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Police face a daunting job trying to find the missing child in
New Zealand's largest city.
They need public help but they also have a lot of methodical,
painstaking investigative work to do.
While there is nothing yet to indicate a sinister side to Aisling Symes's disappearance, it's something police are now very aware of but say the lack of clues is ominous.
Glen Blackwell, a former detective and now private investigator, says it looks more and more likely that there are some suspicious circumstances.
And as abduction becomes a real possibility, the job ahead is huge.
"The random abduction type situation is probably the most difficult to solve because quite often it might not be a premeditated event. It may be an opportunistic situation," says Blackwell.
"Clearly that is the most dangerous scenario because you don't know who you're dealing with."
Covering the basics will be the key in solving the case - an area canvas, background checks, monitoring the borders and more.
Police have already begun profiling people with a criminal history in the area where Aisling disappeared.
"We are profiling people or people that police know of that have, that we have concerns about and we will profile those and we've already begun visiting some people that we have concerns about," Inspector Gary Davey of the Waitakere Police.
Child abduction cases in New Zealand are extremely rare.
In the past year, there were just eight, less than half the 17 cases police dealt with the year before and the majority of those cases were custody related.
The way Aisling has gone missing is highly unusual.
The only case similar was 17 years ago, when two-year-old Amber-Lee
Cruickshank vanished from the southern tip of Lake Wakatipu.
She has never been found, but most cases are resolved.
"I think the police in NZ are at the cutting edge of investigative work where we have some very highly skilled detectives and police officers and I'm sure they are all giving it their absolute best effort," says Blackwell.
Aisling's family and thousands of others hoping that effort pays off.
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