‘I’m sick and tired of it, if you want the truth. I’m sick of the politics, the politicians. And I’m sick of people like you coming in here and telling me what I should and should not do. As though you have any idea … any of you … of the things, the pressures, I have to try to …’

He allowed the sentence to trail off, as though deciding he was wasting his breath. He flapped a hand.

‘Do what you have to,’ he said dismissively. ‘I just hope you realise how much it’s going to cost me. How much it’s going to cost this entire constabulary. The powers that be are going to see it as us letting Richardson off the hook.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, Roger,’ Fleet said, ‘you’re doing the right thing.’

Burton scoffed, and sat back heavily in his chair. ‘There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me feel better, Detective Inspector.’ He waved a hand again. ‘You’ve got what you came for. Now get the hell out of my office.’

Saturday 26 October, 9.15 p.m.

They’d narrowed the window of Nicky’s disappearance down to sometime after five o’clock on Friday evening.

The trail until that point was becoming clearer. After Fleet had left Nicky in order to catch up with Randy at the school, she’d spent several hours at her desk – focused on the hunt for Melissa, judging by her computer’s search history. In the middle of the day she’d made a phone call to Shining Light. Fleet had called the number himself, and the manager, Zack Lawrence, confirmed he’d spoken to Nicky and suggested she contact Melissa’s counsellor. He’d repeated the address he’d given to Nicky, and when Fleet had paid a visit to Susanna Fenton, too, Melissa’s therapist had recounted the conversation she’d had with Nicky almost word for word. Fleet wondered if Nicky had interpreted what the psychotherapist said the same way he had. Nicky didn’t know everything Fleet did – about Melissa’s role, in particular, in ending a man’s career – but nothing Susanna Fenton had said reduced the likelihood, in Fleet’s mind, that Melissa was the killer they were looking for.

At 4.49 p.m., Nicky had tried to call Fleet – at the point he’d been wrapping up his conversation with Richard Hewitt’s daughter – and soon after that her car had been captured on a traffic camera. She hadn’t been driving towards the police station, and her flat was in the opposite direction entirely. Fleet’s best guess was that Nicky had for some reason been heading towards the docks, a fact borne out by the last location signal generated by her phone.

But that was where the trail – and the signal from Nicky’s phone – went dead.