The Girl In Prayer Room: Name They Erased: 1

A little girl is dead. The door is locked from the inside. And someone at Greywick House is hiding the truth. When five-year-old Lily Mercer is found strangled inside the locked prayer room of Greywick House, DI Ruth Calder expects a straightforward murder investigation. Instead, she finds a house full of frightened people, missing records, contradictory stories, and a child who seems to have discovered a secret that someone was desperate to keep buried. Eight-year-old Daniel Mercer knows more than he is willing to say. He insists Lily was frightened before she died, but when Ruth asks what scared her, Daniel falls silent. Then Ruth discovers a name that should not exist. Anna Bell was a child at Greywick House in 1989. Her name was erased from the records. She was supposedly transferred away and forgotten. But Lily had been searching for her. And now someone is killing people connected to the past. As Ruth and DS Jamie Bell dig deeper, they uncover altered identities, missing files, secret transfers and a decades-old allegation that Greywick House never wanted investigated. Every answer raises another question, and the closer Ruth gets to the truth, the more dangerous the case becomes. Because Lily did not die simply because she knew a secret. She died because she found the girl they erased.