Missing Persons, two and a half years back. I was on the front desk one lunchtime, a sunny day near the end of my time on the squad; the breeze floating in through the open window smelled like country air, like the summer had thrown off all the layers of city to come cartwheeling in clean and sweet. I was listening to bouncy nineties pop trailing out of a sunroof, eating a turkey sandwich, thinking about that morning’s happy ending – ten-year-old disappeared after a fight with his parents, we found him playing Nintendo in his best mate’s bedroom – and about Murder waiting for me just a couple of weeks away. It felt like we were on the same side that day, me and the world; it felt good.

When the girl in the crap suit hovered in the doorway, I put the sandwich away and gave her just the right smile and ‘Can I help you?’, not pushy, just warm and encouraging. It worked: she dumped her whole story on my desk.

Her dad, such a lovely sweet wonderful man, how he taught her to play chess and he took her to Powerscourt waterfall in his taxi and he could make her giggle till she got the hiccups. The day she came downstairs in her school uniform and her mother was frantically ringing her dad’s mobile for the hundredth time, He never got home last night I can’t find him oh Jesus Mary and Joseph I know he’s dead . . . The detectives who took statements and made reassuring noises about how most missing people come home within a few days, just need a bit of time to themselves. The few days turning into weeks and still no sign of SuperDaddy, the detectives’ visits getting further apart and their reassuring noises getting vaguer. The one who finally patted her on the head and said, You have great memories of him; we don’t want to change that, do we? Sometimes these things are better left as they are.

‘That has to mean he knew something, don’t you think it . . . ? Or at least he had an idea, even just an idea – doesn’t it sound like that to you, like he knew what . . . ?’

Her leaning in across my desk, fingers woven together so tight the knuckles were white. Me shrugging, blank-faced: ‘I wouldn’t be able to speculate on the detective’s thought process. Sorry.’