Gristhorpe held the bridge of his nose and grunted.
“I’m sorry I can’t really be of any more help yet,” Jenny said, “but I’m working on it. The really odd thing, as I told Alan, is that there were two of them, a man and a woman. I want to look a bit further into that aspect.”
Gristhorpe nodded. “Go ahead. And please don’t underestimate your usefulness.”
Jenny smiled at him and shuffled her notes back into the briefcase.
“This stuff the newspapers were on about,” Gristhorpe went on, “organized gangs of paedophiles, what do you think of that?”
Jenny shook her head. “It doesn’t figure. Paedophiles are like other sexual deviants, essentially loners, solo operators. And most of the allegations of ritual abuse turned out to be social workers’ fantasies. Of course, when you get abuse in families, people close ranks. They might look like organized gangs, but they’re not really. Paedophiles simply aren’t the types to form clubs, except
“Except what?”
“I was thinking of kiddie porn, child prostitution and the like. It’s around, it happens, there’s no denying it, and that takes a bit of organization.”
“Videos, magazines?”
“Yes. Even snuff films.”
“We’re doing our best,” Gristhorpe said. “I’ve been in
touch with the paedophile squad. Those rings are hard to penetrate, but if anything concerning Gemma turns up, believe me, we’ll know about it.”
Jenny stood up. “I’ll do a bit more research.” “Thanks.” Gristhorpe walked over to open the door for her.
Jenny dashed back to her car, got in and turned her key in the ignition. Suddenly, she paused. She couldn’t remember where she was supposed to go or why she was in such a hurry. She checked her appointment book and then racked her brains to see if she had forgotten anything. No. The truth was, she had nowhere to go and no reason at all to hurry.
IV
Banks breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh air outside
the flue. Claustrophobia was bad enough, but what he
had just seen made it even worse.
After Gristhorpe had gone to meet Jenny, the SOCOs had slowly and carefully removed all the stones from the body of a man in his mid-to late-twenties. When they had finished, Dr Glendenning bent forward to see what he could find out. First, he opened the bomber-jacket and cursed when he had to stop the tangle of greyish intestines from spilling out of the man’s shirt. A couple more flies finally gave up the ghost and crawled out from under the tubing and took off indignantly. The wind moaned down the flue. Quickly, Banks had searched the dead man’s pockets: all empty.
Banks lit a cigarette; fresh air wasn’t enough to get the taste of the flue and of death out of his mouth. The smell was difficult to pin down. Sickly, sweet, with a slight metallic edge, it always seemed to linger around him like
an aura for days after attending the scene of a murder.
Glendenning had been crouched in the flue alone for over half an hour now, and the SOCOs were still going over the ground inside the taped-off area: every blade of glass, every stone.
Banks wandered into the smelting mill and looked at the ruins of the furnace and the ore hearth while he waited, trying to put the first shocking glimpse of those spilled intestines out of his mind. He had seen the same thing once before, back in London, and it wasn’t something even the most hardened policeman forgot easily. He stared at the dullish brown patch in the corner, marked off by the SOCOs as blood. The murder, they said, had probably taken place in the mill.
At last, Glendenning emerged from the flue, red in the face. He stood upright and dusted his jacket where it had come into contact with the stones. A cigarette dangled from his rnouth.
“I suppose you want to know it all right away, don’t you?” he said to Banks, sitting on a boulder outside the smelting mill. “Time of death, cause of death, what he had for breakfast?”
Banks grinned. “As much as you can tell me.”
“Aye, well, that might be a bit more than usual in this case. Given the temperature, I’d say rigor mortis went basically according to the norm. It was just after two o’clock when I got the chance to have a really good look at him. Allowing, say, two to three hours for rigor to start, then about ten or twelve to spread, I’d say he was killed sometime after dark last night, but not much later than ten o’clock. His body temperature confirms it, too. Is that good enough for you?”
Banks said it was, thank you very much, doctor, and mentioned the blood in the smelting mill.
“You’re probably right about that,” Glendenning said.
“I’ll check postmortem lividity later when I get him on the table, but as far as I could tell there was no blood around the body, and there would be, given a wound like that.”
“What about cause of death?”
“That’s not difficult. Looks like he was gutted. You saw that for yourself.” Glendenning lit a new cigarette from the stub of his old one. “It’s an especially vicious crime,” he went on. “In the first place, to do something like that you have to get very close.”
“Would it take a lot of strength?”
“Aye, a fair bit to drag the knife up when it’s stuck so deeply in. But not a superman. Given a sharp enough knife. What are you getting at? Man or woman?”
“Something like that.”
“You know how I hate guesswork, laddie, but I’d go for a moderately strong man or an exceptionally strong woman.”
“Thanks. First we’ll check all the female bodybuilders in Yorkshire. Left-handed or right?”
“I should be able to tell you later when I get a good look at the entry point and the direction of the slit.”
“What about the weapon?”
