Ready, Miller headed for the front door. Anna heard the detective’s raspy tones and the heavy Scottish accent of yet another new player. Miller led this person past the bedroom door and into the living room. He wore a long coat over a suit, very sophisticated, like her father, but a tuft of hair poking up on the side of his head suggested he’d rushed to dress after waking. Whoever he was, Miller had felt the need to avoid looking worn out.

She approached the living room door but didn’t enter. She heard the new arrival introduce himself to the party as Chief Superintendent Allenberg, District Commander for Sheffield. The big boss, then. He sounded proud to announce that the chief constable, woken from slumber, had authorised the use of surveillance devices for this investigation. Surveillance? On who? Did they have a suspect?

Pressed against the wall like an intruder in her own house, she listened as Miller outlined the call she had received about the possible kidnap and events since. Anna was surprised to hear that there had been a whole platoon of police officers on standby, ready to head out into fields and outhouses and lakes, the usual routine when a youngster went missing, but that Miller had ordered this approach scaled back in respect of evidence for a father-daughter abduction by Nicolas Carter. A media blackout was mentioned.

Then, a rundown on the Carters. Nick: thirty-seven, landscape gardener, menial labour worker his whole life, no known mental illness, only brush with the law: a fine and a one-year driving ban for drink-driving when he was twenty.

Anna: thirty-five, once-upon-a-time employee of Conservative Party member Marc Eastman – yes, that chap who just got made Secretary of State for Education – and now a stay-at-home mother. No psychological ailments and no dealings with the law bar one occasion in September of 2011 when her car was analysed amongst hundreds of others as part of a hit-and-run fatality enquiry in London.

Here Anna decided she’d heard enough and was about to return to the bedroom when she heard voices ahead. Yet more new voices. Someone was in the cubbyhole at the end of the hall. Now she could hear shuffling paperwork. The little alcove was where Anna sat to stare out of the small porthole window at the neighbour’s trees and work on her poetry. She hated the idea of detectives reading her work and yanked the curtain.

Two detectives she’d never seen before were sitting at the small table inside and dragging their fingers through her box of personal paperwork. Only one acknowledged her: a pregnant young woman, who she’d later learn was Detective Constable Ella Hicks, turned in guilty surprise. The male, a young Pakistani DC called Zesh Nabi, didn’t even look up from what he was doing. She was annoyed to see her stack of poetry jotters had been knocked over, one having slid to the floor.