It's just the wind.

She's not coming back.

Early morning, it's dark inside and outside. Dark enough for the trees to look like a monstrous wave moving towards me.

When the sun rises pale and cold, I stand on the bench and look at the brightening sky. A train pa.s.ses. Without it, I might be on another planet. I might be dead. I might be the only person left in the world.

I have no more paper to write upon. I have used up the last page. When George hosed me down, the book was under my pillow. The pages were wet and now they are buckling and curling as they dry. My pencil is just a stub, so I guess it doesn't matter about the paper. From now on I'll have to write in my head. Compose my lists. Gather my thoughts. File and forget.

People say that my generation lacks imagination and that we have a short attention span. We're also super-sized and lazy and have no decent music. This is criticism from a Boomer generation that loves telling stories about the 1960s-the s.e.x, drugs and rock 'n' roll-but who swapped their protest placards for property portfolios and pension funds. My parents are like that: small people with small lives.

When I reached the England Indoor Age Championships and had to go to Birmingham to run, my mother didn't come to watch me. She said running wasn't very ladylike and suggested that I had a mutant gene that didn't come from her side of the family. She also joked about checking my adoption papers or said that she must have s.h.a.gged Seb Coe instead of my father.

She was always talking Dad down like that. "I didn't marry you for your looks," she'd say, "but where are the brains you were supposed to bring to the family?"

After I came second at the nationals for my age group my parents gave me a brand-new Raleigh bike. I was sick of running by then, but I liked my new bike. I rode everywhere, for mile after mile.

My grandmother died that month. When I got the news I rode my bike to Abingdon Station and waited for one of the express trains to come roaring through so I could swear and scream at how wrong the world was to take my gran. That's what I want to do now. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, but this time I want the world to hear me.

18.

Homeopaths say that water can retain a memory; why not walls? They can be scrubbed, graffitied, painted and plastered yet somewhere beneath the layers, the memories remain.

The guard ahead of me has pale blond hair that is combed across his forehead like he's going to primary school. Occasionally, he glances over his shoulder, making sure I'm still following.

"One of my colleagues found him," he says, as we stop outside a cell. "He opened the viewing hatch and saw him hanging there. Raised the alarm."

The cell door opens. I'm expected to look. The guard is still talking. "My colleague wrapped his arms around the prisoner's waist, supporting him until someone could cut him down."

The guard points to the far wall. "The belt was looped around that heating pipe. He must have stood on the bench."

The room has no windows, bare walls and a concrete floor.

"They took him to the Radcliffe, unconscious but breathing. Could be brain damaged. Oxygen deprivation. I heard one of them paramedics talking."

The guard is gazing at something beyond the walls. "There'll be a full investigation. No belts. No laces. That's the rule. Somebody f.u.c.ked up."

I need to get outside. Fresh air. It's not until I reach the car park that I realize I've been holding my breath. Ruiz is waiting for me. He's wearing a heavy woolen overcoat that looks like it survived both world wars. A boiled sweet rattles between his teeth.

"You found the place," I say.

"Trained investigator."

He has a different car. He once drove an early-model Mercedes-his pride and joy-but it didn't survive a collision with a motel room wall. Now he has a box-like Range Rover with a dark-green paint job.

"It looks like a tank."

"Exactly."

We drive together to the hospital. Sinatra is in full voice on the stereo: "That Old Black Magic." Ruiz's musical tastes haven't escaped from the fifties. I once asked him about the sixties and he told me that he was too busy arresting hippies to ride the peace train.

"So you missed out on the free love."

"Oh, it's never free, Professor. Never free."

There are police cars outside the main doors and a uniformed constable is stationed at the ICU. Tall. Good looking. Nurses keep smiling at him as they pa.s.s.

Augie Shaw is lying half naked on a bed, handcuffed to the side-rail. The capillaries have burst in the whites of his eyes. There is a woman sitting beside him, canted forward with her head resting on the bedding, eyes closed. His mother, even more diminished than before, fading away.

DCI Drury is talking to one of the doctors. We wait.

"I hate hospitals," says Ruiz, expecting me to ask why.

I humor him. "Why?"

"Healthy people die in them."

"You've lost me."

"Sick people get better in hospitals. Healthy people die. Think about it. That's what you read about in the papers: people going into hospital for minor operations and dying because of stupid mistakes and overworked nurses and exhausted interns. You don't hear about really sick people dying."

"That's because they're really sick."

"Exactly."

I don't bother pointing out the flaw in Ruiz's logic.

"I should be made Minister for Health," he adds. "I could sort out the problem with waiting lists straight away."

"How so?"

"I'd stop people at the door of Accident and Emergency and quiz them on how they got injured. Food poisoning or a dog bite or a broken arm, they'll have to wait fifteen minutes. But if they arrive with self-inflicted slashes or a Hoover nozzle stuck up their a.r.s.e, it'll be six hours."

"Are you sure you don't read the Daily Mail?"

"I'm being harsh but fair. There are too many idiots using up our health budget."

Drury has finished his conversation. He opens his palms, looking like a Mafia G.o.dfather. "Where have you been?"

"I had to take my daughter home."

"Tell Grievous next time. He's been running around like a lost puppy."

I introduce him to Ruiz and the two of them size each other up with a handshake. Drury seems less aggressive today. Perhaps he hasn't met his normal quota of fools.

"If it weren't for Piper Hadley I'd be wishing that boy dead," says Drury, talking about Augie Shaw. "Sign of a guilty man, a suicide attempt."

"Or a desperate one," I say.

The DCI pushes spare change into a machine and makes his choice. A bottle of water drops into the tray. He cracks the top and drinks noisily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He looks at me. "You still think Augie Shaw couldn't have kidnapped Natasha McBain and Piper Hadley?"

"He hasn't the intellect or the experience."

"Maybe you're right, Professor, but while you've been playing happy families, we were checking the registered s.e.x offenders living in the area and running a full background check on suicide boy in there. A very interesting name came up-his old man Wesley Shaw once faced eight counts of child rape but managed to plea-bargain it down to one count of attempted unlawful penetration of a minor. And you know where he was on the night the Bingham Girls disappeared? He was working on the rides at the fairground."

"Where is he now?"

"He died eighteen months ago. Ran a red light and got pancaked by a bus in Stoughton Street."

Drury tosses the empty plastic bottle into a metal bin.

"Wesley George Shaw. He also had a few aliases: WG Buford, David William Burford, George Westman. Born in 1960, the son of an aircraft mechanic stationed at RAF Abingdon working on fighter planes. First arrest at age twenty-four: attempted rape. Charges dropped. Second arrest: curb-crawling and engaging the services of an underage prost.i.tute. You see where I'm going, Professor? Wesley Shaw's name came up in the first investigation, but his old lady gave him an alibi. She lied for him."

"Is that what she told you?"

"She just confirmed it."

"But Wesley Shaw is dead."

"He was alive when the girls went missing. He could have kidnapped them; set the whole thing up. Augie just inherited them. Like father like son."

At the far end of the corridor, a door opens and Victoria Naparstek appears. Tall, pale, purposeful, her face enameled with anger. She confronts Drury, stopping inches from his face.

"I warned you."

He raises his hands, but Victoria knocks them away.

"I told you what would happen."

"Let's take this somewhere else. Take a deep breath. Calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down."

He's gentler with her than I expect. "Somebody messed up. I'm sorry."

"Have you told his mother that? No. That might mean a lawsuit. Compensation. Instead, you're going to close ranks. Collude. Get your stories straight."

"This isn't the time or the place."

He's whispering to her, trying to lead her away; holding her arm, talking like they're old friends. She shudders at his touch. Disappoints him.

"Don't patronize me," she says. "Never, ever patronize me."

Then she leaves, storming down the corridor. The police officer on guard follows her progress, his eyes glued to her posterior.

"What are you looking at, Constable?" barks Drury. "Keep your eyes to the front."

19.

St. Catherine's School is set amid trees and boot-churned sporting fields on the northern outskirts of Abingdon, a mile from an old RAF base, which was decommissioned in the nineties.

A lone student is sitting in the administration office. Sulking. She swings her legs beneath a vinyl chair, awaiting judgment for some indiscretion. Dressed in a gray skirt, white blouse and v-neck burgundy jumper, she looks up as we enter in a flurry of cold air. The door closes. She looks down again.

A school secretary is seated behind sliding gla.s.s. Grievous flashes his warrant card and asks for the headmistress. The secretary misdials the number twice. All thumbs. Perhaps an unpaid parking ticket is preying on her mind.

The headmistress, Mrs. Jacobson, is a big woman in a beige dress. Her dyed hair is brushed back and fastened with a comb. "Come, come," she says, herding us like pre-schoolers into her office, her shoes echoing on the parquet floor.

"This is about Piper and Natasha, isn't it? Is there news?"

"There have been some developments in the case," says the young detective. "The details are confidential for operational reasons."

"Of course, I understand. Sit down. Coffee? Tea? Help yourself to biscuits. Such a terrible business-it took our girls a long time to recover. Some of them needed counseling, but we're a very stoic bunch here at St. Catherine's."

A spare seat is found for Ruiz, who hasn't said a word since we arrived. Grievous picks up a chocolate biscuit, which crumbles when he takes a bite. He makes a little sound and tries to catch the falling crumbs. Mrs. Jacobson walks to the side table and comes back with a plate and a paper napkin, silently admonishing him. She settles again behind her desk.

"Darling Piper, I can't imagine why she'd run away. Her father is such a generous man. And her mother is so beautiful and charming."

"Not like the McBains?" asks Ruiz.

The headmistress flinches. "Excuse me?"

"Natasha's father served a five-year stretch for armed robbery. Surely you know that."

"We don't discriminate at St. Catherine's."

"Neither do we," says Ruiz.

There is a look between them. Nothing warm.

"We were hoping to talk to some of the teachers who taught Piper and Natasha," I say. "And to look at their student files."