As he returned to the corridor again, the muffled cry rang out again, from the next room down the hallway.    And he realised that it could only be the Westons’s twelve-year-old daughter, Tara.

“Why has he kept the girl alive after killing everyone else?” wondered Richie as he started down the corridor to the next door.   Then he blushed as he realised the only possible reason.

“With both parents dead, it’s unlikely to be for ransom!” he reasoned, blushing again.

Although he could hear the shower still running, he knew that it could not continue much longer.   “Got to get on with it then,” he thought as he tentatively gripped the doorknob and swung the bedroom door inward.

Not quite knowing what to expect, Richie stepped into the bedroom which obviously belonged to a young girl: posters of Hanson and other teen heartthrobs lined the wall, along with two bookcases of Barbie dolls and a seemingly near-infinite array of Barbie companion dolls and accessories.

Of more interest though, was the painfully beautiful silver-blonde girl in the centre of the bed.   Unlike her parents, Tara Weston seemed to be unharmed, her pale blue eyes staring up at Richie in terror as he stepped into the room.

At first, other than the strange posture, hunched in the middle of the bed, Tara Weston seemed untouched.   Then, even in the dark, Richie could see the strong masking tape circling her head three or four times to gag her, and the gleaming, near new looking chains that held her spread-eagled to the bed.

“Mmmmmm!” murmured Tara, blue eyes wide in terror staring at Richie.

Heartsick at the look of absolute terror in the eyes of one so young, Richie wondered if the fiend who had killed her parents had already told her of the “fate worse than death” that awaited Tara Weston.

“Unless I, Richie Travers, burglar extraordinaire, can rescue her,” he thought.   Then seeing his gloveless right hand in the pale beam of his penlight, he thought, “Extraordinarily inept that is.”

As he approached the bed, Richie was startled to hear singing from a metre or so beyond the bed.   And for the first time he realised that the murderer of Laura and Stephen Weston was showering in the en-suite of their daughter’s bedroom.