“What sort of power?”

Mackenzie stood back, raised both his arms high in the air, behind his head, and clasped his hands, then he brought them down as if wielding an imaginary hammer with all his might on to the head of an imaginary victim. “Like that,” he said. “And there was no resistance.”

Annie swallowed. Damn. This was turning into a real bugger of a case.

Elizabeth Bell, the social worker in charge of the Alderthorpe Seven investigation, hadn’t retired, but she had changed jobs and relocated to York, which made it easy for Jenny to drop in on her after a quick stop by her office at the university. She found a narrow parking spot several doors away from the terrace house off Fulford Road, not far from the river, and managed to squeeze her car in without doing any damage.

Elizabeth answered the door as quickly as if she had been standing right behind it, though Jenny had been vague on the phone about her time of arrival. It hadn’t mattered, Elizabeth said, as Friday was her day off this week, the kids were at school and she had ironing to catch up with.

“You must be Dr. Fuller,” Elizabeth said.

“That’s me. But call me Jenny.”

Elizabeth led Jenny inside. “I still don’t know what you want to see me about, but do come on in.” She led Jenny into a small living room, made even smaller by the ironing board and basket of laundry balanced on a chair. Jenny could smell the lemon detergent and fabric softener, along with that warm and comforting smell of freshly ironed clothes. The television was on, showing an old black-and-white thriller starring Jack Warner. Elizabeth cleared a pile of folded clothes from the armchair and bade Jenny sit.

“Excuse the mess,” she said. “It’s such a tiny house, but they’re so expensive around here and we do so love the location.”

“Why did you move from Hull?”

“We’d been looking to move for a while, then Roger – that’s my husband – got a promotion. He’s a civil servant. Well, hardly all that civil, if you catch my drift.”

“What about you. Job, I mean?”

“Still the social. Only now I work down the benefits office. Do you mind if I carry on ironing while we talk? Only I’ve got to get it all done.”

“No. Not at all.” Jenny looked at Elizabeth. She was a tall, big-boned woman wearing jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. The knees of her jeans were stained, Jenny noticed, as if she had been gardening. Under her short, no-nonsense haircut, her face was hard and prematurely lined, but not without kindness, which showed in her eyes and in the expressions that suddenly softened the hardness as she spoke. “How many children do you have?” Jenny asked.

“Only two. William and Pauline.” She nodded toward a photograph of two children that stood on the mantelpiece: smiling in a playground. “Anyway, I’m intrigued. Why are you here? You didn’t tell me very much over the telephone.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to be mysterious, honestly. I’m here about the Alderthorpe Seven. I understand you were involved?”

“How could I forget. Why do you want to know? It was all over ten years ago.”

“Nothing’s ever ‘all over’ in my line of work,” said Jenny. She had debated how much to tell Elizabeth and had even spoken with Banks on the phone about this. Useful as ever, he had said, “As much as you have to, and as little as you need to.” Jenny had already asked Mr. and Mrs. Liversedge not to reveal Lucy’s true origins or name to reporters, but it wouldn’t be long before some bright spark came across a slip of paper or recognized a photo from the newspaper’s morgue. She knew that she and Banks had a very narrow window of opportunity in which to operate before trainloads of media people got off at York and Hull, and even found their way to sleepy little Alderthorpe. She took a risk that Elizabeth Bell wasn’t likely to tip them off, either.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

Elizabeth looked up from the shirt she was ironing. “If I have to. I have done before.”

“The person I’m interested in is Lucy Payne.”

“Lucy Payne?”

“Yes.”

“That name is familiar, but I’m afraid you’ll have to jog my memory.”

“It’s been in the news a lot recently. She was married to Terence Payne, the schoolteacher the police believe was responsible for the murder of six young girls.”

“Of course. Yes, I did see a mention in the paper, but I must admit that I don’t follow such things.”

“Understandable. Anyway, Lucy’s parents, Clive and Hilary Liversedge, turn out to be foster parents. Lucy was one of the Alderthorpe Seven. You’d probably remember her as Linda Godwin.”

“Good heavens.” Elizabeth paused, holding the iron in midair, as if traveling back in her memory. “Little Linda Godwin. The poor wee thing.”

“Perhaps now you can see why I asked you about keeping secrets?”

“The press would have a field day.”

“Indeed they would. Probably will, eventually.”

“They won’t find out anything from me.”

A worthwhile risk, then. “Good,” said Jenny.

“I think I’d better sit down.” Elizabeth propped the iron on its end and sat opposite Jenny. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you can tell me. How did it all begin, for a start?”

“It was a local schoolteacher who tipped us off,” said Elizabeth. “Maureen Nesbitt. She’d been suspicious about the state of some of the children for some time, and some of the things they said when they thought no one could overhear them. Then, when young Kathleen didn’t show up for school for a week and nobody had a reasonable explanation-”

“That would be Kathleen Murray?”

“You know about her?”

“I just did a bit of background research among old newspapers at the library. I know that Kathleen Murray was the one who died.”

“Was murdered. Should have been the Alderthorpe Six, as one of them was already dead by the time the whole thing blew up.”

“Where did Kathleen fit in?”

“There were two families involved: Oliver and Geraldine Murray, and Michael and Pamela Godwin. The Murrays had four children, ranging from Keith, age eleven, to Susan, age eight. The two in the middle were Dianne and Kathleen, age ten and nine respectively. The Godwins had three children: Linda, at twelve, was the eldest, then came Tom, who was ten, and Laura, nine.”

“Good Lord, it sounds complicated.”

Elizabeth grinned. “It gets worse. Oliver Murray and Pamela Godwin were brother and sister, and nobody was quite sure exactly who fathered whom. Extended-family abuse. It’s not as uncommon as it should be, especially in small, isolated communities. The families lived next door to one another in two semis in Alderthorpe, just far enough away from the other houses in the village to be guaranteed their privacy. It’s a remote enough part of the world to begin with. Have you ever been there?”

“Not yet.”

“You should. Just to get the feel of the place. It’s creepy.”

“I intend to. Were they true, then? The allegations.”

“The police would be able to tell you more about that. I was mostly responsible for separating the children and making sure they were cared for, getting them examined, and for fostering them, too, of course.”

“All of them?”

“I didn’t do it all on my own, but I was in overall charge, yes.”

“Did any of them ever go back to their parents?”

“No. Oliver and Geraldine Murray were charged with Kathleen’s murder and are still in jail, as far as I know. Michael Godwin committed suicide two days before the trial and his wife was declared unfit to stand trial. I believe she’s still in care. A mental institution, I mean.”

“There’s no doubt about who did what, then?”

“As I said, the police would know more about that than me, but… If ever I’ve come face-to-face with evil in my life, it was there, that morning.”

“What happened?”