Anderson appeared next, addressing the camera, describing Luke’s last-known movements before he was replaced by the CCTV footage of Luke leaving work. She watched as the familiar, denim-jacketed figure with its loose easy gait made its way up Duck Lane. When the film cut to a still of the abandoned blue van she stared at it in dismay. Such a lonely, desolate spot: had Luke really been there? It seemed unimaginable. Next, and most distressing of all, was a close-up of the bloodstained seat.

Finally, there Clara herself was. Huddled between Anderson and DCI Carter, her face deathly pale, her voice shaking as she read from the piece of paper that trembled in her hand. ‘My boyfriend Luke is a kind and loving man,’ she began. ‘We all – his family, his friends – we all miss him so much. If anyone knows anything, anything at all, please, please come forward. We haven’t seen him for four days, and we just want him back …’ An information number ran along the bottom of the screen as she talked. When she finished, the camera zoomed in on her face, lingering on her tears. After a few more words from the detective chief inspector, the film cut back to the studio, the newsreader soon replaced by a weatherman standing before a map of Britain annotated with swirling clouds of rain.

For two days, Mac and Clara holed up in his flat on the Holloway Road, an anxious, stultifying existence while they waited for news, broken only by aimless walks around Highbury Fields beneath the muggy April sky. On the third day they sat miserably in Mac’s local, staring into their pint glasses. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ Clara asked him, it suddenly occurring to her that he hadn’t been disappearing off at night with his camera as usual.

‘I’m taking a break for a while,’ he told her. ‘Perk of being freelance, I guess.’ He looked at her. ‘How about you? How long have you got off?’

‘A couple of weeks. They said I could tack some holiday time on to that.’

He nodded and each of them silently wondered the same unknowable thing: how long would it be before they were released from this nightmare?

Realizing she could put it off no longer she phoned her parents in Portugal, downplaying the situation for all she was worth – as much out of her ingrained desire not to cause them any trouble as to prevent them from flying over to stay with her: she wasn’t sure she could cope with that on top of everything else. ‘No, no,’ she soothed, ‘there’s nothing you can do. The police are handling it. I’m sure there’ll be good news soon. I’m OK. Honest, Mum, I’m fine. Mac’s looking after me, and Zoe. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.’