There was no question that he had to get inside, through fair means or foul. He could waste time looking for a back 252entrance to try, or he could go with an instinct that the woman he was looking for was in no position to complain about forced entry. A second knock, and then a third, brought no response, so he went back to the car to fetch a jemmy. The wood gave easily, and he found himself in a dark hallway with three doors leading off it and a rear exit to a yard. ‘Miss Fielding?’ he called, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence. ‘Miss Fielding, are you all right?’ His breath fogged the air and he shivered; there was barely a noticeable difference between the temperatures inside and out, and the flat reeked with the earthy smell of damp. A man’s overcoat, scruffy and frayed at the sleeves, hung on a hook inside the door, and he wondered if it belonged to the photographer.

The room on his right – the one with the window to the street – was a bedsit, sparsely furnished with a couple of shabby armchairs pulled up to a gas fire and a metal army bed in the corner, unmade and covered in a couple of thin grey blankets, woefully inadequate for the time of year. Old copies of The Times were piled high at the head of the bed and used as a makeshift side table; a half-drunk cup of tea and an empty cigarette packet had been left on top of them, and there was a gas ring and kettle on the floor, but no evidence of other home comforts, and he guessed that Fielding lived for her work. Even so, after the festive atmosphere of the last few days it was strange to walk into a home so devoid of Christmas; the hardest of hearts and the busiest of lives usually succumbed to some grudging acknowledgement of the season, but here there was nothing – no decoration or card, no treat or luxury, no sentimentality of any sort. Perhaps she had simply been too busy, he thought, or had decided that any preparations were a waste of time when she was going away. 253

The smell in the flat changed unmistakeably as he walked further down the hallway, and he knew then what he was going to find when he opened the second door. Alex Fielding’s body was on the floor beside her bed. Her blood had drenched the threadbare rug where she lay, and the spray marks on the sheets and walls testified to how viciously her throat had been cut. The assailant seemed to have taken her by surprise because there were no signs of a struggle in the room; on the contrary, a half-packed suitcase sat neatly on the bed, filled with clothes that seemed at a glance much smarter than the pullover and trousers she was dressed in, and a new, emerald green evening dress – still with its price tag – hung on the wardrobe; something in its hopefulness saddened him. Reluctantly, Fallowfield covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and bent over the dead woman. Decomposition had been slowed down considerably by the freezing cold temperatures in the flat, but the body was beginning to look bloated and discoloured. Outside, the sound of children playing in the street seemed suddenly absurd and out of kilter.