‘So do you think that’s her?’ Nicky said, voicing the question Fleet was pondering himself. ‘Do you think the intruder could be Melissa? Because it’s hard to be sure if it’s even a woman. I would guess not, but when it comes to Melissa, we don’t exactly have much to compare them to.’

On the desk beside the computer was a headshot of Melissa that Nicky had managed to retrieve from Shining Light. Apparently all the residents at the homeless shelter were issued with a photo ID, and the manager had emailed the image that appeared on Melissa’s pass to Nicky. He’d taken the photograph himself, with a phone that he’d described as ancient, so the quality wasn’t great. But everything they had on file otherwise was twenty years out of date. If they’d been looking for Melissa based on the picture of her in the Beaconsfield yearbook, they would have walked right past her on the street. They were like before and after shots, Fleet had decided – and not in a good way.

‘The clothes don’t help,’ Nicky was saying. ‘The loose trousers, the puffy jacket.’ She rewound the footage to the point the intruder was caught entering the room. ‘I suppose the height could be about right, judging from the doorframe. Zack Lawrence, the manager at the shelter, reckoned Melissa was almost as tall as him, which would make her close to five-nine.’

Nicky allowed the footage to continue, and then paused it once again when the intruder was looking directly into the camera. Fleet focused on the figure’s eyes, which were shadowed by the outline of the balaclava. It wasn’t even possible to make out their precise colour. Melissa’s were blue, and those in the footage could have been anything from grey to light brown.

‘Do you think we could get the tech guys to have a look?’ said Nicky. ‘See if they can clean it up a bit?’

Fleet exhaled. ‘You know what it’s like down there. They’ll have a backlog, and thanks to the powers that be, we’ll go straight to the bottom of the pile. By the time they get to us …’

Fleet paused. It will probably be too late, he’d been about to say. But where had that thought come from? Too late for what exactly?

An alert sounded on Fleet’s phone. He pulled it from his pocket, hoping the text might be from Holly. He’d sent her a message first thing – Did you get home OK? Call me. Any time – and he’d yet to hear back.