DNA had come back confirming Mary's biological mother and the deceased girl were related – a step in the right direction even if it was a painful one. There wouldn't be any DNA to definitively prove the male body was that of Donovan Padmore, though Eve's facial reconstruction sketch and a forensic superimposition had been pretty irrefutable. Despite all that, forensics felt as though they were running out of things to test for while Spence had gone so far as to quietly suggest boxing the case up. They might have provided names to the victims, but everyone involved had died tragically other than Sapphira Callaghan, and nobody had seen her in years. Any thoughts of simply shelving everything had been firmly rebuffed by Boyd and Grace though; they'd only had the reconstruction sketches circulating for a short while, and information had a habit of popping up when least expected when it came to cold cases.

After two weeks, Boyd had started to debate smashing his head into his own desk; leads had just about dried up, and anyone who could have been a suspect had died in a fire or been stabbed to death already. For a day or so they'd even toyed with the idea Sapphira had committed the murders and arson, but that just hadn't been feasible. Social Services had basically forgotten about Sapphira's existence the moment she'd turned eighteen, and files suggested she'd pretty much kept herself to herself while in their care. Nobody had ever reported her missing, but that was essentially what she'd become – a young woman who'd slipped through bureaucracy into a dark void.

Boyd gulped down some of his rapidly cooling coffee then fell back in his chair to stare up at the ceiling adorned with those tragic acoustic tiles that insisted on sucking the soul out of an office. Suddenly he wanted Sarah and her sweet smile back; even though they'd not been together very long, she'd just instinctively known how to make him feel better. He slammed the cup back down; maybe he was just doomed to destroy every relationship he had. His marriage, being a father to Luke, even Grace had essentially quit for a little while at one point. She probably had some long word to describe him, but Boyd didn't want to hear it. He wanted justice for little Mary. A kid, a child was dead and he'd got nothing to go on – or at least until a lead had come to him.

Grace knocked politely on his door which snapped him out of his muted self-loathing and didn't bother waiting for him to invite her in, just pushed the door open then made her way to his desk so she could lean on it with her fists almost conspiratorially. His expression might have been one of irritation and sleep deprivation, but the psychologist held hope inside those dark eyes of hers.

"You'll never guess who just walked in asking to speak to us."

"Lord Lucan?" Boyd shrugged. "Think a lot of people want a chat with him."

"I'm being serious, Boyd." She chastised lightly. "Sapphira Callaghan is out there waiting to speak with us."

Suddenly Grace's hope spread to him and caused him to sit straighter in his chair. Nobody had seen her in years, then she just wandered into the Cold Case Unit of her own volition? Was this one of those situations people liked to call miracles?

"Well, bring her the hell in then. Come on, Grace, don't piss about."

"All right, all right, I'm doing it."

Boyd stood as Grace opened the other office door to invite the only surviving Callaghan in. He'd not been entirely sure what to expect, but a young woman who'd clearly been on the streets for years hadn't been it. Memories of Luke flashed back to him like a relentless tidal wave as he shook her hand before retreating back to his seat – his sweet boy now cold in the ground. Had he been paying proper attention, Boyd would have noticed the way she'd shaken his hand but scooted around Grace entirely. Desperate to banish the haunting thoughts of his departed son, Boyd focused on Sapphira's face: porcelain skin, eyes greener than they had any right to be, and raven hair which would have been utterly captivating had it been cleaner. While thin and clearly underfed, there were delicate curves under her clothes and a surprisingly generous chest. Beauty aside, those green eyes housed horror just like his own brown ones did. This young woman was also haunted, just by different demons.

"So you're Sapphira Callaghan, right? Can you prove that?"

Grace could have rolled her eyes. Boyd hadn't ever been much of a people person but he could have at least started with a hello. Instead, she perched on his desk after encouraging the raven-haired beauty to sit in one of the black guest chairs. She knew all too well her role in the interview could be anything from a comforting presence to damage control.

"… Yeah." She dropped her backpack – a distinctive thing with a blue and gray zigzag pattern – to rummage around in her dark and worn denim jacket for a few seconds before yanking free her license that Boyd took quickly. "I'm not at that address anymore, and I don't have a car, but it's in date at least."

Boyd proffered it to Grace who had a quick glance herself before returning it.

"I'm Doctor Grace Foley; I'm a psychologist." She gestured to Boyd behind his desk looking like the king of the castle. "And this is Detective Superintendent Boyd. Before we begin, would you like a cup of tea, Miss Callaghan? It's been a cold morning."

She didn't respond; Grace suspected it ran deeper than indecisiveness, but Boyd was a dog with a bone and determined to move the conversation along as quickly as physically possible.

"Do you or don't you? It's not a hard question." Sapphira nodded. "Brilliant! Grace, get her some tea."

With a contained sigh, Grace poked her head out of the office to request Stella make tea before she returned to lean on the desk, where she carefully began to coax Sapphira into opening up to them and relaxing in the space. Coming to them had clearly been difficult for her, and, fortunately, by the time Stella had supplied the girl with some sugary tea, they'd learnt the sketches in the papers had brought her in.

"Miss Callaghan-"

"Sapphira."

"Hmm?" Boyd's brow furrowed into a little crease.

"I hate my surname. Please call me Sapphira, or Saph."

All right, Sapphira it is. I'm going to level with you." Said Boyd. "We know practically nothing about your family other than what's written in the Social Service files and little bits neighbors remember. Now, we know you ran away; was that because of Donovan Padmore, because of the drugs?"

Sapphira's brow furrowed deeply over her steaming cup, which somehow managed to intensify those green eyes of hers. "What? No! No, Donovan was the only good thing in my life. He protected me."

Boyd and Grace shared a look before he carried on. "Protected? Why would you need protecting?"

"You have no idea of the hell going on inside that house, do you?" A defeated laugh escaped her as she stared into her tea. "My dad was a lovely man. He took such good care of us. I miss him so much. Sometimes I can't even remember his face properly. He was a good person, but my mother was… evil. Just evil. She'd always been mean, but after Dad's accident, there wasn't anybody to keep her under control."

"When you say 'under control,' what does that mean exactly?"

Silence lingered a moment before Sapphira found her voice again. "Everything with her was religion, and I don't think she likes kids very much. She never went to church though; had her own interpretation and this unending list of impossible rules."

Boyd's head tilted to one side questioningly. "And what was her interpretation then?"

"Men needed to be men, provide for their family, and if they didn't, they were failures who should just die." She explained bluntly. "After my dad's accident, she treated him like something under her shoe. Everyone always said he had a heart attack, but I couldn't ever shake that she did something to him. Adam could do no wrong. He was her perfect baby boy, while all women other than her were whores. She hated us; we had to be punished for our sins."

This wasn't the story cop nor psychologist had expected; files and neighbors hadn't given any hint that the girls were being abused. However, when they paused to think about it, there had been some red flags they'd slightly overlooked back when they'd gone through the case together.

"Em," Grace took a breath. "What were the supposed sins of you and your sisters?"

Sapphira shrugged before green eyes peered up to Grace for the first time since she'd entered the room. "I guess our sin is we aren't hers. It started small at first. She'd make us sit on the stairs without moving, but after dad died, it became fun for her. She'd force us to stand in the corner with our arms above our heads for hours. If we dropped them or leaned on the wall, she'd hit us with a belt." Boyd's hands clenched into fists as he listened quietly. He'd grown rather good at recognizing a liar over his career, and the sorrowful distance in her emerald eyes wasn't the look of a liar. She clung to her cooling red cup so tightly that it threatened to crack. Worse than all that though, both he and Grace could tell she didn't expect them to believe her. "Elle - Elizabeth and I tried to protect the younger ones, but… we didn't know how."

"You were a child, none of it is your fault."

"Please carry on, Sapphira."

Something amazing happened then – amazing in Boyd's eyes anyway. She flashed him a small but bright smile that he took to be gratitude; someone had finally listened to her.

"Mother – we always had to call her mother – encouraged Adam to punish us. Kept going on about how the Devil corrupted us and it was his job to teach us how to behave because he was the man of the house." Sapphira's voice shook with a trauma no child should have had to endure. She did her best to hold back tears, had clearly spent years fighting off those monstrous memories, but Boyd and Grace needed to hear it. "He always enjoyed it more than she did; he'd smile and laugh. Sometimes he'd break stuff then blame it on us. There was this – I guess you'd call it a storage cupboard or a closet – under the stairs. We'd be locked in there for days without any food or water after she pulled us out of school."

Her shaking finally forced Sapphira to set her cup down and curl up in the chair so her knees were to her chest with her arms snared around them. Grace made to rub Sapphira's shoulder comfortingly but thought better of it when the dark-haired beauty had flinched away from her. Boyd just stared at this girl: twenty-five years old, homeless, alone in a world that couldn't have cared less about her. How had all of this abuse gone on without a single person noticing?

So he asked: "Why didn't you or your sisters tell Social Services?"

A despondent laugh escaped her. "We did, but Mother always talked her way out of it with some story. Bridgeman, Mrs. Bridgeman – that was the woman who came to check on us. Our mother had her convinced we were all liars who would do anything for attention. After the fire, I told them again, and they said my mother deserved better than an angry teenager making up cruel stories about her because I'd not gotten my way. After that I gave up, realized nobody would ever care, and when I turned eighteen, I slipped away knowing nobody would ever look for me. I don't know what I did to her, but Mother hates me the most – well, me and Rachel. Do you know why she called me Sapphira?" They shook their heads. "In the Bible, she's killed by God for lying and being greedy. I don't know why but I've been labelled the liar in her eyes since birth."

Again Grace thought about reaching out to Sapphira but refrained. It was painfully obvious she had an intense lack of trust in women due to her abuse and the perpetuation of it coming at the hands of women. So, while less common in victims of childhood abuse, Sapphira actually felt more at ease around men – something made clear by the way she'd only fully acknowledged Boyd.

"Where does Donovan Padmore come into the story?" Asked Boyd as calmly as he could. "Was your mother giving him drug money to keep quiet about the abuse?"

"No. Where are you getting drugs from? Donovan didn't do drugs." Genuine confusion coated her face as it dawned on them that drugs were just another of Amanda Callaghan's falsehoods. "Donovan was quiet and kind. He loved cats even though he was allergic to them. He liked jazz and stars."

"It sounds like Donovan was very important to you." Grace folded her arms over her chest. "He was your friend?"

Sapphira nodded. "I started getting locked out at night by Adam, and Donovan would see me when he got home from work. At first he just said hi as he passed me, then he'd bring me snacks. After he'd realized I wasn't out there by choice, he let me hang out at his place." Her feet finally dropped back to the floor. "You have to understand, Donovan wasn't confrontational. He was a teddy bear. He didn't know how bad things were and I didn't want him getting hurt. Then one day he was just gone. It was strange. A cop came to ask if Mother knew where he'd gone, but I didn't hear what she said. Then she sent me, Elle, and Abigail to the store; but not the close one, it was the big store over two miles away. We were gone all day. Elle was acting strange and worried about Mary but wouldn't tell me why. When we got back, something in Elle changed. She said we needed to just run, but we couldn't do that because Rachel and Mary were still inside. I think Adam saw us because the front door got thrown open and he yanked Abigail inside then grabbed Elle. Her face… I'd never seen that look on her face before. I just ran." That finally had the tears fall, an uncontrollable stream of anguish revealing the guilt which had plagued her for the last nine years. "I just left them!"

Making sure not to actually touch Sapphira, Grace crouched beside the chair with her hands atop the armrest, a comforting expression on her face that the younger woman didn't see. Meanwhile, Boyd simply sat there silently unsure of what to do. He'd never been good at comforting people and wasn't even sure there were any words that would make the situation better.

"None of this is your fault, Sapphira. None of it. Elizabeth was protecting you."

"I left them! I ran away and then the house burnt down!"

In a need to just do something – anything really – Boyd fished a partially forgotten-about box of tissues out from a drawer and pushed them across his desk. Grace snatched them up to quickly proffer them, and Sapphira took one.

"Grace is right, Sapphira, you didn't do anything wrong." Boyd tried. "You were sixteen and if you'd stayed, you would have died as well."

"… Maybe that would have been better." She muttered mournfully, and the comment struck Boyd like a knife.

"No." He told her firmly. "No, that wouldn't have been better."

Minutes passed as Sapphira forced herself to calm her breathing. This was probably the first time she'd ever actually spoken about what had happened and even Boyd couldn't object to her emotional outburst. However, as he sat there trying to patiently wait for the tears to stop, a thought occurred to Boyd: why had Sapphira kept referring to her mother as though she were still alive? Nine years had gone by. The whole family had been declared dead. So, after Sapphira had calmed down and wiped away her tears, Boyd made sure to ask about it.

"I – I don't think she or Adam are dead. I don't know about my sisters, but I've never believed they're dead." Boyd and Grace shared a suspicious look as Grace returned to perching on the desk. "I looked it up; a fire needs to be at least fourteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit for hours to make a body burn to ash, and even then there's normally bone fragments and teeth."

Yes, Stella had mentioned something similar.

"So what do you think happened?"

Dazzling green eyes met Boyd's brown ones for a moment, his stern but calm while hers were red from crying.

"I had no idea. Now I've seen Donovan and Mary in the papers though, I think my mother killed them and ran from it. Maybe she thought someone would finally believe me."

He nodded. They'd not considered the Callaghans still being alive, simply accepted the fire report about what had happened to the bodies. If Amanda Callaghan was still alive, they needed to find her sooner rather than later.

The gray-haired man left Grace to deal with wrapping up the interview; he'd gotten the lead he'd so desperately yearned for and needed some distance to escape the reminder of Luke. Grace would surely forgive him; she always did in the end.

Orders were soon barked at Spence and Stella which caused a flurry of motion. Coffee was abandoned in favor of investigating Sapphira's suspicions, and soon the place cleared out. It wasn't until he was alone, surrounded by a quietude as his eyes danced across the board, that Boyd remembered what she'd said about her father. Without even thinking about it, he tugged the picture of John Callaghan from the board and jogged back to his office just as Grace was escorting her out into the hall.

"Sapphira!" The young woman with dirty but beautiful hair spun around only to have the photograph pressed into her pale hands. "So you can remember."

Green eyes blurred as tears again threatened to fall when she realized what he'd handed her. Her father, a photograph of the one person who'd truly loved and protected her. The smile she gave Boyd warmed his heart and made it twinge. In his line of work Boyd saw so much death and heartbreak that it was good for his soul to see a moment of genuine happiness.

"Thank you, Mister Boyd."

Then she was gone after rebuffing Grace's offer of help to get her a hostel space, just vanished from the building much as she had when she'd turned eighteen.

"I gave her a card and told her to call us if she thought of anything else. Not sure what else to do for her."

Boyd stayed quiet; just watched Sapphira as someone escorted her out and did his best not to flash back to Luke sitting in that secure psychiatric unit. He'd seen how people, especially young people, had to live on the streets in London, but nobody could help Sapphira if she wouldn't take it.