Rathe took a moment to consider the friend. Not surprisingly, she had been interviewed more times than anybody else in the group who were out that night and Rathe wondered how she felt now about her decision to let Kirsty go off alone. He thought about how often she might lie awake, wondering if things might have been different if she had told Kirsty she was coming with her for money, no matter what anyone else said about it. He could not be sure but he suspected she had let that unanswerable question loiter in her mind for some considerable time. It might linger there still, of course, and Rathe could not help but think how quickly a bad decision could crumble into a sense of guilt.
The conclusion of his researches was predictably vague. He could not hope to solve a disappearance with a
