Shoving some balled socks, a bra, and some medical textbooks out of the way, Susan shimmied under the bed to where a grease-stained pizza box lurked in a far corner. Pulling it out, she flipped the lid to reveal a plastic bag containing a roll of fifties, a signet ring that had once belonged to a man referred to only as “Big Papa,” a crime-scene kit, and a selection of fake IDs for Mr. Sufjan Tolemy, Ms. Suzanne Pottolemy, and (Susan’s personal favorite) Miss Susin P. T. Olemy. Taped to the lid of the box were several smaller bags containing an assortment of useful tools, and it was from one of these that Susan selected a black velvet pouch.

The locks in J-block might have been temperamental when it came to keys, but when it came to picking, the simple pin tumbler should prove a breeze. As Susan crouched in the hallway, she cast an eye over the lock and selected her tools from the black pouch.

A pick and a torque wrench, a one-of-a-kind tool handmade by a man who knew locks the way a nun knew the Bible.

“May Jesus bless you, McGraw,” Susan said, her smile an echo of adventures past: breaking into the sealed cabinet in the headmaster’s office to steal the skeleton that now resided in her room (and replace it with a tower of sarcastic-looking cuddly toys), rearranging all the mannequins in the windows of the local department store to look like they were performing “Y.M.C.A.,” gathering evidence against that notorious Northampton reprobate Logan Hogan.

Ah, youth . . .

In her more fanciful moments, Susan had anticipated a den of chaos, as if Daisy had been taken in the night and her room trashed by men in balaclavas looking for a USB stick filled with state secrets. There was also a dark, entirely implausible scenario in which Susan opened the door to find Daisy unconscious, with Baby Gordon pecking at her glasses in an attempt to feast on her eyeballs.

What she got was something else entirely.

Daisy’s room was bare.

Not the stripped bare of the recently departed dropout, but more like a room that had been on a faddish diet and lost all its weight too quickly. Gone was the flesh—and with it, the soul. There was no Anglepoise desk lamp, no glitter lamp, not even any photo frames—the photos themselves were pinned haphazardly on the university-issue bulletin board. Even poor Enya had been stripped of her frame, left to curl at the corners under the bed, and the speakers through which she had once warbled were gone.

It didn’t make any sense. Based on what remained, it was inconceivable that Daisy had moved out. But then . . . where had all her stuff gone? And why?

No wonder she’d been so shifty about letting anyone in here.