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envelope, set it aside, and returned her attention to the book.
    The paper was stiff against her fingers as she turned the first page. A minute or more passed as she stared, unable to grasp what she saw.
    A single word, a name, cut from a newspaper headline and glued at the top of the page.
    GWEN.
    Hair, the colour of wheat, a lock of it tied with a fine ribbon and affixed beneath the name. Without thinking, Rea touched it with her fingertip, separating the strands. Smooth and soft against her skin.
    And something else. Something milky translucent, a teardrop shape stuck to the paper, ragged and stained brown at the wider end. Again, Rea touched it, finding the texture maddeningly familiar.
    Then she knew, and her gut tightened. She tasted bile, swallowed, swallowed again, felt the heat in her throat as it opened.
    Rea ran for the bathroom and retched over the basin. And again, her stomach convulsing, her eyes hot and stinging. She turned the taps, released a flow of water to wash the foulness away, even as more streamed from her mouth.
    When it was done, her belly empty and aching, she rinsed her mouth and splashed cold water on her face. Her skin remembered the sensation of the torn fingernail, and her stomach rebelled once more, but she had nothing left.
    Rea lowered herself to the floor and rested her back against the side of the bath. She twined her fingers together to subdue the tremors that ran out from her centre.
    ‘Jesus,’ she said.
    There was no question what it had been. A human fingernail. A woman’s, going by the shape. And the hair. Had they belonged to Raymond’s wife? Had he kept them as a memento of her? Had he called her Gwen, some sort of pet name?
    She pictured Uncle Raymond, or at least the ghost-like memory she had of him, bent over his wife’s open coffin, scissors in one hand, pliers in the other.
    The urge to giggle crept up on her, and she covered her mouth, kept it trapped inside. No one would hear, but even so, she would not laugh at a dead man’s grief.
    All right, she thought. Pull yourself together. Go back and look at it. It’s gross, but it won’t kill you.
    Rea closed her eyes, counted to ten, and climbed to her feet. She walked back to the bedroom and paused in the doorway. The book still lay open on the desk, where she’d left it, the envelope of photographs alongside. She crossed the room slowly, quietly, as if she feared to wake it.
    She stopped, told herself not to be so stupid. A bit of hair and a fingernail. That’s all.
    Rea stepped up to the desk and looked down at the book. What a strange and sad man, she thought, to keep such things in here. Treasures to him, maybe. Precious things to be locked away. She reached for the corner of the page, lifted it, turned it, let it fall away to the other side.
    ‘Oh no,’ Rea said.
    A newspaper article, cut out and pasted to the page.
    MISSING GWEN FEARED ABDUCTED.
    A black and white photograph of a young woman, a formal portrait taken in some studio, a reluctant smile on her pretty face. Her hair and jewellery years out of fashion.
    ‘Oh God, no,’ Rea said.
    The caption beneath the picture was printed in bold letters.
    Greater Manchester police have expressed concerns for the safety of Gwen Headley, 23, missing since the early hours of Saturday morning.
    Rea felt suddenly cold, as if the air in this secret room had crept and slithered under her clothing. She shivered as she fought the desire to flee the house.
    But she wanted to know.
    On the opposite page, sheets of notepaper glued in place, each one covered in line after line of neat, precise handwriting. And drawings, small, fine sketches of the same girl. And at the top of the first sheet, her name, and a date.
    In spite of every shred of common sense that told her not to, Rea started to read.
     

Gwen Headley
MAY–JUNE 1992
     
    I MET HER at the post office on Cheetham Hill Road, in the northern part of Manchester. She worked behind the counter. I was there to get a