EVERY night the Tuen Mun killer strikes anew; night after night stalking the housing estate's grim hallways; night after night raping, strangling, and murdering Ip Wing-sze . . . night after night returning to drive another stake into her mother's grieving heart. ''Every night, he comes in my sleep and kills her. Over and over and over again,'' said Ip Ng Kei-kit, with tears in her eyes. ''At 1 am, my heart starts pounding, boom, boom, boom. I feel him coming, grabbing her, and I see it all. I grab my head and try to scream, but can't. ''I just can't take it . . . he's killing me, too.'' One week after suffering a mother's worst nightmare - identifying the battered and bruised body of her teenage daughter - Mrs Ip opened her grieving heart to the Sunday Morning Post. But it was Ip Keung-ki, father of the 19-year-old who was brutally raped and strangled during the early hours of last Sunday, who relived his eldest daughter's last moments. ''She had been out with friends, at a movie,'' he said. ''Afterwards, she called a taxi to come home. One of the boys offered to guide her home, to walk her to the door.'' Normally, she would have been with her boyfriend, who would have seen her safely home. But he had hurt his leg a few days earlier and on the fateful night wasn't with Wing-sze and her friends on their Saturday night outing. Instead, after a midnight meal at a dai pai dong on Tai Hing Estate, she went home alone, taking a taxi to the Leung King Estate bus depot. ''She didn't want to be a bother,'' said Mr Ip. ''That was her nature. She was independent, but she was never any trouble to anyone.'' On most days, as she returned home from work, Wing-sze would be watched by her mother from a window as she walked up the cobbled stone path to her family's 12th floor flat at Leung Chun House. But now the area was enveloped in darkness, so she hurried past the estate's basketball court and playground and the bushes that lined the deserted path towards home . . . and safety. Leung King is not a hospitable place. Containing eight blocks and 6,844 flats, the housing estate is built around convenience stores and fast-food restaurants in an anonymous setting replicated in nearly 58,000 other housing units in Tuen Mun alone, and thousands more throughout the New Territories. Leung King Estates, built in stages between March 1988 and August 1990, used the Trident design, favoured by the Housing Department in the late 1970s and 1980s. Looking like the Mercedes insignia from the air, it features a trio of 35-storey apartment blocks, radiating from a central point. Eight apartments are typically contained on each floor of the three wings. There are six lifts where the buildings are joined in the centre, two per wing. However, all of the wings connect via walkways, and the lifts actually work in tandems, with a pair of them stopping on every third floor to serve Leung King's crush of 25,000 residents. Normally, long waits are required as the lifts slowly creep to the top of the towering blocks. But at about 1 am, when Wing-sze reached the lobby, it was deserted . . . except for the beast who stalked her from the shadows. Upstairs, in his modest flat, Mr Ip waited in front of the television set. He kept the volume low so as not to disturb his wife, who slept in the bedroom. His other daughter, Wan-chee, 15, was away at a camp. The house was peaceful. Two cockatoos slept in a cage. The hands of a cuckoo clock ticked on the wall above a microwave set next to the small kitchen table. Mr Ip was awaiting a call from his daughter, but felt no alarm as the cuckoo announced the passing of each hour. ''She usually called,'' he said. ''She was a good girl and always kept us informed so we wouldn't worry. ''But I wasn't surprised that she didn't call. You see, she had called the previous night, on Friday, to say she was staying with friends. ''I know she was really staying with her boyfriend,'' he confided, ''but she didn't want to tell us. I just figured she was with him again, but was scared to call and tell us.'' As his daughter was approached by her killer, Mr Ip lay curled up on the floor, inches from the hallway door. Even muffled screams might have alerted him, but he heard nothing. Neither did neighbours on the top floor of the building, where the brutal attack is believed to have taken place. Police say Wing-sze was apprehended in the lift, taken to the 34th floor, and then raped in a stairwell about 30 metres down the hallway from the lifts. She fought valiantly, but in vain. A box of ashes, burnt offerings from a terrified neighbourhood, now marks the spot where the attacker slowly squeezed the life from her young body. Wing-sze's father rose as usual at 7 am and later went off to his chauffeur's job. At around 10 am Mrs Ip went to the market . . . so far, it was a normal Sunday morning in the Ip household. It was when Mrs Ip returned that the horror on the 34th floor turned into a nightmare for the Ip family. Waiting at their flat were police officers. Mrs Ip grew pale as she recounted the scene. ''They asked if my daughter was Ip Wing-sze. They had her identification card,'' she said, her voice almost a whisper. Again a protective Mr Ip took over the story, almost as if he was trying to compensate for the protection he couldn't give Wing-sze on the night she died. ''The police paged me, and I came back.'' By then, he said, it was around 11.30 am on the Sunday. The days since have been filled with police interviews, pictures and visits from family friends. Previously, Mrs Ip has said little publicly about her daughter's death. But last Friday she shared the horror of losing Wing-sze. ''My wife has to go up there,'' said her husband, flicking his head in the direction of the 34th floor. ''She still sees her, lying there. She sees our daughter, dead.'' The family has lived at Leung Chun House for three years, and when they moved there from Yau Oi Estate it seemed like a dream come true. Now they can't wait to get away. ''We have to get out of here, for the sake of my wife and other daughter,'' said Mr Ip. ''We can no longer live among these bitter memories.'' Ironically, it was for the daughters' sake that they had moved to Leung Chun House. ''We had applied for a bigger place because the girls were growing up, getting older. Before, they shared a room in bunk beds,'' explained Mr Ip. But at Leung Chun House, each of the girls had their own small room, with space for their own bed and their own mementos. There are cassettes by her favourite Canto-pop stars Andy Lau Tak-wah and Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, there is a stack of romance novels beside her deserted bed, and there are the photos for which she loved posing. ''She liked to sing and listen to music, and she liked to read,'' said her mother. ''She sometimes went to karaoke with her friends, and she also liked swimming, going to barbecues and cycling.'' Lithe and athletic, she often rented bicycles with friends for long rides in Sha Tin and Tai Po. Mrs Ip pulls out a stack of albums that show her attractive daughter posing at parks, beaches and parties. She is invariably smiling. Many are from Wing-sze's January trip to Thailand, her first venture abroad. She said her daughter had acquired a strong belief in Christianity, but ''was not baptised''. So the family have asked Buddhist monks to perform a ceremony for their daughter's spirit and a funeral planned for Friday. Mr Ip said his daughter had recently left a Kowloon toy company and had begun working for JCG Holdings Ltd, a Central finance company. But now the dreams are gone for Wing-sze and only the nightmares remain for the Ip family.