Hiding in the Hills

It’s late at night when 25-year-old Oli calls Gloucestershire Police. His father, Michael, has missed an appointment with his mental health worker, and no-one knows where he is. Michael is known to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and is thought to have stopped taking his medication. When PC Jade Chitcuti leads a search of Michael’s house in Cheltenham, the evidence of his paranoia is clear for police to see. While Michael is not thought to be suicidal, he is known to hide, which could place him at increased risk if he is outdoors and not found quickly.

Michael has been receiving treatment for his mental health for many years and this is not the first time he has gone missing. Oli is becoming increasingly desperate to find a way of helping Michael and restoring him to the happy, cheerful father he remembers. But try as he might, Oli is battling to get his father to acknowledge he is ill and to get him to accept the treatment he needs. When police find Michael hiding after three days out in the open, having had nothing to eat or drink, it’s an indication of how much he will neglect himself in his bid to get away. But what they do not yet know is that this just the start of a number of increasingly erratic and challenging missing episodes that will test both their resources and ingenuity to the limit.