She would turn forty that coming December, was still single – had never, in fact, been married – and while a bit shop-soiled, battered and bruised, she was far from down and out for the count. She still had her looks and her figure, though she needed more and more magic potions for the former and had to work harder and harder at the university gym to keep those excess pounds from creeping on, given her taste for good food and wine. She also had a good job, a growing reputation as an offender profiler, publications to her credit.

So why did she sometimes feel so empty? Why did she always feel she was in a hurry to get somewhere she never arrived at? Even now, with the rain lashing against her windscreen, the wipers going as fast as they could go, she was doing ninety kilometers per hour. She slowed down to eighty, but her speed soon started creeping up again, along with the feeling that she was late for something, always late for something.

The shower ended. Elgar’s Enigma Variations was playing on Classic FM. To the north, a power station with its huge corset-shaped cooling towers squatted against the horizon, the steam it spewed almost indistinguishable from the low cloud. She was nearing the end of the motorway now. The east-bound M62 was like so many things in life; it left you just short of your destination.

Well, she told herself, she had come back to Yorkshire because she was running away from a bad relationship with Randy. Story of her life. She had a nice condo in West Hollywood, rented at a most generous rate by a writer who had made enough money to buy a place way up in Laurel Canyon, and she was within walking distance of a supermarket and the restaurants and clubs on Santa Monica Boulevard. She had her teaching and research at UCLA, and she had Randy. But Randy had a habit of sleeping with pretty twenty-one-year-old graduate students.

After a minor breakdown, Jenny had called it a day and come running back to Eastvale. Perhaps that explained why she was always in a hurry, she thought – desperate to get home, wherever that was, desperate to get away from one bad relationship and right into the next one. It was a theory, at any rate. And then, of course, Alan was in Eastvale, too. If he was part of the reason why she had stayed away, could he also be part of the reason why she had come back? She didn’t want to dwell on that.

The M62 turned into the A63, and soon Jenny caught a glimpse of the Humber Bridge ahead to her right, stretching out majestically over the broad estuary into the mists and fens of Lincolnshire and Little Holland. Suddenly, a few shafts of sunlight pierced the ragged cloud cover as the “Nimrod” variation reached its rousing climax. A “Yorkshire moment.” She remembered the “L.A. moments” Randy was so fond of pointing out in their early days when they drove and drove and drove around the huge, sprawling city: a palm tree silhouetted against a blood-orange sky; a big, bright full moon low over the HOLLYWOOD sign.

As soon as she could, Jenny pulled into a lay-by and studied her map. The clouds were dispersing now, allowing even more sunlight through, but the roads were still swamped with puddles and the cars and lorries swished up sheets of water as they sped by her.

Lucy’s parents lived off the A164 to Beverley, so she didn’t have to drive through Hull city center. She pressed on through the straggling western suburbs and soon found the residential area she was looking for. Clive and Hilary Liversedge’s house was a nicely maintained bay-window semi in a quiet crescent of similar houses. Not much of a place for a young girl to grow up, Jenny thought. Her own parents had moved often throughout her childhood, and though she had been born in Durham, she had at various times lived in Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Norwich, all university towns, and all full of randy young men. She had never been stuck in a dull suburban backwater like this.

A small plump man with a soft gray mustache answered the door. He was wearing a green cardigan, unbuttoned, and dark brown trousers which hugged the underside of his rounded gut. A belt wouldn’t be much good with a shape like that, Jenny thought, noticing the braces that held the trousers up.

“Clive Liversedge?”

“Come in, love,” he said. “You must be Dr. Fuller.”

“That’s me.” Jenny followed him into the cramped hall, from which a glass-paneled door led to a tidy living room with a red velour three-piece suite, an electric fire with fake coals and striped wallpaper. Somehow, it wasn’t the kind of place Jenny had imagined Lucy Payne growing up in; she couldn’t get any sense of Lucy living in this environment at all.

She could see what Banks meant about the invalid mother. Pale skin and raccoon eyes, Hilary Liversedge reclined on the sofa, a wool blanket covering her lower half. Her arms were thin and the skin looked puckered and loose. She didn’t move when Jenny entered, but her eyes looked lively and attentive enough, despite the yellowish cast of the sclera. Jenny didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she put it down to one of those vague chronic illnesses that certain types of people luxuriate in toward the ends of their lives.

“How is she?” Clive Liversedge asked, as if Lucy had perhaps suffered a minor fall or car accident. “They said it wasn’t serious. Is she doing all right?”

“I saw her this morning,” Jenny said, “and she’s bearing up well.”

“Poor lass,” said Hilary. “To think of what she’s been through. Tell her she’s welcome to come here and stay with us when she gets out of hospital.”

“I just came to get some sense of what Lucy’s like,” Jenny began. “What sort of a girl she was.”

The Liversedges looked at each other. “Just ordinary,” said Clive.

“Normal,” said Hilary.

Right, thought Jenny. Normal girls go marrying serial killers every day. Even if Lucy had nothing at all to do with the killings, there had to be something odd about her, something out of the ordinary. Jenny had even sensed that during their brief chat in the hospital that morning. She could couch it in as much psychological gobbledygook as she wanted – and Jenny had come across plenty of that in her career – but what it came down to was the feeling that Lucy Payne was definitely a sausage or two short of the full English breakfast.

“What was she like at school?” Jenny pressed on.

“Very bright,” answered Clive.

“She got three A-levels. Good marks, too. As and Bs,” added Hilary.

“She could have gone to university,” Clive added.

“Why didn’t she?”

“She didn’t want to,” said Clive. “She wanted to get out in the world and make a living for herself.”

“Is she ambitious?”

“She’s not greedy, if that’s what you mean,” Hilary answered. “Of course she wants to get on in the world like everyone else, but she doesn’t think she needs a university degree to do it. They’re overrated, anyway, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” said Jenny, who had a BA and a PhD. “Was she studious when she was at school?”

“I wouldn’t really say so,” said Hilary. “She did what she had to do in order to pass, but she wasn’t a swot.”

“Was she popular at school?”

“She seemed to get on all right with the other children. We got no complaints from her, at any rate.”

“No bullying, nothing like that?”

“Well, there was one girl, once, but that came to nothing,” said Clive.

“Someone bullying Lucy?”

“No. Someone complaining she was being bullied by Lucy, accused her of demanding money with threats.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. It was just her word against Lucy’s.”

“And you believed Lucy?”

“Yes.”

“So no action was taken?”

“No. They couldn’t prove anything against her.”

“And nothing else like that occurred?”

“No.”

“Did she take part in any after-school activities?”

“She wasn’t much a one for sports, but she was in a couple of school plays. Very good, too, wasn’t she, love?”