Pip:

So immediately the police are looking for any clues or suggestions that the missing person has been the victim of a crime?

Angela:

Absolutely. If the circumstances of the disappearance are suspicious, officers are always told ‘if in doubt, think murder.’ Of course, only a very small percentage of missing person cases turn into homicide cases, but officers are instructed to document evidence early on as though they were investigating a homicide.

Pip:

And after the initial home address search, what happens if nothing significant turns up?

Angela:

They will expand the search to the immediate area. They might request telephone information. They’ll question friends, neighbours, anyone who may have relevant information. If it is a young person, a teenager, who’s missing, a reporting parent cannot be assumed to know all of their child’s friends and acquaintances. Their peers are a good port of call to establish other important contacts, you know, any secret boyfriends, that sort of thing. And a press strategy is usually discussed because appeals for information in the media can be very useful in these situations.

Pip:

So, if it’s a seventeen-year-old girl who’s gone missing, the police would have contacted her friends and boyfriend quite early on?

Angela:

Yes of course. Enquiries will be made because, if the missing person has run away, they are likely to be hiding out with a person close to them.

Pip:

And at what point in a missing persons case do police accept they are looking for a body?

Angela:

Well, timewise, it’s not . . . Oh, Pippa, I have to go. Sorry, I’ve been called into my meeting.

Pip:

Oh, OK, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me.

Angela:

And if you have any more questions, just pop me an email and I’ll get to them when I can.

Pip:

Will do, thanks again.

Angela:

Bye.

I found these statistics online:

80% of missing people are found in the first 24 hours. 97% are found in the first week. 99% of cases are resolved in the first year. That leaves just 1%.

1% of people who disappear are never found. But there’s another figure to consider: just 0.25% of all missing person cases have a fatal outcome. 5

And where does this leave Andie Bell? Floating incessantly somewhere between 1% and 0.25%, fractionally increasing and decreasing in tiny decimal breaths.

But by now, most people accept that she’s dead, even though her body has never been recovered. And why is that?

Sal Singh is why.

Two

Pip’s hands strayed from the keyboard, her index fingers hovering over the w and h as she strained to listen to the commotion downstairs. A crash, heavy footsteps, skidding claws and unrestrained boyish giggles. In the next second it all became clear.

‘Joshua! Why is the dog wearing one of my shirts?!’ came Victor’s buoyant shout, the sound floating up through Pip’s carpet.

Pip snort-laughed as she clicked save on her production log and closed the lid of her laptop. It was a time-honoured daily crescendo from the moment her dad returned from work. He was never quiet: his whispers could be heard across the room, his whooping knee-slap laugh so loud it actually made people flinch, and every year, without fail, Pip woke to the sound of him tiptoeing the upstairs corridor to deliver Santa stockings on Christmas Eve.

Her stepdad was the living adversary of subtlety.

Downstairs, Pip found the scene mid-production. Joshua was running from room to room – from the kitchen to the hallway and into the living room – on repeat, cackling as he went.

Close behind was Barney, the golden retriever, wearing Pip’s dad’s loudest shirt: the blindingly green patterned one he’d bought during their last trip to Nigeria. The dog skidded elatedly across the polished oak in the hall, excitement whistling through his teeth.

And bringing up the rear was Victor in his grey Hugo Boss three-piece suit, charging all six and a half feet of himself after the dog and the boy, his laugh in wild climbing scale bursts. Their very own Amobi home-made Scooby-Doo montage.

‘Oh my god, I was trying to do homework,’ Pip said, smiling as she jumped back to avoid being mowed down by the convoy. Barney stopped for a moment to headbutt her shin and then scarpered off to jump on Dad and Josh as they collapsed together on the sofa.

‘Hello, pickle,’ Victor said, patting the sofa beside him.

‘Hi, Dad, you were so quiet I didn’t even know you were home.’

‘My Pipsicle, you are too clever to recycle a joke.’

She sat down next to them, Josh and her dad’s worn-out breaths making the sofa cushion swell and sink against the backs of her legs.

Josh started excavating in his right nostril and Dad batted his hand away.

‘How were your days then?’ he asked, setting Josh off on a graphic spiel about the football games he’d played earlier.

Pip zoned out; she’d already heard it all in the car when she picked Josh up from the club. She’d only been half listening, distracted by the way the replacement coach had stared bewilderedly at her lily-white skin when she’d pointed out which of the nine-year-olds was hers and said: ‘I’m Joshua’s sister.’