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gone—vanished.’
    He spoke with deliberate slowness, as if to a foreigner.
    ‘OK—I hear you. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere to cool off after your row?’
    ‘I checked everywhere, and besides her phone was there, her handbag, jacket and everything. She wouldn’t go out without her things. And the flat… it was different somehow. That’s why I called the police.’
    ‘I’m positive she’ll turn up soon,’ I said in a vain attempt to soothe him. ‘Why—it’s only just gone half nine—she might walk in here at any moment.’
    ‘Believe me—she won’t. To be honest with you, it looks like…’
    He paused as he wiped away a tear from his face and gave a strange hiccupping sob.
    ‘It looks like… she’s been abducted.’
    ‘
Abducted
?’
    I hadn’t meant to sound disbelieving, but the idea did seem farfetched.
    ‘There’s stuff the police told me not to mention…’
    Until this point, I’d suspected Ryan of overdramatizing. Now, the gravity of the situation hit me full on. It wasn’t Isabelle’s style to flounce off and miss work. The suave little bitch would show up and put on a professional performance irrespective of her personal life. The police were taking her absence seriously, plus Ryan’s grief was real and visceral.
    ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ I asked, switching into my professional sympathy mode.
    ‘Nothing, apart from keeping your mouth shut,’ he said baldly.
    ***
    ‘Charming,’ said Lisa after Ryan had left. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
    ‘Isabelle’s gone AWOL. He’s beside himself.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, ‘after the way he spoke to her on Friday. But fancy little Miss Perfect being late for work, because of a row with her boyfriend...’
    She didn’t even try to conceal her delight at the prospect of Isabelle having blotted her copybook.
    ‘Ryan says she’s been abducted.’
    ‘By who—aliens?’ she snorted.
    ‘Apparently she left her jacket behind, her bag, her phone. He’s called in the police.’
    ‘I say there’s nothing in it—I’d put money on it. Remember the guy who went missing after his stag weekend?’
    Despite my sense of foreboding, I chuckled at the memory. The police were involved then too, and we’d all been worried sick. Finally, it transpired that his friends had bundled his comatose body onto the Inverness sleeper train for a prank.
    ‘This is different,’ I said.
    ‘But it’s far too early to jump to melodramatic conclusions.’
    It puzzled me that Lisa was so unconcerned. I felt much less breezy. With hindsight, there’d been some nasty undercurrents swirling around for a while, which we’d all been too blinkered to notice.
    ‘Who said I was?’
    ‘You seem tense,’ she observed. ‘Is everything OK?’
    I tried not to wince as she patted my arm on the bruises.
    ‘Apart from this, yes.’
    ‘But you had that stressed, haunted look even before Ryan came in, like something freaked you out.’
    I obviously hadn’t done as proficient a job as I’d thought in pulling myself together.
    ‘No—no I’m OK. Anyway, how are you?’ I said, spinning the conversation around to a safer topic. ‘I assume you came to see me for a reason. Have you changed your mind about leaving?’
    ‘No—I came to tell you I’m definitely off—that pathetic bonus is the last straw. Why fight a foregone conclusion?’
    Why indeed?
    ***
    I figured Smithies should hear the news from me rather than a distorted version via the office rumour mill.
    He was speaking on the phone when I arrived—his back to the door, and admiring his reflection in the glass. I took in the details of his office as I waited for him to finish his conversation.
    The desk was bare, either in compliance with the firm’s ‘clear desk’ policy or because he didn’t have enough work to do. One of the glass wall panels had been replaced by an opaque partition, now filled by a jumbo-sized portrait of his wife and children water