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There was no reply.
    Clare dug her phone out of her pocket and dialled Ina Britz.
    Im at the house, Clare said. Seems to be the last point of contact with Rosa Wagner. No sign of her, but theres a broken window and blood by the phone.I want forensics here now.
    Im on it, said Ina. Are you alone? Stay where you can be seen till we get there. Clare? Clare, answer me.
    But Clares phone was back in her pocket and shed already stepped outside, looking for a way into the house. All the windows were closed, all of them intact. She tried each one as she worked her way around the house. Sash windows in the sitting room. Nothing outof place.
    She found a stone and cracked a pane. She waited, holding her breath. No alarm. She unhooked the catch and opened the window. She climbed in. She ran through the living room, the immaculate dining room, a playroom where two teddies sat wide-eyed, expectant, amid a pile of toys.
    The oak door into the kitchen was locked, the key on the inside of the door.
    Clare ran outside again. Nothingbut the view onto the wintry garden. Woody rose bushes, lavender, the lawn. Behind her, the roar of security vehicles as they raced towards the house. At the end of the garden the trees swayed in the wind, a branch skimming the electrified wire fence that encircled Sylvan Estate.
    She ran down the slope.
    The grass here was long, with straggly runners flattened under the fence. A steep bank, invisiblefrom the house, had washed away the ground eroded by the rain. There were marks in the earth where tiny claws had burrowed under the fence. Nearby, a porcupine quill lay in the mud. Clare picked it up, testing its pointed end against her skin. Neat black-and-white quills, little javelins, afforded the creature protection that Clare envied right then.
    The winter-hungry animal had squeezed underthe fence to forage in the estate. The tracks used by other creatures surviving on the edge of the suburb were visible among the trees. And it would have been the trees that drew the girl into the forest, closing up behind her. In the woods, Rosa would have been in another world, dark, forested, a refuge. But Sylvan Estate was not a benign place, as the skull and crossbones small yellow-and-blacksigns strung along the fence at eye level, warned. Clare tossed a small branch, and the fence hissed and spat, lethal as a cobra. Voltage like this would have knocked Rosa out unless the current was off.
    Clare slipped the quill into her pocket. There was the semblance of a path next to the fence. It led towards a stand of oak trees fifty metres away. She followed it and her pulse quickenedwhen, among the solid old trunks, she saw a dry-packed wall.
    The cottage on the other side was constructed from dressed stone that was a mottled orange-grey from the lichen. Raspberry canes had grown rampant in this corner of the garden, almost swamping the roof and recessed windows. Clare tried the door, but the wood had swollen in the rain and it was stuck. She put her shoulder to it and shoved.It gave way suddenly and she stumbled inside.
    Light filtered in through a cobwebbed window. Clare probed the gloom with her flashlight. A pile of blankets and old scraps of carpet in the corner. A snug nest against the cold. An empty vodka bottle on the floor, a half-eaten packet of stroopwafels, the same as those shed seen in the pantry.
    Clare held her breath and went over to the bed. Lyingon a grubby blanket was a light bulb, the crystal meth residue streaked across the inside. Tik, the smell of new money. Tik, the smell of fleeting power, the stench of a slow death. A new copy of Glamour magazine was jammed between the bed and the wall, a torn scrap marking the fashion spread. Clare slid it out and turned it over, noticing part of a graph and handwritten notes that she couldntquite decipher. There were a few more scraps underneath the magazine. Clare placed them on one side, all five pieces, evidence to be bagged with the other detritus. One fell to the