“Mind if we have a look?” Annie shouldered her way past him and climbed the stairs.

Sunny turned. “Wait! You can’t just—”

But Banks prodded him and started walking up behind him, and he had no choice but to follow Annie or turn and fight. “It’s a missing girl,” Banks explained, “and we fear she may be in danger. There’s also been a serious assault on a police officer. That gives us every right to search for her wherever we see fit.”

“I have rights, too, you know. I want my lawyer.”

“We’ll sort that out later. First we need to find out whether she’s here and if she’s been hurt.”

Annie had switched on all the lights and flooded the place. It was so bright that Sunny shielded his eyes.

“I’ll keep our friend company while you have a look around,” Banks said, and gently shoved Sunny down into an armchair. The living room was sparsely decorated, just a few framed prints on the yellow walls, mostly charcoal or watercolor drawings, a large flat-screen TV set and a state-of-the art stereo system. The smells of the takeaway shop below hung about the place: garlic, stale cooking oil, old meat. There were stains on the wallpaper, which was coming away from the wall at the ceiling, and on the beige carpet.

“Nice,” said Banks. “Music fan, are you?”

Sunny didn’t reply. Banks flipped through the CDs and found an assortment of eighties to naughties dance compilations—the kind of monotonous machine-generated rhythm tracks you usually find in double jewel cases on the wall at HMV for £1.99 or thereabouts. There were also a fair number of country and western compilations and CDs, which surprised him. Among the DVDs were several porn titles and a lot of action films, mostly Asian martial-arts stuff. Banks had never heard of any of them, but it was easy enough to see what they were from their covers. No Bollywood.

“I’d say your technology exceeds your taste,” he said. “I’ll bet your neighbors love you.”

Sunny just snorted.

Banks picked up one of the dance party CDs. “This is the sort of music young girls like,” he said. “Girls who take a bit of E and dance for hours. Girls who don’t like Justin Bieber and One Direction.”

Annie came out of the final room, the bathroom. “Nothing.”

“I told you,” said Sunny, jumping to his feet. “Now you can go and leave me in peace.”

“Where is she?” Annie asked. “Where’s Jade? What have you done with her?”

“I don’t know anything about any Jade.”

“And Mimosa,” Annie said, pushing her face closer to his. “I don’t suppose you know anything about her either, do you?”

“Stop it,” said Sunny, backing away. “You can’t do this to me. This is intimidation, it’s—”

“Get dressed, Sunny,” said Banks.

“What?”

“I said, get dressed. You’re coming with us.”