The sergeant made a face. ‘Human bloody Rights Act, like as not succeed.’

The door to the cell was unlocked, the air inside vinegary with disinfectant. Maxine Carlin lay curled in one corner, face to the wall. She turned only slowly when he spoke her name.

One side of her face was pinched tight, the corner of her mouth aslant; a scab above the right eye had been picked away down to the pink skin beneath. He could smell the drink on her from where he stood.

‘You wanted to see me?’

‘Took your bastard time!’

‘Wanted to talk?’

‘Not here.’

She could only walk unsteadily at first, ignoring Cordon’s proffered hand. Once they had reached the car, she leaned against the roof until her breathing had become more regular and her head had begun to clear. He drove south past Morrab Gardens and parked along the West Promenade, windows wound down, waiting while, painstakingly, she rolled a cigarette. Faint, under the occasional clamour of gulls, he could hear the rhythmic shushing of pebbles as the tide moved them up and back along the beach.

‘It’s about Letitia?’ Cordon asked.

‘That stupid bloody name!’

‘Rose, then. What you wanted to see me for, it’s about your daughter? About Rose?’

‘She’s gone missing, i’n’t she?’

Missing, Cordon thought: missing from where? He hadn’t clapped eyes on her in months, years.

‘Her father, he rung me. She was supposed to be going down to see him, stay for a bit. Hastings, where he’s got some excuse for a bloody bookshop. Down from London. Never turned up. Never showed.’

‘Changed her mind, perhaps.’

‘Called him, didn’t she, right before she left. Charing something?’

‘Charing Cross?’

‘Maybe. I dunno. Meet the train, she told him. Waited half the day. Her mobile switched off each time he tried. Got on to me in the end, see if I knew anything. I didn’t know a bloody thing.’ She flicked the cigarette away in a shower of sparks. ‘Since she moved up there, London, we’ve not exactly kept in touch. Not like when she was here. Used to be, we was more like sisters. These last few years, never tells me a thing. More secrets’n the Queen of bloody Sheba. Don’t even know where’s she’s living. Not properly. Never been there, never been asked.’

Cordon nodded. ‘All this was when? When she was supposed to meet her father?’

‘Last week. Beginnin’ of last week. Right after New Year.’ She rubbed a cracked fingernail against the corner of her eye.

‘The two of them, they were close then?’

‘When it suited him.’

‘But she did see him?’

‘Like I say, when it suited him, miserable bastard.’

‘And this time, no explanation, she just never arrived?’

‘Christ! Didn’t I just bloody say so?’

‘You’ve tried contacting her?’

‘Much good it did me. Old mobile number, that’s all I had. Waste of bleedin’ time.’

‘And you’ve not got an address?’

‘Just this. Here.’ Maxine started scrabbling in her bag. ‘Place she used to work. Housekeepin’, somethin’ like that. Never said too much about it.’

She pushed a piece of paper into his hand. A street name and house number in London, N16.

‘And this was when? When she was working here?’

‘A year back, got to be. Maybe more. Something though, isn’t it? If you’re lookin’. Somewhere to start.’

Cordon sighed and folded the paper carefully into his top pocket. She’d been missing, if missing she was, for just a week, not yet quite two. No time, no time at all. The air through the open windows was cold and getting colder, a breeze lifting off the sea.

‘You’ll do what you can? To find her?’

Cordon turned away. The lights farther around the bay suggested home, a glass of whisky and a warm bed.

‘You will?’

‘I could make a few inquiries from here. Get somebody to go round, maybe, check that old address. Beyond that, I don’t think there’s a great deal I can do. Not until we know more. Grown woman, independent. No suggestion of foul play. She’s probably fine. Just changed her mind. Last moment. It happens. Went somewhere else instead. Friends.’

‘You’ll do fuck all.’

Down on the beach a dog was barking excitedly, chasing shadows across the dark.

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Fuck all. You’ll do fuck all.’

Cordon sighed.

‘You’re all the fucking same.’

Men, he supposed she meant. Men.

‘Don’t hear nothin’ from her, I’ll go up meself. Thought you might bloody help, that’s all.’ She levered open the door. ‘She thought a lot of you, fuck knows why.’

Awkward, she swung her legs round and ducked her head.

‘Wait up,’ Cordon said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

She chose not to hear. Like someone walking on coals, she made her way across the street and continued close to the wall. Cordon started after her, but changed his mind. At the edge of the promenade the nubbed paint of the railings was uneven and cold against his hand. She thought a lot of you. Out over the sea, the moon showed for a moment from behind a bulwark of cloud, then was gone.

The first time he had seen Rose Carlin — Letitia — she had been sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed, the mattress stained with shit smears and rusted blood, eyes winced tight as she injected heroin into the vein at the back of her left knee.

No one had answered when he’d knocked on the door. Himself and four other officers rousting all the houses on the street, a favour passed down from on high. Boarded up most of them, bulldozers on their way, a complex of two- and three-bedroom apartments that would rise up from the detritus of what had once been two-up and two-down family homes. Harbour View. Even the name was a lie.

The only other person in the room, a young male of eighteen or so, sat on the floor, legs outstretched, head angled back against the wall, a leather belt tied off around his upper arm. Cordon knew him from various squats around the town and the toilets near the bus station where he’d jack off unhappy travellers for the price of a half-gram wrap or a pack of cigarettes. Billy Mullins, youngest of five: one in the army, two doing time, another — the black sheep — working eight to five as a council gardener, kids of his own.

‘Right.’ Cordon kicked his toe against the underside of the youth’s worn trainers and hauled him to his feet. ‘Now then, Billy, what’s it to be?’

Mullins blinked at him once and his head lolled down towards his chest.

Christ, Cordon thought, I don’t have time for this. He dragged a straight-backed chair across with his foot and sat Mullins down on it hard.

‘Possession, is it? Intent to supply?’

‘Fuck off,’ Mullins said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Behind them, a sigh slipped from the girl’s mouth like air escaping from a balloon, and she slumped sideways on the bed.

‘New girlfriend, Billy?’

‘What’s it to you?’

Her arms were thin, barely flesh on bone, breasts that seemed to belong to a body other than her own. He could have encompassed her thigh, almost, with the span of his hand. There were used condoms, two of them, close by on the floor: Cordon supposed he should be grateful for that at least.

‘How old is she?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Come on, Billy. Fourteen? Fifteen? Younger?’

‘Old enough to fuck.’

Cordon kicked the chair from under him and he went sprawling, striking his head against the skirting. Bruise like a blackened egg, Cordon thought, come morning; some smart young duty solicitor waving the Polaroids around like they were Get Out of Jail Free cards.

He helped Mullins to his feet, read him the riot act, watched as he bundled together his few things before skedaddling down the stairs. The girl dressed slowly, as if dazed, as if everything that touched her skin caused her pain. When he reached out a hand to help, she pulled away.

He took her to a cafe just beyond the street’s end, the girl walking half a pace behind. When he asked her what she wanted, she made no reply, so he ordered her a mug of tea and a bacon roll and when she’d wolfed that down he ordered the same again. Dredging up a smile, she bummed a cigarette from someone at the next table. She still hadn’t looked Cordon square in the eye.