Andy pulled a bottle out of a cupboard, along with three tumblers. Into each he poured a shot of brandy. He handed round the glasses, saying, “Get that down.”

Nan's hands circled her glass, but she didn't drink. “Something's happened to her.”

“We don't know anything. That's why the police are on their way.”

The police, in the person of an ageing constable called Price, arrived not thirty minutes later. He asked the expected questions of them: When had she left? How was she equipped? Had she set off alone? What seemed to be her state of mind? Depressed? Unhappy? Worried? What had she declared as her intentions? Had she actually stated a time of her return? Who spoke to her last? Had she received any visitors? Letters? Phone calls? Had anything happened recently that might have prompted her to run off?

Julian joined Andy and Nan Maiden in their efforts to impress upon Constable Price the gravity of Nicola's failure to reappear at Maiden Hall. But Price seemed determined to go his own way, and a painstaking, hair-tearingly slow way it was. He wrote in his notebook at a ponderous pace, taking down a description of Nicola. He wanted to know about her equipment. He took them through her activities during the last two weeks. And he seemed terminally fascinated by the fact that, on the morning before she'd left for her hike, she'd received three phone calls from individuals who wouldn't give their names so that Nan could pass them along to Nicola before she came to the phone.

“One man and two women?” Price asked four times.

“I don't know, I don't know. And what does it matter?” Nan said testily. “It may have been the same woman calling twice. What difference does it make? What's that got to do with Nicola?”