"Why you? Why didn't Mrs. Goode's daughter go?"

She shrugged. "It was my idea. Anyway, Lizzie hadn't come back from the kitchen."

"You weren't frightened? You didn't think of waiting for her to go with you?"

"No," she said, "it never occurred to me." She was surprised now that it hadn't. She thought about it. "To be honest, there was nothing to be frightened of. Mum just said Anne was ill. I suppose I thought she'd got an appendix or something. I just kept thinking what a nuisance it was that we had to keep the reporters at bay by locking the gates." Her voice rose. "And it's not as if I've never been up the drive before on my own. I've done it hundreds of times, and in the dark. I sometimes go and chat to Molly when Fred goes to the pub."

"Fine," he said unemotionally. "That's all very logical." He smiled encouragement. "You're a fast runner. I had the devil's own job to catch you and I was going like a train."

She unknit her fingers from the tangled bottom of her tee-shirt. "I was worried about Anne," she admitted. "I keep telling her she's going to drop dead of cancer any minute. I had this ghastly thought that that was exactly what she'd done. So I put a spurt on."

"You're fond of her, aren't you?"

"Anne's good news," she said. "Live and let live, that's her motto. She never interferes or criticises, but I suppose it's easier for her. She doesn't have children to worry about."

"My mother's a worrier," lied McLoughlin, thinking the only thing Mrs. McLoughlin Snr ever worried about was whether she was going to be late for Bingo.

Jane put her chin on her hands. "Mum's an absolute darling," she confided naively, "but she still thinks I need protection. Anne keeps telling her to let me fight my own battles." She twisted a lock of the long dark hair round her finger.

He crossed his legs and pushed himself down into the chair, deliberately relaxed. "Battles?" he teased gently. "What battles do you have?"

"Silly things," she assured him. "Molehills to you, mountains to me. They'd make you laugh."

"I shouldn't think so. You're just as likely to laugh at some of my battles."

"Tell me," she demanded.

"All right." He looked at her smiling, trusting face and he thought, pray God there is nothing you can tell me or that smile will never come again. "The worst battle I ever had was with my mother when I was about your age," he told her. "I'd sneaked my girlfriend into my bedroom for a night of passion. Ma walked in on us in the middle."

"Golly," she breathed. "Why didn't you lock the door?"

"No key."

"How embarrassing," said Jane with feeling.

"Yes, it was," he said reminiscently. "My girlfriend hopped it and I had to do battle with the old dragon in the nuddy. She gave me two choices: if I swore on oath I'd never do it again, I'd be allowed to stay; if I refused to swear, then she'd boot me out just as I was."

"What did you do?"

"Guess," he invited.

"You left, starkers."

He pointed his finger at her with thumb cocked. "Got it in one."

She was like a wide-eyed child. "But where did you get clothes from? What did you do?"

He grinned. "I hid in the bushes until all the lights went out, then I took a ladder from the shed and climbed up to my bedroom. The window was open. It was very easy. I crept back into bed, had a decent night's kip and scarpered with a suitcase before she got up in the morning."

"Do you still see her?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "I do my duty Sunday lunches. To tell you the truth, I think she regretted it afterwards. The house became very quiet when I left." He was silent for a moment. "Your turn now," he said.

She giggled. "That's not fair. Your battle was funny, mine are all pathetic. Things like: Will I or will I not eat my mashed potato? Am I working too hard? Shouldn't I go out and enjoy myself?"

"And do you?"

"Go out and enjoy myself?" He nodded. "Not much." Her lips twisted cynically and made her look older. "Mum's idea of my enjoying myself is to go out with boys. I don't find that enjoyable." Her eyes narrowed. "I don't like men touching me. Mum hates that."

"It's not surprising," he said. "She must feel it's her fault."

"Well, it's not," she said dismissively, "and I wish she'd realise it. The hardest thing in the world is to cope with someone else's guilt."

"What do you think happened to your father, Jane?"

The question hung in the air between them like a bad smell. She turned away and looked out of the window and he wondered if he had pushed too fast and lost her. He hoped not, as much for her own sake as for the sake of the enquiry.

"I'll tell you what happened the night he left," she said at last, speaking to the window. "I remember it very clearly but even my psychiatrist doesn't know all of it. There are bits I kept back, bits that at the time didn't fit the pattern and which I left out." She paused for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it for ages until the other night. Since then I've thought of nothing else, and I think now that what I left out may be important."

She spoke slowly and clearly as though, having geared herself to tell the story, she saw no point in making it garbled. She told him how, after her mother had left for work, her father had run her bath. That was the signal, she said, that he intended to have sex with her. It was a routine he had established and which she had learned to accept. She described the entire process without a flicker of emotion and McLoughlin guessed she had rehearsed it many times on the psychiatrist's couch. She spoke of her father's approaches and her removal to her bedroom as if she were commentating on a chess game.

"But he did something different that night," she said, turning her dark gaze on the Sergeant.

He found his voice. "What was it?"

"He told me he loved me. He'd never done that before."

McLoughlin was shocked. So much pain and without a word of love. Yet, after all, what good would kind words have done except make the man a hypocrite? "Why do you think that's important?" he asked dispassionately.

"Let me finish the story," she suggested, "and perhaps it will strike you, too." Before raping her this time, he had given her a present, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. "He'd never done that before either."

"What was it?"

"A little teddy-bear. I used to collect them. When he had finished," she said, dismissing the entire incident in four words, "he stroked my hair and said he was sorry. I asked him why because he'd never apologised before, but my mother came in and he never answered." She fell silent and stared at her hands.

He waited but she didn't go on. "What happened then?" he asked after several minutes.

She gave a mirthless laugh. "Nothing really. They just looked at each other for what seemed like hours. In the end, he got off the bed and pulled up his trousers." Her voice was brittle. "It was like one of those awful Whitehall farces. I do remember my mother's face. It was frozen, like a statue's. She was very pale except for the bruise on her face where he hit her the day before. She only moved after he'd left the room, then she lay beside me on the bed and hugged me. We stayed like that all night and in the morning he'd gone." She shrugged. "We've never seen him again."

"Did she say anything to him?" he asked.

"No. She didn't need to."

"Why not?"

"You know that expression 'if looks could kill.' " He nodded. "That was what was frozen on her face." She bit her lip. "What do you think?"

She caught him off guard. He so nearly said, I think your mother killed him. "About what?" he asked her.

She showed her disappointment. "It seems so obvious to me. I hoped it would strike you, too." There was a hunger in the thin face, a yearning for something that he didn't understand.

"Hang on," he said firmly. "Give me a minute to think about it. You know the story backwards. This is the first time I've heard it, remember." He looked at the notes he had been taking and cudgelled his brain to find what she wanted him to find. He had ringed the three things she said her father had never done before: love, present, apology. What was their significance? Why did she think he had done them? Why had he done them? Why would any father tell his daughter he loved her, give her a present and regret his unkindnesses? He looked up and laughed. It was stunningly obvious, after all. "He was planning to leave anyway. He was saying goodbye. That's why he disappeared without trace. He'd arranged it all beforehand." She let out a long sigh. "Yes, I think so."