Mitchell entered his superior's office in response to the summons he had received, leaving Melissa to secure Oliver Ryder in one of the station's two cells.

"How's the investigation going?" Stevens asked once his sergeant was seated. "Have you make any progress?"

"If you mean with what happened to Georgina, then no; all I've got on that front so far is the theory that Oliver got confused about whether Georgina was his cousin or his girlfriend, and killed her when she rejected him after he made a move on her," Mitchell answered.

"Is that why you brought Oliver in?"

Mitchell shook his head. "No. He's here for assault and resisting arrest. He attacked Kieran Wright, and Mel caught a wallop while trying to break the two of them up; she's going to have a lovely bruise come morning, thankfully, that's all she suffered."

"Okay, so you've got nothing on Georgina's murder so far, beyond a theory that doesn't have anything to back it up. What about Lucy's apparent disappearance? Have you got anything on that?"

"I still don't know where she is," Mitchell admitted. "But I have discovered that she came back to the village yesterday afternoon to meet someone. I don't yet have proof of who the someone she was meeting is, but I've got reason to think it's Zack Wild..."

"The gentleman who found Georgina's body this morning?" Stevens asked, surprised. "Why would Lucy have wanted to see him?"

"Because, according to what I've discovered, she wants to become an author, and she wants whatever help he can give her." Mitchell allowed that to sink in. "Lucy's best friend, Kelly Hunter, told us about her desire to be an author, and we found evidence of that when we searched her room; we also found that after she returned home yesterday afternoon, and before she left again, she visited Mr Wild's website, she also took a number of books written by Mr Wild with her when she left the house."

"That's all well and good, Lewis, but have you got any proof that Lucy actually visited Mr Wild? Have you asked him about it?"

"He wasn't home when Melissa and I went to speak to him, we're going to try again later. We do have confirmation that Lucy went to Mr Wild's house, though, and that she went inside, she was seen being let in yesterday afternoon around two."

"Did she leave again?"

"No idea on that score. Kieran, he's the one who saw Lucy go in, was down the road, fixing his car for about twenty minutes and didn't see her leave."

"So Mr Wild is the last person to have seen Lucy?"

"As far as I know right now. Hopefully I'll be able to confirm that when I catch up with Mr Wild."

Inspector Stevens contemplated his sergeant for a short while. "Do you think Mr Wild could be involved in Georgina's murder and Lucy's disappearance?" he asked.

"I don't want to leap to conclusions based on what may just be a coincidence, but he found Georgina's body in an out of the way place, where almost no-one goes, and he's currently the last person known to have seen Lucy. He's also the person in the village we know the least about. Again, I don't want to leap to any conclusions," Mitchell said, before doing exactly that, "but I can't imagine anyone else from the village being a killer; we know them, if that was the sort of person they were, we'd have discovered it by now." He ground his teeth in frustration. "This would be a lot easier if we knew anything about Zack Wild beyond what he's told us, which isn't much. I know he's definitely an author, but we don't know anything other than that for sure."

"In that case this might help." Stevens slid a file across the desk to his subordinate. "It's only a summary of Mr Wild's service record with the Southampton police, but it's bound to give you some idea of the sort of person he is. The full file is being couriered over, it should be here later this afternoon. I've added whatever other information I've been able to find out so far, it's not a huge amount, but it might help." He watched Mitchell pick up the file and flip open the cover. "You're due a break, why don't you have a read of that while you take it, then you can take John Ryder into town to identify Georgina."

Melissa used the excuse of bringing her superior a mug of coffee to slip into Sergeant Mitchell's office so she could try and find out what the file Inspector Stevens had got said.

"Here, I thought you could do with a fresh coffee," Melissa said, putting the mug down in front of Mitchell, after moving the old, cold coffee out of the way.

"Thanks," Mitchell said absently, without looking up from the file he was reading.

"Is there anything good or interesting in there?" she asked. She had time to sip about a quarter of her own coffee before she got a response.

"Haven't you read it?" Mitchell asked, and then immediately answered his own question. "No, of course you haven't. Here, have a read." He passed the folder over. "It makes for interesting reading," he said, his attention no longer on the file, he lifted the mug, so he could sip his coffee.

It was interesting, Melissa thought as she read, but also very brief. It took her barely a minute to get through the file, which only made her more curious about the author who had moved into the village and gotten himself mixed up in the first murder there had been in more than a decade.

"It makes Mr Wild seem a viable suspect, doesn't it," Mitchell said. "Multiple violent incidents, several against women; it's not proof positive, but it definitely looks like he could be our murderer to me. Don't you agree?" he asked of his partner.

"Not really," Melissa disagreed with a shake of her head. "We've got nothing but a few facts and coincidences. The coincidences mean nothing right now, and we don't know enough about the supposed violent incidents to tell if they have any relevance; for all we know he could have been justified in the things he did. If you're going to make Mr Wild a suspect on that basis, you've got to make Oliver one as well, he's definitely violent, and he's connected to both Georgina and Lucy – one's his cousin and the other's his girlfriend, if that's the right word to describe their relationship."

"Surely you think Zack Wild's a better suspect than Oliver," Mitchell said, speaking with a mouth so full of tuna mayo sandwich that it was almost impossible to make out what he was saying. "We know Oliver, we don't know Zack Wild."

"That doesn't mean anything," Melissa protested. "We still don't know there's a connection between what happened to Georgina, and Lucy's disappearance; we still don't know that Lucy has disappeared, she could be anywhere, doing anything. Even if Lucy has disappeared, and there is a connection, we don't have a clue what it is or who's responsible, because we don't have a clue what happened to Georgina before she was found this morning. For all we know, it could be just about anyone in the village who's responsible."

"Oh, come on, Melissa, you can't believe that someone we know could have done what we saw this morning."

Melissa didn't respond to that, instead she took a chocolate bar from her pocket, tore open the wrapper, and stuffed half of it into her mouth to keep her from saying what she was thinking.