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found was a small pouch of eye shadows and mascara hidden under some T-shirts at the back of a drawer. Apart from the schoolwork there were no personal items: no diaries or letters that were going to help them out.
    Mariner heard the front door slam and, moments later, a small figure appeared in the doorway. Yasmin’s younger brother.
    Mariner smiled. ‘Hello. It’s Sanjit, right?’
    A nod. ‘You’re a policeman?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Are you looking for Yaz?’
    ‘Yes. Have you got any idea where she might have gone?’
    The boy shrugged. ‘She doesn’t talk to me, except for a bit of verbal abuse.’ He made a quacking gesture with his fingers and thumb and Mariner curbed a smile.
    ‘What are you looking for?’ Sanjit asked.
    ‘Anything that might give us clues about where Yasmin is.’
    ‘Have you found her secret box?’
    ‘No.’
    Without another word the boy dropped to the floor and wriggled on his belly under the bed, emerging minutes later with a small, cardboard shoebox. ‘She doesn’t think I know about it.’ He handed it to Mariner. Inside were an ornately carved rubberwood chest and a ceramic moneybox in the shape of a teddy bear. Mariner lifted the lid of the first. It contained more make-up, a leaflet for the Tate Modern, illustrated with a Lucien Freud nude, and a couple of tickets for the London Underground dated March of that year. ‘Did you go down to London too?’ Mariner asked.
    ‘No, she went with her school.’
    Euston to Embankment. Must have been a special trip if she’d preserved the tickets. And why two tickets? Yasmin and Suzanne?
    The moneybox, when he prised off the stopper in its base, contained three ten-pound notes and some loose change.
    ‘It’s her pocket money,’ said Sanjit. And surely the sort of money Yasmin would have taken with her if the disappearance had been planned.
    ‘Anything unusual happen lately?’ Mariner asked, replacing the items. ‘Yasmin fall out with anyone?’
    Sanjit rolled his eyes. ‘She’s always arguing with Dad, stomping around and slamming doors. We have to walk on egg boxes all the time,’ he said, in an approximation of the phrase.
     
    The woodentops had given the house a good going-over but found no sign of Yasmin nor anything else unusual, and nearly an hour after their arrival, Mariner pulled out of the drive hardly any the wiser.
    ‘Not much to help us then,’ he said. ‘All we know is that Yasmin had a row with her dad about staying at Suzanne’s, then apparently Mum gives in while Dad’s away and says she can go. Did you ask Grandma about that?’
    ‘Yes, and she has views all right although she was coy about expressing them. Naturally she sides with her son and sees this as a direct consequence of Yasmin’s mother flouting his wishes.’
    ‘So she blames Shanila rather than Yasmin.’
    ‘Not exactly. She just implied that Yasmin is no different from your average teenager, and that it’s her parents’ duty to give her strict boundaries. Righteous women shall be obedient. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish . It’s what the Koran says.’
    ‘Then perversely, when her mother lets her go beyond those boundaries, Yasmin decides not to go to Suzanne’s after all, but for some reason doesn’t make it home either.’
    ‘Because she’d had enough of rules and wants out completely?’
    ‘She didn’t take any money with her.’
    ‘It’s not necessarily long term. It could just be a gesture. Giving her old man the finger because of the hard time he’s been giving her?’
    ‘Anything’s possible.’ And that was the whole problem. There was nothing to narrow the scope of the search.
     
    Back at Granville Lane DS Tony Knox had requisitioned the CCTV footage from Kingsmead Station, where Yasmin boarded her train.
    ‘What’s it like?’ Mariner asked as they settled down to watch.
    Knox shrugged indifferently. ‘See for yourself.’
    The black and white image was crude and snowy. Knox perched on a