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that everybody heard it from her first. ‘Well, thank the Lord for that. Now, let’s just hope their Nicky’s as lucky, ’cos she’ll not stand much of a chance if that lot don’t pull their fingers out and get back inside to look for her.’
    Assuring the crowd who were beginning to mutter their discontent that the fire crew would do everything in their power to rescue the girl if she was in there, Jay asked if anybody had the parents’ phone numbers.
    ‘If anyone’s likely to have Sue’s, it’ll be Tina Murphy,’ Irene said, pointing out a younger woman who was standing in a garden further down the road. ‘She’s about the only one who still talks to her round here.’ Folding her arms now, she nodded in the opposite direction. ‘You’re best off asking Carole Miller for Terry’s, though. She’s in the dirty house down there; number thirty-two. She’ll probably have his new address, an’ all, ’cos him and the floozie are supposed to have gone and got themselves a fancy new flat, according to her. Not that they bothered inviting any of us lot round for the housewarming, mind.’
    ‘Yeah, ’cos they know what’ll happen if they don’t keep their heads down,’ someone else said nastily.
    Thanking them for their help when she’d taken down all their names, Jay went to speak to Tina Murphy – who, it transpired, did have Sue Day’s number. Ringing it, only to find that it was switched off, Jay left a message asking Sue to contact her urgently. Then she went back up the road to Carole Miller’s house.
    Frustrated to get no answer there after several minutes of knocking, despite being sure that she’d seen somebody moving behind the grimy nets covering the front-room window, she headed back to the station, hoping that she might find something there which would help her to trace the boy’s parents.

3
    Terry was absolutely knackered when he finished his shift. It was gone eleven by the time he drove into the parking lot behind the flats and he just wanted to kick his boots off, eat his dinner, and go to bed. But one glance at the shadows dancing behind the curtains of his fifth-floor living-room window as he traipsed wearily towards the main doors let him know that there would be no peace for him tonight.
    Six weeks they’d lived here, which made six week ends of torture for Terry as Leanne filled the flat up with giggling girls, all trying to out-Mariah and out-Leona each other on the karaoke machine into the early hours. And he wouldn’t have minded if any of them could actually sing, but they were all as bad as each other.
    And the mess  . . . he’d never seen anything like it in his life. Wine and beer spilled all over the new carpet, empty crisp packets and chocolate wrappers stuffed down the new couch cushions, ashtrays full to overflowing. It was like a kids’ party, but way worse than it being your own kids, because at least you could tell them to shut up and clean up. But when it was your girlfriend, you had to respect her right to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted – or so Leanne kept telling him.
    Letting himself into the flat now, Terry hung his jacket up in the hall and opened the living-room door. Leanne and the girls were dancing around in the middle of the floor, while another was using the new coffee table as a stage, her words indecipherable as she belted out whatever song she was butchering through the echo-overloaded microphone.
    Gazing around, Terry felt the irritation churn in his empty gut. Leanne had put them in a lot of debt furnishing this place, insisting that everything had to be brand new and top of the range. Washer/dryer, leather three-piece, flat-screen TV, king-size bed, designer sheets, copper-bottom pots and pans . . . The list had been endless, and Terry had no doubt that the paying back of the credit cards would be, too. And considering that he was the mug who was working every flaming hour under the sun to pay for it, he didn’t appreciate