Total silence fell on the streets of Soham today as a murder trial jury retraced the final steps of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Under grey November skies the jurors walked the final route taken by the two 10-year-olds before entering the house where they are alleged to have been murdered by Ian Huntley.
They also stepped inside the hangar building at Soham Village College where the charred remnants of the girls' clothes were found hidden in a bin.
The centre of Soham was sealed off with a police cordon, turning it into a virtual ghost-town, and overhead a police helicopter enforced a no-fly zone.
Traffic was halted and the residents of the normally busy Fenlands market town became almost invisible as the jury coach drove into town, surrounded by police outriders.
A few shoppers watched in silence from a supermarket and one old woman turned away as the convoy passed through the empty streets. Even the CCTV cameras erected in the town since the tragedy were turned away during the jury's tour of the key sites in the case.
The jury coach began its journey at the Old Bailey at 9.40am and reached Soham at 11.07 a.m.
After a brief pause at Soham Village College - affording jurors their first glimpse of the empty shell of Huntley's former home - the convoy travelled to Jessica's family home in Brook Street.
The coach slowed to a virtual standstill as it passed the two-storey house, marked by a lone policeman, and was then driven the 700 metres to Holly's home in Redhouse Gardens.
Jurors have heard that Jessica left home at 11.45 a.m. on the day the girls disappeared, Sunday August 4th last year, and walked to Holly's, where the two girls played together all day before leaving the house unnoticed shortly after p.m. The jury of seven women and five men, guided by prosecution counsel Mr Richard Latham QC, got off the coach outside the Wells' house and paused to hear the lawyer set out their route into the town centre.
Mr Latham, dressed in a beige coat with a navy velvet collar over a grey suit, shepherded the jury as they filed into an alleyway and out into Sand Street, the town's main thoroughfare. Trial judge Mr Justice Moses followed on, having swapped his traditional red robe and wig for a grey, woollen, calf-length coat and pinstripe suit. Police officers stood in every street entrance, ensuring no-one could approach the jury.