Inspector Stephen Fulcher meets his friend and collleague DCC Ray Hayward at a local diner. Ray is being accused of sexual harrassment.

News of a missing girl, Sian O’Callaghan, spreads across the community while the police interview her boyfriend, Kevin. Steve checks the CCTV footage, where Sian can be seean hour after sending a text to Kevin. As they look into the origin of the phone signal, they deduce that, because of the signal’s triangulation, she must have moved in a car, prompting Steve to ask the police to deploy the dogs and go on the search in the local a. Once there, the helicopter picks up two bodies on the infrared scanners, prompting the police to investigate, where they find a tent and ask the two sleepy campers to come out, who aren’t the people they’re looking for.

DS Bob Cooper interviews a man at a house in the middle of the forest; a suspicious character who heaedd out in the middle of the night to grab some crisps, raising alarm bells immediately. As it turns out, the man does have previous criminal convictions but none of them serious enough to link to abduction or murder.

In the woods, police come across a vital clue in the form of ripped underwear. Consulting CCTV once more, the team find more clues as they see the girl disappear into the bright headlights of an estate car. Convinced she must have got in, Steve raises his suspicions given the car is traveling in the wrong direction to her house. There follows a press conference, at which Kevin makes an appeal for information. Afterwards, Steve learns that Ray hung himself and is told that Ray's car was an estate, and could match the description of that seen in the CCTV footage.