Perez had finished emptying shelves and turned his attention to a painted cupboard that formed a window seat, the only original piece of furniture in the room. It contained memorabilia of Charles’s stage career, flyers and posters, a signed programme for the Royal Variety Show, photos of Charles next to men with wide lapels and women with big hair. He piled the contents onto the floor. Then he stopped. He was on his knees and was so still for a moment that it looked to Willow as if he was praying. Then he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. She got down beside him and was again aware of her body close to his. He reached inside the cupboard and pulled out a small digital recorder, held it carefully in his fingers for her to see.

‘It could be a coincidence.’ Willow stood up. ‘No reason at all why it should be Eleanor’s.’ But she didn’t believe in coincidence and she could hear the excitement in her own voice. Here they could have found a definite link between the two victims.

‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Perez stood it on the desk and switched it on. They heard an eager young woman talking about walking along the path from Voxter after an evening with her relatives and seeing the apparition of Peerie Lizzie.

‘That’s Vaila Arthur, telling Eleanor the story of her encounter with Peerie Lizzie,’ Willow said. ‘Can we go right back to the beginning and play it from the start?’

Perez pressed a couple of buttons. There was silence. Willow expected to hear Vaila’s words again. Instead there was a child’s voice. She was singing a simple melody; it was piping and a little flat on the high notes, but still moving somehow.

‘What on earth is that?’ She looked across the desk at Perez, whose face was white and quite still.

He waited a moment before answering. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Peerie Lizzie’s song.’

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty