Bingham shared the feeling of exhaustion he saw in the youth's face as he relived the day his mum ran away, and that was what Bingham wanted. Soon, he hoped, memories would be stirred, old loyalties and disloyalties restored: the passing of time and the slip of the tongue. Slowly, a picture of this woman was forming in his imagination. Bingham wasn't one to be hurried. 'There will be time ... to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet'. Eliot's phrase came back to him as he sat in the family's kitchen pondering and watching the son of Helen Sanders.

The couple had moved to Spain when they retired and were 'odd' in as much as they never came home. They seemed quite content in each other's company, 'always locked in each other's arms', as one of their children said to the newspapers... They were expecting friends round, but when the guests arrived at the villa there was no one to be seen. The place was completely empty, but a meal had been prepared. Various salads were waiting in the kitchen and a rabbit casserole was simmering on the stove...

Robert Courtney had been missing for several months along with a quarter of a million pounds from some Treasury budget. There had been the usual splash in the papers, the usual rush and tear of reporters in the village and then all had gone quiet. The police seemed unable to find the young man, which had puzzled Bingham and annoyed his friend, Simon Brockie, the retired Detective Chief Inspector, who had seemed disinclined to discuss the matter.