Monday night. Uniforms took a statement but I haven’t had a moment to go and see him in hospital and get a follow-up.’

Gillard sighed. ‘It’s the Madeleine McCann effect. I’ve had this discussion with Rigby a few times. Press priorities inevitably trump policing priorities because our bosses are politicians.’

‘Ah yes, and you have got to curtsy to two of them tonight, haven’t you?’ Claire said, with a laugh.

‘Don’t remind me.’ He looked down at his phone, on which an email had just come in from the surveillance team. ‘Hell, I don’t believe this,’ he said.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Latest from the surveillance team. Initial checks on platform CCTV show no sign of Beatrice getting off at Clapham Junction or Vauxhall. BTP says she didn’t get off at Waterloo either.’

‘That’s the last three stations. So where did she go?’

‘It seems she just vanished into thin air.’

Chapter Three

The team’s first attempt to track Beatrice was a skimpy one, hours of CCTV footage scanned on fast-forward, relying solely on cameras covering platform exits. To be certain it required looking in detail at the recordings from many dozens of platform cameras. By four o’clock, the CCTV team and their counterparts at BTP were sure: nobody resembling Beatrice Ulbricht had left the train at Waterloo, nor at the two immediately preceding stops.

Gillard called in Research Intelligence Officer DC Rob Townsend to get some clarification, and asked Claire to sit in too. Townsend came to the conference room with DI Nigel Duffy from the British Transport Police.

‘Rob, you’ve had the chance to examine the detailed cell site timeline, I believe. What can you tell me?’

‘Between the time Beatrice got on the train and the final text from her at 16.39 she received fourteen phone calls, none of which she answered. By this time the voicemail was full in any case. There were also eleven text messages received. Only two were answered, both from fellow members of her quartet. The first was Karen Ellsworth’s, sent at 14.46 and answered at 15.58, and the second was responding to a message sent at 13.42, from Teus Zukowski, another member of the quartet.’