Going to Google, I tried to find any mention of Beatrix Steards’s disappearance online. There was very little: just one account on a website dedicated to long-term missing people, and it didn’t add anything to what I’d already found out from Quinn. The paucity of articles didn’t concern me, because cases that predated the Internet and the digitization of media outlets often didn’t have corresponding stories online, but it meant – if I got nothing from the file Quinn sent me – I’d probably have to start tapping into national newspaper archives.

There was only one photograph of Beatrix Steards online.

It was small and low res but, despite the quality, I could see enough. She was petite and slim – maybe five three, maybe eight stone – and, at the time the picture was taken, presumably at some point in the mid eighties, she had a short, dark bob and was dressed in a spandex miniskirt and black leather jacket. Her eyes were difficult to define because of how the sunlight was falling across her, but I could see a distinguishing mark just below her right eye – a mole, perhaps, or a minor scar.

Who are you?

I continued to stare at her, trying to make sense of what I’d just learned, trying to figure out the connections to Patrick, to the others at Black Gale, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something through the rain: movement at the front of the house.

Isaac Mills was leaving.

26

As soon as I saw him unlock his car, I moved, heading back down the road, leaving the refuge of the bus shelter behind. The rain was fierce now, carving in at a horizontal, the wind screaming in my ears. I’d left my Audi two streets along, parked out of sight, but – although he would get a head start on me – I wasn’t going to be far behind him.

I got to the car, slid in at the wheel and started up the engine, and then saw his Lexus pass the bottom of the road I was in. Pulling out, I fell into line four vehicles back.

He headed south-east, in the direction of Bradford. I let a couple of cars out at a junction on the edge of the town, playing it safe by putting more distance between us, even though the rain was a useful veil: it had eased off, but the wind had got up, and it created a swirling grey curtain as we hit a dual carriageway.

He went as far as Bingley, midway between Keighley and Bradford, and then took the turn-off. It was another mile before I realized that he was following the signs for something called Keygrave Mill. I had no idea what was there, but the signs for it were brown, which meant it was a tourist attraction.

Now I was even less certain what he was doing.