When Craig left at dawn, Katie stood by the front window and watched the news crews gather. A man in a parka was first. He took up position across the street by the Ritchies’ front gate at around seven-thirty and unfolded a little seat. By eight he had been joined by at least eleven others, some with video cameras, some with stills cameras. They milled around on the snowy sidewalk. Katie figured the ones stamping their feet and acting cranky were the American and European journalists. The guys who just stood there were Canadians. Canadian journalists stood in the snow a lot.

They’d already tried ringing the bell but she’d ignored it, and if they had her number it was a waste of time. Some of them had mobiles and she’d watched them punching in numbers, wondering if they were calling her. Who cared? The phone was off the cradle.

She watched them passively from behind the safety of the net curtain with the lights off and decided she couldn’t even find a space in her bursting heart to hate them. In a while she would phone her parents and warn them about what was going to go down here. June Crosby had been on the phone constantly since the first murders hit their TV screen in Vancouver, but Katie had laughed off her mother’s concerns. Time, though, to tell the truth. She thought of what she might say on that call and her heart piled on a few extra weights. But right now, she just watched the vultures gather outside the window. A mother wolf guarding the lair.

‘They looking for Dad?’

The voice made Katie jump, and she whirled round with her hands over her breast. Billy was standing in the door to the lounge, his eyes tiny with the remains of his drugged sleep, the Flames T-shirt he’d slept in as crumpled as his face. She studied that tiny oval face, weighing up his condition, wondering if he was able to handle what new horror waited on his own doorstep.

And as she looked, Katie saw in her son’s eyes something that had never been there before. He was looking at her with the eyes of an adult. Calm, introspective, mature. It was unnerving her.

‘You okay, sweetheart?’

He nodded once.

‘Come here.’ She held out her arms to him and he walked slowly forward, docking in the bay that was his mother’s embrace. Katie stroked his head, held his face to her stomach and swallowed. ‘Things are going to get a bit tough, Billy Boy. You’re going to have to be real strong.’

‘Why?’

‘Well … your Dad’s done some bad things.’ She hesitated. ‘We think. Those men out there think so, anyhow. Things he might not be that proud of.’

Billy’s head snapped out of her grasp and he stood back from her, his eyes ablaze. ‘He hasn’t done nothing bad! Nothing!’