When Bill Hawker set out for Heathrow to hand out leaflets last week, he knew it might be an emotional experience. He was handing out flyers to passengers on their way to Tokyo, urging them to look for the man suspected of killing his daughter Lindsay.

Lindsay was working as an English teacher in Japan. Six months ago her savagely bruised body was found buried in a bath full of sand in the apartment of a 28-year-old man called Tatsuya Ichihashi.

What Hawker hadn’t realised was that his trip to Heathrow’s Terminal Three might also bring huge comfort. As he handed out leaflets a young Japanese woman approached him. “She was my best friend’s English teacher,” she said. “My friend told me your daughter was a really lovely person.”

It made Hawker realise, “it just takes one person; one occasion like this, because somebody out there must know where Ichihashi is”.

Shortly before Lindsay left home her older sister Lisa had warned her to be careful. “Remember Lucie Blackman,” she’d said. “Watch out for Japanese businessmen.”

After Lindsay’s body was found last March, nine Japanese police attempted to arrest Ichihashi. He was not a “businessman” but an unemployed loner with wealthy parents who’d previously committed robbery with violence. Somehow, during the raid, he escaped, leaving the police with only his backpack in their hands.

Initially the Hawkers were told it was a matter of time before he was caught. Six months later he is still on the run. “To be honest, what we really want is to hide away, and grieve for Lindsay, and never talk to anyone again,” says Julia, Lindsay’s mother. Instead they’ve written to the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and embarked on an ambitious e-mail campaign.

“Our aim isn’t to let the world know what a terrible time we’re having; our aim is to get Ichihashi caught,” Julia says.

A few weeks ago, an autopsy revealed that every inch of Lindsay’s body had been badly beaten before she was murdered. Appalling revelations, but Julia Hawker seems determined to remain philosophical: “She was a strong girl and she wouldn’t go easily.”

In her first week at Leeds University, Lindsay met her boyfriend Ryan Garside. He studied philosophy; Lindsay, science. “They could argue for England,” says Bill. After she graduated, Lindsay had decided to study to be a doctor, but first she wanted a year away. “She didn’t want to backpack around the globe,” says her mother. “She wanted a job with accommodation.”

According to the Foreign Office, Japan was one of the safest countries in the world. She got a job as a teacher with the Nova English language school in Tokyo for a year. Before she set off Lindsay learnt basic Japanese from the internet, studied the culture and bought l00 lavender bags as little presents. “That set me back a bob or two”, grumbles Bill, affectionately.

Last Christmas the Hawkers visited her. Bill remembers how he rebuked her for saying hello to so many people near her apartment. “She said, ‘Dad, I’m the English teacher. I have to fit in’.” When they returned home Lindsay and her sisters continued communicating through Facebook. “She had such a thirst for life; that’s why we feel so cheated,” says Julia. “She fitted so much into her 22 years.”

“She was just like my wife when she was young,” says Bill. “The brown eyes; the long brown hair.”

Lindsay’s long brown hair was shorn by her killer on the morning of Sunday, March 25, when she went back to his apartment, after an English lesson in a nearby cafe.

Back in England her parents were worried, as there’d been a small earthquake in Japan. “I called her l7 times,” says Julia.

At midday next day, Nova, the language agency, phoned to say that Lindsay had gone missing. The Hawkers finally learnt about their daughter’s murder through the father of one of Lindsay’s many friends, who were keeping vigil outside the apartment where her body was found.

“The news headlines kept saying, ‘the body in the bath’,” says Julia. “I kept thinking, she’s not a body in the bath; she’s my daughter.”

In her darker moments Julia wonders if Lindsay’s killer will ever be found.

“There are times when you just shake and you can’t keep still. It’s like you’re in an inferno,” she says. “What’s happened does make us question everything about our lives. We don’t want revenge, but we want Ichihashi caught so that he never kills again.”

www.lindsayannhawker.com

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