Still she faltered, half unwilling to plunge herself into the darkness that surely awaited her inside the flimsy box she had constructed to hold her memories of those days, but she was already doing that anyway, by talking to the police, wasn’t she? No doubt she would have to testify in court, too. When she thought of the burden of all that, of the jury’s eyes on her, the Sphinx-like judge with his hooded eyes—for it would surely be a man—the hawkish defense lawyer, cynical and aggressive in his attack, making it sound as if everything she said was a lie, as though they were on television, she felt suffocated, and a sense of panic engulfed her. On the other hand, maybe all this was a way not so much of exorcising the past, but of somehow domesticating it, transforming it, making it a part of herself rather than something separate, to be shut away in a box in the dark. She knew that despite all the analysis and self-probing she had subjected herself to over the years, she hadn’t succeeded in integrating herself with her experience. Whatever else a memoir might turn out to be, it would certainly be a leap into the unknown.

Persy rolled over and found the sun again. Linda picked up her notebook and pen and began to write. Let it be a steam train, then, she thought. The kingfisher sat on its branch across the river and continued searching for fish.

ANNIE EXPERIENCED a sense of déjà vu as Gerry drove down the rough track to the farmhouse, though the weather was different from her last visit to a farm, when she was making inquiries about a stolen tractor. Back then, the freezing rain had lashed down on her, the ground had been a mass of churned-up mud and dung. Today the sky was blue, the sun beat down and a sleepy sort of torpor imbued the air. Even the farmyard smells were aromatic. Almost. This was the closest house to the site of the body, and the people who lived here also owned the field next to which the girl’s body had been found. Annie could see the line of trees along the road from which she had just come clearly from where she stood.

It was a youngish man who opened the door. Early thirties, Annie guessed, his hairline already receding but otherwise trim and fit, with that weathered skin and healthy sort of glow that came from working outdoors.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Annie and Gerry flashed their warrant cards, and a frown darkened his forehead. “But what could you possibly . . . ?”

“Mind if we come in for a minute, sir?” Annie asked.

“Oh, no, of course not. Sorry, I’m just . . . er . . . yes, please, come in.”