8 a.m. The trouble with the search for Molly Carraway was that they had so little to go on. Nothing, really. Where do you start when a girl is missing? Police protocol sounds simple and clear – at the place where she was last seen. You study any CCTV footage for clues and then spread out like a spider’s web. They’d done all this and it had led nowhere. Sure, they watched Molly flirting, getting drunk, dancing showily – arms right up in there. Joanna made a face. Even the girl’s armpits were beautiful. She made a mental note to book in for a leg, underarm and ‘honeymoon’ wax before the great day. When was she going to have the time? Telephone calls to all of Molly’s friends whose numbers Clara had supplied proved equally futile. Most hadn’t seen her since her last day at school, Friday the third. Patches yielded no further physical clue other than the gold earring. Initial forensic tests on the earring had confirmed what Joanna had suspected: the presence of blood and a tiny piece of human tissue, which had been sent for DNA analysis.
