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herself a mental shake and got out of the car, smoothing back her hair and trying to get herself back into the right state of mind for this interview.
    The Duncans were sitting in the living room . Mrs Duncan hunched into an arm chair; her husband perched on the edge of the sofa. The family liaison officer, a PC called Mandy, stood up as the other officers came into the room.  Anderton introduced himself and his team.
    “I’ll make us all some tea,” said Mandy. Kate smiled at her as she walked past to the kitchen. Briefly she wondered how many millions of cups of tea the liaison officers made in the course of their careers.
    Anderton began with a few words of sympathy. Mrs Duncan kept her eyes on the arm of her chair, her fingers rubbing and picking at the fabric.
    “I don’t know what we can tell you,” said Mr Duncan. “We don’t know any more than you do. Elodie went out last night—she was in a band and they were playing at a pub, The Black Horse. I don’t know what happened.”
    “Did you expect Elodie to come home last night?”
    “She was meant to.”
    Anderton leant forward a little.
    “Does that mean that you did expect her home, or not?”
    The Duncans exchanged a glance. Then Mr Duncan said, reluctantly, “We did expect her home but…we weren’t sure whether she would be or not.”
    Mrs Duncan gripped the edge of the seat arm, the bones of her fingers showing bluish-white through the skin of her hands.
    “She’s been so odd recently …” she began falteringly, and then obviously realised the mistake in her use of the present tense. Tears began to stream down her cheeks, but she kept speaking. “She was so secretive, moody—we used to get so upset with one another, I don’t know…I didn’t know what to do.”
    Anderton looked at Kate , and she responded to his unseen cue, taking up the baton.
    “Were you worried when Elodie didn’t come home, Mrs Duncan? Had she done this before —stay out all night without letting you know when she’d be home?”
    Mrs Duncan nodded.
    “The past few months have been particularly bad. She was so argumentative. Nothing her father or I could do was right. Ever since her eighteenth birthday, she’s just run wild.” She stopped abruptly and put her face in her hands.
    Kate turned to Mr Duncan , who was staring blankly at the carpet.
    “Did Elodie have a boyfriend?”
    “No.”
    He said it harshly, almost angrily. Then he seemed to recollect himself. “I’m sorry. She did have a boyfriend for a few months , but that didn’t last long. There wasn’t anyone else.”
    Kate glanced at Olbeck, who looked back at her expressively. How much did these parents actually know of their daughter? She wouldn’t have been the first teenager to hide an unsuitable boyfriend from their knowledge.
    “We’ll need the name of Elodie’s ex-boyfriend, please, and also the names of her friends, the people she used to spend a lot of time with.”
    Neither of the Duncans spoke for a moment. Then Mrs Duncan, fingers unconsciously pulling at the fabric of the chair on which she sat, said , “His name was Reuben, Reuben Farraday.”
    “Is he a pupil at Rawlwood College?”
    “He is not,” said Mr Duncan. “He and Elodie met at a concert. I’m afraid I have no knowledge of where he is now.” He and his wife exchanged another look. “I’m afraid I didn’t much approve of him.”
    “Was that why they split up?”
    “I don’t know.” His tone indicated that he would prefer not to continue talking about this particular subject, which normally would mean that Kate and the team would start to push harder. But these parents had just lost their daughter and, after a tiny shake of the head from Anderton, Kate switched subjects.
    “You mentioned Elodie’s behaviour had changed over the past couple of months, Mrs Duncan. Did you know why that was?”
    Mrs Duncan shook her head. “Every time I tried to talk to Elodie about how badly she was behaving, she just got worse.