‘It sounds like SIRPS: Simple Role-Play Scenario. Quizmaster sets tasks or questions, could be to one player or dozens.’

‘You mean teams?’

He shrugged. ‘Hard to know. What’s the website?’

‘I don’t know.’

He looked at her. ‘You don’t know very much, do you?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

He sighed. ‘How serious is the case?’

‘A young woman’s gone missing. She was playing the game.’

‘And you don’t know if the two are connected?’

‘No.’

He rested his hands on his stomach. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘See if we can track down Quizmaster for you.’

‘Even if I had an idea what the game involved …’

He nodded, and Siobhan remembered her dialogue with Quizmaster. She’d asked about Hellbank. And his reply?

You’d have to play the game …

She knew that requisitioning a laptop would take time. Even then, it wouldn’t be hooked up to the Net. So on her way back to the station she stopped off at one of the computer shops.

‘Cheapest one we do is around nine hundred quid,’ the saleswoman informed her.

Siobhan flinched. ‘And how long before I could be online?’

The saleswoman shrugged. ‘Depends on your server,’ she said.

So Siobhan thanked her and left. She knew she could always use Philippa Balfour’s computer, but she didn’t want to, for all sorts of reasons. Then she had a brainwave and got on her mobile instead. ‘Grant? It’s Siobhan. I need a favour …’

DC Grant Hood had bought his laptop for the same reason he’d bought a mini-disc player, DVD and digital camera. It was stuff, and stuff was what you bought to impress people. Sure enough, each time he brought a new gadget into St Leonard’s he was the centre of attention for five or ten minutes – or rather, the stuff was. But Siobhan had noticed that Grant was always keen to lend these bits of high-tech to anyone who asked. He didn’t use them himself, or if he did he tired of them after a few weeks. Maybe he never got past the owner’s manuals: the one with the camera had been chunkier than the apparatus itself.

So Grant had been only too happy to make a trip home, returning with the laptop. Siobhan had already explained that she would need to use it for e-mails.

‘It’s up and ready,’ Grant had told her.

‘I’ll need your e-mail address and pass name.’

‘But that means you can access my e-mails,’ he realised.

‘And tell me, Grant, how many e-mails do you get a week?’

‘Some,’ he said, sounding defensive.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll save them for you … and I promise not to peek.’

‘Then there’s the matter of my fee,’ Grant said.

She looked at him. ‘Your fee?’

‘Yet to be discussed.’ His face broke into a grin.

She folded her arms. ‘So what is it?’