‘How many you think he did?’ asked Dick -

‘Not a clue,’ I said, eyes still shut. ‘Not a bloody one.’

It was snowing in the middle of May and Hazel Atkins had been missing nineteen hours – Lost.

Morley Police Station -

Four o’clock -

The Incident Room:

Maps and a blackboard, markers and chalk, grids and times -

One photograph.

Lists of officers and their territories, lists of houses and their occupants -

Gaskins out in the fields, Ellis on the knocker -

Evans in and out with the press -

Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice sat waiting.

The chalk in my hand, the smudges on my suit -

The egg sandwiches covered in silver foil, uneaten.

I took off my glasses. I wiped them on my handkerchief.

There was nothing more to say:

Outside it was still snowing and Hazel Atkins was still missing -

Twenty-four hours.

Her parents back on a sofa in the cold front room of their dark home -

The curtains not drawn -

All of us lost.

There was a knock at the door -

I looked up.

Dick Alderman: ‘Nightcap, boss?’

I shook my head. I closed the file, glasses off and on the desk.

‘Clare Kemplay?’ Dick said, looking at her file.

‘Yep.’

‘Evening Post mentioned it,’ he mumbled.

‘Kathryn Williams?’

He nodded.

‘What did she say?’

‘Nine years ago, same school,’ he shrugged. ‘Bit about Myshkin.’

‘What about him?’

‘The usual bollocks.’

I picked up my glasses. I put them back on, the thick lenses and the black frames. I sat and stared up into his eyes, thinking -