They entered Ess' apartment in silence. It should have been a rare joy, dining out during the afternoon with a prospect of a couple of uninterrupted days before them. Instead the meal was a mix of forced jollity and awkward silences. Shades headed straight for the fridge and pulled out a wine bottle. He placed a couple of glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa, where Ess had collapsed.

"Champagne?" she asked.

"Well, the best fizzy wine that --" He peered at the label " -- Bulgaria can produce. I know what my girl likes."

He poured a generous helping into each glass, handed one to Ess and slid into the easy chair that she was trying hard not to think of as 'his' chair. She sighed.

"Okay, go on then. Ask."

"Ask? What about? Oh, you mean the private detective following you, secret missions, fights in back alleys and sulky dinners? You mean that? I hadn't noticed."

"I'm not sulking."

"Okay, well, actually, yes, I do have a question. Just one." He took a gulp of the cheap wine, leant forward and looked intensely into her eyes. "What the hell? Just that, really. What the hell, Ess? Just what the hell?"

"Idiot."

"I don't want to interfere. No, that's not true, I do want to interfere. Of course I do. But I won't. I know what you'd say if I did. But seriously, what the hell are you into? I thought you were chasing fairies through the park."

"I am, sort of."

"Sort of?"

She closed her eyes and saw Regents Park, the clump of trees, the clearing... She snapped her eyes open again.

"This missing person thing. It's hard. Most people don't think she's missing, and I think I sort of got warned off this morning, you know, in a 'I really want to do you a favour' sort of way. And then that horrible man following me and I didn't even know. What if you hadn't been there?"

Shades shrugged. "Then you wouldn't have been any the wiser. He was a grunt in a legitimate firm. Most of those lot live hand to mouth but, give or take an illegal hack or two, they're just normal joes making a living. But City Investigations have offices in a few towns. They have to be careful. Anything dodgy and they wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. No, they were hired just to keep an eye on you, nothing more."

"You know them?"

"No." He patted his chest pocket. "I Googled them whilst you were powdering your nose in the restaurant."

Ess decided to ignore the implied interference into her professional life. "But who would hire them?"

"That's the question. You won't find out. The oik in the alley would have told us if he knew, but the company won't. They'd lawyer up in an instant. The more interesting question is why? Find that out and the other stuff will make sense."

"Good, because none of it makes sense at the moment. I'm getting nowhere."

"Is that what you think?"

Ess narrowed her eyes and peered at him over her glass. "What do you mean? Have you been snooping?"

Shades held up his hands. "Me? I wouldn't dare. Seriously, I've not done a thing. But a big firm like that, they don't come cheap. Okay, so they hired a complete plonker to follow you, but I bet they charged their client top dollar for him. So someone thinks you're somewhere close enough to something to hedge their bets with real money. So congratulations. Sounds like you've nearly solved it."

"But I haven't."

"You rattled someone's cage, though. Who have you spoken to?"

Ess counted them out on her fingers. "There's Lord Hever. He was the last person to see her, as far as I know. He took some photos of her. Peter Davenport and his agent, just before that. Her agent. And various models and others at the party"

"So I'm thinking this isn't some kid from a council estate."

Ess hesitated. Did it really matter if Shades knew? After all, he'd just laid himself on the line to protect her. Not that there was any danger to him, he'd moved too powerfully, too gracefully, to be at any risk.

"It's Daisy. You know, the model."

Shades let out a low whistle. "Wow. You don't do things by half, do you. These people at the party, you have their names?"

"No, not really. I mean, it was hardly more than hello, have you seen this girl, goodbye. And like I said, no one's even that sure she's missing."

"I think we can assume she is. Unless she hired the detectives herself to make sure you didn't find where she's hiding, but that's hardly likely. Her agent's not going to want her missing. Think of all that commission she's missing. Hever? The photographer?"

Ess nodded.

"No," said Shades, after a few moments. "I mean, if he's got photos, conceivably they'd be worth more if she was dead, but I can't see that. He's got to be worth a few bob already. You don't see him riding around town on a pushbike. Davenport? Who's he?"

"A politician."

Shades shrugged. "Don't know him. Has he got a motive?"

"I don't know. I mean, I don't know if anyone has. Everyone seems to like her. No one has a bad word to say about her. Well, most people, anyway."

"Who doesn't like her, then?"

"Well, it's not that he doesn't like her. He never said that. But Whitmarsh, Davenport's agent, he showed me a file that made her out to be, well, not a slut exactly, but that was what he was trying to say. Sleeping around. Disappearing for periods at a time. That sort of thing."

"A police file?"

"I think so. It was all blocked out, but police, MI5, someone like that."

"Why would the police have a file on her?"

"I don't know. Something about her meeting people of interest. He didn't seem to think anyone was interested in her, just somebody she might have met."

"When did you speak to this politician?"

"Davenport? Last night."

Shades sat back and frowned, staring through the far wall. Eventually he shook his head. "This doesn't smell right. No way some obscure MP is going to be able to get a file like that in twelve hours, on a Sunday too. Sounds to me as though he had it already, or was fed it from higher up. If the security people have a file on her, then there's a chance they have her, and they set their tame MP onto you to keep it quiet and the detective to keep an eye on you."

"The security forces?"

Shades grunted. "Oh yeah, I forgot. We live in a democracy. Due process and all that."

"But you said it was a legitimate investigation company."

"Yeah, we used them sometimes. Plausible deniability, plus they can do things unmonitored the security forces can't."

'We'. Ess noted. 'We used them'. She filed the slip away for later.

"But if that is the case, you don't have a hope in hell of finding her," he continued. "They'll have her squirrelled away, and they'd stop you if you got anywhere near."

He stared at her for a moment and then sighed. "But of course, that's not going to stop you. So you have to hope they aren't interested in her and it's someone else she's with. I'd chase the money. Who's going to benefit from her disappearance?"

"What makes you think it's about money?"

Shades sighed, picked up the bottle and held it out. Ess held out her glass, wondering where the wine had gone.

"Because the next most likely is it's a sex crime, and in that case you're looking for a body."