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take her daughter’s place. She did not encourage her to linger, and closed the door before she had even turned her back.
    The house was bursting with cards and flowers. Some of the cards had been opened and arranged along the mantelpiece, on windowsills, and the polished surface of a heavy oak merchant’s chest standing in an alcove. The rest lay in a heap on the coffee table where Nancy tossed this latest offering, not bothering to open it. It landed on the pile, then slid to the carpet. Nancy walked over it as she went back to the sofa where she had been lying most of the night and all of the morning until the girl’s timid knocking disturbed her.
    She had lost all sense of time since Anna Foster and DS Merry had driven her home from that horrid place where they had taken her to identify her daughter’s body. Afterwards, at her insistence, they had left her alone to come to terms with her loss. As if she ever could. Anna had promised to visit the following day. The young sergeant had said that she would be in touch. Nancy did not want visitors, and besides, aren’t people secretly relieved when a bereaved person reassures them that there is nothing they can do?
    From her prone position on the sofa, Nancy heard a key turning in the back door. Oh dear God, not Richard .
    “Nancy! Love, why didn’t you call me?”
    Though she had dreaded him coming, Nancy suddenly realised that his familiar face was all she wanted to see. Speechless, she turned to him, her eyes brimming with tears. Of course she had wanted to call him. In the eight years that she had known Richard Turner, there had been scores of times when she had wanted to call him and blurt out the truth about her past, why she would not marry and settle down with him like normal people do. Any other man would have given up on her by now, but not Richard.
    A little older than Nancy, divorced, with two teenage children of his own, rarely seen when they were small, Richard had no doubt harboured hopes of starting a new family with her, but she had made it clear from the beginning that marriage and children were not on her agenda.
    Over the years, he had come to accept the terms of their relationship, but her unwillingness to share was, she knew, a constant source of frustration for him. Above all, he could not understand why she still refused to live with him.
    “Amy’s dead,” she heard herself wailing.
    “I know.”
    “Who would do such a thing?”
    “You know I loved her like a daughter, don’t you?” Richard asked. There were tears in his eyes too, she realised. Nancy sniffed. It was true. She looked at Richard, thinking that he deserved to know the truth at last, and fearing that once he did, she would lose him forever.
    “Sit down,” she said. Richard, who had been kneeling on the floor beside her, heaved himself tiredly onto the sofa. “There’s something you should know.”
    Richard regarded her quizzically. At that moment, Nancy had been sure she would tell him, but when she spoke, her words were a shock to them both.
    “When all this is over, when they’ve found Amy’s killer and he’s safely behind bars, then we’ll get married.”

Chapter 4
    Jim Neal was re-reading the medical report on the cause of Amy Hill’s death. It contained no surprises, and only confirmed what was evident that bleak morning on the common; that she had been strangled to death.
    Technically, Ava had been correct in saying that Amy’s killer had snapped her like a twig, for the tiny hyoid bone in her neck had been crushed, the most likely cause being a ligature of some sort, tightened around the girl’s throat by a man, or even a woman with enough strength to overpower the petite victim.
    Ava Merry interrupted his thoughts, rapping impatiently on the glazed panel of his office door.
    At his nod, she barged into the room, saying, “Foot soldiers have come up with a lead, sir. A girl answering to Amy Hill’s description was seen outside the Odeon cinema at around