out she was suffering from low self-esteem. She didn't think so. She had a reasonably good opinion of herself. But when she looked in the mirror, she couldn't deny what she saw. Nice eyes, though. Blue with streaks of hazel. Unusual.
Whether it was what she saw or what she heard, the woman seemed reassured. "Thank goodness for that," she said. The Fife accent was clear, though the edges had been ground down either by education or absence.
"I'm sorry?"
The woman smiled, revealing small, regular teeth like a child's first set. "It means you're taking me seriously. Not fobbing me off with the junior officer who makes the tea."
"I don't let my junior officers waste their time making tea," Karen said drily. "I just happened to be the one who answered the phone." She half-turned, looked back, and said, "If you'll come with me?"
Karen led the way down a side corridor to a small room. A long window gave on to the parking lot and, in the distance, the artificially uniform green of the golf course. Four chairs upholstered in institutional grey tweed were drawn up to a round table, its cheerful cherry wood polished to a dull sheen. The only indicator of its function was the gallery of framed photographs on the wall, all shots of police officers in action. Every time she used this room, Karen wondered why the brass had chosen the sort of photos that generally appeared in the media after something very bad had happened.
The woman looked around her uncertainly as Karen pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit down. "It's not like this on the telly," she said.
"Not much about Fife Constabulary is," Karen said, sitting down so that she was at ninety degrees to the woman rather than directly opposite her. The less confrontational position was usually the most productive for a witness interview.
"Where's the tape recorders?" The woman sat down, not pulling her chair any closer to the table and hugging her bag in her lap.
Karen smiled. "You're confusing a witness interview with a suspect interview. You're here to report something, not to be questioned about a crime. So you get to sit on a comfy chair and look out the window." She flipped open her pad. "I believe you're here to report a missing person?"
"That's right. His name's-"
"Just a minute. I need you to back up a wee bit. For starters, what's your name?"
"Michelle Gibson. That's my married name. Prentice, that's my own name. Everybody calls me Misha, though."
"Right you are, Misha. I also need your address and phone number."
Misha rattled out details. "That's my mum's address. I'm sort of acting on her behalf, if you see what I mean?"
Karen recognized the village, though not the street. Started out as one of the hamlets built by the local laird for his coal miners when the workers were as much his as the mines themselves. Ended up as commuterville for strangers with no links to the place or the past. "All the same," she said, "I need your details too."
Misha's brows lowered momentarily, then she gave an address in Edinburgh. It meant nothing to Karen, whose knowledge of the social geography of the capital, a mere thirty miles away, was parochially scant. "And you want to report a missing person," she said.
Misha gave a sharp sniff and nodded. "My dad. Mick Prentice. Well, Michael, really, if you want to be precise."
"And when did your dad go missing?" This, thought Karen, was where it would get interesting. If it was ever going to get interesting.
"Like I told the guy downstairs, twenty-two and a half years ago. Friday, 14th December 1984 was the last time we saw him." Misha Gibson's brows drew down in a defiant scowl.
"It's kind of a long time to wait to report someone missing," Karen said.
Misha sighed and turned her head so she could look out of the window. "We didn't think he was missing. Not as such."
"I'm not with you. What do you mean, 'not as such'?"
Misha turned back and met Karen's steady gaze. "You sound like you're from round here."
Wondering where this was going, Karen said, "I grew up in Methil."
"Right. So, no disrespect, but you're old enough to remember what was going on in 1984."
"The miners' strike?"
Misha nodded. Her chin stayed high, her stare defiant. "I grew up in Newton of Wemyss. My dad was a miner. Before the strike, he worked down the Lady Charlotte. You'll mind what folk used to say round here-that nobody