Of course, once an ID was established, that was really only the beginning. These young women had families – partners, parents, perhaps even children – who were wondering where they’d gone, and waiting to hear from them.

There was an astonishing statistic that Fry had once been given. Something like ninety-eight per cent of couples who lost a son or daughter through murder would separate within a couple of years of the crime. It was because the loss of a child was an experience that destroyed your life, and put such a strain on a relationship that the damage might never be repaired.

Ninety-eight per cent. That was a really bad statistic. When a victim had been a teenager or young woman when she went missing, the parents would no longer be together, almost certainly. She would be looking for people whose lives had already been wrecked. She’d be turning up on their doorstep to tell them a body had been discovered, and she thought it was probably their daughter. Could they come along and confirm that? Oh, and Merry Christmas, by the way.

Fry finally pulled up at number twelve and walked up to her flat on the first floor. Angie was out, of course, but her clothes were still here. Outside, the noise of drunken revellers would go on for hours yet, and the rain wouldn’t stop them. It had been dark since before she called at the museum to see the hand of glory. But that was the nature of late December.

Rain and dark nights. Ideal for festive jollity.

Farnham’s clothes were soaking wet now, and his shoes slithered in the mud as he dodged from tree to tree, stumbling over roots. His breath was ragged against the sound of rain and the whip of branches hitting his face. The noise of his breathing went ahead of him through the woods. But it was the sound of a man whose life was already over.

For a second, he stopped and leaned against the trunk of an oak tree. He shook his head, spraying rain, sweat and mud from his face. His jacket was streaked with dirt, and fragments of vegetation clung to his jeans where he had charged through the undergrowth. Ahead of him were more trees, and the bank of a fast-running stream, brown water surging noisily in the night.

His wheezing concealed any noises from behind him, except for one soft footstep. There was a moment of silence. Birds rustled their damp wings in the branches, and a small shower of water fell on his face. As his breath blew out painfully into the air, he knew it might be his last.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ he called. ‘Stop it, now.’

He heard his own voice shaking with fear, and became angry at the humiliation he was being forced to suffer.

‘You’re making a mistake. You know that? A big mistake.’