Gillard sighed. ‘Have you tried ringing her?’

‘Yes, but not for several hours. There was no reply.’

‘Let’s have another go.’ Gillard reached across for the paperwork, tapped out the number on his desk phone and heard it ring out. It then went to a message service which said the mailbox was full. He shrugged, waited a minute, then tried again. This time the phone was answered.

‘Hello, is that Beatrice Ulbricht?’

It clearly wasn’t. There was a lot of background noise, but Gillard could just about make out the words being spoken to him. He repeated Beatrice’s name, then loudly spelled it out. ‘Can you hold it all for me?’ Gillard asked, and then read out his police credentials. ‘Yes, the entire container.’

Gillard hung up, offering Townsend a dour expression.

‘Who was that?’ Townsend asked.

‘Someone called Gladys at the Brentford waste transfer station. She’s got Beatrice’s phone. Found in a consignment of rubbish.’

‘Oh shit,’ Townsend said. ‘That’s not good news.’

‘They just found the phone, Rob,’ Gillard said. ‘They haven’t found a body so far.’ Gladys had told him that the device had been picked up out of the container of unsorted rubbish this morning. It joined a dozen other phones recovered over the last week, along with fountain pens, spectacles and various other metallic items through which the overhead magnet earned its keep.

‘She told me that if they hadn’t spotted it, or if the magnet hadn’t grabbed hold of it, it would be on its way to Bristol this evening to be burned at the Severnside Energy Recovery Centre.’

‘So Beatrice is still missing?’

‘Yep. They’re taking a look through the hopper for her, but in the meantime, Rob…’

‘I’ll get right back on the CCTV, sir.’

‘Thank you, Rob. I’m a lot more worried now than I was an hour ago. Millennials are inseparable from their phones. I can’t think of a good reason why it should be at a rubbish dump.’

‘Unless she’s there too,’ Townsend said.

Gillard nodded grimly as he reached for the phone. Alison Rigby would want to know. He punched out her direct line. As so often, it fell to him to be the bearer of bad news.

Chapter Two

Adrian Singer lived in the village of Westmeare, population 280, in a quiet rural corner of Surrey. His home was a small whitewashed cottage with a neat well-tended garden surrounded by a white picket fence. There was a wooden sculpture by the door and a rustic wagon wheel leaning against a wall. Gillard parked his car behind the aged Honda Civic already there, and turned to PC Lynne Fairbanks.

‘Nice place he’s got.’ Gillard was sure that the climbing roses over the front door would look lovely in the summer. Even in the steady rain it looked delightful.

‘It makes me think of the gingerbread house in Grimm’s fairy tales,’ Lynne replied. ‘And we know how that turned out.’ They both peered in at the warmly lit house, then got out of the car shrugging up their raincoats against the weather. Singer met them at the door. He was a balding fellow in his early forties, slightly unkempt, with bright eyes and a limp handshake. Gillard and Fairbanks were offered coffee and biscuits, and sat at a rustic table in front of a roaring open fire while it was prepared. The low-ceilinged lounge boasted an upright piano, an expensive-looking Bose stereo and a series of three brass instruments balanced on stands.