‘Forget it.’ I slow the car as we approach the roundabout. ‘Just tell me one thing. How long has he been drinking in the mornings?’

She doesn’t reply.

‘Kira, how long?’

‘Just today. I think.’

‘You think?’ I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. They spend every waking minute together. How could she be unsure about something like that?

‘Yeah.’ She zips up her make-up bag and gazes out of the window as the car swings around the roundabout and we approach Bristol Temple Meads. As I indicate left and pull into the station and park the car, I can’t help but scan the small crowd of people milling around outside the station, smoking cigarettes and queuing for taxis. I can’t go anywhere without looking for Billy.

‘Do you think he’s got a drink problem?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head as she unbuckles her seat belt and opens the door. ‘He’s not an alcoholic, if that’s what you mean. He opened the rum when we got home from the club. He was wired and couldn’t sleep.’

‘Because of Billy’s appeal?’

‘Yeah.’ She lifts one leg out of the foot well, places it on the pavement outside and gazes longingly at the entrance to the train station.

‘Kira?’ I reach across the car and touch her on the shoulder. ‘Is there anything you want to talk to me about?’

‘No,’ she says. Then she jumps out of the car, handbag and make-up bag clutched to her chest, and sprints towards the station entrance before I can say another word.

Chapter 4

It’s a small conference room, tucked away in the basement of the town hall with a strip light buzzing overhead and no natural light. It’s a quarter of the size of the one where we made our first appeal for Billy, forty-eight hours after we reported him missing. Unlike that first appeal, when every single one of the plastic-backed chairs in the rows opposite us were filled, there are only half a dozen journalists and photographers present. Most of them are fiddling with their phones. They glance up as we file in with DS Forbes, then look back down again. A couple of them begin scribbling in their notebooks.

Mrs Wilkinson looks sombre in a pale grey jumper and trouser ensemble whilst Mr Wilkinson looks surly and distracted in a dark suit, the leg of his trousers stained with what looks like dirt or oil.

I have no idea if that’s what they’ve written. I’ll find out tomorrow, I imagine. I can’t bear to read the papers, particularly not the online versions with the horrible, judgemental comments at the bottom, but I know Mark will. He’ll pore over them, growling and swearing and mumbling about ‘the bloody idiot public’.