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above. A pink suitcase tucked away at the bottom.
    This was a student girl’s bedroom, much like Celia’s, although he guessed much tidier. He checked his watch. It was 4.35pm. Min’s bedroom left no indication of what, why or where she’d gone. His eyes fell on the empty desk in the far corner. Officers had seized her computer. Station techies would be examining it now, checking her last movements online. He crossed the room and pulled open the single drawer below. A couple of biros rattled along the bottom as it opened. He lifted out an essay and picked up a photo of a man and woman and another of an older Chinese woman – her mother and father, and grandmother perhaps. He cast the photos aside and sifted through what was left: her passport, a menu for The Thai Boathouse, a hairbrush with a couple of hair bands secured around the handle.
    Suddenly, a comment Tom had made tripped into Jackman’s mind, ‘She was rarely alone.’ Rarely alone. Until that night. It suggested an element of planning, a stalker maybe. In Jackman’s experience, stranger crime was incredibly uncommon. Most victims were assaulted, abused, or killed by someone they knew. Somebody would have to have been watching her movements for days, weeks even – waiting, planning, ready to snatch her at any moment.
    No amount of years in the force made these thoughts any more palatable, although he had to admit that the longer Min remained missing, the more sinister explanations presented themselves. He thought back to the three kidnappings he had dealt with during the course of his career. Two of them had been drugs-related, connected with debts that, once paid, meant the victim was returned. The third was the abduction of a businessman’s daughter, a CEO of a major video games company. Ethan Larkin’s daughter had been gone less than three hours when the ransom call came through. The advice was always the same: pay the ransom and preserve life. A tacit agreement meant that the press honoured a complete hold on media activity once a demand was received. For this reason, most kidnappings never even got reported to the public. Getting the victim back was top priority.
    Although kidnappings were one of the most unpleasant and manipulative of crimes to deal with, they were predominantly a business transaction. But, with Min missing for over twelve hours and no ransom call, it seemed an unlikely prospect.
    He considered Ellen Readman, missing for a week before her body was found, and wondered how Reilly was getting on in Northampton. Ellen Readman and Katie Sharp were both dark-haired girls, just like Min. He hoped there wasn’t a connection.
    The buzz of his phone cut through his thoughts. He glanced down at the text message from Davies. ‘Best full shot of the misper, taken from the footage at the Old Thatch Tavern last night.’ He clicked to open the photo and came face to face with Min Li.

Chapter Nine
    Jackman decided to walk back to the police station. He rounded the corner onto Alcester Road, passed the blue-blocked college frontage and made his way over the railway bridge, pausing at the junction with Grove Road and Arden Street. During the daytime this was a busy intersection. Vehicles spilled through it as they headed out of the town centre. He turned around, almost full circle. Directly ahead of him lay Greenhill Street. Alcester Road stretched out of town behind. A turn to the right or left showed lines of Victorian terraces. He thought for a moment. The last sighting of their misper came from the camera on Greenhill Street, almost directly opposite the pub. They knew she’d turned the corner and was heading in the direction of the college. But the camera at the end of Greenhill Street hadn’t picked up their girl. So she either didn’t get that far, or she turned off somewhere.
    He crossed the road, retracing Min’s footsteps. The edge of Stratford town still featured many black and white uneven Tudor buildings. Wood Street and those