‘Ah yeah, you were a country boy, yeah? Well not me. Harlan’ll skin your arse like a grape, anyway, you show up without that damned girl. He will eat you whole. Me, I’m different. I start a job, I fucking well finish it.’

‘Yeah, that’s fucking heroic, you carry right on.’

‘I will.’

‘Great.’ Nipper looked up at this farmhouse. They were standing in front of this fucker and it looked just about ready to crumble into the soil. And hadn’t he been here before with the missing sister sob story? He was pretty sure he had, and he’d drawn a blank. Nevertheless, he picked up the knocker on the door and let it fall. Inside, right behind it, came a scrabbling and pawing and then a dog started going apeshit, barking the ruddy place down. He shrugged. ‘Dog’s in, anyway.’

Nobody came to the door. They turned away, sauntering back down the drive past old barns and crumbling outhouses and piles of rusty farm machinery.

‘No bastard about,’ said Ludo. He’d had the nous to pack wellies into the boot of the car this time, and he had them on right now, sparing his costly designer shoes. As usual, Nipper hadn’t thought of that; his own once-elegant footwear was caked in mud.

They strolled back down to the gate by the lane where the sign read Beechwood Farm. They were big on tree names out here; they’d already been into The Oaks, The Willows and The Spinney. Nipper and Ludo had been told the same thing over and over again. No new girls around here, and who the fuck were they, asking? She’s Nipper’s, or Neil’s, sister, they said, all sweet and innocent. She ran away from home and we’re worried about her. Fuck off was mostly the reply to that sad old tale.

‘Spinney’s a group of trees,’ Ludo told Nipper.

‘How d’you know that shit?’

‘I read, man. I looked it up. You know? Words on a page? You ought to try it. It was good enough for Shakespeare. It’s a noble pastime.’

‘Clubs and pussy, them’s my pastimes.’

‘How long before one of these yokels mentions us to the Bill?’

‘Not long. But we’ll be long gone by then, with any luck.’

Ludo phoned in to Harlan that night and told him the bad news. Still no sign of the girl anywhere.