The doorbell shocked Simon into wakefulness and he realised he’d dozed off. His iPad was lying on the dining table, the show he was watching still running. He reached to press pause, his hand shaking, as the doorbell rang again.

His already pounding heart lurched as he noted it was nine pm. It was far too late for a delivery, especially on a Sunday. Not that he was expecting one, but deliveries were the only reason for anybody to be at his door.

The bell sounded again, insistent, buzzing one, two, three times. Maybe there was a fire. But the smoke detectors–

The bell again. He hurried to the door. He should have checked the answerphone, but he was so thrown by being rushed that he just wrenched the door open.

His breath caught. Police! Two plainclothes cops in the front, two in uniforms standing behind them.

‘Simon White?’ the female officer asked. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Burnham, Violent Crimes Squad,’ she said, flashing her badge.

She waved her warrant card too quickly for him to read it. Not that his brain could process anything. Weirdly enough, she seemed familiar, although Simon couldn’t think why.

‘Yes?’

He could barely speak. His heart rate surged, and he clutched the side of the door tighter to prevent his hand from shaking.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright, sir?’

‘A… about what?’

‘Mr White, you know Elizabeth Chadwick, don’t you?’

‘Liz?’ Simon was trying to understand and to get himself under control. ‘What’s happened to Liz?’

‘Why would anything happen to Ms Chadwick?’ the male officer said, a big bruiser of a man with the off kilter nose of a boxer.

‘Why else would you be here?’ Simon said with difficulty, because his mouth had dried up.

‘I’m afraid Ms Chadwick has disappeared–’

The female detective’s lips kept moving and Simon knew she was still speaking, but he couldn’t take it in. Dear God, what was happening?

‘– so we’d appreciate it if you’d let us in to check your house.’

Simon blinked at her, on the verge of panic but trying not to show it. She smiled back, a blank, professional, we’re waiting, kind of smile.

‘I know you,’ he muttered, trying to drag his fragmented mind back into order.

‘Yes, I’m D.I. Jaq Burnham,’ she said, emphasising the Jaq. ‘We met at Sarah’s engagement party. Now, will you let us take a look around, or will I need to get a warrant?’

Simon hesitated for a split second, but Liz was missing and he’d do whatever it took to help the police find her. So he stepped to the left, pulling the door open as he did and waved them in.

‘Thank you,’ D.I. Burnham said, and the detectives stepped inside while the uniforms took up position on either side of his door. ‘While we’re looking, would you mind answering a few questions?’

This wasn’t the first time in his life that police had arrived at Simon’s home, although the last time he’d been a lot younger, in his father’s house, and he’d hidden away as they’d stormed in. Weirdly, even though this was a lot more low key, it felt as traumatic.

Still, he did as ordered. Now that they were here, his best bet, and Liz’s, was to get this over with as quickly as possible.

‘Can you tell me, please, when was the last time you saw Ms Chadwick?’

‘Thursday night, at the party.’ Simon glanced out of his front door to the balcony that ran the length of the block of flats. Neighbours had appeared, some peeking through a crack in their front door, others more blatantly standing outside, watching the show.

‘You haven’t seen her since?’ DI Burnham said as she crooked her finger to indicate he should follow her into the flat.

‘No. I haven’t seen her.’

Her partner, in the meantime, had headed to his closed bedroom door.

‘What is this room?’ he asked.

‘Bedroom,’ Simon said.

‘Would you open the door for us please, sir?’ the man said.

It felt to Simon like a worse intrusion being asked to open his house himself, like a victim slapping his own face. But he did as asked and pushed open the door.

‘What about you?’ Burnham carried on, as Simon stood aside to let the big cop enter his room. ‘What did you do after you left the party?’

‘I came straight home.’

‘Can anybody corroborate that?’ Burnham said as she took a pair of bright blue latex gloves out of a sealed pack and pulled them on.

‘I have a home security system,’ Simon barely managed to whisper. This was getting worse and worse. ‘It will have time stamps.’

‘A home security system?’ D.I. Burnham paused, the second latex glove only half on. She looked like she thought this was a distinctly odd thing to have. ‘How about the rest of the weekend?’

‘I’ve been home.’

‘All weekend?’

‘Yes.’

‘You never went out.’

‘No.’

‘Alright, please open this door for me too,’ Burnham said, indicating the bathroom.

Simon did as ordered and tried to pull himself together at the same time. He’d been so shocked he’d done everything so far without thinking. But now he was regretting his capitulation.

He belatedly remembered the advice Rat Face had given everyone at the young offender’s institution. Rat Face because he had a rather prominent set of front teeth, although Simon had always thought he looked more like a mouse with his big, round glasses. He’d been the local genius because, unlike most of them, he could read and write really well and spent his life with his nose in a book.

He’d always told them that whether they were innocent or guilty, they should say as little as possible to the police and block whatever they were trying to do.

‘Because they’ll just try to fit you up. They decide who’s guilty first, and then they find the evidence that proves it. Or they plant it,’ he’d added ominously.

‘Thank you for your co-operation. Now please wait out here with these officers,’ Burnham said, pointing at two uniforms.

Simon blinked at her, realising he’d zoned out. She waited till he nodded agreement before she went in for a closer examination of his bathroom. It was too late for him to stop her. So, against everything Rat Face had warned him about, he remained in the doorway, watching, just in case they tried to plant something on him.

***

Jaq was struck by the thought that Simon White was more nervous than most. He’d turned white as a sheet when he’d seen cops at his door, but that was to be expected. It was rarely a good sign for anyone.

But he had yet to calm down. His tightly clasped hands were shaking, and he looked unfocused. He looked so petrified he couldn’t even concentrate as his eyes darted from her to Darren and back again.

‘Any luck?’ Darren asked as Jaq went back to digging through the laundry basket.

Jaq shook her head.

‘Have you found his security system?’

‘Yeah, it’s hooked up to his computer. We’ll see if we can take his computer with us. Aside from that, no woman, but I suppose that was too much to ask for. No signs of anybody at all or a struggle. The place is immaculate.’

That was true, Jaq thought, as her gaze swept over a modern, open plan flat. A kitchen ran along the right-hand side wall to halfway, dining table to the left, sitting room at the far end with floor to ceiling industrial style windows. The rest was warm wood panelling, mid-century wood and olive green velvet furniture and a set of three massive paintings of cloud streaked skies.

‘It looks like it’s straight out of a magazine. Maybe he is gay,’ Jaq said, glancing back into the bedroom and running her eye over the perfectly made bed.

Darren gave a cynical laugh and said, ‘My Brenda would kill to have a place decorated like this, although hers would be fuller of knick knacks. I wish she’d be more minimalist.’

Jaq laughed. She was all too familiar with Darren’s wife’s passion for interior decorating.

Now she headed for the kitchen to look through the cupboards. It could be very revealing to see what a suspect had in the cupboards. Kitchens were often used as hiding spaces for all sorts of things, from drugs to keys and weapons. Often mixed in with something innocuous, like the flour or the sugar.

Simon White’s kitchen was as minimalist as the rest of the flat. He had a small stack of plates, minimal cutlery, and barely any food. Milk and bread in the fridge and a box of tea in the cupboard above the kettle, along with four packets of dried fruit, one apple, one pear, one mango and a half-empty bag of crystallised ginger. All too small to hide anything else in it. There was no flour, sugar, bags of pasta, cans of sauce or any of the detritus of most people’s kitchens.

‘This makes it look like he doesn’t live here at all,’ Jaq said, and might have added more, but her phone went off.

‘Yes, Amber?’

‘Boss, I think I may have found something weird.’

‘Ok, just a sec.’

Jaq pushed Darren into the bedroom, closed the door behind them and switched the phone to speaker.

‘This Simon White, you asked me to look into… It all looked pretty normal, no criminal convictions, not even the proverbial parking ticket. But it looks like your man may have changed his name as part of the witness protection programme.’

‘Really? When?’ Jaq asked, looking at Darren with the sort of, what do we have here expression.

‘Hard to tell, but there are no records of him from around fifteen years ago. Nothing obvious, although Simon White is a pretty common name.’

‘Okay, thanks, keep digging and let me know if you turn anything else up.’

‘Will do,’ Amber said, and the phone clicked off.

‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Jaq said and cocked her head at Darren.

‘Tenuous, people land up in witness protection for many reasons and I’m guessing he’s in his thirties, so if he changed his name so long ago, it was probably because of something that happened when he was a kid.’

‘What though?’ Jaq said as she took in the minimalist bedroom, with another pair of sky paintings and the same floor to ceiling windows. ‘If it was a sexual offence, it might be relevant.’

‘It isn’t much to go on,’ Darren said. ‘Liz Chadwick was last seen near his house. He might have a record and he’s a colleague of the missing woman.’

‘He’s super nervous and his flat is unnaturally clean.’

‘Some people are just neat freaks.’

‘I think we should take him in, just in case.’ Police were unfair and harsh, but there was a reason for it, mostly because they were trying to protect the weak and the vulnerable or to get justice. Sometimes that prevented them from showing compassion for potential suspects. ‘We need to keep him where we can see him and where he can’t do any damage limitations or just vanish on us.’

‘It will have to be voluntary. If you can convince him to come to the station, I’ll go along with it.’

‘Alright,’ Jaq said and went back to Simon. ‘Mr White, we’d like you to come down to the station to answer some questions. We’d also appreciate if you let us take your security recordings and all your unwashed clothes for forensic analysis.’

It was a long shot. Without a warrant, Simon White was within his rights to tell her to go to hell and chuck the lot of them out.

He looked up, pale and shaky.

‘I didn’t do anything. You’re wasting your time and Liz’s looking into me.’

‘All the same, sir.’

Simon White stared at her, it seemed in a blank, thoughts flickering across his face. She held her breath, waiting for him to tell her to go to hell.

But in the end he seemed to crumple, shrugged and said, ‘Do whatever you want.’

‘Thank you. This way, sir.’

Keeping it polite never hurt. Sometimes it really annoyed Jaq to have to do it when she had just arrested someone she knew damn well to be guilty, but that wasn’t the case here. So she was keeping her expressions neutral. She didn’t want to give Simon White any sign of whether she thought him innocent or guilty.