“For fuck’s sake,” Mark snapped, thudding back in his chair. “I’m not making it up. Ask anyone. It was all round the team before we even got up.”

“Don’t worry, we will,” I said cheerfully, and left him and Cassie to it. I went back to the incident room and waited for Bernadette to put the call through, which she did in her own time, to show me it wasn’t her job to come looking for me. “Ryan,” I said.

“Detective Ryan?” She sounded breathless and bashful, but I knew the voice instantly. “It’s Rosalind. Rosalind Devlin.”

“Rosalind,” I said, flipping my notebook open and hunting for a pen.

“How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” A small, brittle laugh. “Well, actually, no, I’m not. I’m devastated. But I think we’re all still in shock, really. It hasn’t sunk in yet. You never imagine something like this happening, do you?”

“No,” I said gently. “I know how you must be feeling. Can I do anything to help?”

“I was wondering . . . do you think I could come in and talk to you sometime? Only if it’s no trouble. There’s something I need to ask you.” A car went by in the background; she was outside somewhere, on a mobile or a pay phone.

“Of course. This afternoon?”

“No,” she said hastily. “No—not today. You see, they’ll be back any minute, they’ve only gone to . . . to view the . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Could I come tomorrow? Sometime in the afternoon?”

“Whenever you like,” I said. “Let me give you my mobile number, OK?

In the Woods 101

Then you can reach me any time you need to. Just give me a ring tomorrow, and we’ll meet up.”

She took it down, murmuring the numbers under her breath. “I have to go,” she said hurriedly. “Thank you, Detective Ryan. Thank you so much,”

and, before I could say good-bye, she was gone.

I checked the interview room: Mark was writing, and Cassie had managed to make him laugh. I flipped my fingernails against the glass. Mark’s head snapped up, and Cassie threw me a tiny smile and a fractional shake of her head: apparently they were managing to get by without me. This, as you might expect, was fine with me. Sophie would be waiting for the blood sample we’d promised her; I left Cassie a “Back in 5” Post-it on the door of the interview room, and went down to the basement.

Evidence storage procedures in the early 1980s, especially for cold cases, were not sophisticated. Peter and Jamie’s box was on a high shelf and I had never taken it down before, but I knew, from the lumpy shifting when I had pulled out the main file from the top, that there were other things in there, and those had to be whatever evidence Kiernan and McCabe and their team had collected. The case had four other boxes, but they were labeled, in neat black lettering as careful as a child’s: 2) Questionaires, 3) Questionaires, 4) Statements, 5) Leads. Either Kiernan or McCabe couldn’t spell. I tugged the main box off the shelf, dust-motes fountaining through the bare lightbulb’s glare, and dumped it on the floor.