He types his dad’s name and ‘Dr Larry Knight’ into Google. A few articles from a range of medical journals pop up. It sounds like they parted ways about four years after setting up the clinic. Theo wonders why. His dad has always been an enigma to him – there is so much about his past he doesn’t know. Maybe Larry Knight might give him some answers. He realizes he’s grasping at straws. There’s nothing here to link his dad to the bodies in Wiltshire. But maybe Larry Knight might give him some insight into what his dad’s life was like before he met Theo’s mum; he might even know Rose Grey.

He rubs his eyes. He’s exhausted yet wired at the same time. He can’t tear his eyes away from the screen even though there is no new information there.

He blinks away his tiredness but his dad’s name swims in front of him.

Dr Victor Carmichael.

16

Rose

January 1980

DAPHNE MOVED IN WITH US ON NEW YEAR’S DAY. SHE turned up on the doorstep just after lunch, her blonde hair in a French-style plait, shivering in her thin coat, armed with just a rucksack and the clothes on her back.

I often wondered, in the days and weeks that followed, why a woman who, I assumed, was in her mid to late thirties had no other worldly possessions. It seemed to me she had left her last location in a hurry.

Was it rash of me to invite a stranger into our home? I didn’t think so. Not then, anyway. Then she was nothing more to me than a lodger, someone to pay rent so that I had another source of income rather than squandering the last of my parents’ inheritance. From her demeanour on Christmas Eve, I sensed she was as desperate as I was to hide away. And I was willing to bet my life on it that it was for similar reasons: running from a man.

That first evening was a little awkward. I showed her around the cottage and to her room so she could dump her stuff. I saw the cottage through her eyes: the unvarnished floorboards that I still hadn’t got around to carpeting, except in your bedroom (pink, like you wanted); the tatty kitchen with the brown tiles; the fireplaces instead of radiators; the old Rayburn range that was always on, and where I boiled water in a cast-iron kettle.

‘What do you use this for?’ asked Daphne, pointing to the door on the left as we descended the stairs.

‘Nothing at the moment,’ I said, leading her into the empty room, with the brown and yellow patterned wallpaper left from the last owner. ‘It’s not a very big room. I think it was probably a front parlour or something.’

She frowned. ‘I suppose you could use it as a dining room.’