'low priority ... no danger to the public at large or, so far as we can judge, to the missing person ... whose right to go missing at all we have to respect. yeah, yeah.'

'there'll be a secret lover somewhere, and they've gone off on holiday ... or she's topped herself.'

'ok, but neither of those suggestions cuts any ice with her employer.'

cameron looked at his watch. 'more like three minutes,' he said.

'i take it that's a yes?'

'one thing, freya ... ninety-nine out of a hundred missing persons are a waste of police time ... bear that in mind before you go getting carried away.'

'thanks, guv. i'll keep it simple.'

freya drove straight to barn close, taking young dc nathan coates with her, and, when they arrived, sending him first to check the garage and garden shed, and then to go round the neighbours. freya wanted angela randall's house to herself.

'weird,' one of the uniform patrol who had first been there had said, and as freya closed the door softly behind her and stood in the small front hall she sensed at once what they meant. but there was nothing sinister here, she was sure immediately, it was just extraordinarily silent, with a quality and a depth to the silence she had rarely known in a house before, almost like a heavy, dense textile surrounding her, impenetrable and tightly packed.

what kind of woman was it who lived - or perhaps had lived - here? she went from room to room slowly, trying to build up a picture of her. clearly she was tidy, clean, careful and organised. this was a bleak little house, and almost anonymous, like an out-of-date show home in which no one had ever lived. the furnishings were not ugly but they were unmemorable and might have been chosen by anyone. there was no sense of a personal taste behind the selection or the arrangement. the style was neither antique nor very contemporary, the colour scheme was pale bland. freya opened drawers and cupboards; crockery, cutlery, linen, a charity catalogue; the small bureau contained some papers, clipped together in an orderly manner - bank statements, payslips, a building society book in which