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Amy picked up her helmet and put on her leather biker gloves, determined not to cry again. Just as she was turning to go, Clive’s hand shot out and grabbed her glove.

‘I don’t know it for sure,’ he said. ‘But going on past experience, it’s probably some combination of Alice Barrow – her mum’s maiden name; Harcourt – the first street she lived on; or 20 April 1986 – her birthday. She always used those.’

Amy put her arms around him and hugged him. His own arms twitched, as though he was going to reciprocate but then thought better of it.

Leaving the pub, she felt a desperate urge to get to a computer straight away. Becky’s flat was closer and she had the keys in her jacket pocket. She would go there, use the iMac. She felt an electrical charge inside her, a blend of excitement and terror. This was her final and only lead. If this led nowhere, what would she do? She pictured Becky lying in the dark, lost for ever.

She got on her bike and headed towards Becky’s flat.

DI Declan Adams and DC Bob Clewley pulled into a parking space at the end of the cul-de-sac and got out of the car. Declan stretched his legs – his knee had seized up this time – and gently rotated his bad shoulder, while Bob smirked at him.

‘Getting old,’ Bob said.

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘Still, at least we are growing old. Unlike these poor bastards’ daughter.’

Declan put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder to stop him striding straight up to the house. ‘Remember, we don’t know that for certain. Not yet. We need to talk to them first. Or rather, I do. Let me do the talking, all right? Don’t want you going in with your size tens and upsetting everybody.’

The cul-de-sac was in a suburb of Chichester, West Sussex, a pretty place that Declan had visited once before, back in the mists of time, on a school trip to the cathedral. All he remembered about that trip was how he had spent the whole day trying not to stare at Sally Oaks, with whom he was madly in love that week. He wondered where she was now. He hoped she or her loved ones never received a visit from someone like him.

It was every parent’s greatest fear: a knock from the police. Declan wondered whether, after fifteen years, these parents were still waiting, still hoping. Still dreading that knock.

But despite the news he was going to have to deliver, assuming the information in the DNA database was correct, Declan felt that tingle of excitement, had felt it all the way up from Eastbourne, wanting Bob to ignore the speed limits and put his foot down.

Declan pressed the doorbell and waited. A dog barked inside and he heard a woman’s admonishing voice, ordering it to be quiet. But it was a man who opened the door. He was, according to the information they had, sixty-one, but he looked older, well past retirement age. The remains of his hair were bone white and he was thin, all sharp angles and hollows beneath the cardigan that he was wearing despite the humid weather.

‘Mr Corrigan?’ Declan said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Declan Adams. This is Detective Constable Bob Clewley. May we come in?’

A minute later, they sat on a salmon-pink sofa, holding cups of tea that Mrs Corrigan had produced with record speed. Whilst her husband was emaciated, Sheila Corrigan was a large woman, just the right side of morbidly obese. Along with the tea, she put down a large biscuit barrel, full of custard creams and chocolate digestives. At Sheila’s insistence, Bob took a Jammie Dodger.

Derek Corrigan settled into an armchair, an ancient Labrador at his feet, his wife in the armchair beside him. On the mantelpiece opposite the sofa were half a dozen framed photos of a girl, her age increasing from left to right along the mantel. A 6-month-old baby, grinning toothlessly, then a little girl with plaits, a pubescent girl with a gappy smile wearing a Brighton and Hove Albion shirt, a skinny teenager clad in black with big silver earrings, a young woman on her graduation day, flanked by her proud parents, and finally a woman in her early twenties, standing in front of a Christmas tree. Blue eyes and blonde hair. She was beautiful.

Sheila saw Declan staring at the photos. ‘That’s Amber,’ she said brightly.

‘Our daughter,’ Derek added. There was no brightness in his voice, but, beneath the sadness, Declan detected a touch of wonder – disbelief, still – that he could have fathered such an attractive woman.

Declan put his tea down on the table in front of him. ‘You didn’t ask us why we’re here,’ he said.

The Corrigans exchanged a look that almost broke Declan’s heart.

‘We thought that maybe you have some news …’ Sheila said, the sentence trailing off as if she’d run out of oxygen.

Declan cleared his throat. ‘I want to ask you about your daughter. Amber. When did you last see her?’

Derek sent an enquiring look in his wife’s direction and she nodded. He said, ‘Fifteen years ago. Fifteen years this month, in fact: 31 July 1998. That’s when she went to the conference.’

Declan was aware of Bob scribbling in his notepad, and trusted that he would take down everything important. ‘Conference?’

‘Yes. It was something to do with the Internet. I think … well, yes, this was just when everyone was starting to go online. We didn’t get it until a few years later – I still can’t use it properly, it takes me half an hour to type “Dear Sir”, but Sheila here is on it a lot these days, aren’t you, love?’

Sheila nodded. ‘I use this forum. For women like me.’

Declan waited for her to continue. ‘Mothers whose children have run away. Not that Amber was a child when she went.’ She swallowed hard and her chin trembled.

Run away. That’s what they thought had happened. Declan turned back to Derek, keen to concentrate on the facts, not only because it was his job, but because facts were easier to cope with than emotions. Even the facts he was going to have to reveal during this conversation. ‘Do you know where the conference was, or what it was called?’

‘I can’t remember the name off the top of my head but we’ll have the details somewhere. Do you want me to …?’ He moved to stand up.

‘No, it’s fine. If you could look it up for me later, that would be great.’

‘All right. The conference was about starting a business on the Internet. Amber had done Business Studies at university—’

‘She got a 2:1,’ Sheila chipped in.

‘—and was excited about the thought of making lots of money on the web.’

Bob looked up from his notepad. ‘That would have been when the Internet gold rush started. Before the bubble burst.’

‘That’s right.’ Derek nodded. ‘Amber was so excited about this conference. She said there were going to be investors there and people from America who’d set up successful websites and were making piles of cash.’

‘But you don’t remember where it was?’ Declan prompted him.

‘Not the name of the conference – but it was in Tunbridge Wells.’

That was just a short drive from Robertson Farm, just across the Sussex–Kent border. It was time, Declan realized, to explain exactly why he and Bob were here.

‘Mr Corrigan, Mrs Corrigan – it’s not going to be easy to tell you this …’

He watched Sheila reach out her hand. Derek grasped it.

‘A few days ago, the body of a young woman was discovered on farmland in Sussex.’ He decided to spare them the detail of the cesspit for now. This was going to be hard enough as it was. ‘The farm is close to Tunbridge Wells.’

The couple were staring at him, tears already appearing in Sheila’s eyes. Derek looked as if he was about to throw up; Declan wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to grow any paler, but he had.

‘We took a DNA sample from the … young woman. Her DNA was not on the system, but … I’m not sure if you know how DNA works, but children have a 50-per-cent DNA match with their parents. Mr Corrigan, your DNA is on the national database.’

He let go of his wife’s hand. ‘I know.’

Declan paused and looked at Sheila, who had rubbed away her tears with her fist and now looked angry and embarrassed. She obviously knew too.

‘I realize the charges were dropped,’ Declan said.

‘Yes, when that little bastard admitted he’d been making it all up.’

Derek had a tiny flare of colour in his cheeks now; the rosy tinge of anger. ‘They took a sample from me way back then. One of the Scouts accused me of doing disgusting things to him. The whole thing was a prank, a stupid so-called joke between boys. But I can’t believe my DNA is still in your system, even though the whole thing was dismissed. It didn’t even go to trial.’

‘It happens,’ Declan said. ‘And in a way it’s a good thing … because it led us here. To you.’

Derek lifted his chin defensively. ‘It lost me my Scout leader’s job, but it didn’t ruin my life. Amber leaving us without a word and not coming back –
that
was what ruined my life.’

Declan guessed that Derek’s outburst was, although genuine, also a way of postponing what he knew Declan was about to say.

‘Do you have any other children?’

‘No,’ Sheila replied.

Declan braced himself. This was it – the very worst part of being a cop. He had only had to do it twice before, in the company of an FLO, a family liaison officer, and never with a case like this – where the parents had been holding onto a thread of hope for so many years. Now, he was going to snap that thread.

‘The DNA of the young woman we found on the farm has a 50-per-cent match with yours, Mr Corrigan. Knowing that Amber went missing fifteen years ago, and that she was your only child, means it is almost certain that the body we found is hers. I’m so sorry.’

From talking to other friends in the force, Declan knew that parents reacted to news like this in a multitude of ways: denial, instant waterworks, fury, calm acceptance.

‘But it can’t be her,’ Sheila said.

So it was denial.

‘She left the country. She met a man and left the country. She went to live in Brazil.’

‘No, I’m afraid …’

Sheila hauled herself to her feet. ‘Look, let me show you.’ She left the room and, through a set of double doors, Declan could see her rifling through a sideboard. She came back with a small wooden box, from which she produced a sheet of paper.

Declan took the piece of paper, making sure he held it by the edges. It was a letter from Amber, dated 3 August 1998, typed on a sheet of A4 paper that had lost much of its colour. The letter was short, and, in it, Amber told her parents that she had met a man at the conference and had fallen in love. They were moving to Brazil to start a new life together.

Declan’s pulse accelerated. The body in the cesspit had to be Amber, unless the DNA match was wrong. They could double-check that. But the match and the location, together with the timing and the fact that the description Melinda Moore had given them matched Amber’s physical features, meant he had no doubt in his mind. The dead girl was Amber Corrigan.

Which meant there were two possibilities:

One – the letter really was from Amber, but she had been murdered after she wrote it, by her Brazilian lover or someone else; or

Two – the letter had been written by the person who killed her.

‘Did Amber always
type
letters to you?’ Bob asked, reading over it himself. ‘It seems pretty impersonal.’

Sheila said, ‘Yes, she did. Even at uni. She loved her computers and her handwriting was terrible. She had been pestering us to get on email for ages so she didn’t have to bother with stamps.’

‘So, all these years, you thought Amber was living in Brazil, without ever emailing or visiting you?’

‘Yes. She was. We reckoned she just decided she wanted a new life, and had to shut everything out of the old one to be able to cope with it. She was always single-minded … When you turned up today, we thought you were going to say that something had happened to her out there.’

‘Look at these,’ Derek said, leaning forward and taking something else out of the box. He handed it to Declan.

It was a photograph of a house on a beach. White walls, a terracotta roof, palm trees either side. Declan turned it over. There was no writing on the back.

‘That’s her house,’ Derek said. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’

‘When did you get this?’ Declan asked.

‘A year after she went away.’

‘And was there anything with it? A note?’

‘No. Just that. It’s a beautiful place. Beats rainy Chichester, doesn’t it?’

‘What about the envelope, Mr Corrigan?’ Bob asked. ‘Do you still have it? And the envelope that the first letter came in?’

Derek looked at his wife, who shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I threw them away. I never keep envelopes.’

‘We’ve often thought about going out there to try to find her,’ Derek said. ‘But we wouldn’t know where to start looking.’

Declan suddenly wanted to shake the pair of them, knock their heads together. ‘Didn’t this seem out of character to you? For Amber to run off with a guy she’d just met, send a mysterious photo with no note and not contact you again?’

The couple exchanged another look. Sheila spoke this time. ‘It
was
out of character, I suppose. She was always very close to me, used to call me nearly every day when she was at university. But we’d had a row, you see …’

‘It was that bloody boy,’ Derek said. ‘The one who accused me of those things.’

‘Amber didn’t know he was lying. The whole thing happened just before she went to that conference, you see. She didn’t want to talk to her dad at all … And I stood by him, knew the boy must be lying. Amber was upset with both of us.’

‘It’s the worst thing,’ Derek said. ‘She probably still thinks I did it.’

Sheila shook her head, her gaze fixed on the photo of the whitewashed house on a Brazilian beach. ‘That’s not the worst thing. She probably has children of her own by now. We’re most likely grandparents.’

Derek reached over and patted his wife’s hand as she sobbed. He was staring into space now.

All of a sudden, Declan needed to get out of this room, this house – but he would take the letter and photo with him, along with the picture of Amber when she was in her early twenties, standing in front of the Christmas tree, smiling.