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Reid had to sit still for a few minutes after finishing the email. There was something so strangely hopeful in being judged worthy, but it fought with a bitter weight of guilt at having let Anna down.

Because he hadn’t been there for her. He’d made it impossible for her to contact him, which was basically as bad as turning his back.

Dom tapped on the door as he was trying to gather himself together again.

‘Kit Frankland is here,’ he said. He waved a file at him. ‘You’ll need a scan of these. I’m coming in with you, but I want you to take the lead.’

Reid gave him a crooked smile. Letting him lead the interview was a serious mark of trust when he must have looked like hell.

‘Thanks, mate,’ he replied. ‘I’ll gesture for help if I stop being able to form words.’

He scanned through the notes and felt a heavy sense of worry at the similarities he was seeing. Another young woman in Kit’s friendship group who’d wandered off during a party. Another apparent display of grief from Kit.

He got to his feet and made his stiff way over to the interview suite. He tried to prepare himself for the person Anna had described. For the measured, intelligent man who saw and controlled everyone around him.

It was more than a little surprising to find himself shaking hands with an extraordinarily posh, slightly over-cheerful young man with a babyishly handsome face.

‘I understand you have a few question about… Aria,’ Kit said, his gaze roving over the interview room as if committing it to memory. Reid could imagine how he’d relate this already, telling all of it as a fascinating anecdote to his equally posh friends.

‘We do,’ Reid said, settling down alongside Dom. He had to move his chair a few inches away to make room for Dom’s beefed-up arms. How the man found shirts that fitted him Reid had never understood.

Reid unfolded his notes, trying to mentally rehearse his plan while a large part of him was stuck on how this– this– was the young man Anna had been so mixed up over. This pompous, overbred boy .

He’d been bracing himself not just for an intellectual battle but for a feeling of complete inadequacy in the face of a superior male. And now here he was, sitting opposite a wall of designer aftershave and smugness, wondering what the hell Anna had seen in the guy.

‘OK,’ he said, getting himself together. ‘I think you know we’re now quite concerned for the whereabouts of Ms Lauder.’

Kit nodded, earnestly. And then, with a sudden drop in the cheerful act, said, ‘I… should we call her Anna?’

‘Why would you call her Anna?’ Reid asked.

Kit’s expression didn’t shift as he said, ‘I’m assuming you know who she really is, if you’ve been asked to find her. Was it her dad who raised the alarm?’ Reid felt momentarily unsettled, and then reflected that he might need to reserve some of his judgement on Kit Frankland after all.

‘I should have raised the alarm myself,’ Kit said, quietly. ‘But when I found out… I just thought she’d played me for a fool and then left.’

Reid sighed, with a trace of fellow feeling for Kit Frankland. Perhaps that was what Kit wanted. For Reid to sympathise. But it was impossible not to recognise what he was seeing. It was so very much like Reid’s own confusion over Anna. The questions over whether he’d really known her at all.

‘Before we go on, can you tell me how you found out who she really was?’ Reid asked.

‘My father,’ Kit said, simply. ‘Who says he was tipped off by a friend.’ He gave the ghost of a sigh. ‘But it seems to be fairly widely known. By the time I spoke to Esther, her mother had already told her.’

Reid scrutinised him. ‘And how did that make you feel?’

Kit’s mouth twisted into a smile. ‘Like an idiot. But in some ways… in some ways it was better than what I’d been thinking before.’

‘Which was…’

‘That she’d gone home with another man,’ Kit said. ‘James was pretty sure he saw her leaving with someone, and that was a bit… shit, actually.’

‘It’s a little strange, that,’ Reid said. ‘Because we haven’t yet identified this guy she left with and we haven’t found her leaving on any of the CCTV. Which implies that she may have fled in some covert way, or that someone smuggled her out against her will.’

Kit looked totally confused at this. ‘What… do you mean by “covert”? You mean over the wall or something?’

‘Do you have any reason to think that?’ Reid asked.

‘No,’ Kit said, looking slightly frustrated. ‘I just… I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Did anything happen that could have made her feel threatened?’

Kit looked off to one side, and then said, ‘I don’t…

well…’ He shook his head. ‘I guess maybe what Ryan said spooked her.’ He glanced back at Reid.

‘Ryan told us she wasn’t on the high-performance rowing programme at all.

Or at least he didn’t think so. He met the coach, who apparently had no idea who Aria was.

’ He gave another slightly twisted, humourless smile.

‘Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it.’

‘And Anna knew this?’

‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘I… told her about it. But nobody actually accused her of anything and she was pretty convincing about it being a mistake. I ended up thinking Ryan had got it wrong. And I… Look, I don’t think she would have thought me a threat.

’ He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and said seriously, ‘I would have protected her.’

Is this what she liked about him? Reid thought, realising that he wanted to believe Kit. Though unlike Anna, he had a strong reason not to.

‘You had a room booked, didn’t you?’ Reid said. ‘Is that where you took her?’

Kit looked slightly off balance. ‘I didn’t– I never used the room.’

‘Then why extend the booking for a night?’

He felt satisfaction as Kit’s discomfort visibly increased.

‘You talk about protecting her,’ he said, quietly. ‘But you aren’t very good at protecting the young women in your life, are you? Holly died. And Chloe…’

Reid saw the change in Kit’s face. The way the muscles in his jaw went momentarily slack and then very tight.

‘Why are you bringing that up?’ Kit asked, his voice slightly hoarse.

‘That’s… seriously harsh.’ He shook his head.

‘I would have done fucking anything to protect the two of them. All three of them.’ His jaw worked for a moment.

‘I don’t even give a shit about Anna lying to me.

I’ve still been trying to find her. I went to the police and waited for bloody hours for them to see me last night. ’

‘You also ignored our calls asking you to see us ,’ Reid shot back.

‘Seriously,’ Kit said, somewhere between indignant and earnest, ‘I had no idea you weren’t the same people.

I was waiting to see the police, so I didn’t think I needed to do anything, and then this morning I got asked to come here instead.

Fucking hell,’ he added in a mutter. ‘This is a shitshow. You’re wasting time splitting hairs when she could be–’

‘We’re all working to find Anna,’ Dom said, interrupting in a cheerful but firm voice. ‘This has been our priority since yesterday evening.’

Kit’s gaze went to Reid’s face. ‘Did you get beaten up over this? Is there… does somebody not want her found?’

‘It happened when I went to look at your room in Trinity,’ Reid said coldly. ‘Do you want to explain?’

That silenced Kit. He opened and closed his mouth, and then looked down at his hands.

‘You gave that room to Ryan Jaffett, didn’t you?’ Reid said.

Kit looked up at him and, this time, there was a pleading expression on his face. ‘Look. I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it, but it has nothing to do with any of this.’

‘Regardless, you’re currently shielding someone who attacked an officer,’ Dom said. ‘I’d start talking if I were you.’

Something broke in Kit then, and he sagged.

‘All right. All right. Ryan… he has a problem. When he’s drunk, he gets…

he doesn’t take no for an answer.’ He looked up at Reid.

‘A few weeks ago, before we knew Anna, he did something really stupid. The girl he… The next day, she was telling him she was going to go to the police and the college.’ He gave an angry look.

‘I thought it would be enough to stop him. But then he did the same fucking thing to Anna. But, by then, it was like I was complicit in all of it.’

‘Complicit how?’

‘I should have gone to his college and told them what he told me,’ Kit said, miserably.

‘I, like, justified to myself not doing it because I didn’t have enough details.

And then nothing seemed to happen and I thought maybe it hadn’t been that bad.

Maybe the girl had been upset but not… harmed.

’ He bunched his fist and then flexed his fingers out on the table, his eyes only on them.

‘But yesterday, the shit hit the fan. It turned out Ryan had kept her quiet. He’d fucking filmed some of it and threatened to share it online if she reported him.

And then, during the May Ball, apparently someone went into his room and stole the footage.

So Ryan was freaking out and accusing everyone.

And now he’s hiding somewhere, convinced he’s about to be lynched or arrested and, to be honest, he probably deserves both.

’ Kit let out a long breath. ‘I don’t know who I’m angrier with.

Him, or me. I’ve been letting him get away with this shit.

Even gave him the room, which he’s basically been hiding in for two days. ’

Reid was thinking a lot of things at once: that the footage had been taken by Seaton and was not, in fact, in some student’s hands but hopefully already being accessed by the cyber team. And that he was sure it wasn’t the only footage Ryan had on that phone.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Esther, then. Do you know who her secret boyfriend is?’

Kit looked startled. ‘Beau? I never met him… but I don’t think he can have anything to do with this.

He’s someone she met on holiday. I think he’s probably an Italian waiter or something, but she won’t say.

Apparently they meet up sometimes for fun.

I think she probably wants to be with him but can’t be because she’s too desperate to please her mum. ’

Reid already knew that Kit was wrong on this. Anna had witnessed enough to be sure the boyfriend was an older man in a position of authority. Esther seemed to have kept this from Kit, despite living with him.

But Ryan had known about it. He was sure that was why Esther had supported his presence at the Pitt Club dinner, and why he’d made the dig about Esther being in London with someone her mother wouldn’t approve of. And Esther had been desperate for Kit not to find out the truth.

Which meant it could only be one of three people, didn’t it? The three older men who Kit would go ballistic about her seeing.

‘You weren’t aware it was someone known to you?’ Reid asked him, as though he hadn’t just put all this together. ‘Someone much older than Esther?’

Kit’s expression went slack once again, for a moment, and it was almost satisfying. Kit was clearly– despite initial impressions– in the loop about a lot of things, but this was a total shock to him.

‘I… what?’ Kit gave a short laugh. ‘She said it was nobody I knew. Seriously. Why would she lie about it?’

‘For good reasons, I think,’ Reid said, quietly, to himself. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for all the help, Mr Frankland. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay here and not contact anyone just for now.’

Once Dom Davies had followed him through the door Reid said, ‘We need to look at all the images on Ryan Jaffett’s phone asap. And if that’s not going to be possible in the next half-hour, I need Anna’s father back here.’