She had spent the last twenty minutes cursing herself: what if the girl had gone straight to her mother’s or to stay with a friend? She tried to convince herself it would have been better to catch her as she was leaving the police station, but experience had taught Ruth that was usually a waste of time: the suspect was invariably with a protective family member or legal adviser and was certainly not in the mood to talk. No, it was best to catch them alone when they were vulnerable, and her flat seemed like the best bet; with the Tribune’s resources, it had not been hard to find out where she lived. It was getting dark. Ruth looked up at the Battersea mansion block, which was a bit run-down for a socialising Chelsea girl; on the wrong side of the river, too. Then again, when Robert ‘Squirrel’ Sykes had called to say that he had tracked Sophie Ellis down, he did mention that she had disappeared off the social scene after her family had run into financial difficulties. Ruth wondered whether the police had heard about the Ellis family money problems.
