He opens a satchel and hands me a ring-bound folder of crime-scene pictures. The first images are location shots of the farmhouse taken from every angle. For a hundred yards in every direction the pristine snow is untrammeled. No footsteps. No tire tracks. No signs of life.

The images move closer, skirting the fire engines and showing the shattered front door. The interior shots reveal a clean, comfortable house with no immediate signs of a disturbance apart from the evidence markers on the floor.

Taking a photograph from the folder, I prop it on a chair in the sitting room. I choose a second image, this one of William Heyman, and place it on the kitchen table. He's lying on his stomach, head to one side, blood pooling beneath his cheek.

Closing my eyes, I try to picture that night. A blizzard raged outside, groaning through the roof beams and rattling the windows. The power lines were down. The Heymans lit candles on the stairs and in the kitchen. They were sitting in front of the open fire.

A teenage girl knocked on the front door. Wet. Cold. Covered with scratches. She wasn't barefoot, but she was wearing a floral dress and perhaps other clothes that aren't here anymore.

William and Patricia Heyman weren't living in the area when the Bingham Girls went missing. They moved into the farmhouse a year later. The girl who came to their door was a stranger. They took her in, drew a bath, found her fresh clothes and dried her shoes by the fire.

She told them the story and William Heyman called 999, but the switchboard was overloaded and he was put on hold. Someone else was outside in the blizzard, following Natasha.

The attack was sudden... fierce. Mr. Heyman turned and tried to run. He was struck from behind before he reached the kitchen. He crawled a dozen feet before dying, smearing the tiles with his blood.

The weapon? Something blunt and heavy: an axe perhaps. I noticed a woodpile with a chopping block at the side of the farmhouse.

Natasha was upstairs in the bath. She must have heard the commotion. Pulling on her clothes, she smashed the bathroom window and crawled through, cutting herself on the broken gla.s.s.

Patricia Heyman fled upstairs but the killer followed. She tried to barricade herself in the bedroom but the lock didn't hold.

Looking at the photographs, I notice little evidence of fire in the hallway but once inside the main bedroom the visual impact of the blaze is instantly clear. It burned intensely over a few square feet, yet covered every surface of the room in oily black soot, creating a strange "shadowland."

The only "un-sooted" item on the bed is a blanket covering the body. It was placed on Mrs. Heyman after the fire. Augie Shaw wanted to shield her, to protect her privacy. He's a schizophrenic. Interpreting his actions is perilous. It still doesn't make sense. Why would he kill her, burn her body and then tenderly protect her modesty with a blanket?

Whoever killed the Heymans worked calmly and quickly, wiping benches and pouring bleach, removing traces of his presence. He didn't come prepared. He made do. He didn't plan ahead, but neither did he panic. He stayed afterwards to clean up or came back later.

Meanwhile, Natasha fled from the farmhouse, barefoot and bleeding, across a silent landscape. She knew he was coming... following...

Some girls are cutters or slicers or jabbers. Some are bulimic or anorexic. I'm a runner and a writer. I jot things down. Messages. Shopping lists. Quotes. Names. Ever since I learned how to write I've been filling exercise books, notepads, journals and diaries.

I like words. Sometimes they pop into my head randomly or I see them out of the corner of my eye, like shadows or flashes of light or stray eyelashes. I have favorites. Incandescent is a good word. So is serendipity. Epic. Perpendicular. (Tash said I only like it because it has a "d.i.c.k" in it.) Audacious. Rapscallion. Oxymoron. Hullabaloo.

I have three exercise books, which I keep hidden beneath my mattress. I write in the corner beneath the ladder, just in case the camera is watching.

When I write things down, I own them. They're no longer hanging in mid-air like cartoon bubbles or wisps of smoke. They're made real. Solid. Conversation doesn't last. Spoken words fade. We stop listening. Forget.

This is what I wrote down this morning.

I dreamt last night that I had a mono-brow.

Cramps. My period is coming.

Spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s... again.

The gas bottle is running out.

Must wash socks, but I'm wearing every pair.

Before I was taken, my lists were very different. I used to write down why I was unhappy.

Because Mum and Dad row all the time.

Because I'm ugly.

Because I'm not a vampire.

Because my room's a mess.

My handwriting is getting smaller and smaller, as though I'm shrinking. The real reason is that I'm running out of pages so I try not to waste the margins or the white s.p.a.ces, filling them with words to pa.s.s the time. I have one page left after this one. Every word has to count.

Filling hours. Wasting days. Tash cut up our magazines and made a collage on the wall, sticking photographs and words together to form these weird worlds where people have dog heads and bikini bodies. It's really clever because if you stand at the far side of the room you can see that all the random images and letters form a bigger picture-a portrait of a girl. Tash said it was of me, but I'm not that pretty and n.o.body will ever paint a picture of me.

You're probably thinking I have low self-esteem. My mother taught me to lower my expectations. She was a debutante and a model at motor shows, but she talks as though she was the muse to Yves Saint Laurent and Versace.

And she makes out that her family was wealthy and upper cla.s.s, but I know she came from Brighton where Gran and Granddad had a bed and breakfast on the seafront and they sent her to the local grammar school.

I don't know what my dad sees in Mum-apart from her looks, of course-but beauty is only skin deep and short-lived and in the eye of the beholder. I know my cliches. In their wedding photographs, my mother looks like Natalie Portman and Daddy looks like Natalie Portman's father, walking her down the aisle.

I don't have his patience or his sense of duty when it comes to loving Mum. "Anything for a quiet life," he used to say. I can give you more cliches: don't rock the boat or make waves or upset the apple cart.

Mum was always going off to health spas because she needed to recharge. Daddy didn't seem to mind because he could relax for a week. When she came home she'd throw these lavish parties, filling the house with freeloaders and hangers-on, who would eat our food and drink our booze, while she played lady of the manor.

I used to dream about leaving home. I wanted to go somewhere where I could lose myself. Bingham isn't big enough to get lost in. It's boring. Dullsville. It's like going to a relative's house when you know in advance where you're going to eat and refuel and what songs you're going to sing and what color cordial makes you throw up. And when you arrive, someone is going to pinch your cheek and tell you how much you've grown.

I don't know why I'm writing stuff like this down. I don't imagine anyone will ever find my notebooks or read them. And if they do, I don't know if they'll be young and sad. That's the sort of reader who will understand me: young and sad and lonely.

15.

The main doors of the church are shut, but I find a smaller door at the side of the south transept. Dr. Leece's wife told me that I'd find him here. Stepping inside, I let my eyes adjust before searching along the high-backed pews, looking for movement or a silhouetted head.

From somewhere above me, an organ strikes up in a blast of music that vibrates the air and shakes dust from the beams. Following the sound, I climb the stairs to the choir loft. John Leece is sitting with his back to me at an organ keyboard, facing a wall of pipes and plugs. Working his feet and hands, he produces deep resonant chords that fill every corner of the church.

As the final notes fade, he folds the sheet music. I clear my throat and he turns, blinking, his eyes floating behind thick lenses.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you," he says.

"I was enjoying the music."

"I play here every Sunday," he says, packing away his things.

"That piece didn't sound very religious."

He glances at me guiltily.

"I'm sure G.o.d won't mind me rocking it up occasionally. How did you find me?"

"Your wife."

Dr. Leece looks at his hands, closing his eyes for a second.

"You've come to ask me about the post-mortem?"

"Yes."

"Are you a Christian, Professor?"

"I'm not really anything."

"I was an altar boy. I even thought about becoming a priest, but I became a doctor instead."

The pathologist is staring at his hands, turning them over as though studying them for the first time.

"I have done more than four hundred post-mortems, but nothing like the one yesterday. Every body presents a new challenge. It's like reading a road map of broken bones, scars and diseases, but you expect there to be certainties; things you know are true."

There is a chair in the corner. I pull it closer. With barely any inflection in his voice, he relates the details of the post-mortem, describing the various tests and measurements, screening for drugs and a.n.a.lysis of stomach contents.

"She was chronically underweight, physically stunted, with anemia, Vitamin D and iron deficiencies, skin lesions and sores."

"Best guess?"

"She was imprisoned away from the natural light."

"For how long?"

"Months rather than weeks."

"Years?"

"Quite possibly. There were twin lateral scratches on both her hips, suggesting she may have squeezed out of somewhere narrow."

"The bathroom window at the farmhouse?"

"No, somewhere else." Dr. Leece opens his hands. "She cut her forearm on the bathroom window. The lateral scratches were made earlier."

"How much earlier?"

"A few hours."

He unrolls his sleeves and b.u.t.tons the cuffs.

"Ever heard of Locard's Exchange Principle?"

"No."

"It's a theory developed by Edmond Locard in the nineteenth century. It states that whenever someone comes into contact with another object or person, there is a minute exchange of particles. I found several fibers in Natasha McBain's hair and beneath her fingernails-synthetic material, a dark color, totally different to her clothing."

"When you examined Augie Shaw's clothes-did you find similar traces?"

Dr. Leece shakes his head. "Her dress was heavily soiled. I've done an early a.n.a.lysis. The dirt is a conglomerate of things-plants, animal matter, microscopic particles of gla.s.s, paint, cement and machine oil..."

"An industrial site?"

"There were also traces of creosote and chlorinated hydrocarbons. Creosote has been used to treat railway sleepers and chlorinated hydrocarbons can create all sorts of things: pesticides, plastic, synthetic rubber, you name it. I've sent the samples to a lab in Switzerland that specializes in identifying contaminants. It may give us an idea of the industrial process."

"What about her stomach contents?"

"She hadn't eaten in her last twelve hours. There were traces of vegetable matter and meat, but I won't have a definitive answer until tomorrow."

He pauses for a moment, gazing past me at a stained gla.s.s window showing the apostles at the last supper.

"She was circ.u.mcised," he whispers.

"I know."

"The procedure was poorly executed but required some medical knowledge. She could have died of infection." The pathologist lowers his forehead, faltering. "Why was it done at all?"

I don't answer him.

"How far could she have walked in a blizzard in those clothes and shoes?"

"Not more than an hour or two."

I make the calculation: four to seven miles, depending upon the terrain.

"Natasha was wearing an ankle bracelet," says Leece. "A silver chain, not expensive. I went back over the old case files-there was a list of the clothes they might have taken with them. Jewelry was mentioned."

"Did Natasha have an ankle bracelet?"

"No... Piper Hadley had one."

The church grows even quieter, as though someone has turned the volume down, m.u.f.fling our voices. Piper Hadley has rarely been mentioned in the investigation, yet she's like a jagged hole at the center of every scenario. A silent victim.

Outside, I breathe in the cold air, smelling wood smoke and chestnuts roasting over charcoal. I buy a bag from a man on the corner, peeling off the blackened skins and tasting Christmas. People pa.s.s me on the wet pavements, hunched and hurrying, carrying bags full of Christmas presents and groceries. They have no idea how the world has changed since yesterday.

A ridge of lead-colored cloud is burning like magnesium along the edge of the horizon, silhouetting the rooftops, making the dark seem darker. Stillness gathering.

I once thought of studying meteorology to learn how it works, the flow of things, air currents, wind, clouds, circling the earth. I thought the planet might be easier to understand than the mind.

Shifting my weight from one foot to the other, I wait for Mr. Parkinson to fall into step inside me. Together we walk back to the hotel, going over the details again. One girl escaped. One remains elusive.