And realised the face was not, as she had first thought, female . . .

. . . but male.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Morning, Ma’am. Good weekend?’

Miles was already at his desk when Jazz arrived at the school.

‘Fine. You?’ Jazz placed her briefcase on the desk, took out her laptop and plugged it in.

‘Wild parties and a bed full of supermodels.’ Miles grinned. ‘Actually, I watched the cricket from the West Indies on Sky, trying to bask in some reflected sunshine. Now, the head requests an immediate audience. Apparently, this shambles of a school now boasts not only a dead pupil and a dead tutor, but also a missing child.’

Jazz looked up from her screen. ‘Really? When? And why wasn’t I informed?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. And I presume no one contacted us because the child concerned appears to have been abducted by his father and the school probably thought it had nothing to do with the case. They had the local plods on site to help them search.’

‘Who’s the boy?’

‘He didn’t say, but the mother is with the head in his office. I said you’d go as soon as you came in.’

Jazz handed Miles a piece of paper. ‘Can you get a number for this address? Give them a ring and say we want to visit this morning.’

‘Right, Ma’am. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Find out where the hell DS Roland has got to and why he didn’t inform me immediately about this missing boy. And get Sebastian Frederiks to pay me a visit here in half an hour.’ Jazz stood up and walked to the door, slamming it behind her as she left.

The head’s secretary was sitting pale and wide-eyed behind her computer.

‘They’re waiting for you in there,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the office.

‘Thank you.’ Jazz entered the room and found a pretty, petite woman sitting in front of Robert Jones’s desk.

‘Inspector Hunter, good morning. Thank you for coming. This is Mrs Millar, mother of the missing boy.’

‘Who is . . .?’

‘Rory Millar. Perhaps your sergeant filled you in on the situation?’

‘Briefly. Hello, Mrs Millar.’ Jazz shook the woman’s hand. ‘Could you tell me what’s happened?’

‘Yes, I’ll do my best.’ Angelina began to talk haltingly of the events of the past twenty-four hours.

Jazz listened until she had finished, then nodded.

‘Right. So, in fact, your son isn’t missing. He’s with his father, but you don’t know where.’

‘I haven’t received a reply to my text asking where they are and my . . . lawyer is concerned that due to my ex-husband’s drink problem, and the fact he’s suffered depression, it could be a case for the police. Is it, do you think?’

Jazz remembered David Millar, desperate and wild-eyed, outside this office. And Rory Millar himself, whom she was still to meet, whose name seemed to have a nasty habit of regularly cropping up.

‘If he hasn’t replied to your request to let you know where he’s taken your son, then yes, there is some cause for concern. But equally, surely there’s no reason to believe that Rory is in any danger, Mrs Millar? He’s with his father, after all.’