Best case, Natasha Barclay had been the victim of an assault, and worst case her injuries may have been fatal. Without immediate medical attention, she could easily have bled out after her hand was removed. The fact that at least part of the attack looked to have taken place inside her home meant there was a good chance she may have known her assailant. What Porter couldn’t quite reconcile, though, was that if she was alive and well, why nobody, including her parents, had bothered helping to look after her flat. On the flip side, if something more sinister had happened, why had nobody reported her missing? The last thought that struck him as he leant forward to start the task of locating her parents was a little less palatable, but one that would need careful consideration nonetheless. What if those closest to her knew she was missing but had a vested interest in hiding that fact?

CHAPTER THREE

The canvassing of the remaining neighbours took up most of the morning, but proved fruitless. As far as they were concerned, the flat may as well have stood empty all these years, and none of them had heard of Natasha Barclay, let alone laid eyes on her. The search of her flat had yielded a few interesting snippets of information, though. The three constables returned from their door-knocking and set to work sifting through the boxes of letters, photos, and everyday detritus that had been packed up and brought back to the station. One of these included the unopened mail that had been piled like a snowdrift behind the front door. Buried in there was a series of bills from various utility companies: British Gas for power, British Telecom for the phone line, shortening to BT around the early nineties. The water bills told a tale in their own right. There was a mixture of both Thames Water Authority and Thames Water. The latter had only been founded in 1989, which lent further credence to Porter’s suspicion that the flat had indeed stood empty since before that. The bills covered the period from 1983 right through to 2012, whereupon they were accompanied by demands for payment citing a failed direct debit, and finally notices to disconnect services, and the other utilities followed suit around the same time.

Porter listened while one of the PCs, a young man by the name of Edwards, summarised what they’d found. They’d also catalogued a series of bank statements that showed the same current account as before, dated 1983. The funds, healthy at first, slipped steadily away like sand through an hourglass, without a single deposit to stem the tide, until they were depleted around the time the demanding letters started to arrive. The power had been cut, alright, but not through any fault or error of the provider.