‘So I see,’ Gemma said, grinning at him.

‘I mean, will I be in trouble?’

‘Nah. There wasn’t time, and you’ve phoned in a CAD. Don’t stress about it. Mavis is trying to trace Meredith’s phone, but just when you rang I remembered something – I persuaded her to give me her Apple login a few days ago, in case anything like this ever happened, and I could use Find My iPhone. She wasn’t keen but I said it might be an idea, as a precaution. Let’s try it now. Hop in.’

Emad opened the passenger door and climbed in, clutching the helmet on his lap like a pet, as Gemma slid behind the wheel and started logging into iCloud. She tapped in Meredith’s details and waited a moment, tucking a long strand of curly hair back behind her ears. When she looked up, Emad was staring at her profile. When he saw she’d caught him doing it, he flushed briefly and looked away, embarrassed.

Something pinged on the screen and Gemma exclaimed, ‘Oh! Her phone’s still at Minstead. That’s not good. Why isn’t she answering the door then?’

Then she frowned and zoomed into the map with two fingers. ‘Wait – it’s not in the cottage. It’s in an outbuilding somewhere in the grounds. Fuck. This is not good. Looks like it’s about ten minutes away from the house. Let’s get down there.’

‘Should we call it in?’ Emad paused. ‘Sorry for the stupid questions. This is all still so … new.’

She smiled at him again. ‘It’s not a problem, Emad, honestly. No-one expects you to know everything straight away. It took me a good couple of years before I started feeling like I had half a clue about how it all worked. So, yeah I think we should – better safe than sorry. At least they’ll know where we are. And then we can see what’s going on – maybe she just went for a walk, you never know…’

They glanced doubtfully at each other, as Gemma radioed and left brief, calm instructions with the control room as to their whereabouts, in case they might need assistance on the hurry-up. Then they set off across the dark lawns, towards a copse of trees due south of the house and Meredith’s cottage, Gemma holding her phone out in front of her to see the map coordinates, while Emad lit the way with his torch app.