Mark didn’t reply, taking a moment to choose his words carefully. ‘I was involved in a case back when I was in uniform. I was about twenty-one, twenty-two, so must be about eight years ago now. I had just finished probation, so had only been a copper for two years. Anyone will tell you, you’re still the new kid even then. Still am, to some degree. There was a call about a teenager gone missing – young girl, about seventeen. I recognised the address straight away when they gave it to us over the radio. Been over there a fair few times for a load of different reasons. The usual council estate stuff: fights, domestics, thefts, you know the score. This family was pretty notorious, but only in the few streets around where they lived. Anyway, we were always getting called out there for some reason or other. The girl, she was in the middle of five kids. Had a younger sister, but three older brothers who were nightmares. She’d disappeared before, getting up to all sorts, no doubt. It was always only for a day, tops. She’d waltz back in, usually just around the same time we’d show up. I hadn’t dealt with that side of them before, but I knew about it. I didn’t think this time would be any different.’

‘It was though, right?’ Stephanie said, as Mark paused.

‘She’d left the house the day before, about five p.m., they said. Just said she was going out, nothing more. Took the details and told them we’d keep an eye out for her, that sort of thing, thinking she’d be back soon enough.’

Mark had a clear image in his head of that house. So different to the one he’d spent almost a week in now. The smell of damp and despair seeping out of every wall. The yellowed wallpaper, the nicotine stains on the dad’s fingers, as they prised open another can of cheap lager. The lines on the mum’s face, crevices deeper than were normal on the face of someone in their forties. The shouting and arguing from other, unseen places within the house.

‘She wasn’t, was she?’