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straight through the gate and round the side of the house to the garden. That suggests to me that they had been to the house before and knew your mother and her routine well. Are you sure you haven’t seen them before?’
    Charlie shook her head. She had been very shaky and frightened back at the house, but now, mostly because of her mother’s plea for her to say nothing about her father, she felt even more frightened and menaced. She began to cry again.
    ‘There, there.’ The policeman patted her shoulder comfortingly. ‘I know this has been a terrible shock to you, Charlie, but it’s important we catch these men as quickly as possible and we can’t do that unless you give us some detail. Now, how tall were they, were they fat, thin? Did they have a beard or moustache? How long was their hair?’
    She felt so foolish being unable to describe them in any detail. ‘Burly men in dark blue overalls’ could be absolutely anyone. When she said she thought they were tall, Willows asked her how she could judge that if she was looking down at them. When she said they looked alike, both with very short dark hair, he pulled her up again and asked if she was sure about that.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Charlie sobbed. ‘I couldn’t see them that clearly, the sun was in my eyes.’ She said she guessed them to be in their thirties, and they were both clean-shaven.
    ‘They weren’t Chinese then?’ he asked.
    ‘No, of course not.’ She was surprised by such a question. Apart from her father she didn’t know any Chinese people.
    The man shrugged. ‘That’s a shame, they might have been easier to trace. Where is your father, Charlie?’
    Charlie faltered. ‘I don’t know exactly, he’s away on business.’
    ‘When are you expecting him home?’
    She had no choice but to say she didn’t know that either, and by the time she had admitted she had no contact telephone number for him, or even an address, and he had been gone for some weeks, she knew it was as obvious to this policeman as it was to her that Jin’s long absence and the attack on her mother were inextricably linked.
    ‘Has he ever been away before and failed to contact you and your mother?’
    ‘Yes,’ Charlie said weakly. This wasn’t strictly true, a week was the longest they’d ever gone without contact, but in the circumstances she thought it better to lie. ‘He goes to places it’s difficult to phone from.’
    ‘Did he take his car with him?’
    ‘Yes, he always does.’
    ‘Well, where does he leave it when he goes abroad? At the airport, a friend’s home, or does he drive it across to the Continent?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. She’d never thought of that before, all she ever saw was him driving off in it, and coming back in it. His navy-blue Rover was as much part of her father as his dark suits and briefcase. ‘I think he takes it on the car ferry sometimes, but I don’t know for certain.’
    The questions went on and on and most she had no answer for. Did her father have an office in London? What shipping company did he use for his imports? Did he have any business partners? Who was his closest friend?
    ‘You are sixteen, Charlie,’ the policeman said at length, looking at her intently. ‘I find it very strange that you know so little about your father’s business. Can you tell me why this is?’
    ‘Dad doesn’t talk about business when he gets home,’ she said indignantly. She felt the man was suggesting she was stupid as well as a liar. ‘Sometimes he talks about the things he has bought, like a new batch of rugs, or where he’s been, but that’s all. There are so many other things to talk about.’
    *
    By eight o’clock that evening Charlie was beside herself with anxiety, fluctuating between bouts of pacing up and down the small waiting room and sinking into a chair and sobbing hysterically. Her mother was still in the operating theatre and the nursing staff were unable to make any predictions about whether she