Flinging her bag to the floor, Gina hurried to the boards at the one end of the room. Sunlight filled the room. Gina pulled the blind across, blocking out the sun and heat. The fan whirred behind her, wafting the musty smell around.

‘As you probably all know, we have identified the mystery woman as Mrs Hanley, co-owner of the Taste of Nature farm shop. On the way back, Bernard called. We also have a match on the hair that was found on Erin Holden’s clothing. As well as Mrs Hanley’s prints being found on something connected to Erin, we now know that the hair found on Erin also belongs to our Mrs Hanley. I called Smith. Last he heard, she was receiving treatment and our Doctor Nowak had pushed him out of the room. Let’s just hope she doesn’t have a heart attack and peg it. In the meantime, we need to make a plan of action. What did you find out about Mrs Hanley, O’Connor? Wyre?’

Wyre draped a stray hair behind her ear and O’Connor tapped his foot on the floor as he flicked through the pages of his note-filled pad before speaking. ‘She co-owns the shop with her husband. They were easy to find, their house is about a ten-minute walk down the road from their shop. Clover Farm, it’s called. It hasn’t been a working farm for over forty years. Their full names are William and Jaqueline Hanley. William is fifty-nine, Jaqueline is sixty-two. There was something else—’

‘Spill it out,’ Gina replied.

‘Jaqueline Hanley has late stage Huntington’s disease and from what the doctor at Cleevesford Surgery said, she can’t communicate any more and is totally incontinent. He didn’t recognise the photo of our mystery woman that I emailed over. Shall I go back to calling her the mystery woman?’

‘This is all we need. Didn’t we say that traces of blood and faeces were found on Erin’s clothing and that they didn’t belong to Erin?’

They all glanced over at the board. ‘Yes, guv,’ Wyre replied.

‘What if the bodily secretions belonged to the real Mrs Hanley? Who is this woman and why is she purporting to be Mrs Hanley?’ Gina began to pace in front of the board. ‘We need to get a warrant for that house. Wyre, make it so. We still have a missing girl, Christina Dawson.’

‘I’ll do it now.’ Wyre swivelled her chair to the side and slid across the floor to her computer.

Briggs entered, holding a takeaway coffee. ‘Any updates?’

‘It’s all happening, sir. I think we’re onto something and it’s all leading back to Mrs Hanley and Stan North. We need a search warrant. As soon as we have it, I’m sure we’ll have the answers.’

‘There’s another thing, guv,’ Wyre said as she did a half turn in her chair, her ponytail slapping her shoulder.

‘Go on.’

‘If you look at the map and all the points I pinned.’ Everyone’s gaze was on the map.

Gina walked over and pinned Clover Farm and the Taste of Nature farm shop. ‘I see. Erin could have come from Clover Farm, run across this field, alongside the brook, over the style, through this gate that leads to the pull in parking place, which is just a short drive from the garage. Darren Mason said he stopped at multiple places and this was one of them. It would have been hard for her considering what a state she was in but she did it. Let’s run this through. She’d have got into the van while he was arguing with his partner, Callum Besford. Darren also said that the van may not have been locked. She simply opened the back door to the Transit van, climbed in and waited for him to drive off. She must have been scared to death, hoping to get as far away as possible. He drove for a while. Maybe she was clinging to the back door of the van and the door flew open at a bend, which is why she may have fallen out. Who was she running from? And what has the fake Mrs Hanley got to do with all this?

‘I’m grabbing a quick drink and I want all the paperwork in order to go to the farm and the shop. Get back-up units on standby. I want you all ready to go and storm the place but we must tread carefully.’ She paused. ‘Erin wanted us to help someone. We don’t want to put her at risk by storming in too hard.’ Gina stomped over to her bag, popped a paracetamol into her hands and swallowed it down with Wyre’s glass of water. Her head was beginning to throb as more information filled it. ‘Were the others taken to replace Simone? Why? Erin was found in dirty clothes, not all secretions her own. Julia Dawson said the girl she’d spoken to on the streets had been approached about a job, the same job that Erin and Christina had left the streets of Birmingham to do. What was that job? Care work, domestic work?’

‘Domestic slavery, guv?’ Wyre said.

Gina grabbed a marker pen and wrote domestic slavery on the board and stabbed a full stop at the end before flinging the pen onto the table. ‘Yes! The heroin is used to control them. They don’t necessarily always need to be careful about locking the doors, at least they might not have thought so, until Erin ran away. William Hanley has a wife who, from the sound of it, needs round the clock care. She’d need feeding, toileting, and washing, everything that she can’t do herself any more. Is our mystery woman his live-in lover, taking Jaqueline Hanley’s place? Maybe they just couldn’t cope any more.’

‘Where does North fit in with all this?’ Wyre asked.

Gina paced back and forth. Her heart rate began to pick up. Excitement or anxiety? She couldn’t be sure. She began to breathe in and out, trying to intercept a potential anxiety attack before it forced her to leave the room. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think. Damn it.’ She balled a fist and slammed it on the windowsill, her hand shaking.

‘Guv?’ Wyre said as she stood.

Gina exhaled and wiped her brow. ‘However hard I try, I can’t think how North fits into this, I just know he does. I want to know what he’s hiding. If he wasn’t hiding anything, he wouldn’t have absconded the way he did. I’m missing something. We’re all missing something.’

Jacob stood and left the room to take a call. They all awaited his return. ‘Stan North’s car was spotted by a mobile camera unit on the carriageway that runs from Alcester to Stratford-upon-Avon, the A46. He’s been pulled over and they’re bringing him in as we speak.’

‘Yes,’ Gina said as she punched the air and swallowed. She turned, took a final deep breath and discretely checked her pulse. It was normal. Everything was fine. She was fine – wasn’t she?

Briggs flung his cup in the bin as he finished his coffee. ‘Good job team. Let’s hope our theories are right.’ Gina looked across and caught his eye. He smiled as he left the room.

‘Be ready. As soon as the warrant is granted, we have to leave. I’m heading off to the interview room to wait for Stan North’s arrival. We’re going to nail him, and when we do, we’re going to find out once and for all what he’s been hiding.’