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foreman. But they actually saw the car yesterday morning parked in the clearing where they were working. Apparently they just thought someone was walking in the woods but when no one had come back by the end of the day they decided to report it to the foreman, but he’d gone home, so they did the same. They only mentioned it this morning when they went in to work.’
    ‘So we’ve already lost twenty-four hours?’ Thackeray said incredulously. ‘Don’t they carry mobile phones, these silly beggars?’ Mower shrugged.
    ‘If they do, they obviously didn’t think it was worth calling in. Incredible. Though to be fair, you’re lucky to get a decent signal in some of those remote areas.’
    ‘Did it rain up there last night? It was pouring down when I got home.’
    ‘I think it was pretty general. So forensics will have a hard time finding anything useful at the scene,’ Mower said.
    ‘Right. First things first. Get uniform to make sure the car is still up there, and cordon it off,’ Thackeray said. ‘We don’t want anyone putting muddy fingerprints all over it before we’ve had a thorough look. Then talk to PC Mirza before you go to see the husband. Take her with you if you like. She might be useful in spotting if he’s changed his story at all. There’s only two possibilities, if she drove to a remote spot like that. She’s either still up there, alive, or quite possibly dead. Or she left in someone else’s vehicle. Again, she could have gone off willingly with someone. Or perhaps not.’
    ‘Guv,’ Mower said.
    Thackeray sat immobile for a long time after Mower had closed his office door behind him but his mind was not on the possible disappearance of Karen Bastable. He had not gone home early the previous evening, as he had promised Laura, and when he finally arrived he had found her already in bed reading.
    ‘Have you eaten?’ she had asked ungraciously, when he had pleaded pressure of work. But he had shaken his head, then slumped in a chair watching TV and not gone to bed himself until he had been sure she was asleep. He guessed that she wanted to talk about a commitment he had rashly made a few months before, a last desperate throw, he thought now, to keep Laura with him and one which he had come to regret.Now life had returned to something more like normal, he realised how hard that commitment would be to keep, how much, in fact, it terrified him. However much Laura wanted a child, he did not think that he could possibly become a father again.
     
    Sergeant Kevin Mower warmed to PC Nasreem Mirza. She described her interview with Terry Bastable with a glint of humour in her dark eyes.
    ‘You don’t let the racist bastards get you down, then?’ Mower asked.
    ‘You can’t, can you? They’d only think they were winning. It’s been worse since the London bombs, of course, but I’m not going to be blamed for what those idiots did.’
    ‘Do you want to come with me to talk to him again? You obviously weren’t happy with what he told you.’
    ‘It was more that there was something I thought he wasn’t telling me,’ Nasreem said. ‘I’ll certainly come if you want me to. If my sergeant’s happy.’
    The sergeant was happy enough, but it was obvious that Terry Bastable was not when the two officers arrived on his doorstep.
    ‘Have you found her?’ he demanded as he reluctantly let them into the house, reserving his glare for the Asian PC and addressing himself entirely to Mower.
    ‘We’ve found her car, Mr Bastable, apparently abandoned, but there’s no sign of your wife, I’m afraid.’
    Bastable threw himself onto the sofa and ran a hand across his forehead, as if to wipe something away.
    ‘I’ve not had a bloody wink of sleep,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t stop thinking about her, where the hell she might be.’
    ‘You’ve heard nothing, I take it?’ Mower asked. ‘You’d have called us…?’
    ‘Nowt,’ Bastable said. ‘She’s gone without a bloody word. She wouldn’t do that,