Daunting as it was, above all she needed to put names to her fears, and thus if not contain them, at least quantify them. The first was that Jim was dead, lying undiscovered somewhere, either waylaid or having met with an accident. These possibilities were supported by the fact that he hadn’t been home in days, but then so was the other hypothesis, that he could be in hiding. Militating against this primary fear was the fact that his phone was still working. She had tried it again this morning, not with any measure of optimism, but just in case. It was still ringing and still running active diverts. If he was dead in a ditch, would the battery have run out by now and would she be getting a recorded message saying it was switched off? She didn’t know.

This left the theory that he was in hiding. He had wanted her out of the way on Friday. Was this to lengthen the time before anyone noticed his disappearance, or had he anticipated dealing with something dangerous that day and didn’t want her in the firing line?

Sergeant Collins had suggested that such disappearances were often about relationships or money, which was hardly news, as the files on Jim’s missing-person cases would unanimously testify. She couldn’t really see either of these applying, although as Collins had said, people often concealed these problems as an overture to their disappearance.

Did Jim have debts nobody knew about? Hardly. He’d given Jasmine her first month’s salary in advance, an astute move because she doubted she’d have stuck it out if she wasn’t beholden by having already banked (and largely spent) the money. Relationships offered even less in the way of likelihood. That normally meant another woman. Jim was already divorced, so he didn’t need to hide a relationship from anybody. Besides, his only true, dedicated long-term relationship had been with his work, first in the police and later as a PI. This, of course, brought her to the possibility that Jim was in hiding from somebody for reasons precipitated by one of his cases. If she was going to find him, she had to work out what he was running from.

There were three areas that might offer her some directions: the case files that were open or at least piled on his desk, the computer files most recently accessed, and the phone.