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were so beloved of a certain generation of town planners. Most of it was Victorian or Regency terraces crowded close onto narrow pavements with the occasional half-timbered chunk of the seventeenth century plonked down amongst them.
    Dominic managed to restrain himself from asking the obvious question until we were safely back in the countryside.
    ‘So ghosts and magic are real?’ he said.
    I’d had that question enough times to have an answer ready. ‘There are things that fall outside the parameters of normal policing,’ I said. I find you get two types of police, those that don’t want to know and those that do. Unfortunately, dealing with things you don’t want to know about is practically a definition of policing.
    ‘So “yes”,’ said Dominic.
    ‘There’s weird shit,’ I said. ‘And we deal with the weird shit, but normally it turns out that there’s a perfectly rational explanation.’ Which is often that a wizard did it.
    ‘What about aliens?’ asked Dominic.
    Thank god for aliens, I thought, muddying the water since 1947. I’d once asked Nightingale the same question and he’d answered ‘Not yet’. So I suppose if they were to suddenly turn up they’d be part of our remit. But I hoped they didn’t turn up anytime soon. It’s not like we don’t have enough work to do already.
    ‘Not that I know about,’ I said.
    ‘So you don’t rule them out?’ he said.
    We both had the windows down as far as they would go to try and pick up whatever breeze we could.
    ‘Do you believe in aliens?’ I asked.
    ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘It’s a big universe,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to be totally empty, is it?’
    ‘So you do believe in aliens,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But not that they’re visiting us.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Why would they want to travel all that way?’ I asked.
    We passed through an elongated village that Dominic identified as Luston. Beyond that, the road narrowed and the dense green hedgerows blocked out the view on either side.
    ‘Do you think someone snatched them?’ I said, before Dominic could ask any more awkward questions.
    ‘From two separate households?’ he said. ‘Unlikely. Lured them out, maybe.’
    ‘Internet grooming?’
    ‘Nothing on their computers. At least nothing I’ve been told about.’
    ‘Someone they knew? Or met locally?’
    ‘Let’s hope it’s a local,’ said Dominic.
    Because if it was a local then there’d be a connection. And if there was a connection then sooner or later it could be dug out by the investigation. In the case of Soham the police had their eye on Ian Huntley, the main suspect, from the moment he opened his gob and admitted to being the last person to see the victims alive. Without a connection it came down to hoping they were spotted by the public or came home of their own accord. Or they might be found by the ever-widening search programme – but we didn’t want to think of that.
    Dominic asked where I was staying and I asked him what was available.
    ‘Today?’ he asked. ‘Bugger all. It’s all full of media.’
    ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Do you know anywhere?’
    ‘You can stay in my mum’s cowshed,’ he said.
    ‘Her cowshed?’
    ‘Don’t worry. There’s no cows in it.’
    I’d have looked for a bit more clarification, but I turned a corner and had to brake suddenly to avoid a white TV satellite van which was trying to park in a gap between a Range Rover and a sleazy-looking maroon Polo. I edged past into the Y-junction that formed the heart of the village, but there were so many media vehicles it was hard to see the houses.
    ‘Lock up your sheep,’ muttered Dominic. ‘The circus is in town.’
    He directed me left again, up a lane that ran up a slope.
    ‘Church is that side,’ said Dominic. ‘Rectory on your left, pub is back down the way we came.’
    What I could see of the village was free of rubbish but untidy, long yellow grass obscuring the fences, bushes thrusting