go.'

'She knows you're here. It's up to her.'

'If you asked her,' Elder said.

Smiling, Summers shook his head. 'That's not the way it works.'

'Rob,' Katherine said from the doorway, 'it's all right.' How long she had been standing there, Elder wasn't sure.

'You want me to stay?' Summers asked her.

'No, it's all right.' Her face was pale, tiredness darkening her eyes.

Summers touched Katherine lightly as he went past.

Elder waited for her to come and sit down, but instead she walked to the window and opened the curtains enough to be able to look out. The music came to an end, and voices could be heard, faint and indistinct, through the neighbouring wall. In the kitchen, Rob Summers was washing pots, putting them away.

'I'm sorry,' Elder said finally.

'What for?' He had to strain to make out the words.

'Whatever I've done to make you this upset. Angry.'

When she turned to look at him there were tears he hadn't anticipated on her face.

'I don't know what you expect from me,' Elder said. 'I don't know what you expect me to do.'

'Nothing.'

'You're hurting yourself, you must realise that.'

Slowly, Katherine shook her head. 'You saved me. From Keach. After he did all that stuff to me. He was going to kill me and you saved me.'

'Yes.'

'And now you wish you hadn't.'

'That's ridiculous.'

'Is it?'

'Yes.'

'You don't like me like this.'

Elder paused. 'No. No, of course I don't.'

'You want me to be like I was before.'

'Yes.'

She slid her hands across her face. 'Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before.'

How long he sat there he wasn't sure. Summers didn't reappear. Katherine left the room and then returned and the next thing he was standing beside her at the front door.

'You'll be careful,' he said.

'Yes, of course.' A smile fading in her eyes, she seemed young again, young and old beyond her years. You're seventeen, he wanted to say. Seventeen. What are you going to do with your life?

'If… if I need to get in touch?'

'Call me at Mum's.'

'Not here?'

'Bye, Dad.' Fleetingly, she kissed him on the cheek. Her hand touched his. She stepped back into the house and closed the door. A moment later, maybe two, the curtains were pulled back fast across.

Beyond Plymouth the train slowed its pace, stopping every twenty minutes or so at this small town or that. Countless times, Elder picked up his book only to set it back down. Staring out of the window into the passing dark, there was only his own face staring back. Six miniatures of Scotch lined up, empty, on the table before him: the slow but steady application of alcohol to the wound, the plastering over of helplessness and guilt. Should he have stayed? With a sweep of his hand, he sent the bottles flying, ricocheting from seat to empty seat and skittering along the floor. The few people still in the carriage tightened their faces and made themselves as small as they could.

By the time the train drew, finally, into Penzance, there were no more than a dozen or so passengers left. From the platform he could hear the sea, the waves splashing up against the concrete wall.

The taxi-driver bridled when Elder told him the address. 'It's gonna cost 'e. Hole through my exhaust goin' down that lane, had that happen before.'

Ignoring him, Elder slumped into the back.

Come morning, he knew, his head would feel like a heavy ball that had been bounced too many times. The cottage was a darkened shell. He gave the taxi-driver five pounds over the odds and stood watching him drive away, red tail lights visible between the dark outlines of bracken and stone that lined the lane and then not visible at all. Inside, he drank water, swallowed two aspirin and went to bed.

Rain, hard against the windows, woke him at three; by five he was sitting in the kitchen below, leafing through a week-old issue of the Cornishman and drinking tea. When eventually he stepped outside, purple light was already bruising the crest of the moor and all he could see was Katherine's face.

But within an hour the rain had dispersed and there was freshness in the air. In a short while, he would set off on a walk, possibly along the Tinner's Way, past Mulva Quoit to Chun Castle and beyond, allow his head the chance to clear. Later, he might take the car into town, spend some time in the gym; stock up on food, call in at the library, see about, perhaps, signing on for that woodworking course he'd been thinking of. Settle back into a routine. So far away, it was almost possible to forget the rest of the world existed.

Family. Friends. Responsibilities.

9

Maddy Birch's body was found near Crouch Hill, at the bottom of a steep path leading down to the disused railway line. A woman walking her dog, early morning, saw something flesh-coloured sticking up from between the leaves. Her 999 call was classified immediate and a patrol car arrived minutes later, driving in along the narrow lane leading past the adventure playground and children's nursery towards the community centre at the furthest end.

The body had fallen or been thrown some forty feet down the muddied bank into a tangle of blackberry bush and bracken.

The first officers at the scene called for reinforcements and began moving back the small scattering of spectators which had already started to gather. Soon the area would be secured and properly cordoned off by officers from Forensic Science Services, the body shielded by a canopy until the medical examiner had finished his preliminary investigation. Diagrams would be drawn, the scene examined in scrupulous detail, numerous Polaroids taken, measurements noted down: the whole operation captured on video.

The first two detectives from SCD1, Homicide, arrived some twenty minutes later. Lee Furness and Paul Denison, both DCs, showed their ID and spoke briefly to the uniformed officers before pulling on protective clothing. Not wanting to obliterate anything Forensics might find on the path, they scrambled down through the bracken some twenty metres further along.

Losing his footing midway, Furness cursed as dark mud smeared the leg of his overalls.

Denison reached the bottom first.

'Jesus,' he said and crossed himself instinctively. The dead woman's eyes were open and he wished that they were closed. Curly-haired and round of face, at twenty-seven Denison was the youngest in the team, younger than Furness by a full year.

The woman's skin was the colour of day-old putty, save where it had been sliced and torn.

Careful not to contaminate the scene, Furness, wearing a pair of latex gloves, prised a pair of white cotton knickers from the brambles on which they had snagged, dropped them down into a plastic evidence bag and sealed it along the top.

When they looked up, their DS, Mike Ramsden, had just arrived and was standing at the top of the bank, looking down. Burly, broad-shouldered, tall, wearing a scuffed leather jacket and tan chinos, tie loose at his neck, Ramsden epitomised the public's image, post-TV, of what a police detective should be.

'Boss here?' Ramsden called.

'Not yet,' Denison said.

'Forensics?'

'On their way.'

'Time for you two to get it sorted,' Ramsden said. 'Make a name for yourselves. Just don't go trampling over everything.'

His breath hung visible on the morning air.

Karen Shields, promoted to Detective Chief Inspector some twelve months before, was on her way to Hendon and a weekly meeting at Homicide West when the call came through. Over an excess of instant coffee and without too much rancour, she and other senior officers would review progress in the various investigations underway, pool information, prioritise.