‘Last heard.’

John Fletcher, landlord of the Red Lion, was lucky in that he’d had an extensive car park at the back. Half was now set out with tables and umbrellas enclosed in a heavy sort of plastic tent. The day was fine, so the sides had been rolled up. They ate a hearty meal and walked slowly back.

‘My time to sleep,’ said Charles. ‘Care to join me?’

‘The usual answer.’

‘You’ll crack one of these days.’

‘Not me. I’d better go into the office. See you later.’

Everyone except Mrs Freedman was out. Agatha sighed and sat down at her computer to check through all the cases logged on it. ‘Nothing on that girl who went missing – Trixie Ballard?’

‘Not a sign yet. Sharon’s been working on it.’

Agatha studied the notes on the case on her computer. The disappearance of the fifteen-year-old had received extensive coverage in the press. She looked up. ‘Did the parents appear on television?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Freedman. ‘If you Google BBC News and check back, you’ll get it.’

When the video link came up on the screen, Agatha turned up the sound on her speakers and listened carefully. Mrs Ballard was a thin dyed blonde who sobbed uncontrollably. Mr Ballard did all the talking, ‘Please come home, princess,’ he said, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘We miss you and we love you.’

‘That’s odd,’ said Agatha when the brief video had finished. ‘He never appealed to anyone who might be holding her to let her go. Where is Sharon’s report? No, don’t worry. It’ll be here somewhere.’

Agatha found Sharon’s report and studied it carefully. Sharon had been very thorough. School friends and teachers had been questioned along with next-door neighbours and local shops. She had left school two weeks ago to go home and seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Still smarting at what she felt were her inadequacies as a detective, Agatha decided to see what she could find out about the girl herself.

The Ballards lived in a five-storey block of flats off a roundabout on the Evesham Road out of Mircester. It all looked very respectable, with private parking, no graffiti, and a tiny mowed piece of grass and flowerbeds along the edge of the car park.

Agatha was about to get out of the car when a thought struck her. Surely the parents, neighbours and friends would all just say the same thing. The girl’s room would have been thoroughly searched. She remembered from the notes, Trixie’s computer had been studied in case some paedophile had been grooming her.

Leaning back in the car, Agatha lit a cigarette and brought the faces of the parents up into her mind’s eye. The father’s face had looked bloated. Grief or drink?

A memory from her own childhood surfaced in her mind. Her parents had both been alcoholics. One night she had awakened to find her father standing at the end of her bed. ‘Move over, darling,’ he’d said.