“I doubt it. Not according to the statistics, at least.”
“Any good news?”
Jenny shook her head. “What it comes down to,” she said, leaning forward, “is that in my opinion—and remember it’s still all basically guesswork—you’re probably dealing with a psychopath, most likely the male, and a woman who’s become fixated on him, who’ll do anything he says. There’s something odd about them, though, something odd about the whole business. The
psychology doesn’t quite add up.” She frowned. “Anyway, I’d concentrate on him. He might not be a paedophile in particular, so I wouldn’t depend on criminal records. I think it’s more likely that he just likes to act out sadistic fantasies in front of an adoring audience. I? Oh, God, what am I saying? That poor damn kid.” Jenny flopped back in the chair and put her hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m behaving like a silly girl.”
“Nay, lass,” said Gristhorpe. “When they played that tape there wasn’t a dry eye in the courtroom?and they were hardened coppers all.”
“Still,” said Jenny, “if I’m to be any help I have to try to remain calm and objective.”
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe, sitting down again. “Aye, you can try. But I don’t imagine it’s easy for any of us with a possible psychopath on the loose, is it? Another cup of tea?”
Jenny looked at her watch. No, she didn’t have to hurry; she had plenty of time. “Yes,” she said. “That’d be very nice. I think I will.”
I
“Don’t tell me you’ve been burning the midnight oil?”
Gristhorpe said, when Vic Manson phoned at nine
o’clock Monday morning.
Manson laughed. “Afraid so.”
“Anything?”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Start with the search of the moorland.”
“The lads haven’t finished yet. They’re still out there. No sign of a body so far.”
“What about the clothes?”
“I’ve got Frank’s report in front of me. He’s our blood expert. It was a dry stain, so we can’t tell as much as we’d like—the presence of certain drugs, for example— but it is blood, it’s human, and it’s group A, one of the most common, unfortunately, and the same as Gemma’s, according to our files. We’re doing more tests.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, we can tell a fair bit about how it came to be there and—this is the interesting part—first, there wasn’t very much, nowhere near enough to cause loss of life. It was restricted to the bib area of the T-shirt and the dungarees, which might make you think on first sight that
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someone cut her throat, but no way, according to Frank. At least not while she was wearing them.”
“Then how did it get to be there?”
“It didn’t drip. It was smeared, as if you cut your finger and wiped it on your shirt.”
“But you surely wouldn’t wipe it on a white T-shirt and yellow dungarees?”
“I wouldn’t, no. That’d be grounds for divorce. But Gemma was only seven, remember. How careful were you about getting your clothes dirty when you were seven? Someone else washed them for you.”
“Still … And less of your cheek, Vic. What kind of injury could have caused it?”
“We can’t say for certain, but most likely a scratch, a small cut, something like that.”
“Any idea how long the clothes had been out there?”
“Sorry.”
“Anything else at all?”
“Yes. In addition to the items I’ve mentioned, we received a pair of white cotton socks and child’s sneakers. There was no underwear. You might care to consider that.”
“I will.”
“And there was some whitish powder or dust on the dungarees. It’s being analyzed.”
“What about the cottage?”
“Very interesting. Whoever cleaned that place up really did a good job. They even took the vacuum bag with them and combed out all the fibres from the brushes.”
“As if they had something to hide?”
“Either that or they were a right pair of oddballs. Maybe house-cleaning in the nude got them all excited.”
“Aye, and maybe pigs can fly. But we’ve got nothing to tie them in to the missing lass?”
“No prints, no bloodstains, no bodily fluids. Just hair.
It’s practically impossible to get rid of every hair from a scene.”
“And it’s also practically impossible to pin it down to any one person,” said Gristhorpe.
“There’s still the DNA typing. It takes a bloody long time, though, and it’s not as reliable as people think.”
“Was there anything that might have indicated the child’s presence?”
