"What about his neighbours? Didn't they notice his absence?"
Anne-Marie shrugged, as if the most important pieces of information - the murder and the man's isolation - had been exchanged, and any further enquiries into the problem were irrelevant. But Helen pressed the point. "Seems strange to me," she said.
Anne-Marie plugged in the filled kettle. "Well, it happened," she replied, unmoved.
"I'm not saying it didn't, | just -”
"His eyes had been taken out," she said, before Helen could voice any further doubts.
Helen winced. "No," she said, under her breath.
"That's the truth," Anne-Marie said. "And that wasn't all'd been done to him." She paused, for effect, then went on: "You wonder what kind of person's capable of doing things like that, don't you? You wonder." Helen nodded. She was thinking precisely the same thing.
"Did they ever find the man responsible?"
Anne-Marie snorted her disparagement. "Police don't give a damn what happens here. They keep off the estate as much as possible. When they do patrol all they do is pick up kids for getting drunk and that. They're afraid, you see. That's why they keep clear."
"Of this killer?"
"Maybe," Anne-Marie replied. "Then: He had a hook."
"A hook?"
"The man what done it. He had a hook, like Jack the Ripper."