She shook free of the memory, giving a small fierce smile and lifting her hair away from her left ear. Baarda walked to the bed and sat gently on the edge, pushing the hair back further with his fingertips to inspect what was left of the lobe. The ragged edge was still clear. He ran his thumb over the rough scar tissue.

‘It’s helpful,’ Connie said. ‘Every mirror is a reminder of why I do this job.’

‘They allowed male and female patients on the same ward?’ Baarda sounded horrified, rightly so.

‘The door between the wards was supposed to be locked at night, only it was a shortcut to the outside for staff to take breaks, so it was often left unlocked. Safety came second. There were a lot of attacks and abuse, but the staff didn’t report it up the chain for fear of reprimand.’

‘Is that why you decided to become a forensic psychologist?’

‘At that point I was thinking of something more active and interventionist. I wanted to join the FBI. Get trained, get tough, if I ever learned to communicate again, which by then had become a matter of survival.’

Baarda’s mobile rang. He dropped Connie’s hair and stood up, walking across the room before answering. He gave a variety of commands while Connie wandered into the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face, flushing the recollections down the sink with the drips.

Baarda ended the call before knocking softly on the bathroom door.

‘Connie, are you all right?’

‘All good,’ she declared, opening the door. ‘Anything new on Elspeth?’

‘I’m afraid not. Just an update on the missing schoolgirl. Uniformed officers have canvassed the school area and the streets surrounding Meggy’s home address and got nothing, save for one of Meggy’s friends, who said she’d talked about seeing someone in the park who’d made her feel unsettled. Makes sense that he’d been following her. If it had been an opportunistic snatch from a school, he’d have been there at the normal end of the school day. He was obviously aware that Meggy was always picked up later.’

‘Sure,’ Connie said, the word faint in her own ears. She was staring at her laptop across the room, reconstructing the masses of images contained in the files but seeing those on the walls at Angela’s house. ‘Parks are good places to watch people. You can be jogging, walking, birdwatching, almost anything. Public spaces where it’s normal to be going slowly or just sitting around. Chances are, no one would notice you.’

‘Is there something …?’

‘Can’t be. Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Connie,’ Baarda said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Pull up all the photos you have of Elspeth where she’s in a park. Go through everything, whether it’s her, her husband, their children. They have dogs, right?’

‘Correct.’