‘Well, the someone couldn’t have left her in a better place, could she?’ said Wexford with a grin at the priest. ‘Come now, Constable Davies, this is no way for a liberated woman to go on. Let us pull ourselves together and go and phone Mrs Bond.’

Trevor and Pippa Bond arrived together, having again been brought to the police station in Susan Rains’s car. The young husband was plainly terrified that the child would turn out not to be theirs, that their journey would prove to have been a cruel and vain awakening of hope, and for this reason he had tried to persuade his wife not to come. But she had come. Nothing could have kept her away, though she was fuddled and dazed still from Dr Moss’s sedatives.

But once she saw the baby the muzziness left her and the glazed look went out of her eyes. She seized her in her arms, crushing her until Karen cried out and struggled with all her nine-week-old energy. Inscrutably, Susan Rains watched the little drama, watched her sister throw the blue blanket on to the floor, shuddering as she did so, watched the tears run down her cheeks on to the baby’s head. Pippa began frenetically examining the white frock, the matinée jacket, the minute socks, as if hunting for visible germs.

‘Why don’t you burn the lot?’ said Susan very coolly. ‘Then you won’t have to worry.’

Trevor Bond said quickly and awkwardly, ‘Well, thanks very much, thanks a lot. I’ll just see these girls of mine home and then I’ll get off to the office. We’ve got a lot on our plates, always have this time of the year.’

‘I’ll take them back, Trev,’ said Susan. ‘You get off to work. And I’ll phone Mother.’

‘I’d let Dr Moss have a look at Karen if I were you,’ said Wexford. ‘She seems fine and I’m sure she is, but better be on the safe side.’

They went on their way. Susan Rains walked a little behind the others, already marked for her role as the eternal aunt. Wexford’s thoughts went to her nephew, her brother Mark’s child, though he didn’t know why he should think of him just then, and then to young Ginger, that grass orphan, down in Bystall Lane. He picked up the blanket – young Ginger’s blanket? – and examined it, coming to the conclusion at the end of a few minutes’ scrutiny of its texture and its label, that it was made of pure wool, had been manufactured in Wales, was old but clean and had been mended in one corner by someone who was no tyro when it came to handling a darning needle. From its honeycombing he picked a quantity of hairs. Most of these were baby hair, very fine red-gold filaments that might (or then again might not) all have come from the same child’s scalp, but among them were a few coarser longer hairs that were clearly from a woman’s head. A red-headed woman. He was thinking about the two red-headed women he had encountered during the time Karen was missing, when there came a knock at the door.