“so, Mrs Taylor,” said DCI Bryant, sipping the tea that Suzi had made for him. They were sitting in the Taylors’ kitchen, round their small breakfast table. It was the very early hours of Saturday morning. “Your daughter is disabled …?”

“Yes. She had an accident a few years ago and broke her back. Now she can’t use her legs.”

“What kind of accident …?”

Suzi’s face, already clouded with worry, turned even darker. “Her father was driving. It wasn’t his fault. Another car was on the wrong side of the road and … anyway, do you need to know all the details of that? Will it help find her?”

DCI Bryant blinked. “No. I guess not. I’m sorry to intrude on a painful memory.”

Suzi nodded.

“I imagine it was painful, though,” said PC Middleton.

Suzi looked over. PC Middleton was standing by, his notepad in hand.

“PC Middleton …” said DCI Bryant wearily.

“A car crash … Ow!”

Suzi frowned. “That’s not quite what ‘painful’ means in that—”

“Don’t bother, Mrs Taylor,” said DCI Bryant even more wearily.

“I think it may be more important to tell you about the car, Mr Bryant,” said Sanjay, who was also sitting round the table, as were Prisha, and Colin and Norma Warner, Janet’s parents. It was pretty cramped. Not least because Colin and Norma were both happy to spread themselves out on their chairs. “The one they went away in,” Sanjay added.

“The car? The children were kidnapped by someone driving a car?”

“No, no, no!” said Prisha. “She was driving the car! Amy!”

DCI Bryant turned to Suzi. “Your daughter, a child, was driving a car?”

“It ain’t a car, you big wazzock!” said Colin.

“No, it ain’t! Wazzock!” said Norma.

“Excuse me,” said PC Middleton. “Please moderate your language, sir and madam. Do NOT call the Detective Inspector a wazzock.”

“Oh! What will you charge us with, then?”

“Yeah, charge us with what?”

“Saying the word ‘wazzock’ in a built-up area?”

“Ha ha ha ha, yeah, a built-up area!”

This seemed to be mainly what Colin and Norma did: what some people call “bantz”. Even though their daughter had gone missing.

“I should inform you, Mr and Mrs Warner, that I have written that down,” said PC Middleton.

“Anyway,” said DCI Bryant, “this car. Vehicle. Whatever. The thing Amy was driv—”

“Sir … would you know how many Zs there are in ‘wazzock’?”

“Twelve!” said Norma.

“Yeah, twelve!” said Colin.

PC Middleton scribbled on his pad, then frowned. “That looks a bit strange. Like how you would write down the sound of someone sleeping.”

“Stop writing, Middleton,” said DCI Bryant.

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Zip it, Middleton! ZIP IT!”

“Right you are, sir.”

DCI Bryant sighed very heavily, and then turned back to Prisha.

“You were saying, Mrs Agarwal …?”

“Yes. Well. Colin and Norma are right, it wasn’t a car. At least, not a normal car. It was more like … something you might see in a cartoon.”

“A cartoon? What kind of cartoon?”

“The Simpsons? Spongebob? Minions? Tom and Jerry? The Amazing World of Gumball?”

“Yes. That’s enough cartoon examples now, Middleton.”

“I don’t know,” said Prisha. “Sort of like an old cartoon that had a car from the future in it.”

“This is what it’s like,” said Suzi, holding up her phone. DCI Bryant and PC Middleton peered at it. “It’s a photo my son took. I copied it to my phone.”

“Oh my goodness …” said DCI Bryant.

“Hmmm …” said PC Middleton, holding his pencil up to the phone.

“Don’t draw it on your pad, Middleton.”

“No, sir?”

“No. We have a photo here. So we don’t need you to do a drawing.”

“Right you are, sir.”

“It kind of is like a cartoon car from the future in an old cartoon,” said DCI Bryant.

“Thank you,” said Prisha.

“But it’s different now,” said Sanjay. “The car. It’s bigger and has new bits.”

“But does it still look basically like this?” said DCI Bryant.

Sanjay looked at it. He nodded.

“And where do you think it – they – might be going?”

Everyone looked to Suzi. She shook her head, looked down, and then, after a little while, looked up.

“My guess is – even though I don’t want it to be true – Scotland. Just past the border, to be exact.”