Then Alex came out of the office and confirmed it. 'I haven't seen Jayden all week,' he told me.

'Wasn't he in school?'

'Nope.'

'Did you know he and Harry Embsay had a fight?'

'Yep.'

'What about?'

Alex shrugged and offered me a piece of gum as he walked me out into the street. 'I'll tell him you were looking for him if I see him.'

'Thanks.'

'For what?'

'For being nice all of a sudden.'

Alex blushed. 'I suppose you want a sorry from me after last time? Well, I am I'm sorry.'

Noticing the two bikes from St Jude's propped against the wall, I asked him if they were fixed.

'Ready to go. Just waiting for someone from St Jude's to collect them.'

'I'll collect one now,' I decided. That way I could cover more ground in my search for Jayden. 'By the way, Alex . . .'

He stepped back in fake alarm. 'Whoa, when you say "by the way" I know it isn't. In fact, this is where I feel the knife go in, right between my ribs.'

'OK, yeah it's important.'

'Aargh!' Alex staggered and pretended to fall. 'I knew it.'

'Listen to me. You didn't by any chance notice someone leaving a bag at Tom's house the night Lily . . . the night you lot met to arrange the next five-a-side tournament?'

'Aargh, shit!' Clutching his stomach, Alex staggered out on to the pavement. 'Right in the guts.'

'Seriously did you?'

'Seriously no. And I do know the reason you're asking.'

'The police already came calling?'

'Zap! Kerpow!'

And Alex told me he'd had to give details of who else was at Tom's house that night, and now they were working their way down that list, taking fingerprints and DNA samples, matching them up with evidence on the bag.

'What's the problem? This should be right up your street, Alex all the Silent Witness stuff.'

'Yep, except my dad went mental. He threatened to kick me out.'

'For something you didn't do? Or I presume you didn't do?'

'Yeah, but that's how he is old-school strict. A knock on the door from the cops brings shame on the family, blah blah. Anyhow, from now on I've got to keep my nose snot-free and that means keeping my head down and staying in school even during my free periods, not hanging out with the wrong crowd, working with him in the workshop in my free time.'

'Sounds like you'll have lots of fun,' I sighed, ready to take a bike and carry on looking for Jayden.

'Yeah thanks, Alyssa.'

'You're welcome any time.' The sarcasm between us was heavy as lead.

Alex stuck his hands in his hoodie pockets (black Nike) and with a sudden change of tone from sarcastic to genuine said, 'Alyssa, if you really want to know where Jayden is right now, he's probably walking Bolt on Hereward Ridge.'

'Seriously?'

'Yeah, seriously. He does that most Sundays. Don't tell him I told you.'

chapter twelve.

Cycling all the way up to the Ridge told me I wasn't nearly as fit as I thought I was and gave me plenty of time to wonder why Alex had had a change of heart.

When you think it through, it was definitely guilty conscience over the time he, Micky and Ursula had threatened me in defence of their buddy, Jayden. After all, bullying probably didn't come as naturally to him, or to Micky for that matter, as it did to scary Ursula.

Anyway, I panted up the last few hundred metres, keeping my head busy with theories about Alex so that I didn't leave room for darker thoughts. I saved those for the wee small hours, the nightmare moments when Lily's ghost came screeching through the bedroom walls like those witches of my childhood dreams. Lily staring at me, pleading for help.

Eventually I came to the brow of the hill where I got off the bike and stared back down into the valley. My breath rose like steam into the cold, grey air.

I stood in total silence, wondering in which direction stick boy might choose to walk stick dog. Way below, cars crawled along Ainslee Road like small, shiny beetles. Above my head, rooks rose from the bare trees. To my left, halfway down the hill, stood Upwood House, a Georgian mansion and National Trust property in its big, artificially levelled and landscaped garden. To my right was a stand of ash trees where the cawing parliament of rooks eventually settled. I looked in all directions then decided to follow a bridleway sign towards the ruins of a thirteenth-century Cistercian abbey nestled on the lower slopes of the next valley. I got on the bike again and started pedalling bumpily downhill.

Ten minutes later I was in the grounds of Ripley Abbey and wondering if Alex had made a fool of me.

'He's having a laugh,' I muttered as I gazed at deserted hillocks and hummocks, piles of ancient stones and the odd wall crumbling but still standing after seven centuries of winds and rain. The only part of the building left intact was a row of shadowy cloisters. I checked it out before wheeling the bike through a crumbling gothic arch towards a river that snaked through the valley bottom, all the time looking for signs of recent human activity anything at all: a crumpled crisp packet, an empty can, footprints in the mud.

Caw! Caw! Even the rooks laughed at me from their giddy heights.

Then Bolt charged along the riverbank, teeth bared.

'Down!' I yelled, putting the bike between me and the Staffie and thrusting the frame into his snarling face.

But he only took orders from one master and that definitely wasn't me. He growled and snarled, crouched, leaped, barked then snarled and snapped some more. The bike didn't seem like it was a good enough defence so I looked for places to hide behind a pile of stones, up a grassy hillock or some worn stone steps leading nowhere. Finally, still using the bike as a shield, I turned towards the river and saw Jayden standing calmly mid-river, perched on one of thirty or so stepping stones used by the old Cistercian monks.

'Call your dog off!' I yelled.

Jayden didn't move. He let the swift, strong, black current flow around him, watched me suffer.

'Stay down, Bolt!' I cried, driving the bike's front wheel straight at him. He ducked out of reach, teeth bared, spittle dribbling from his mouth.

'Jayden, for God's sake!'

Stick Boy moved at last, stepping from one worn, moss-covered stone to the next, balancing like a high-wire performer, arms stretched wide. The wind caught his unzipped jacket and made it billow like a sail.

Burly Bolt barrelled downhill to the water's edge, gave a throaty bark and trundled back. He repeated this three times as I tried and failed to escape. Jayden stopped two steps from dry land.

'Jayden!' The dog had me cornered against a heap of medieval stones. The look in his eyes said, 'Kill!'

Stick boy smiled and jumped clean over the final stepping stone, made a crunch landing on the gravel bank. 'Down, Bolt,' he said quietly.

Vicious Bolt stopped everything he'd been doing and lay quiet as a lamb. There must have been a switch inside his head, activated by the sound of his master's voice. But his brownish-amber eyes were still trained on me and my bike, ready for Jayden to flick the next switch.

'Alyssa,' Jayden began casually. What are you doing here? hung unspoken in the ancient air, whispering through the arches, along the dripping cloisters.

'That dog is seriously going to hurt someone,' I gasped.

He nodded.

'He's not going to attack me again, is he?'

'Not unless I tell him. Anyway, what do you want?'

As far as Jayden and I were concerned, we were done with the pleasantries long ago. 'Why did you and Harry fight?' I asked outright.

'Who says we did?' Shrugging and slouching up the bank, past the boulders towards the shadowy cloisters, Jayden expected me to follow. 'Stay, Bolt,' he muttered.

The dog watched me go, eyes darting after me. Kill!

'Someone gave him a black eye and a busted lip,' I insisted. 'It's on record that the someone was you.'

'He's lucky that's all he got.'

I was staring at Jayden's back, trailing along three steps behind. 'It wasn't. You damaged his ribs, knees, knuckles you want me to go on?'

He turned and smiled. 'It turns out Harry isn't as tough as he looks.'

I sighed then wait for it here comes my most predictable question. 'It was about Lily again, wasn't it?'

'For Jesus's sake.'

'It was. With you, everything comes back to Lily. You didn't move on.' In spite of being dumped by her, in spite of scary, multiple face-piercings Ursula.

Jayden stopped but didn't turn. He put his arm out and traced his forefinger up and down the nearest stone pillar, threw back his head and studied the uncanny civil-engineering achievements of the ancient, Cistercian monks.

'The cops finally got the pathologist's second report,' he said in a flat voice.

The news hit me like a physical blow to the chest. 'Not good news?'

'Brace yourself.'

'Jayden, for God's sake!'

'We're talking mutilation.' His eyes bored into me.

'Mutilation?'

'Deliberate. Not accidental.'

Silence enveloped us. I don't know how long it took for me to understand. In the end I just repeated what Jayden had said. 'Someone deliberately mutilated Lily's body?'

Jayden nodded. 'It turns out that one of Lily's teeth was missing.'

A tooth! This was so not what I'd expected. If I was thinking anything, it was that maybe there was a cut, a flesh wound, something similar.

'Back tooth molar, bottom right, with the socket gaping open.'

'Don't I don't want to hear any more!'

'Sorry, I thought you needed to know.'

'It's just too . . . nasty.'

'Perverted?'

'Yes.' I leaned against the pillar and tried to take a deep breath to steady myself.

Jayden's voice didn't alter it was a monotone drained of emotion. 'So did Lily go to the dentist for a tooth extraction the week she died?'

'I don't know, Jayden no, she didn't! She would have told us. It would have been a big drama.'

'Which means the pathologist is right the tooth was taken out after she died,' he muttered.

The shock got to me and I felt sick. 'We have to find out who took it and why.'

'Right! If we knew that we'd have all the answers is that what you mean? The guy in charge of the investigation . . .'

'Inspector Cole.'

'. . . maybe he already knows who took it?'

'I doubt it.' I said. 'But they're not sitting on their arses doing nothing. They're starting to collect forensic evidence DNA, fingerprints from the bag Lily packed the day she disappeared. You know they found it at Tom's house?'

Jayden didn't answer. Instead he grunted and stayed with his new favourite topic. 'The tooth Harry didn't seem to have any answers either.'

'Good God, Jayden you challenged Harry Embsay about Lily's missing tooth? That's the same as saying you think he killed her!'