It was at this table that she had first decided that she hated DI Bob Rutter, and then realized that she had fallen in love with him. It was on this very chair that she sat – heartbroken – when Rutter’s sense of duty forced him to end the affair, and it was where she had come to grieve when she learned he had taken his own life. But the table held happy memories, too. It reminded her of working with DCI Charlie Woodend, the man who had made her the policewoman – and perhaps even the person – she was now. It recalled for her the joy – even amid the despair – when she finally accepted that Bob’s last wish had been that she should raise his daughter, Louisa, as her own. There were times, it had to be admitted, when she’d considered breaking with the past and using another pub – or, at least, another table – but she knew, deep inside herself, that was never going to happen. Paniatowski took a sip of her vodka and banished the time machine to the back of her mind. ‘All we’ve got so far is a forced window – and a woman who went missing sometime in the last ten hours,’ she said to her team.
