‘I remember it. I was shopping with Anna. Nick got left to watch Josie because she didn’t want to go down the aisles. It cost a lot to put Josie on that ride for half an hour. What’s she wearing?’

‘Well, she’s got…’

Aware that Anna thought the police were treating this case as just another day at the office, Jane had had an idea to force one of the detectives to study Josie more closely. Now, she figured, the sergeant was infusing her niece deep into his soul, which turned Josie from an object to be investigated into a real little girl who’d miss her parents. It would hopefully put that little bit of extra urge into him, make him go that extra mile. And it would help her to feel like a part of this, like she was helping her family. Like she wasn’t a useless piece of furniture.

9.06 a.m.

In a panic, Anna opened her wardrobe. On the top shelf they kept fresh sheets and rarely used clothing in vacuum bags, and the thing she was after. It was in a small aluminium biscuit box along with other valuables, like the necklace her dead mother had given her at six, which she’d worn every day until she was eight and a new physical education teacher at her school forced her to take it off. It reminded her of the beaded necklace Josie wore, a gift from the same woman, and which the little girl tried to avoid taking off if possible, once even arguing with a PE teacher who tried to insist on its removal. Strangely, she hoped it hadn’t got accidentally torn off when those foul Ogres…

The item she wanted was a 3-D glass image of Josie. It was here for safekeeping because her daughter had dropped it once and chipped a corner. The quality didn’t beat a high-res photograph, of course, but photographs didn’t have the same impact. This small cube was the only way she could see Josie in profile, and behind the ears, even though it was a computer guess. If she was lost from her, a photo wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do, either, but at least she seemed to have flesh and blood, as if she’d posed for a mould. She wished she’d not been so cheap and bought the smallest version available; a giant Josie’s head, almost full-size, would have cost only £400. Nothing. That seemed like nothing now.