She took the percolator down one flight to add water. Returning with a toothbrush holder which she rinsed to use as a second mug, she felt a moment of disquiet as if this small act, which hardly ranked as a violation of Miss Gradwyn’s privacy, was an impertinence. Rhoda Gradwyn had been particular about her coffee, and on the tray with the coffee grinder was a tin of beans. Kate, still burdened with an irrational guilt that they should be taking from the dead, switched on the grinder. The noise was incredibly loud and seemed interminable. Later, when the percolator had stopped dripping, she filled the two mugs and carried them over to the desk.

Waiting for the coffee to cool, he said, “If there’s anything else interesting, this is where we’ll probably find it,” and unlocked the drawer.

Inside there was nothing but a beige manila folder stuffed with papers. The coffee for the moment forgotten, they pushed the mugs to one side, and Kate pulled in a chair beside Dalgliesh. The papers were almost entirely copies of press cuttings, at the top an article from a Sunday broadsheet dated February 1995. The heading was stark: Killed Because She Was Too Pretty. Underneath, taking half the page, was a photograph of a young girl. It looked like a school photograph. The fair hair had been carefully brushed and tied with a bow to one side, and the white cotton blouse, looking pristine clean, was open at the neck and worn with a dark-blue tunic. The child had indeed been pretty. Even simply posed and with no particular skill in lighting, the stark photograph conveyed something of the frank confidence, the openness to life and the vulnerability of childhood. As Kate stared at it, the image seemed to disintegrate into dust and became a meaningless blur, then refocused again.

Beneath the image the reporter, eschewing the worst of hyperbole or outrage, had been content to let the story speak for itself. Today in the Crown Court, Shirley Beale, aged twelve years and eight months, pleaded guilty to the murder of her nine-year-old sister, Lucy. She strangled Lucy with her school tie, then bashed in the face she hated until it was unrecognisable. All she has said, either at the time of the arrest or since, is that she did it because Lucy was too pretty. Beale will be sent to a secure children’s unit until she can be transferred at seventeen to a young offenders’ institution. Silford Green, a quiet East London suburb, has become a place of horror. Full report on It was now eight-thirty. Sophie Langton writes on Without speaking—“What Makes Children Kill?”