DC Craig Power tapped gingerly at his computer keyboard with two fingers, examining each key carefully beforehand, as if hitting the wrong one would result in a nuclear detonation. Lolly, who liked a chinwag, chatted with one of the civilian staff about something she had been forced to send back to ASOS. Wrong colour, wrong size, wrong style; Sasha could never keep up.

In his side office, DCI Vaughn was hunched over his phone, kneading the skin around his eyes with his big fingers. Her boss had been subdued recently, had lost much of his legendary bite, and didn’t spend half as much time prowling around the incident room looking over everybody’s shoulder. Sasha, who knew him as well as anyone in the MIT, had been meaning to take him aside to ask whether there was anything troubling him, but the right moment hadn’t yet presented itself.

Before she did anything else – before she read her emails or prepared for the morning team briefing, before she checked her diary to remind herself of the numerous pointless meetings that would likely punctuate her long day – she clicked open a browser and typed in Andrew Dean’s name.

A news article from three years ago appeared instantly, detailing the facts of the disappearance of the girl three years ago in Denbighshire, Wales, which Ajay had told her about.

FATHER PLEADS FOR NEWS OF MISSING DAUGHTER

Police have renewed their appeal for information about missing teenager Rhiannon Jenkins, who disappeared nine days ago.

In a media briefing organized by North Wales Police in Wrexham, Rhiannon’s father, Owen Jenkins, joined Superintendent Sharon Thomas to ask for anyone who has seen nineteen-year-old Rhiannon to come forward with information.

Rhiannon went missing following an evening at The Red Lion pub near the village of Llandrillo on the evening of 4 May. A distraught Mr Jenkins told the assembled press he was extremely concerned for the welfare of his daughter.

Joined by other members of his family – including Rhiannon’s aunt Jennie and uncle Davey Jenkins, an independent businessman, with whom Rhiannon was holidaying at the time of her disappearance – widower Mr Jenkins made a direct plea to his daughter to make herself known to police.

‘I want you to come home, Rhiannon,’ he told the media, before becoming overcome with emotion. ‘You’re my little girl, you’re all I have left in the world, and I just want you back.’

Superintendent Thomas told the press: ‘Rhiannon’s family and all of us in North Wales Police are very concerned for her safety. Rhiannon is an independent and outgoing young woman, with plenty of friends, but it is totally out of character for her not to make contact with her family. We have a dedicated team of detectives doing everything to locate her, and we will leave no stone unturned.’

Detectives are currently piecing together the teenager’s last known movements. She and friends spent much of the evening at The Red Lion, where she met Laid In Essex! star Danny ‘Abs’ Cruikshank, who was holidaying in a cottage nearby with a group of friends, named as Andrew Dean, Jeremy Weston and Tony Gardner. The men, all from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, were questioned by police when an eyewitness reportedly saw them talking to Rhiannon outside the pub in the early hours of the following morning, but they were later released.