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girl’s face and she became a woman again. She gave them a surprisingly precise description of the girl she had known as Sarah Dunne, answering DC Pickering’s questions quietly and watching him make a note of her answers. It made them increasingly certain that she was describing the woman whose remains had been dumped on the building site. She concluded with, ‘I told the uniformed constable, she came from somewhere over the other side of Bolton, I think, but I haven’t got any address. She never told me that.’
    Pickering closed his notebook and looked into the earnest young face. ‘And what was your connection with Sarah Dunne, Karen?’
    The face which had opened up during her description of the dead girl now shut as suddenly as a book. Karen Jones looked past Pickering instead of at him as she said, ‘We was just friends, wasn’t we? I told the constable earlier, I didn’t know her all that well.’
    â€˜But you knew her well enough to give us a very good description. Even to remember some of the clothes she wore. That’s very helpful to us, Karen.’
    The girl didn’t respond. Her face set sullenly as she said, ‘That’s good then, isn’t it? But there’s nothing more I can tell you.’
    Lucy Blake said, ‘Oh, I think there is, Karen. Not much more, perhaps, but that little might be important. You say Sarah was your friend. So I’m sure you’d want us to find out who killed your friend and put him away for a long time.’
    They could see the struggle going on behind the old-young, too-revealing features. But her face set into a frown as she said, ‘I’d like you to get whoever killed her, yes. But I can’t help you. You’ve had everything I know.’
    â€˜Not quite, Karen. Perhaps I should tell you that we know how your earn your living. How you pay the rent for this place.’ Lucy Blake looked round the room, with its tiny kitchen beyond a small arch, its door to the cramped bathroom built in hastily a decade ago, its high, grubby walls and dusty curtains. She let her gaze come to rest on the new wide-screen television and hi-fi stack, which gleamed incongruously in their shabby setting.
    Panic flashed across the smooth face of Karen Jones as she saw a detective sergeant looking at these things. ‘I save up my money. I do a few hours in the Red Lion at lunch times.’
    â€˜And in the evenings, you’re a hooker. Bringing men back here. Earning enough to pay the rent and buy a few luxuries.’
    â€˜You can’t prove that.’
    Lucy sighed. ‘We could, if we wanted to, Karen. But we’re not here to harass you. We’re here to find out all we can about a dead girl you knew. A girl very much like you. A girl who was murdered.’
    â€˜I told her to be careful.’ The words were out before she could check them.
    â€˜I’m sure you did, Karen. But she wasn’t very experienced, was she? You were giving her a few of the tips of the trade, weren’t you?’
    Karen Jones nodded, her eyes now on a worn patch in the fading Persian carpet, which had graced a grander room than this in its heyday. ‘There are places you can’t go in this town. Not to work, I mean. Not to pick up men.’
    â€˜And why is that, Karen?’
    â€˜There are people who control the trade, aren’t there? People who keep the best areas for their own tarts. They cut up your face, if you don’t keep off. You can’t work, without your face being right.’
    â€˜And they might even kill a young girl, if they thought they could get away with it. To encourage the rest of you to stay in line.’
    She nodded dumbly. Perhaps she felt that if she didn’t put that idea into words, if she let the phrases come from the police, she wasn’t grassing on the men she feared. The man she feared, to be accurate.
    â€˜So you think one of the pimps who control prostitution