The Lost

by Claire McGowan

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Not everyone who's missing is lost. When two teenage girls go missing along the Irish border, forensic psychologist Paula Maguire has to return to the hometown she left years before. Swirling with rumour and secrets, the town is gripped by fear of a serial killer. But the truth could be even darker.

Not everyone who's lost wants to be found. Surrounded by people and places she tried to forget, Paula digs into the cases as the truth twists further away. What's the link with two other disappearances from 1985? And why does everything lead back to the town's dark past- including the reasons her own mother went missing years before?

Nothing is what it seems. As the shocking truth is revealed, Paula learns that sometimes, it's better not to find what you've lost.

Release date: April 11, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 374

Sample

York, May

‘Imagine all of you went missing.’

She waited until they were all listening, putting down their pens on top of blank paper pads, sitting up straight. Light filtered in through the dusty blinds of the room.

‘Every two minutes in this country, someone disappears – that’s over 200,000 a year.’ She paused so they could take in the numbers. They were listening now; attentive. Mostly middle-aged men, a few women dotted here and there. Nobody younger than her.

She clicked the next slide. ‘Research shows we can divide the missing into four main groups. If we take a hypothetical one hundred people – all of you here – statistically, sixty-four will have gone missing voluntarily. Money trouble, family breakdown . . . many reasons.’ I can’t go on. I just can’t bear it any more. ‘Around nineteen in the hundred will drift away. People in this category typically have weak societal bonds, addiction problems – drugs, alcohol.’ Envelopes piling up in a hallway, Return to Sender scrawled across the name. ‘Many in these groups will come home again, or be found safe years later.’

She clicked again, and in the dark they scribbled down her words. ‘And some people don’t mean to go missing. They just get lost somehow, on the way to the shops or the bingo hall. They may not remember who they are, where they’re meant to be.’ Something slipping out of your pocket, a loss you don’t even feel until it’s too late. ‘This group makes up sixteen out of the hundred.’

Some in the audience had begun to count, and she could see they knew what she’d say next.

‘This leaves the one per cent. Among the missing, this is the one who didn’t want to go. Who knew exactly where they were going, and remembered their own name. The reason this person disappeared is what keeps me awake at night. Who took them? What happened? Where are they?’

She could see them nod, taking notes, and she stopped and put down her laser-pointer, and didn’t say the rest, what was really on her mind when she ran these numbers and figures. When I think about her – which I try not to do – I hope she wasn’t in the one per cent. But sometimes, I must admit, I hope she was – because otherwise, it means she wanted to go.

Berkshire, September

There was no point in running.

Everyone knew that. The response team knew, crouching in the early dawn. It was the first morning it had felt really cold, and a wintry sun tinted the windows of the vans where they huddled. The reporters half a mile off in the village, doing hushed live broadcasts, they knew. ‘As police move in to search for missing Kaylee Morris, hope is fading fast . . .’ Even the girl’s parents, staring at blank walls back in the police station, squeezing the blood from each other’s hands, they knew too, deep down. After a month gone, taken on her way home from school, the police weren’t likely to find her alive. A body, maybe, for the parents to bury. Better than not knowing. Gentle lies that she hadn’t suffered.

No, there was no point in running up the damp field to the ramshackle cottage on the hill. But when the lead officer silently lifted his Hi-Vis arm, she was out and moving too, over the wet ground. Her feet squelched, red hair tangled in her face. Ragged breaths tore her lungs. She reached the trees and crashed through, branches ripping at her face, and only stopped when strong arms pinned her.

A voice in her ear. ‘Where the hell are you going? I told you to stay put!’

She struggled. ‘Please. I have to!’

The policeman’s face was kind between his helmet and bright jacket. ‘Let it go, Paula. You’ve done your bit.’ Ahead of them, dark figures took up silent positions round the cottage. Paula sagged and gave up. The sky was streaking pink with dawn. Overhead, the trails of planes to Heathrow, oblivious. And up in the house, a single light was burning.

At times like this, Paula liked to focus her eyes on a jokey plaque someone had pinned up behind the boss’s bald head. You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps. Was it possible he’d put it there? Could there be a spark of humour somewhere inside the red-faced man who was currently reading her the riot act? She tuned in from time to time, just to keep the thread of what it was she’d done.

‘. . . don’t know how many times I’ve told you come to me first, don’t go haring off to the middle of nowhere, somewhere not even in our JURISDICTION . . .’

The rhythm was almost soothing. Blah blah blah blah blah BLAH blah.

‘. . . once again taking it upon yourself to enter a crime scene, when if I may remind you, you are not a police officer, Miss Maguire – and yes, I am calling you Miss on purpose, you can put that in your employment tribunal and smoke it, because let me tell you, you’ll get short shrift . . .’

Paula sucked on the nail she’d split running into the bushes. The fount of adrenaline was still pumping under her ribcage, and outside she could hear muffled cheers and pops as her uniformed colleagues celebrated. Because unlike her, they were actually supposed to go to crime scenes where convicted rapists were holding abducted girls hostage.

‘. . . all very well to sit here with your little theories, look at the messages on Facebooker or whatever it is – well, let me tell you, that’s not how we work here.’

Paula lowered her hand. There’d be no time to grow the nail back for the weekend. ‘Look,’ she broke in. ‘I know I’m not supposed to go to crime scenes. But I had to see her. I had to see her come out.’

He gave a grunt of irritation. ‘I don’t make these things up to try you, Miss Maguire. There’s a reason we have rules and regulations. You’re supposed to have a desk job. What would I tell your family, if you were injured?’

Paula stared at her shoes until the pricking in her eyes subsided. If she cried in front of him, she’d never forgive herself. ‘But we found her, didn’t we? We found her safe.’

The boss had run himself down, like a wind-up toy. ‘Yes. We did find her.’

‘So.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Official warning, full report, that sort of thing?’

He grimaced. ‘Full report by eight a.m., with your deductive reasoning set out. But the warning . . .’ He gripped his pen as if it gave him actual pain to speak. ‘The parents are very pleased, of course. Very positive PR for the force. So in the circumstances . . .’

‘Right.’ She was getting up. ‘So in conclusion, you don’t want me to go to crime scenes?’

‘No, Miss Maguire, you must not go to crime scenes, ever, ever, EVER. Unless for some reason I tell you to. Which I won’t, after today.’

‘If you say so.’ She moved to the door.

‘I’m not finished.’ She turned round. ‘Please – sit down.’

When Paula reluctantly sat, he fixed her with his flinty eyes, exasperated. ‘This has to stop, Paula.’

‘I know.’

‘You have a consultant post, yes? Forensic psychologist? We aren’t covered to have you in dangerous situations. I believe we’ve been over this. And over.’

‘I know.’

He seemed to think for a moment, then sighed and slid a letter across the desk, neatly squaring it off. ‘That came for me today.’

She glanced at it, scanning the text. ‘About time, I suppose. They want your help?’ As one of the country’s most advanced missing persons departments, they were often asked to consult for other forces.

‘They want you.’ God knows why, his raised eyebrows said. ‘Seems you’ve made quite the impression. What was that paper you gave at the York policing conference – “The Psychobabble of the Lost” or something? Earlier this year, if I recall.’

She didn’t react. ‘“Psychopathology: A Case Review in London’s Largest Missing Persons’ Unit”.’ Or ‘this shithole here’, as it was also known by most of its occupants.

‘Hmm. Well, it must have worked – they want you to help set up a cold case review team.’ He threw a folder over; making a breeze that ruffled her hair. ‘Given that you haven’t entirely . . . meshed here, I wonder if perhaps a move sideways—’

She didn’t look at it. ‘I’m not going back.’

‘I thought you’d jump at the chance. It is your home town, isn’t it?’

‘I live here now.’

‘It’s a good opportunity. I hear there’s reams of old unsolveds over there. Not to mention however many thousands vanishing each year.’

‘Six,’ she said. Her blue eyes held his bloodshot ones. ‘Six thousand missing every year in Ireland. Sixteen a day, on average.’

He gave a grunt of something that might have been satisfaction. ‘And a little bird tells me your father’s not been well.’

She shifted restlessly, hating that he knew things about her. ‘He broke his leg, but he’s OK. He doesn’t need me.’

He spoke as if he’d planned the words carefully. ‘I’d have thought you’d be quite keen on this kind of work, Miss Maguire. With your family history.’

Her face clenched. ‘If you think that, Inspector, you’ve another think coming.’

‘Just take the damn file. At least consider it. I feel it would be a good outcome for you. And for me, if I’m perfectly honest.’

She took it, but her eyes didn’t leave his face. ‘Is that all?’

His pen was getting mangled. ‘I just have to ask, Paula—’

‘Yes?’

‘How did you know? How did you guess, that she wanted to go with him? That he didn’t take her at all?’

Paula thought about it. ‘Inspector – have you any idea what it’s like to be a teenage girl?’

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

‘No. Well, I don’t think I can explain it, then. See you later.’

‘I prefer sir, Miss Maguire.’

She called over her shoulder, making her red hair bounce. ‘I prefer Doctor.’

Behind her she heard the snap as the boss’s pen broke in two.

Outside, Paula was washed in the glow of a happy incident room, sleeves rolled up and discreet cups of corner-shop fizz circulating under desks. Not really allowed, but it wasn’t every day a girl was abducted by a sex offender and brought home safe and sound. Beyond the tinted windows of the Rotherhithe station, even the Thames was lit with sharp autumn light, as if joining in the celebrations. Photos of Kaylee smiled down from every wall. Paula had been picturing her all this time as a cheerful girl: the pink scrunchie, the frizzy dark curls. Not the snarling young woman they’d found in the cottage, hair bobbed and bleached out of recognition.

‘Not even a scratch on the girl!’ It came out gurrrl, as relief sharpened DS McDonald’s Edinburgh accent. He squeezed Paula round the shoulder. It was McDonald who’d brought her to the scene, when she came to him with her theory, waving the internet history Computer Crime had got off Kaylee’s pink netbook, saying they had to go now, they had to rescue her. Paula knew she was supposed to go to the boss first, but there hadn’t been time. There was never time, not when you had to find someone at all costs.

‘It was this one here,’ McDonald called to the team. ‘When she said, How do we know Kaylee’s even been abducted, it just clicked. We were going at it all the wrong way. And then you said, Go back to the girl’s computer, see what she searched for, and there’s the cottage in her history, and she’s in it, right as rain. Which is more than can be said for my DC.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Bit of a shiner. It’s not often your rescuee belts you one.’

That was true. The girl hadn’t been restrained when they brought her in; why would she be, poor, kidnapped Kaylee Morris? She’d lunged across the station at the officer handcuffed to her ‘fiancé’: paedophile, rapist, and suspected murderer Mickey Jones, forty-three – AKA hotmickey18, as he’d posed on the site where they’d met. Kaylee was fifteen and two stone overweight, but before anyone could reach her she’d given the DC a black eye, screaming, ‘Let him go! He loves me! He’s the only one who cares about me. I hate you all!’

Which was nice, after the month-long, multi-million-pound investigation, posters in every shop in London, TV appeals, all trying to find the supposedly missing girl who wasn’t even lost.

In the incident room, the DS slapped Paula’s back. Never a touchy-feely man, he seemed almost giddy with success. All that time looking for the girl. Hoping she was alive; sure she was dead. ‘Tell them how you worked it out.’

‘Ah, no—’

‘Tell them! It’s brilliant.’

Reluctantly, Paula looked around at the team. ‘It was all in your reports, really. I just did the analysis. That friend of hers who said Kaylee was desperate to “lose it” . . . you know. The Pill prescription you found in her room.’

‘And the rest – tell them!’

‘The offender profile. Mickey Jones. His previous record – he’d always approached the women first. Tried to talk to them, then lost his temper when they weren’t interested. He doesn’t look to hurt, this one – not at first. He looks for love.’ She suppressed a small shiver. ‘You see?’

They looked blank, all except one of the new Community Liaison Officers, WPC Singh. Her voice was soft. ‘They were planning it.’

Paula nodded. ‘There you go. It made me think – maybe she was planning to go off with him. Maybe he didn’t abduct her at all. So if we checked her internet searches . . .’

The DS was shaking his head. ‘And we found her safe and sound. Never thought I’d see the day. Bloody great work – proud of you all today.’ He pointed at the file in Paula’s hands. ‘See you got the Ireland offer then.’

She shrugged. ‘Allen just wants rid of me.’

McDonald didn’t deny it. ‘Well, have a drink, lass, you deserve it.’

‘He wants his report.’

‘Ach, let him wait. Take a moment, for God’s sake.’

‘I can’t – too much work.’ That wasn’t the real reason Paula couldn’t celebrate with cheap wine and cheer, but it would do. She retreated to her own glass cubicle and closed the door, took a deep breath. Tried to clear her mind of how the girl had shrieked as they tore her from Mickey Jones’s arms, and the man’s crazy, jittering eyes as they locked him away.

Paula jumped as her door swung open again, bringing in a babble of happy voices.

‘McDonald says drink this.’ One of the PCs was putting a plastic cup on her desk. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Everyone’s dead chuffed.’

The officer – what was his name again? – leant against the wall, and she watched his long legs stretch out. Andy, was that it? ‘Yeah. It’s great.’

Andy, if that was his name, had lovely eyes, blue as police sirens and blatantly checking her out. ‘Hey, eh, Paula? You fancy a drink after work, maybe? Celebrate?’

How old was he? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? A few years younger than her, she was sure. She looked down at her broken nail. ‘I don’t think so. I’m a bit manic here. Maybe another time.’

He was too open. He was thinking, Is she saying no, or is she really busy? She watched confusion slide over his face. He said, ‘All right. Catch you later.’

‘Bye.’ As he went out, her expression changed. Really, she hadn’t time for all this. Kaylee Morris was found, but the in-tray groaned with those who were still lost. She placed Kaylee’s file on her right, under OUT, and lifted the next case off from her left. Picking up the flimsy cup, she took a swig of the cheap sour wine, and set to work.

The next day’s dawn was colder, mist leaching in from the Thames and creeping up to the windows of Paula’s Docklands flat. She watched it from the sofa, her tea grown cold. It was only seven but she’d been awake for hours. Papers were scattered all around her towelling dressing-gown.

A male noise came from the bedroom, a throat-clearing nose-blowing sort of noise, and out came PC Andy, wrapped in a very small towel. He ducked his head, shy. Despite his good looks and strapping frame, she’d realised last night he didn’t do this very often. That was a shame. It made things easier if they did.

‘Up already? Didn’t hear you stir.’ He ambled over.

She swirled the grey tea round her cup, embarrassed at how she’d peeled herself out from his heavy arm and escaped to the living room. He was a cuddler – who’d have guessed? ‘I’m not a great sleeper, sometimes.’

‘No? My mum takes these tablets. All herbal, so it’s healthy, like.’

Paula sighed. Could she get him out without making breakfast? The pale light of dawn highlighted his ribbed stomach, the strong arms grasping the towel. Muscles shifted in his shoulders and she sighed again. ‘Sorry, Andy. I’ve got paperwork.’

He peered over her shoulder. ‘That the Ireland thing? What is it, cold cases and that?’

‘Yeah. There’s a big problem with it over there – lots never got solved, with the border and everything.’

‘Sounds like a wicked opportunity.’

‘Does it? I think sometimes the past is better left alone.’

He looked surprised for a moment. ‘But I thought—’

She shut the file. ‘Anyway, I’m not going.’

‘Well.’ He held the towel awkwardly. ‘Can’t say I want you disappearing anyway.’

She stood up. ‘Sorry. I’ve got to get some work done.’

‘Ah, fair enough.’ He looked about him. ‘Do you know where my—?’

‘Here.’ She pushed his jeans across to him with her foot. ‘Your T-shirt’s in the kitchen.’

‘Right.’ The backs of the policeman’s clean ears were turning pink. God, he was nice. He bumbled into her small strip of kitchen with his towel, knocking into the fridge and dislodging one of the magnets. A photo fluttered down like a dead leaf. ‘Crap, sorry. Clumsy.’ He picked the photo up. ‘That’s your mum, is it? She looks just like you.’

Paula was already moving towards him, but she steeled herself not to snatch it back. ‘Just put it on the side, would you?’ When he did, she slid her hand over the smooth surface of the photo, covering it.

He cleared his throat. ‘Right, I best—’

‘Yeah. You know the way out, don’t you.’

When she heard the door shut she placed the picture back on the fridge, adding an extra magnet in the shape of a strawberry. She wiped his prints off with the sleeve of her dressing-gown. Paula looked at the picture for a long time. Another girl found safe, that was good. But once again she was realising it would never be enough.

Two Weeks Later

Northern Ireland, October

‘Shit!’ Paula’s foot slipped on the clutch of the rented Ford Focus. When agreeing to drive herself from the airport, she’d forgotten she hadn’t been behind the wheel in nearly ten years. But in a way it was good to think about the terror of accelerating, rather than dwell on the rest of her circumstances – stuck in a long queue of traffic from Belfast International Airport (a somewhat grand name for the building set low and squat among green, fertile fields), heading south, south to the border town among the hills that she’d left years before. She was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and wishing she smoked just for something to do. Growing her nails had been futile. She’d bitten them to the quick again, unable to stop once she knew she’d be coming here. Coming home.

It was raining, of course. It was only October, but it was Northern Ireland, and the chill mist crept up to the car and under her skin, making her shiver. She finally got on the motorway, luckily quiet at this time of day, and tuned the radio to local news. Voices filled the car, rich and heavy like clods of soil. That made her shiver too, the memories returning like ghosts.

She’d never wanted to come back again, but here she was following signs to the border, to Ballyterrin. Twenty miles. The radio voices were arguing about the new policing Bill, devolving final powers to the Police Service of Northern Ireland – a different name to paint over the murky past. Politics saturated daily life here, just like the insidious rain. Acned teens on the side of the road, they’d be able to tell you the names of all the local politicians and exactly what was wrong with most of them. Old men in pubs, mums pushing buggies, schoolgirls. Everyone watched the news here, fierce and avid, ready to pounce.

Here already were the hills around her home town, the rolling mountains veiled in rain. It must be a beautiful place, people always said – people who didn’t have to live there – and she always shrugged. Scenery was one thing, twisted hatred another. And the past was still everywhere, creaking with spectral life.

As Paula inched into the town, the traffic heavy as always, she saw her first sectarian graffiti. Sinn Féin, it said, in bold green. We deliver. Underneath someone had scrawled Pizza. Funny, unless of course they got their knees shattered for it. As she watched, a council employee was painting it out with thick white emulsion, slapping on layer after layer until the green was wiped out.

She’d never wanted to come back again. But somehow, here she was.

‘Jesus, Mary, and St Joseph. Is that wee Paula Maguire I see before me?’

‘It is. Hello, Pat.’ Not so wee now, Paula was nearly a foot taller than the small woman hugging her to an acrylic-covered bosom.

Paula manoeuvred her bags into the front door of her childhood home. It was exactly the same dark poky space, walls lined with family pictures, going as far as 1995 and then stopping dead. The same smell of Pledge and cooking. By rights the family should have moved far and often, designated legitimate targets by the local IRA, but they’d stayed – just in case she came back and they weren’t there. It was common, in families with one member permanently lost. The hope that kept you rooted to the spot.

‘Now let me see you.’ Pat shepherded her into the also poky but slightly less dark kitchen, its brown seventies fittings unchanged. It overlooked a small passage that ran from the front of the semi to the strip of lawn at the back. That was where Paula had seen the man, all those years ago. On what had been the last day, though of course she didn’t know it – you never do. If she closed her eyes she would find the layout of this house etched there: downstairs the kitchen and front room, upstairs the bathroom and two small bedrooms. And that was even without the police diagrams they’d made her study over and over.

Pat was nodding at her. ‘A wee bit peaked from that dirty city, but you’re looking well, pet. That’s a lovely jersey you’ve on you, is it M&S?’ She stroked the soft cashmere.

‘Eh – no.’ Paula wasn’t about to tell Pat how much the jumper had cost. ‘How is he?’

‘Like you’d expect. Not used to taking it easy. On you go, I’ve a pot of tea waiting.’

She was suddenly nervous. It was far too long since she’d seen him, a few strained visits to London and one failed holiday together in the Lake District. Why hadn’t she seen him more? He was stretched out on the sofa in the parlour, which still had its plastic head-cover on from when it had been bought in 1980. The year of Paula’s birth. A cabinet was lined with china kittens, gifts from Irish seaside towns, cut-glass statues of the Virgin Mary.

‘Hello, Daddy. Are you well?’

‘I’ve been better.’ The man on the sofa was approaching sixty, still tough and rangy but for the cruel metal cage pinning one strong leg.

‘God, it’s bad, isn’t it.’ She winced at the metal cutting into her father’s flesh.

Pat hovered in the doorway. ‘They said he twisted the bone right round like a corkscrew. Three months he’s to wear it.’

‘Ow. You’ll be off your feet a while, then.’

‘I’ll be bored out of my mind, Paula.’ His arms were folded, eyes fixed on the muted TV, which played the early evening news. A boring affair now the almost-daily shootings, bombings, and kneecappings were in the past. Mostly.

‘How did you even break it this time, Daddy? You never said.’

‘It was my fault,’ said Pat.

‘It was not indeed, Patricia. It was me fell like an eejit. Patricia wanted some old boxes out of the attic –’

‘– for my project, Paula – you know, the town history.’

‘So I go up the ladder – and doesn’t it break clean under me. Came down on me leg like a ton of bricks.’

Pat clucked. ‘You were never right anyway since that first accident, PJ.’

Paula remembered the circumstances, the way her father had first hurt his leg, and pushed it away. She couldn’t think about that now.

PJ made a grumpy noise. ‘Well, I’m still in the land of the living, thank God. I’ll just have to sit and wait.’

‘And here’s Paula back to mind you! It was lucky you got that job too, pet. Sure didn’t it all work out for the best.’

‘Lucky’ wasn’t the word Paula would use. She had made her mind up to say no to the job – though she took the file out every night for two weeks to look at it – when the call came in. If you can come now, we need you. Something’s happened. And something had. Big enough to draw her back, send her to Gatwick for a budget flight, on the way home to the town she’d promised never to set foot in again. The excuse was she’d be looking after her father – if, in fact, anyone could look after the hulking ex-policeman, who was ‘PJ’ because in the old Royal Ulster Constabulary it hadn’t been wise to advertise your Catholic name of Patrick Joseph.

Pat was still fishing. ‘How long are you back for, pet?’

‘Not long,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a consultancy gig, is all. I’m just over for this one case.’

Pat grew sombre. ‘Those poor wee girls. Please God you can help find them.’

Paula said nothing. She hoped so too.

‘I’ll be on my way, so.’ Pat was fussing round for her sensible navy coat.

‘Ah, stay,’ said Paula and her father, almost in unison.

‘I’ll leave you to catch up, and I’ve to make Aidan’s tea. He’s coming round to programme the Sky yoke for me.’

‘Oh. How is Aidan?’ Paula felt she had to ask, though really she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

‘Ah, he’s grand. You know he got the Editor’s job last year? Well, he knocked the drinking on the head after that.’ Did Paula imagine it, or had her father made a ‘humph’ noise? ‘I’ll tell him you were asking for him, pet. Bye now.’

Great. Now Aidan O’Hara would think she gave a damn what he was up to. Paula had known Pat O’Hara all her life, since the day she was born, in fact, and wouldn’t hurt her for the world. Pat and John O’Hara had been her parents’ friends, their only friends really, and when they came round for dinner they sometimes brought their annoying son, Aidan, who pulled the heads off Paula’s My Little Ponies. But that was a long time ago, before what happened to John O’Hara and – all the rest. Now it was just Pat and PJ left, living in the same town, popping in on each other, and Aidan had grown up even more annoying than he’d been at seven, in a variety of new, adult ways.

When Pat left, the house seemed to sag, silent and damp. PJ stared at the TV.

Paula cleared her throat. ‘Will I pour the tea, Daddy?’

‘Aye, good girl. I’ll take a wee bun too, if Pat left some.’

Tea. Would Ireland have ground to a halt without it?

As Paula went to bed that night at the shocking time of 9.30 p.m. – she’d completely run out of things to say – she saw the leg-breaking boxes lined up along the narrow landing, old and mildewed. She knew what was in them. They hadn’t been opened in nearly eighteen years.

‘You’re all right up there?’ Her father, who’d refused all help to get up the stairs, called to her. ‘You want a hot-water bottle?’

It was freezing – PJ didn’t believe in central heating until at least November – but she said, ‘I’ll get it myself, if I’m cold. You rest yourself.’ Back in her single bed. Back with her chipboard desk, her Anglepoise lamp. The walls still marked in Blu-Tack from where she’d had her posters – Take That, first time around. Early Boyzone. Then later Nirvana, Pearl Jam.

Paula rooted in the lower drawer of the desk – set squares, dried-out pens – and it was still there. The framed picture showed a teenage Paula, sulky in Adidas sports clothes, with the same red-haired woman from the photo in her London kitchen. It was the last picture ever taken of her. At least, as far as they knew.

Every time Paula came home she felt it again. It was stupid. Of course she wouldn’t be here – hadn’t been here in years. But somehow it was always a loss just the same.

‘. . . co-ordinate our strategy with other cross-border units, and work together to improve outcomes on missing persons . . .’

Voices were already coming from the conference room as Paula rounded the corner, feet tripping on the thin grey carpet. Bollocks, they’d started without her. First day and late already.

‘God! Sorry!’ She burst into the room in the small building that housed her new team. ‘That Market Street traffic’s got a whole lot worse, hasn’t it?’

Blank faces round the table. Four, five people. ‘Dr Maguire?’ The man standing at the whiteboard was tall, fair-haired, a laser-pointer in one hand. ‘Please, join us. I’m Guy Brooking. I’m with the Met Police, but acting as consultant here for a year.’

Her new boss; the Englishman abroad. Paula sank into a plastic chair as the faces stared at her. ‘Sorry to be late. It’s just . . . the traffic’s worse than I’m used to.’

Guy Brooking spoke smoothly. Paula stared at her bitten nails, shy of all the new people.

‘Now you’