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The details of the two disappearances made their way on to the desk of Sergeant Plender of Rawley CID. He talked about them to the head of Rawley Sub-Division, Detective-Inspector Hurley.
    It was a hot day, with the threat of thunder in the air. Hurley’s office was uncomfortably warm. He was not a man who sought out work. ‘I don’t see what you’re on about, Harry.’
    ‘Two disappearances, sir, two in four days.’
    ‘You can’t say this girl Brown’s disappeared. From the report she simply upped and went. Took all her gear, didn’t she?’
    ‘Yes, but according to Mrs Ransom, that’s her landlady, she was in a fair old state, had been for a couple of days. And she never said she was going, that surprised Mrs Ransom just like it surprised her employer, Darling.’
    ‘The estate agent, isn’t it? I know him by sight.’ Hurley picked his teeth. ‘What sort of girl was she, one for the bright lights?’
    ‘No, sir. Rather shy and reserved.’
    ‘How’d she go, find that out?’
    ‘No. I’ve inquired at the station and bus depot, but they don’t remember. Not that they’d be likely to. We haven’t got a picture.’
    ‘Anyway she left under her own steam, not much doubt about that.’
    ‘I suppose not. If it weren’t for the other case–’
    ‘The au pair girl.’
    ‘That’s right. Anne Marie Dupont. Worked as au pair for a Mr and Mrs Service. I gather she may have been a bit flighty, but nothing serious. She’s left her suitcase behind, clothes, shoes, everything.’
    The inspector looked at the photograph with Plender’s report. ‘Nice bit of stuff. You might say she was flighty and now she’s flown.’ Plender did not laugh. ‘So she’s left her duds behind. It doesn’t mean much. Ten to one she’s working in a strip club now where she doesn’t need ’em. You know what a lot of these au pairs are, on the game only they like to pretend they’re amateurs.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘I see you don’t think I’m right. Well, all you have to do to convince me is show some connection between Miss Brown the secretary-typist and Miss Dupont the au pair. You can’t do that?’
    ‘Not at present.’
    ‘What about their families?’
    ‘The Services have written to Anne Marie’s people in France. I gather her mother’s dead, she lived with her father and an elder sister. Haven’t traced the Brown woman’s family so far.’
    ‘Right. At present then, we go through the usual motions. And I think you’ll find, Harry, that within a week or two one or both of ’em will turn up.’ Hurley wiped his forehead.

Chapter Seven
Plastics People
     
    On the first of June the Vanes moved in to Bay Trees. A company car called every morning for Bob Lowson and took him up to the office, but Bob worked on papers and dictated letters while he was being driven, and Paul was not offered a place in the car. He and Jennifer drove or walked to Rawley Station and took the train. The journey lasted forty minutes, during which Paul read the Financial Times and The Times, and Jennifer turned the pages of a woman’s magazine. Alice was left alone in the house. She made curtains, stained floors, opened accounts with local tradesmen. She was asked to a couple of coffee parties, but mistook the time of the first and arrived when people were leaving, and sat through the local gossip at the second without saying more than a dozen words. She disliked gossip. After returning home she thought, I shan’t ever go there again.
    She spent part of the afternoon of that day looking through a box of old photographs which she found in the pile of stuff stacked in a spare bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the floor with the pictures spread out around her, Jennifer as a baby crawling over the lawn of a flat they had had near Croydon when Paul was working as a salesman, Jennifer as an angel in a school play, Paul and herself at the firm’s annual dance just after he had joined Timbals twelve years ago. Sir Geoffrey Pilling, managing