“What're you talking about?” Nan cut in. “This isn't a runaway teenager we're reporting. She's twenty-five years old, for heaven's sake.

She's a responsible adult. She has a job. A boyfriend. A family. She hasn't run off. She's disappeared.”

“At present, p'rhaps she has,” the constable agreed. “But as she's bunked off before-and our files do show that, madam-till we know she's not doing another runner, we can't send a team out after her.”

“She was seventeen years old when she last ran off,” Nan argued. “We'd just moved here from London. She was lonely, unhappy. We were caught up getting the Hall in order and we failed to give her the proper attention. All she'd needed was guidance so that-”

“Nancy.” Andy put his hand gently on the back of her neck.

“We can't just do nothing!”

“No choice in the matter,” the constable said implacably. “We've got our procedures. I'll make my report, and if she's not turned up by this time tomorrow, we'll have ourselves another look at the problem.”

Nan spun to her husband. “Do something. Phone Mountain Rescue yourself.”

Julian interposed. “Nan, Mountain Rescue can't begin a search unless they have an idea…” He gestured towards the windows and hoped she would fill in the blanks. As a member of Mountain Rescue himself, he'd been on dozens of cases. But the rescuers had always had a general idea of where to begin looking for a hiker. Since neither Julian nor Nicola's parents could even generalise about Nicola's point of departure, the only avenue left to them was to wait until first light, when the police could request a helicopter from the RAE.

Because of the hour and their lack of information, Julian knew that the only possible activity that actually could have grown from their midnight meeting with Constable Price would have been a preliminary phone call to the closest mountain rescue organization, telling them to assemble their volunteers at dawn. But clearly they had failed to impress upon the constable the gravity of the situation. Mountain Rescue responded only to the police. And the police-at least at the moment and in the person of Constable Price-weren't themselves responding.