Her body went totally rigid and she had to force herself to speak. “I—I went up the path, I had my key out. I’d opened the door a few inches when . . . he called my name. ‘Pauline! Hallo, Pauline!’ I turned round, but I didn’t recognize him. He was smiling, and . . . he walked up the path towards me, and he said, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in for a cup of tea, Pauline?’ ” She froze, like a rabbit caught in car headlights.

Her mouth was open, but she made no sound. Deliberately, Tennison coughed, and she shook her head as if awakening, then started gabbling. “I said I was sorry, I thought there was some mistake, I didn’t know him. He came very close, pushed me into the hallway, got me by the throat, kept pushing me backwards . . . I was so terrified I couldn’t scream, I was afraid for my father. I tried to defend myself with my handbag, but he grabbed it and hit me with it. The clasp cut my cheek open and broke my front teeth . . .”

After a decent interval, Tennison prompted gently, “And then your father came in?”

“Yes. He was upstairs, I was lying on the floor, and he kept kicking me, then Daddy called out and he ran away. My father is blind, he couldn’t see him, couldn’t be called to identify him . . .” She was going to cry.

“But you were able to pick George Marlow out of the line-up?”

Gilling swallowed, held back her tears. “Oh, yes. He was clever, though; he had a beard when he attacked me, but he shaved it off before the identity parade. I still recognized him. It was his eyes, I will never forget his eyes . . . I know, if it hadn’t been for my father, George Marlow would have killed me.”

Tennison crossed the room and squatted beside Gilling’s chair. “Thank you, you did very well, and I’m sorry to have made you go through it all again.”

Gilling shrank from her, fearing to be touched, and stood up. Her nervousness was beginning to grate on Tennison.

“I go through it all the time, every time the doorbell rings, every strange sound at night . . . I see his face, keep expecting him to come back, to finish . . . I had to leave my job, I can’t sleep. He should have been put away for years, but they let him go after eighteen months. I live in terror of him coming back, because he said he would, he said he’d come back!”

Tennison climbed into the patrol car and breathed a sigh of relief. Beside her, Amson was immersed in a file.

“Marlow had a beard at the time of the rape, shaved it off for the line-up! That matches with what the toms said in Oldham, they thought the guy had a beard.”