Nobody answered. Margaret pressed a fist to her mouth, turning her sobs into terrible choking sounds. The girl looked from face to face, her lips parted. She was tall and slim, with chestnut curls tumbling down her back, and it was hard to tell how old she was—eighteen or twenty, maybe, but she was made up far more expertly than any teenager I’d ever known, and she was wearing tailored black trousers and high-heeled shoes and a white shirt that looked expensive, with a purple silk scarf flung round her neck. She had a kind of vital, electric presence that filled the room. In that house, she was utterly, startlingly incongruous.

“Please,” she said, appealing to me. Her voice was high and clear and In the Woods 47

carrying, with a newsreader accent that didn’t match Jonathan and Margaret’s soft, small-town working-class. “What’s happened?”

“Rosalind,” Jonathan said. His voice came out rough, and he cleared his throat. “They found Katy. She’s dead. Someone killed her.”

Jessica made a small, wordless noise. Rosalind stared at him for a moment; then her eyelids fluttered and she swayed, one hand going out to the door frame. Cassie got an arm around her waist and supported her to the sofa.

Rosalind leaned her head back against the cushions and gave Cassie a weak, grateful smile; Cassie smiled back. “Could I have some water?” she whispered.

“I’ll get it,” I said. In the kitchen—scrubbed linoleum, varnished fauxrustic table and chairs—I turned on the tap and had a quick look around. Nothing noteworthy, except that one high cupboard held an array of vitamin tubs and, at the back, an industrial-size bottle of Valium with a label made out to Margaret Devlin.

Rosalind sipped the water and took deep breaths, one slim hand to her breastbone. “Take Jess and go upstairs,” Devlin told her.

“Please, let me stay,” Rosalind said, lifting her chin. “Katy was my sister—whatever happened to her, I can . . . I can listen to it. I’m all right now. I’m sorry for being so . . . I’ll be fine, really.”

“We’d like Rosalind and Jessica to stay, Mr. Devlin,” I said. “It’s possible they might know something that could help us.”

“Katy and I were very close,” Rosalind said, looking up at me. Her eyes were her mother’s, big and blue, with that touch of a droop at the outer corners. They shifted, over my shoulder: “Oh, Jessica,” she said, holding out her arms. “Jessica, darling, come here.” Jessica edged past me, with a flash of bright eyes like a wild animal’s, and pressed up against Rosalind on the sofa.

“I’m very sorry to intrude at a time like this,” I said, “but there are some questions we need to ask you as soon as possible, to help us find whoever did this. Do you feel able to talk now, or shall we come back in a few hours?”

Jonathan Devlin pulled over a chair from the dining table, slammed it down and sat, swallowing hard. “Do it now,” he said. “Ask away.”