Ruth Rendell's nineteenth Chief Inspector Wexford mystery is as taut and atmospheric as anything she has ever written.

'I've just heard a crazy thing. A woman phoned to say she and her husband went to Paris for the weekend, leaving their children with a -well, teen-sitter, I suppose, got back last night to find the lot gone and naturally she assumes they've all drowned. It's pretty bizzare, isn't it? The teenagers are fifteen and thirteen, the sitter's in her thirties, they can all swim and the house is miles above the floods.'

The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of Giles and Sophie Dade, let alone the woman who was keeping them company. This was an investigation which would call into question many of Wexford's assumptions about the way people behaved.

Read by Christopher Ravenscroft.

3 hours on 2 cassettes