I bet you have. When was the last time anyone went missing round here?

Duncan returned a few seconds later with a toothbrush and a triumphant look. “She’s not here,” he said. “I reckon if she was planning on going away for a few days she’d have taken her toothbrush with her. I think something is wrong.”

Alice gritted her teeth.

“Let’s start the ball rolling then, shall we?” Duncan put the toothbrush down on the table and picked up another biscuit. “Taylor, you stay here and get a statement from Mrs Green. Make sure you capture the whole chain of events. I’m going back to Trotterdown. I’ll arrange for someone to check the local hospitals.”

He looked at Alice and clearly felt he should try to sound sympathetic. “Just routine,” he said, “like I said, she’s almost certainly OK.”

“Let’s get started then, Sarge.”

“If you need me,” Duncan replied, “I’ll be in the Unicorn in Trotterdown. I promised the wife a Sunday lunch out.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Let’s start from the very beginning, then,” DC Harriet Taylor said.

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” Alice said, not particularly caring whether she did, “but that Duncan bloke isn’t all there, is he?”

“DS Duncan is just very meticulous.” Taylor took out a sheet of paper from a black file and started to write.

“Mrs Green,” she said.

“Please call me Alice. Nobody calls me Mrs Green. Especially since my Stanley did a runner. If you don’t mind me asking, dear, you’re not from around here, are you? That accent. It’s Scottish, isn’t it?”

“Edinburgh. I transferred to Trotterdown six months ago. You last saw Milly Lancaster at around seven on Friday. Is that correct?”

“Round about then. What with the long days at this time of year, it’s hard to say.”

“And Mrs Lancaster seemed fine to you?”

“Yes. She always does.”

“Do you know if anything was bothering her?”

“No,” Alice said again. “She seemed fine to me.”

“And she didn’t mention anything about going away for a few days?”

“Nothing. And she’d have told me, I can promise you that. Like I said, we were planning on meeting up at the market the next day. Milly had her biscuits and cakes laid out ready to pack. You saw them yourself.”

“Sorry, but I have to go through all these questions. We’d rather repeat ourselves than miss something. So — there was definitely nothing troubling her? Nothing’s happened in the past few days that you can think of? Even something minor? ”

Apart from seeing my dead husband’s hand sticking up under my hollyhocks? “No,” she repeated. “She seemed fine. How many times are you going to ask me the same question?”

“Sorry. I just need to make absolutely sure. You were right to let us know,” Taylor said, “I don’t normally like to sound alarmist, but it is a bit odd, particularly at her age. Could you read through this statement and sign it, please?”

Taylor had been very thorough and she’d got everything in order, but there wasn’t anything irrelevant either. “Everything seems fine.” She signed her name at the bottom of the page. “What happens next?”

“We follow the usual procedures.” Taylor put the statement back in the file. “We see what we find from the hospitals, speak with the neighbours, all that. We’ll look for anything out of the ordinary that might explain Mrs Lancaster’s sudden disappearance.”

“Such as?”

“You’d be surprised. In Edinburgh last year a seventy-two-year-old man went missing. Disappeared into thin air. When we dug further, we found out from his bank accounts that he’d won the lottery. He didn’t want his wife finding out. We tracked him down to the south of Spain. He’s back home with his wife now, funnily enough — he couldn’t cope on his own.”

“Men,” Alice said. “They’re all the same.”

“We’ll be in touch, Mrs Green.” Taylor held out a slender hand. Alice grasped it tightly.

“And please,” Taylor added, “please let us know if your friend does show up.”

After DC Taylor had left, Alice sat in the kitchen and looked out onto the back garden. The bees were at their busiest now, buzzing back and forth between the flowers and the hives.

Milly hasn’t won the lottery. She isn’t sitting on a beach in Spain right now, wondering how to spend her money.

She couldn’t remember if Milly even played the lottery. She remembered the first time they’d met though. It was a summer dance in Plymouth. They were both eighteen years old but Alice seemed years ahead in confidence and experience. Milly had always been the shy, nervous one. While Alice flirted, Milly would always be in the background waiting for something to happen. Alice always thought it was a miracle Milly ever got married.

She’d met Stanley at another Plymouth dance too. Handsome, charming Stanley Green. She ought to have known from the start how it would all turn out. She should have known those blue eyes and crooked smile were trouble.

Alice poured herself a glass of port. It was a bit early but she needed something to calm her nerves. It had been a trying few days. First the finger, and now her best friend had disappeared. The jackdaw started to make a droning sound which was distinctly like the dull detective sergeant.

“Don’t be cheeky.” Alice opened the cage and scraped some dog food onto the tray on the bottom. “You jackdaws will eat anything, but you do love your dog food. But this ‘idiot’ business has got to stop. Do you hear me?” The phone rang as she closed the cage door.

“Mrs Green,” said DC Taylor, “sorry to bother you.”

“Have you found something?”

“I’m sorry, but not at the moment. I just wanted to ask you something. You said you and Mrs Lancaster have been going to the market in Berryton for years.”

“That’s right.”

“But you go there in different vehicles, even though you live just two doors away from each other? You told me you first became suspicious when she didn’t turn up.”

“We used to both go in my van. It’s got more space in the back than Milly’s car. But then Milly started to complain about my driving. She said it scared the life out of her and she reckoned I ruined most of her baking on the way. The van’s old and it gives quite a bumpy ride.”

“So Mrs Lancaster has her own car?”

“She’s got a small Ford. One of those Fiestas, I think.”

“I didn’t see a car there earlier. Where does she keep it?”

“She parks it on the road by the pub. It’s just down the road. The Old Boar. There’s no place to park outside Milly’s cottage.” Parking in Polgarrow had always been a problem.

“Could you do me a favour? I’m stuck in Trotterdown for the next few hours. Could you check to see if Mrs Lancaster’s car is still there?”

“Of course.” Alice wrote down the police woman’s mobile phone number on the pad by the phone and hung up.

Alice locked her front door and walked down the road to the pub. She passed the Old Boar and carried on towards the village store. She crossed the road and returned in the direction of her house. Milly’s blue Ford Fiesta was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DC Taylor and DS Duncan arrived at Alice’s house just over an hour later. Duncan seemed unimpressed. He had changed his clothes, and was now wearing a golf shirt and a pair of black jeans. The smell of stale beer hit her in the face as he came in.

“This is a new development, of course,” he told her. “Mrs Lancaster is missing and now so is her car. I’d say this puts an entirely new perspective on things.”

“What do you mean by that?” Alice asked.

“Mrs Green,” DC Taylor said, “DS Duncan seems to think this is a good sign.”

“And what do you think, dear?” Alice said.