‘I knew we should have remanded the silly cow.’

It was Monday morning, and Rachel had not even made it out of her flat before her phone rang with a call from Leila Rajavi. Before she had even pressed accept, she already knew what Rajavi was about to say. Yet again the story had had been emblazoned in black-and-white two-inch-high capital letters across the front of a Sunday tabloid. This time it was a competitor for the paper that Rachel had locked horns with over the Carly Wethers leak.

LOLA JADE MUM IN SEX-CHANGE BOY MYSTERY

Michelle Harper, mum of missing seven-year-old Lola Jade Harper, has been sighted in the Eastwell area with a mystery boy the same age, a source told us.

‘Stacey must have blabbed,’ Rachel concurred with a sigh. ‘Well, the papers don’t name their source but I think we can assume it was her. It isn’t even accurate: Michelle hasn’t been “sighted” with Harry at all. She’s far too canny for that.’

‘And Stacey doesn’t know anything about what Ben Wethers told us in his statement either,’ said Rajavi. ‘In fact, if you read the article, it’s a bit of a non-event, mainly because Stacey’s too dim to really join the dots. She just saw a chance to make a few quid on the sly.’

‘And yet again a paper’s opened itself up nicely to a charge of contempt of court for prejudicing legal proceedings,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘Although since Michelle’s not been charged with anything yet, that’s a moot point. She’d already done a runner before Stacey sold the story.’

The line went quiet, while Rajavi weighed up what Rachel had said. ‘So are you saying we should hold off on making any public response?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Rachel. ‘It will only make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing and open the floodgates to the crackpots. Right now, we have other fish to fry.’

She wanted to swim, but today she would need to forgo her exercise fix and go straight to the office. Before she had even reached her desk, she picked up a text from Rajavi.

Those other fish: one of them has just turned up.

---

Michelle Harper’s white BMW was in a private car park in Feltham, Middlesex, parked in a far corner against the wire perimeter fence. At first glance, it was empty, and clean of any possessions or the usual detritus that accumulates in a car.

When Rachel and Rajavi arrived, a forensics team was standing by while a canine handler set his springer spaniel bitch to work. The spaniel first extensively inhaled from a piece of Lola Jade’s clothing, then jumped into the open rear hatchback and started sniffing, so absorbed in her task that her body was vibrating with energy. Then she sat, frozen and staring, with her nose pointing to the carpet on the floor of the boot. One of the suited forensics officers stepped forward and started gathering microscopic samples.

‘She’s indicating,’ whispered Rajavi.

‘A cadaver dog?’ Rachel wanted to know.

Rajavi walked over to speak to the handler. ‘Not human remains specifically, just “human material”,’ she told Rachel when she came back. ‘We’ll know more when we get the forensics back.’

Rachel pivoted on the spot, staring around the car park. A jumbo jet screamed over their heads, on the south-eastern flight path. She pointed up at it. ‘If we’re looking for reasons to dump the car here, then there’s the obvious one. We must be – what? – three, four miles from Heathrow. There’s a bus that goes straight there, on the road we turned in from. Or it’s a very short taxi ride.’

‘Her passport wasn’t in 57 Willow Way,’ Rajavi added. ‘We turned the place upside down. And her mobile’s completely dead, so we haven’t been able to track her that way either.’

‘Can you get some manpower to check local hotels and B&Bs? And I’ll get onto my contact at Border Force and ask them to scan through their exit checks data. They’ve got access to airlines’ advance passenger data too, though I’ve no idea how long it would take to find what we need.’ She smiled at Rajavi, who was crammed into a stab vest over her pale grey maternity top. ‘And speaking of what we need: I could murder an espresso.’

‘How would you feel about coming to the pub with me?’ asked Rajavi.

Rachel checked her watch. ‘Bit early, even for the festive season.’

‘Don’t worry, we can stick to coffee – or decaf in my case,’ Rajavi said regretfully. ‘While we do a little bit of intelligence gathering.’

---

The Hand and Flowers was in full Christmas drinks mode, with Slade and Wizzard blasting from the jukebox and a chalkboard menu that included several variations on a turkey theme. A Find Lola Jade collection tin perched on the bar, its label faded almost to illegibility. The pub was also very busy, given that it wasn’t yet midday.

‘This is Terry Harper’s local,’ Rachel said, as they corralled a free table in the corner. ‘You know: Gavin Harper’s dad. Lola’s grandfather.’

‘It’s also the preferred boozer of my pet nark…’ Rajavi went to the bar and came back with two mugs of passably decent coffee. ‘And actually, that trashy story Stacey Fisher leaked to the paper has done us a favour on this occasion. After he read that, he reckoned he might have some information that’s of interest to us. For a price, naturally.’

‘Naturally,’ Rachel sighed. ‘Welcome to policing in the age of information technology.’

‘And because it’s Christmas, and he has extra cider and fags to pay for, of course his rate has doubled.’

Rajavi’s nark arrived twenty minutes later. ‘Spud’ was a wizened, hunched man with the physique of a jockey, crossed front teeth and a nose that ran constantly, causing him to sniff, or wipe his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. Rachel could stand this for less than two minutes before offering him a tissue from her bag. He stared as though unsure what to do with it.

Rajavi ordered him a double brandy and Spud launched into a long, self-serving preamble, punctuated with much sniffing.

‘Wait, hold on!’ Rachel had just glimpsed a familiar figure on the other side of the bar. Terry Harper. Of course. He recognised her and looked startled and ill at ease, glancing over in her direction frequently. ‘I think we’re going to have to take our chat elsewhere. We can’t risk him hearing any of this.’

Next door to the pub there was a restaurant called the Taj of India. Although it had not yet formally opened for lunch service, the manager let them in when Rachel showed her warrant card, and brought them complimentary beer and poppadoms.

‘I’m not very good with spicy food,’ Spud whined. ‘I think I’ll just stick with the English menu.’

‘Probably best,’ said Rachel briskly, picturing the impact of chilli on Spud’s sinuses. She ordered a bowl of dhal and some steamed rice to placate the restaurant staff – even though she wasn’t hungry – and Spud chose chicken and chips and a bowl of fruit salad and ice cream, shovelling the food into his mouth as though it was the first meal he’d seen in days. Perhaps it was.

Only after he had consumed most of it did he start to talk, still punctuating his speech with sniffs.

‘You know that missing kid from Eastwell in all the news… Lucy, Lulu…’

‘Lola Jade Harper,’ Rajavi prompted.

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ Spud scraped the remainder of the vanilla ice cream from the bowl then waved it at the waiter to indicate that he wanted another one. ‘So, a mate of mine, Bestie, that drinks at the Flowers sometimes, he’s in this card school. Plays a bit of poker late at night in a room over that dry cleaner’s on the Whiteley Road. Anyway, one of the geezers he plays with is this Asian guy, right?’

‘Right. Go on,’ said Rachel, wishing that she hadn’t had to abandon her coffee next door at the pub.

‘So they were playing one night, and he told Bestie – after they’d had a fair few whiskies – that he’d rented out a property to the mum of the girl. The missing girl.’

‘Michelle Harper?’ said Rajavi, giving up on her poppadum with a wince. She pressed her hands into her diaphragm and blew out hard. ‘Heartburn.’

‘Yeah. Michelle. Hard-faced bint, apparently.’ Spud gave a long, liquid sniff before embarking on his second bowl of ice cream. ‘Nothing wrong with that, you’re thinking, Detective Leila. Only she wants to pay cash and keep it all very hush-hush. Doesn’t want anyone knowing she was in the property. No written agreements and the like. She was willing to pay over the odds for that. Bestie says the place was only worth about six hundred a month and she paid nine hundred, a whole year’s worth up front, and a deposit, just for him to keep it on the QT.’

‘That’s around twelve grand in cash,’ said Rachel. ‘And we know where she got that from.’

‘Where is this house?’ asked Rajavi. ‘We need an address.’

‘Don’t know the exact address, just that it’s over Albert Park way.’

Rajavi took a bunch of twenty-pound notes from her handbag, counted out ten and laid them on the table between the dhal and the ice cream, her hand hovering over them. ‘You know how this works, Spud. I’m going to need at least a name from you.’

‘The guy who owns it, the landlord, is called Sunny. Sunil Khara.’