Gone Astray

1

1

Tuesday

Lesley Kinnock dumped the six shopping bags just inside the front door and lunged at the alarm keypad on the wall to her left, finger poised to punch in the code that would silence its shrill cry. Halfway through inputting the number she realized with a start the alarm was already switched off. She tapped the digital display as it blinked intermittently at her, baffled as to why it wasn’t set as it should be. The system was supposed to be infallible, able to outsmart power failures and the most adept of intruders, which was why they’d paid so much to have it installed in the first place. In a house as big and as rambling as theirs was, there were too many corners a person could hide around, too many nooks to steal themselves within. Without the invisible protection of motion sensors and CCTV, she’d never relax.

Punching the code in again made no difference and her anxiety was raised a notch. What if someone had managed to bypass it? Her husband Mack insisted any burglar worthy of his profession would find it easier to break into a prison than they would their fortressed home, but what if he was wrong? What if someone was prowling around at that very moment?

Lesley peered cautiously into the entrance hall. Brightly lit by the daylight flooding through the opaque glass panels either side of the front door, she could see, to her relief, the space was empty. But while her body unclenched, her imagination had other ideas, drawing her attention to the five doors leading off the hall and whispering to her that behind one of them was someone just waiting to be disturbed.

Hardly daring to breathe, she fumbled in her bag for her mobile phone. As she pulled it out, the screen lit up to reveal a picture of her daughter, Rosie. It took less than a second for her brain to make the connection and, as it did, a wave of relief crashed over her. Of course! That was why the alarm was switched off – Rosie was at home today too. In her panic she had completely forgotten.

‘Rosie?’ she shouted shakily, her anxiety abating far slower than it had taken hold. ‘Are you upstairs?’

There was no answer from the floor above. Wincing, Lesley picked up the bags weighed down with groceries and heaved them across the entrance hall, her flip-flops slapping noisily against the parquet floor. The thin plastic handles of the bags cut into her palms like cheese wire, but she kept her grip until she reached the kitchen and could set them down on the floor next to the fridge, a huge, double-door, American-style appliance that could hold more than a month’s worth of food.

‘Rosie?’ she called out again.

As she flexed her sore and trembling hands, she realized the house was far too quiet for Rosie to be anywhere indoors and she must still be in the garden. At fifteen, her and Mack’s only child viewed peace and quiet with the same disdain people reserved for traffic wardens and footballers with inflated salaries, and Lesley had grown so accustomed to music thumping through the ceiling and the TV blaring out from the lounge that the lack of noise jarred as much as the usual cacophony.

She kicked off her flip-flops, sending them skidding across the kitchen floor, knowing Mack wouldn’t be impressed if he saw them sullying the natural slate tiles. He nagged her to chuck them away, complaining they looked cheap and she could afford better, but what was the point of her dressing up when he was away and she had no job to go to, no friends to see? The rest of her outfit also reflected the apathy that was her default setting of late: a knee-length denim skirt more than five years old that gaped at the waist because it was too big for her now, paired with a navy T-shirt faded from being washed too often. Her face was devoid of what little make-up she usually wore and her fine blonde hair was scraped off her face into a messy ponytail because she hadn’t bothered to wash it since Saturday, the day Mack had left for his latest golfing trip.

The tiles felt chilly beneath the sweat-slicked soles of her feet but she welcomed the sensation. It was a hot day and the shopping had taken longer than she planned, but at least it was done now. In one of the carrier bags was a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc she planned to open that evening while catching up on the soaps. With Mack away she could watch them in peace without his sarcastic commentary running in the background. So what if Albert Square was nothing like real life? As she often retaliated, this new life of theirs wasn’t that far removed from fiction either.

She wouldn’t tell him about her reaction to finding the alarm switched off, she decided, in case he thought she was just being silly again. He accepted her neuroses regarding how secure the house was, but only up to a point; today’s incident would most likely provoke more eye-rolls and sighs than sympathy.

A glance at the clock on the range cooker told her it was 1.13 p.m. If Rosie hadn’t eaten yet – and the tidy state of the kitchen suggested she hadn’t – they could have lunch together on the terrace. It was one of those rare, cloudless days in late May when it was so balmy it felt more like high summer. Having a break might take Rosie’s mind off her next exam for an hour or so and draw her out of the shell she’d retreated into as her GCSE revision consumed her.

Glancing over, Lesley saw the back door was shut but she reckoned her daughter was probably still out in the garden. When she’d left to go shopping just before 10 a.m., Rosie was already sprawled on a blanket on the lawn, reading through a textbook. Her next GCSE exam was two days away on Thursday, and it was science, the subject she struggled most with and had done least preparation for. The school she went to permitted pupils to revise at home on certain days around their exams, but Lesley had doubts about the effectiveness of the policy as Rosie could be easily distracted. But it was the kind of ‘progressive education’ the private, all-girls school had built its reputation on and why it ranked as one of the best in the south of England.

The school, like their house, was in the village of Haxton in Buckinghamshire, a county to the west of London known for being home to the Prime Minister’s country residence, Chequers, Pinewood Film Studios, a moribund furniture industry and a belt of homes owned by once-famous television stars of the seventies and eighties. With a population of 8,318, Haxton was one of the smaller villages in the area, but what it lacked in size it made up for in affluence. Homes there rarely sold for less than a million and every year it featured in the Telegraph’s top-ten most desirable places to live in Britain. It was worlds away from Mansell, the town five miles down the road where the Kinnocks had lived before their £15-million win on the EuroMillions lottery had upgraded their existence to include gated communities and schools that cost £4,000 a term.

Lesley headed over to the back door but gave the solid oak island counter in the middle of the room a wide berth as she went past, as though it had more right to be there than she did. It was too big, too imposing, and in the fourteen months they’d lived at Angel’s Reach – the name given to their house long before they bought it and which she would change in a heartbeat if only Mack would let her – had come to represent everything she loathed about their new wealth. It was all about show.

The presence of the island counter also embarrassed her, reminding her as it did of the first time they viewed the house and she’d asked the estate agent to explain what it was for, because she’d never set foot in a kitchen that had one before. The young woman, all glossy hair and glossed lips, had looked at Lesley more with pity than surprise.

‘You want to know what the point of it is?’

More than a year on, Lesley’s cheeks still grew hot at the memory.

‘There are all these worktops already,’ she had eventually replied, stumbling over her words. ‘I just don’t see why we’d need this great big thing in the middle of the room as well.’

Then, just to complete her mortification, Mack had burst out laughing, grabbed her by the hands and swung her in a circle, boyish excitement melting a decade off his forty-six-year-old face.

‘Oh love, does it matter what it’s for?’ he crowed. ‘With what we’ve got in the bank we can buy a thousand of the bloody things and keep them in a field if we want!’

The estate agent had echoed his laughter – no doubt cheered by the belief she was about to make a sale. But Lesley couldn’t bring herself to join in and squirmed self-consciously as Mack danced her around the kitchen, her movements as jerky as a marionette’s. In the end she was so desperate to leave she’d let him make an offer of the full asking price on the spot, even though it was the first house they’d looked at and she wasn’t convinced it was worth the money. Still wasn’t.

The flagstone terrace running along the back of the house was bathed in sunshine and Lesley raised her hand to shield her eyes against the brightness. White spots fluttered across her vision like tiny butterflies and she blinked hard to vanquish them.

‘Rosie, I’m back. Are you hungry?’

When there was no answer she walked to the edge of the terrace and scanned the lawn, an immaculate carpet of jewel-green turf that stretched forward for 200 feet and was half as wide across. A red and green tartan picnic blanket was laid out on the grass, but her daughter wasn’t on it. All Lesley could see was a textbook and Rosie’s headphones coiled beside it like a thin white snake.

Her insides balled instantly into a knot, a familiar, corporeal reaction to not seeing her child when she expected to. Frowning against the sun, Lesley scanned the lawn again. Where the hell was she? Then common sense gave her a nudge: if the back door was shut, then Rosie had to be inside. She’ll be upstairs and didn’t hear you the first time you called out.

As the knot in her stomach loosened, Lesley went back through the kitchen, into the entrance hall and took the stairs two at a time. The door to Rosie’s bedroom was ajar. She hesitated for a moment, knowing how Rosie felt about her poking around her room, but something caught her eye that propelled her inside. There was a bright yellow Selfridges box open on the bed, empty apart from some scrunched-up yellow-and-white-patterned tissue paper. Next to the box was a delivery note with the previous day’s date and a receipt. Lesley snatched the receipt up. It was for a pair of ballet pump-style shoes in gunmetal grey with silver, crescent-shaped toecaps.

‘You are bloody well kidding me,’ she snorted.

Lesley couldn’t see the shoes anywhere in the room but recognized them from the receipt’s description. A fortnight previously, Rosie had begged her to order them online but Lesley refused, saying the £320 price tag was far too extravagant for herself, let alone a fifteen-year-old. Despite Rosie whining that all her friends had a pair, Lesley stuck to her guns and assumed that was the end of it. Clutching the receipt, anger displaced her anxiety for a moment. Rosie must’ve persuaded Mack to buy the shoes instead and either thought Lesley wouldn’t notice or didn’t care if she did.

Annoyed at being undermined again, she barged into Rosie’s en suite bathroom without knocking. It was empty, but the shower had recently been used judging by the droplets of water still clinging determinedly to the glass door. She could also detect the rich, sweet, coconut scent of Rosie’s shampoo. The aroma, along with the sight of her daughter’s hairbrush left on top of the sink unit, long dark hairs trapped in its metal bristles, prompted a fresh wave of anxiety and the knot in her stomach squeezed tighter.

Anger forgotten, she ran to the top of the stairs.

‘ROSIE!’ she screamed as loudly as her voice would allow. Then she waited, ears straining for the slightest sound. Nothing. The house remained cloaked in silence.

Her heart beat wildly as fear overwhelmed her. Rosie knew better than to go out without letting her know first. She bolted back downstairs, pulse racing. In the kitchen she checked the marble-topped units but there was no note from Rosie saying where she’d gone on any of them. On the island counter she found a small pile of letters that must have been delivered while she was out. Lesley tore through the envelopes in case a message from Rosie had got muddled up with them. Usually she steered clear of any post they received, scared of what she might find. While bills held no fear for her these days, it was a new kind of demand that gave her sleepless nights: begging letters from strangers wanting a slice of their fortune. Mack usually dealt with them so she didn’t have to read the threats and the pleas from people she didn’t know and didn’t want to.

There was no note from Rosie in the pile, so she dropped the letters back onto the counter and checked the corkboard on the wall next to the fridge, in case Rosie had pinned a note over the photos, cards and slips of paper listing the phone numbers of her school, their GP, dentist, the golf club. The corkboard stuck out like a sore thumb against all the marble, but it was the one concession she’d wrestled out of Mack when she argued the kitchen would be too sterile if they stuck to his plan of keeping every utensil and container out of sight, and every wall bare, so as not to spoil the sleek lines of its design. It was the same corkboard from their old kitchen in Mansell and gave Lesley a sense of home in a house she otherwise hated.

There was no message awaiting her attention. Her eyes strayed to the centre of the board, to a photograph of Rosie hugging Mickey Mouse, taken when she was nine and they’d scraped together enough money to go to Disney World in Florida. Rosie’s hair was shorter then, cut into a neat bob that fell just below her ears, and had yet to darken to the brunette it was now. It was one of Lesley’s favourite pictures, which was why it had pride of place in the centre, with everything else orbiting it like planets around the sun. As nine-year-old Rosie beamed out at her, she began to shake. She had to be somewhere. She wouldn’t just go off . . .

Then it hit her. Kathryn. Rosie’s best friend, who lived next door and was in the same year at her school. What was the betting she had the day off too? Rosie had probably gone round to see her and lost track of the time.

Buoyed by the certainty that’s where Rosie was, Lesley fetched her phone from her bag, which was on the floor next to the shopping. She’d call Rosie first and if she didn’t pick up, she’d try Kathryn next. She pressed her thumb down on the ‘R’ key, which was programmed to speed-dial her daughter’s number.

Walking back out onto the terrace, she lifted her face to greet the sun as she waited for Rosie to pick up, luxuriating in the warmth on her skin. It took a few moments before she became aware of the faint echo of a phone ringing. Puzzled, she followed the noise down the terrace steps and onto the lawn. Reaching the picnic blanket, she saw Rosie’s iPhone lying on top of it, the word ‘Mum’ and a picture of Lesley illuminated as it rang. She hung up, trembling.

Rosie never went anywhere without her phone, the thing was practically glued to her hand. She’d never leave it behind unless forced to. Lesley looked wildly up and down the garden.

‘ROSIE!’

There was a rustle in the line of fir trees that stood sentry along the bottom of the garden.

‘Rosie, is that you?’

As she took off towards the trees, the grass suddenly felt sticky beneath her bare feet. She stopped, surprised, and looked down. There was a dark, damp patch on the grass, like something had been spilled. She reached down and grazed the blades of grass with her fingers and, as she drew her hand back, she let out a strangled cry. The tips of her fingers were stained red and when she lifted them to her nose and inhaled, she could detect a strong metallic scent, like the smell of pennies.

Or blood.

2

On the stage at the front of the hall, a girl of around ten was wailing the words to ‘Over the Rainbow’, skinny knees exposed in a blue gingham dress and cheeks daubed with clown-like circles of blusher. As the girl hit a high note, a woman on the front row whooped loudly and clapped.

‘I thought this was assembly, not a football match. Or maybe she thinks it’s The X Factor.’

Four rows back, Maggie Neville laughed louder than she intended to as her sister Lou whispered in her ear. An older-looking man sitting directly in front cast a dirty look over his shoulder, to which Lou’s eight-month-old daughter Mae, cradled on her mum’s lap, responded by bursting into noisy wails. No amount of soothing noises or rocking would placate her.

‘Give her to me,’ whispered Maggie as people turned to look. ‘I’ll take her outside for a bit.’

‘Thanks,’ Lou replied in an undertone, handing Mae to her sister with a grateful smile. ‘Scotty should be on in about ten minutes.’

Scotty was Lou’s middle child and his class was performing ‘Any Dream Will Do’ from Joseph. For a little school, Rushbrooke Primary liked to aim high with its assemblies and today’s celebration of musicals was no exception.

Cradling her niece to her chest, Maggie pushed her way along the row towards the side of the hall, where the exit was. A man swore as she trod on his foot.

Outside in the playground she sat down on a bench so low it could only have been designed with children in mind and Mae’s wails quickly subsided to a whimper. It was just after 2.30 p.m. and the sun pulsed strongly in the afternoon sky. Maggie wished she’d worn a skirt instead of the wool-mix trousers that were part of her usual work attire and were making her overheat. Her laundry basket was overflowing as usual that morning and the trousers and tomato-red T-shirt she had on were the only clean clothes she could find.

From across the playground Maggie could hear the low hum of traffic barrelling along the M40, the motorway that carved through the Chiltern Hills to the north of Mansell town centre. One carriageway took drivers all the way to Oxford, the other to London.

‘Mrs Green, are you . . . Oh, I’m sorry, seeing you with the baby there I thought you were Scotty’s mum.’

Maggie identified the young woman approaching her as Donna, the teaching assistant from Scotty’s class.

‘No, I’m his aunt.’

‘I should’ve realized you weren’t Mrs Green, seeing as your hair is so different,’ she said with a laugh.

Maggie self-consciously brushed her long fringe out of her eyes. Lou owed her auburn tint to Clairol Nice’N Easy but her own hair was still the same dark honey blonde of her youth, still the same shoulder-length style. Boring, according to Lou, but Maggie liked that it wasn’t fussy. In between work and helping out with the kids, she didn’t have the time or inclination for anything more elaborate.

‘Scotty always talks about you,’ said Donna, whose own hair was cropped short and dyed peroxide blonde. Maggie could see she had a tattoo of a seahorse on the inside of her wrist. ‘He loves having a police officer for an auntie.’

Maggie flashed her a tight smile. The last thing she wanted on her day off was to be drawn into a conversation about her work as a detective constable with Mansell Force CID. Experience taught her that when meeting a police officer in a social setting, people either saw it as an opportunity to rant about the lack of beat officers or criminals being let off with lenient sentences, or to ask crass questions like, ‘Do you ever use your handcuffs in bed?’ which she never knew quite how to answer without appearing completely humourless.

But Donna only wanted to talk about Scotty.

‘He was so excited you could come today,’ she chattered on. ‘Normally we have our assemblies in the morning but this one’s been quite the production. If we’d done it earlier we’d have been late starting lessons.’

‘I’m glad I could make it,’ said Maggie, meaning it.

Swinging a day’s personal leave at short notice wasn’t easy but when she found out Scotty had a line to sing by himself, she didn’t want to miss it. Afterwards they were collecting Jude, Lou’s eldest, from football practice, then going to Pizza Hut for their tea.

Donna leaned forward to tickle Mae’s cheek and Maggie caught a whiff of cheese and onion crisps on her breath. Her own stomach growled to remind her that all she’d eaten since breakfast was a Dairylea triangle, squeezed straight into her mouth from its foil wrapper. She’d been too busy helping Lou finish Scotty’s costume to manage anything else.

‘Between you and me,’ said Donna conspiratorially, ‘if I have to hear the songs one more time I’ll scream. Still, the kids do love putting on a show and you must be proud Scotty has a line to sing all by himself. He’s such a kind, sweet-natured boy,’ she added, as though Maggie might be clueless about her own nephew’s character. ‘He’s a credit to your sister. It can’t be easy for her, coping on her own. We did wonder if his stepdad might come today but I guess after everything . . .’

She trailed off as Maggie eyed her suspiciously. Did Donna really know the circumstances of Lou’s break-up with Rob or was she fishing for gossip to pass around the staffroom? Not prepared to test either theory, Maggie rose to her feet, hitching Mae, by now gurgling happily, onto her hip.

‘I’d better get back inside,’ she said politely.

The hall felt even stuffier after the fresh air of the playground. A sullen-looking boy wearing boxes sprayed with silver paint and matching tights had joined the girl in gingham on stage and was singing through gritted teeth. Maggie pushed back along the row, this time managing to avoid standing on any feet. As she eased into her seat, Lou, red-faced and flustered, turned on her.

‘Your phone keeps ringing and I can’t work out how to turn the sodding thing off,’ she whispered, handing Maggie her mobile in exchange for Mae.

‘Shit, sorry.’

Checking the screen, she was surprised to see she’d missed three calls from Detective Inspector Tony Gant. It was, what, two months since they’d last spoken?

‘I need to make a quick call. It’s work.’

‘But you’ll miss Scotty,’ Lou replied sharply.

The man in front turned round and glared again. Lou stuck her middle finger up at him.

But Maggie was already out of her seat, bag slung over her shoulder. ‘I won’t. I’ll be one minute.’ There were loud tuts as she went back along the line.

Maggie paced up and down the playground as she waited for her call to be answered, her empty stomach cramping with nerves. DI Tony Gant was the Family Liaison Coordinator for her force and she was among a hundred or so officers he’d recruited from the ranks to train as a specialist family liaison officer for Major Crime cases. Or she had been until Gant received a complaint about her conduct during her last case and she was suspended from his roster. Four months on, Maggie still wasn’t cleared to return to FL duty and her last evaluation with the Force Welfare Department had been a fortnight ago. As she stalked the playground she feared Gant was trying to reach her because her assessor, Wendy, had found cause to make her suspension permanent.

‘DI Gant,’ a male voice barked.

‘It’s DC Neville, sir. Sorry I missed your calls.’

‘Hello, Maggie. How have you been?’

Unprepared for small talk, she could only stammer the briefest of replies. ‘Not bad. You, sir?’

‘Fine, fine. Have you got your notebook to hand?’

Maggie said yes as she delved in her bag to find it.

‘I need you for a case. Missing teenager.’

She sank down onto the same bench she and Mae had sat on earlier. ‘Really?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. Four months is plenty of time to have learned your lesson and I can’t afford to have decent FLOs sidelined indefinitely. Luckily for you, Wendy agrees and has signed you off just in time for DCI Umpire to personally request you.’

Maggie was glad to be already sitting down. Stunned, she asked Gant to repeat himself and he chuckled as he did.

‘Yes, it turns out you’re forgiven. Right,’ he said sharply, as if there was nothing else to discuss on the matter, ‘the girl’s disappearance is being treated as a critical incident because blood found at the scene suggests she didn’t go willingly. Hence why Major Crime are running it. Umpire’s the Force Senior Investigating Officer on this one and he wants you as lead FLO to her parents.’

‘But what about his complaint?’ she asked.

‘Withdrawn.’

The word hung in the air like a bubble that might pop at any second. Then relief flooded through her.

Family liaison was something she did a few times a year, a specialist sideline to her day job as a detective constable. Although she was stationed in Mansell with Force CID, as a Major Crime FLO she could be deployed anywhere within the force’s jurisdiction, for however long the case took. Some old-timers dismissed family liaison for bringing little more to an investigation than tea and sympathy and historically they could have successfully argued the point, until a series of high-profile cases – including the 1989 Marchioness boat disaster on the River Thames and the murder of London teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 – highlighted how vital the role was and how officers required specific training for it. A national strategy was put in place after those cases, following the light-bulb realization that if the public saw FLOs as being the face of the police, the role had to be taken more seriously.

As Maggie saw it, an FLO was the conduit between the investigating team and the family – broadly defined as partners, parents, siblings, children, grandparents, guardians and those with a close relationship to the victim, such as best friends – and her job was to conduct the flow of information between them. She had to make sure the family understood what was going on – if the victim was dead, that included explaining the sometimes baffling coroner’s process – while uncovering every pertinent detail of the victim’s daily life to feed back to her colleagues. By asking the right questions, she could elicit information from the family that was vital to the case – or even catch them out if they were the guilty party. It wasn’t just about sitting on someone’s sofa enquiring how many sugars they took.

Why DCI Umpire’s sudden change of heart, though, she mulled? He was the SIO on her last case and the one who got her suspended. A dozen more questions whizzed around her head but, knowing it wasn’t the time to ask them, she mentally filed them for later.

‘Tell me about the girl,’ she said, pen poised.

‘Name is Rosalind Kinnock, Rosie for short. Fifteen. Last seen at approximately ten a.m. at the family home in Haxton village.’ Gant’s voice sounded mechanical in a way that suggested he was reading from notes. ‘Her mum left her there revising when she went shopping and when she got back just after one p.m., there was no sign of her except for some blood on the back lawn. Assumption is it’s hers.’

Maggie scribbled fast to keep up. ‘The mum’s name?’

‘Lesley. Dad’s called Mack. He’s in Scotland on a golf trip, yet to be informed.’

‘How come?’

‘Isn’t answering his phone apparently. Patrol officers are with Mrs Kinnock now but DCI Umpire wants you to take over. He thinks she’ll be happy dealing with you because the family lived on the Corley until a year ago.’

The Corley was a housing estate on the east side of Mansell and was where Maggie had lived for the first twelve years of her life. She flicked back through her notes.

‘Their surname’s Kinnock? It rings a bell.’

‘They’re the couple who won the EuroMillions last year. Got fifteen million and spent a chunk of their winnings on a huge pile on the outskirts of Haxton.’

‘Of course – Lesley and Mack Kinnock. They were in the papers for weeks. Is their daughter going missing anything to do with the money?’

A shriek suddenly rang through the open windows of the school hall, followed by shouting. Maggie frowned at the disturbance, but stayed put.

‘Too early to say. DCI Umpire will tell you more when you get there. He’s at the house with forensics.’ He gave her the address. ‘Do everything by the book this time, Maggie,’ he cautioned. ‘I can’t reinstate you a second time.’

The thought sent a chill through her.

‘I know, and thank you, sir. It won’t be a problem.’

‘I should hope not. I’ve assigned DC Belmar Small from Trenton to work with you on this. It’s only his second case but he’s good, very intuitive. He’s already on his way to Haxton.’

Maggie wasn’t familiar with DC Small but was used to being paired with officers she didn’t know. Gant liked his FLOs to work in twos because dealing with distraught and grieving families, often for weeks on end, could be emotionally draining for them, too, and sometimes they needed propping up by a colleague who could empathize with how they were feeling. For the same reason Gant rotated his roster so his Major Crime FLOs were never deployed more than three times a year.

‘Once the media finds out Rosie is the daughter of EuroMillions winners there’s going to be a shit storm,’ he said.

Maggie knew what he was getting at. It was a lamentable rule of thumb that if a missing child – even one as old as fifteen – wasn’t found within twenty-four hours, the chance of them turning up safe diminished with every passing hour. The Kinnocks’ big money win would elevate them onto the same high-profile platform as celebrities and politicians, and the media and public pressure to find Rosie would be immense.

‘I’ll forward a picture of her to your phone,’ Gant added, ‘then I’ll let DCI Umpire know you’re on your way. Check in with me later.’

As she hung up, Maggie wondered what the reaction would be back at the station to her suspension being lifted. Gant would need to clear her joining the case with her own DCI, but she knew he wouldn’t object, even though her FLO duty sometimes took her away from his command for long stretches. He knew how important being an FLO was to Maggie and had backed her application to complete the training.

The sound of raised voices floated through the open windows. Thirty seconds later her phone pinged to signal a text had arrived. Attached was a headshot of Rosie Kinnock. She had straight, dark brown hair that fell past her shoulders and while she wasn’t conventionally pretty she had beautiful almond-shaped green eyes, a lovely wide smile and an unruly splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She looked younger than her age.

Maggie got to her feet and hurried inside. To her surprise, the lights in the hall had been turned up and people were chatting loudly in their seats. Some teachers were standing on the stage; one was holding a mop. She pushed back along the row.

‘What’s going