So she kept going. The weeks turning into months into years; jumping a mile every time the phone rang, spending every birthday waiting for the postman to bring a card. The nights listening to her mother crying on and on. The times she was sure she spotted him walking down the street, nearly leaped out of her skin before the guy turned his head and was some randomer and she was left gasping and paralysed, watching the one moment she wanted from the world dissolve to dust and blow away. One look at my face should have told her this was getting her nowhere, but she kept on going.

You get that, in Missing Persons: people who think seeing their faces, hearing them cry, will make you do your job better. You get parents who come in every year, on the anniversary of the day their kid disappeared, to find out if you have even one new scrap of info. It sort of works: you keep track of the anniversary, put in a few extra hours when it’s coming up, do your damnedest to find something to give them. This chick was a whole other story. I had zero intention of busting my arse trying to help her find Daddy.

Which is what I told her, in a slightly more tactful way, wondering how hard I would have to blank her before she would fuck off out of my face. Files can’t be released, Freedom of Information Act doesn’t apply to police investigations, sorry, can’t help you.

And of course then she whipped out the tears. Please couldn’t you just look up the file, you can’t imagine what it’s like growing up without yada yada yada, and some Hollywood-style puke about needing to know the truth so it couldn’t control her life any more – I can’t swear she actually used the words ‘closure’ and ‘empowered’, because I’d stopped listening, but they would have fit right in. By that stage my happy buzz was well and truly wrecked. All I wanted was to shut the bitch up and kick her out the door.

Aislinn wasn’t looking for a daddy substitute. She was looking for Daddy.

I say, ‘Aislinn’s da didn’t just walk out on them; he went missing. She came in to Missing Persons looking for info. I was on the desk.’

‘Huh,’ Steve says, thinking that over. ‘“Just gone,” Lucy said, remember? I never copped that meant missing. What’d you give Aislinn?’