The snow-drift in which she had suddenly sat was so, so cold. She had been cold enough already, playing as she was in the snow wearing inadequate clothing. But now the freezing damp made her shiver uncontrollably. "Are you okay?" he asked with honest concern in his kind and beautiful eyes, gently touching her stinging cheek. He picked her up and set her on her feet, brushing the snow away with gentle hands. Warmth enveloped her as he helped her into a new brown coat, much too big for her, and buttoned it up snuggly. And then he was gone. But his warmth remained, along with words of encouragement wrapped in brown suede: "I like your persistence . . . . Just keep trying . . . . Don't give up. . . ."

But a deep, gruff voice was insisting she wake from her pleasant dream, and hands the size of a bear's paws were grasping her shoulders. Through the fog in her mind, she realized slowly that she was no longer six years old and she was not playing in the snow. Anger seized her, and she felt a furious roar rip from her throat as she clawed blindly at the person who dared touch her. Pain, sharp and intense, spiked through her skull as she desperately tried to scream at the intruder, all sound with no coherent words.

The huge paws easily imprisoned her small hands, but they were oddly gentle, and the stranger's voice was kind and rhythmically reassuring. Gradually she became aware of what he was saying: "It's all right, child, you're safe. I'm here to help, child, calm down."

But she couldn't let her guard down. In her short life, she had learned that people were unreliable at best—most were treacherous and deceitful as a rule. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of those she had met with whom she had felt safe. She struggled against him, although she was growing very weak, determined not to give up without a fight.

Fighting was futile. He barely noticed her resistance, calling orders over his shoulder to someone else who was approaching them: "There you are, Keene, about bloody time. Don't just stand there gawking, man, off with you to flag down the ambulance! They'll never spot us down here from the street. Useless as a lamppost without a light, you are."

And then he said to her, in a surprisingly gentle tone, "I'm with the police, child. I won't let anyone else harm you, I promise." Something in his voice made her open her one good eye and try to focus; she grew still and studied this police officer, this bear of a man, who promised to protect her. From a young age, she had practiced the art of deducing a person's character from quick observations; she took in the genuine concern in his brown eyes, the friendly lines on his face, the sincerity of his expression. This was a stranger's face, and yet she recognized him immediately as a man of integrity and kindness. Convinced, she sobbed in relief and let herself go limp. She could trust this man, she knew; he had the look of another policeman whom she'd met when she was small.

Once, long ago, a sad-eyed policeman had taken the time to sit and listen to a defiant and frustrated little six-year-old run-away and understand her heart. Where others saw a mischievous trouble-maker and a wild, wilful burden to be dealt with, he saw a charming, home-sick urchin who was crying out for affection and attention in the only way she knew. He seemed to know all in a few minutes what she had been trying a lifetime to say—that she was lonely and desperate for love and stability and care. He felt she was worthy of his attention and he wanted to protect her from the cruelty of the world. The greater part of her sense of self-worth was born in that singular encounter with a stranger who dared to care about her, to be reinforced months later by another stranger with a brown suede coat.

But she could not be his little girl, no matter how much she might have longed for a father just like him; and he had been forced to take her back to a family that didn't want her, because that is the way the world works. All the same, she had held on to the feeling of safety she had, sitting beside her sad-eyed policeman. Her memory of him gave her great hope. He became in her mind the epitome of all a human being ought to be; his existence assured her that good people did inhabit the world if she could but find them.

This new police officer seemed to have been cut from the same cloth as that iconic man from her past. Now that she was quiet, he released her hands, but she grasped one of his huge paws in both of hers and held on tightly, still sobbing in relief.

Gently he disentangled his hand from hers as he soothed, "Let the paramedics help you, child. I'll be right over here, don't worry. I'll not leave you."

"Here's your overcoat back, Inspector Gregson," another voice said, and the warmth was lifted from her and replaced with a shock blanket. Other hands examined her and prepared her for transport, and other voices were speaking to one another concerning her treatment; but all the time she was listening to the bear-man's gruff voice, growling orders as his forensics team arrived, directing the investigation of the crime as he hovered near.

"It's certain the assault didn't take place here. Spread out, find anything you can that might lead to the actual crime scene. Sergeant Beal, I'll have an evidence bag here for this clothing . . . . Ta. No, no, I'll hang onto this, you have a look through the rubbish bins there. . . . Here, you two—go door to door! The child was dropped here sometime in the dead of night, but someone may have seen or heard something. . . . Hi, there, Knutson! What the hell are you still doing here? Go back to the station and search the databases for a girl of her description. Someone knows who this child is and where she came from, and I want to know it myself by the end of the day. . . . Are you daft, man? She's not homeless—have you eyes? . . . . Get busy, you lot! I will have results this day or I'll know the reason why!" Intrigued by his insights into her attack, she was distracted from the pain and from the paramedic's ministrations by his authoritative tone and confident manner.

By this time, she was being loaded into the ambulance. Before they closed the door, the bear-man approached her once again. "I'll be along soon, don't you worry, child," he assured her. "They'll take good care of you, in the meantime." To the paramedic, he asked, "Is Dr Joseph Bell on shift today, do you know?"

"I believe so, Inspector. Shall I call ahead and ask him to meet us?"

"Please do. He'll be interested in this one; and I'll need his deductive abilities if I'm to catch the bastard that did this," the detective inspector replied. "We need to find the brute, but we've no place to start. Tell him I'll be along directly. Oh, and give this to him—he'll know what to do with it."

"But, Inspector, isn't this evidence? Shouldn't you . . . ."

"I need the doc to have a look. I'll collect it in due time. Just do as I say," was the emphatic reply.

The doors slammed shut and the sirens wailed as the ambulance zipped through the streets to hospital.

0000

Ten years earlier, Detective Sergeant Greg Lestrade found himself minding a deceptively angelic-looking six-year-old who was apparently trying to run away to India. Although he spent only a few short hours with her and never learned her proper name, still the blue-eyed child had entangled her tiny fingers around his paternal heart and never let it go. It had grieved him to be forced to take her back to a family who was obviously neglectful and emotionally abusive, but what choice did he have? For many years afterwards, he often thought of the blue-eyed child and wished he could have done something, just any small thing, to ease her way through a hard, cruel world.