Mitchell was not sure what to think as he walked down the path and made his way around to the house next door, where he knocked loudly. It was typical, he thought, that this should be the one time that Constance was not to be found pottering in her garden. He had to knock three times, and wait for a couple of minutes, before he got a response.

"Lewis," Constance Hawkins greeting her visitor when she opened the door. "What can I do for you? There's no problem, is there?"

"Hello, Constance," Mitchell returned the greeting. "Have you got a minute, I need to ask you a few questions about your neighbour."

"Mr Wild?" Constance had never been slow on the uptake, and she quickly put together the sergeant's earlier visit in search of Zack Wild with his presence on her doorstep.

"That's right. Do you mind?" Mitchell made a gesture intended to suggest they go inside. "I'm sure you'll be more comfortable if we do this in the living room, where you can sit down."

"Okay, Lewis, what is it you want to ask me?" Constance asked once the two of them were seated in the living room.

"First off, and I know I already asked you this last weekend, do you remember seeing Georgina Ryder a week ago yesterday on Friday evening, after six o'clock?"

Constance responded immediately with a firm shake of her head.

"You're certain about that?" Mitchell held firm against the glare prompted by the question.

"Of course I'm certain," Constance said. "I have my dinner at six o'clock, and after that I was in front of the television."

Mitchell accepted that, there was no reason for Constance to lie. "Okay, let's move on to your neighbour. Did you see Lucy Goulding pay a visit to Mr Wild yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes, it must have been around two o'clock when she walked past, wearing an outfit that was positively indecent." Constance sniffed disapprovingly at the memory of what Lucy Goulding had been wearing. "I thought at first she must be going up to the Wrights', but then she stopped next door. She was on the doorstep for a short while, talking to Mr Wild; I couldn't hear what was being said, but he let her in. I was surprised by that, I've spoken to Mr Wild a number of times since he moved here, and I wouldn't have thought him the sort of person to let a scantily clad young girl into his home – he seemed more sensible than that."

"I don't know if you're aware of it, but Mr Wild is an author." Mitchell saw Constance nod. "Well, apparently, Lucy is a fan of his books, and a budding author herself; she went there to get copies of his books autographed, and to get some advice on writing, that's why he let her in. Mr Wild claims that Lucy left after about an hour, between three and three-thirty, did you see her go?"

Constance nodded. "Yes, I was still pottering around in the garden when she came back out. I have to admit; I did wonder what Lucy was doing there for so long."

Mitchell was still wondering; he did not believe that Lucy Goulding had visited Zack Wild, dressed the way she was, and all they had done was talk about writing. "Did you see where Lucy went after she left Mr Wild's?" he asked.

"Of course I did," Constance said sharply. "She headed back down the road to the village. If she had gone to the Wrights', you'd have heard about it when you were up there earlier, and the only other place she could have gone is the old Matthews' place. Why don't you ask Mr Wild where she went, he followed her down the road."

That surprised Mitchell. "He never said anything about that to me. When you say he followed her down the road, do you mean on foot or in his car?"

"In his car," Constance said. "He drove down the road no more than a minute after Lucy walked past me. I didn't think anything of it at the time, I just thought he was going out somewhere, but now; you said yesterday afternoon is the last time Lucy was seen?"

"As far as we're aware," Mitchell said. "From what we've been able to find out, she disappeared between leaving Mr Wild's and reaching the village. Please don't be offended, Constance, but are you certain it was Mr Wild you saw heading down the road after Lucy? I'm not trying to suggest you're wrong, I just need to be certain before I do anything."

"I'm certain. I see that car of his outside of next door every day, and I can't imagine anyone else would have been driving down the road then."

"And you didn't see anyone else around, either before or just after Lucy headed down the road?"

Constance shook her head. "No-one. Until Lucy came along, I hadn't seen anyone since Amelia and Tara went off to school yesterday morning, and after Lucy left, the only person I saw was Mr Wild. You know how quiet the road is here."

"I do." Mitchell was aware that it was not unusual for over a day to pass with no-one going either up or down the road. "Anyway, thank you, Constance, you've been very helpful, now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'd better go speak to Mr Wild again."

"You're welcome, Lewis, I'm glad I could help."

"Why didn't you say you followed Lucy Goulding down the road after she left?" Mitchell asked the moment Zack opened the door to let him back in.

Zack looked surprised by the question, and didn't answer until he had closed the door behind the sergeant. "Because I didn't."

"Mrs Hawkins says differently; she says she saw you drive down the road just a minute after Lucy left your house. She's very definite about it. Now, why don't you tell me why you were following Lucy, and where she is," Mitchell said as he trailed his suspect into the living room.

"I don't have a clue," Zack said. "Where Lucy is that is, because I didn't leave the house."

"Are you saying that Mrs Hawkins is lying? Because she is known to be a very honest and trustworthy person."

"I'm sure she is, but on this occasion, she's mistaken." Zack scratched absently at his arm as he spoke. "After Lucy left, I got back to the book I'm writing, I was in a bit of a zone when Lucy rang the bell, and I wanted to get back to it; unfortunately, I couldn't find my zone, so I gave up and went out into the garden out back to wrestle with the jungle there. I was out there for most of the afternoon – I didn't come in 'til my stomach started grumbling, and it was time to make dinner. I didn't leave the house until I went for my run this morning."

"I take it you have no-one who can confirm that," Mitchell said, his eyes on Zack's arm; when he stopped worrying at it with his fingernails, Mitchell saw that the author had a series of fresh scratches, no more than a day old, midway up the back of his arm. "Where did you..." Because he could finish, his phone went off in his pocket. "Excuse me," he said, before hurrying from the room.

"Hello, sir, how's everything going with the search?" he answered the phone when he got to the kitchen.

"I guess that depends on your point of view," Stevens said. "We've found Lucy, but her parents are not going to be happy about it. I'm not happy about it."

Mitchell felt his heart sink into his stomach. "She's dead." It was a statement, not a question. "Is it – was she killed the same way as Georgina?" he asked, wanting to hear that she hadn't been killed, that she had died as a result of an accident.

"I didn't see Georgina, so I can't say for certain," Stevens said. "But based on how you described her body, I think so, yes. I'd say she was killed by the same person, but what he did to her was worse, much worse, and I wouldn't have thought that possible when you described what was done to Georgina."

Mitchell wanted to ask what was different about Lucy's murder, but wasn't sure he really wanted to know. Instead he asked, "Where did you find her?"

"In the woods," Stevens told him. "Her body is not far from where Georgina was found."

"Have you found anything that might tell us who killed her? Or which might tell us if what happened to her and to Georgina are definitely linked?"

"No," Stevens said regretfully. "We've found some partial footprints near to where Georgina was found, but that's it, and they're no help to us right now; the rain we've had in the past week has washed most of them away so we can't follow them anywhere. It would take an Indian tracker to stand any chance of finding out where they lead. The forensics people are still working at Georgina's scene; maybe when they move on to this scene they'll find something useful.

"Paul said you're with Mr Wild, have you been able to find out anything from him?" he asked, changing the subject.

"He claims he didn't see Georgina at all the night she disappeared, and that he never spoke to her, though he did know the name, and he was aware that she was missing."

"What about Lucy, has he been able to tell you anything on that front?"

"Things are a little confusing and conflicted on that front," Mitchell said. He kept his voice low, so it didn't carry down the passage to the living room. "Mr Wild has admitted that he saw Lucy yesterday, that she paid him a visit, he also claims that she left after about an hour, and that he didn't see her again after that."

"And you don't believe him?"

"Well, I've been able to confirm that Lucy did leave the house after about an hour, but, according to Constance Hawkins, Mr Wild followed her down the road in his car a minute or so after she left," Mitchell said. "He denies it, of course, claims he didn't leave the house after Lucy left until this morning, that he spent his time gardening and working on some book he's writing. He has some scratches on his arm, though, and they don't look more than a day old."

"Are you thinking that he could be responsible for these...deaths." Stevens could not bring himself to say murder; it felt to him as though saying it would make it true.

"At the moment, I think he's our most likely suspect," Mitchell said. "He claims not to have seen Georgina the night she disappeared, yet she would have walked right past his house on the way to the Wright Farm, and he found her body in an out of the way place that just about no-one goes to. Then there's his claim that he didn't leave the house after Lucy's visit when he was seen doing so, and the scratches on his arm."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to bring him in so I can question him again, and I want to search his house and his cars for anything that might link him to all of this."

"Sounds reasonable; is there anything you need me to do?" Stevens asked, trying, and failing, to tear his eyes from the naked body on the ground near him that both fascinated and sickened him.

"Yes, sir," Mitchell said. "I have no idea if we need a search warrant to check out Mr Wild's house, and his sports car, so we need to find out."

Stevens thought about things for a few moments before he said anything. "I think you should be alright on the search warrant front. I'll double-check with the chief inspector, but I wouldn't let it stop you searching the house. I'll send you a couple of the guys from the search party to help you out, I'll send them as soon as I'm off the phone, it shouldn't take them long to reach you. One last thing, what are you going to do about finding Mr Wild's sports car, assuming he won't tell you where it is?"

"I've no idea," Mitchell admitted. "Hopefully we'll find something when we search the house that will tell us where the car is."

Once the conversation with his superior was finished, Mitchell returned to the living room, where he paused in the doorway for a moment.

"Is everything alright?" Melissa asked when she saw that her superior was back.

Mitchell shook his head. "No, it's not," he said. "Mr Wild," he addressed the author. "I'm placing you under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Lucy Goulding. We'll be taking you to the station for questioning, and searching your house and vehicles for evidence; with that in mind, where's your other car? Your Land Rover is outside, but not your sports car, where is it, we're going to need to search it as well."

Zack was speechless. He recovered quickly, however, for the sergeant's announcement was not that much of a surprise, given how obvious he had been with his suspicions. He had expected it to be a little longer before he was arrested, though, and assumed that the move had been prompted by the discovery of Lucy's body – he didn't doubt that that was what Mitchell had been told on the phone.

"I think that's a question I shouldn't answer until I've spoken to my solicitor," he said. "Speaking of whom." He got to his feet so he could get his mobile phone from the desk and make the necessary call.