The next thing she said confirmed it: ‘No, don’t be like that, Liz, you’ve known about the Sunday rota for weeks. I…’ Her head twitched and Nick knew his presence had been fathomed. ‘Call you later. No, look, I—’

She looked at her phone, then put it away. Whoever it was had hung up on her. A domestic of some sort, with another woman. He felt awkward overhearing, for all of two seconds. Then more pressing matters took over.

‘Bennet said you had some information for us. So let me ask you something while my wife isn’t listening. And I want the truth. The NSPCC has had nearly two thousand cases of trafficked children in the last ten years. Is my little girl on her way to London or abroad even, to go work in a brothel?’

‘There’s nothing to suggest that, Nick.’ Still with her back to him, Miller took a moment to raise a finger to one eye, which he figured was to wipe away a tear that hadn’t fallen. Then she turned his way, back to business, wholly professional again. ‘Where did you get that idea? Reading on the Internet? Unwise, my friend. There’s been a ransom demand, remember.’

He tried to read deception in her face, but it wasn’t there. If anything, she was surprised he’d made such a leap and it made him realise he had, indeed, paid too much heed to a bunch of statistics posted online. He turned to leave. ‘We’re in the kitchen when you’re ready.’

She got to the kitchen twenty seconds later, carrying a laptop. Anna was seated, Jane was making tea, her fingers fast and deft within her comfortable body space, but Nick buzzed with too much energy and virtually hopped from foot to foot.

‘Thank you all for meeting me,’ Miller said, her voice croaky. As she lay the laptop on the table and stood behind it, Anna got up and approached the fridge. The detective was working the mousepad when Anna put a sandwich in foil and a bottle of water – Nick’s packed lunch for a job he no longer had – right down on the keyboard.

‘You need water,’ Anna said. ‘And you fed your people but I’ve not seen you eat.’

Miller looked ready to object, but took a sip of the water and a bite of the sandwich. Just a fragment of each, as if only to appease Anna. Then she leaned over the laptop again and started working the keyboard, doing everything upside down. Her position exposed more of her chest tattoo – the helmeted warrior had a muscled torso, but the legs of a horse: a centaur. It provoked a strange thought in Nick: No one really knows anyone, do they?