inform you at this point, though, that we have no test for LSD, a fairly common drug among… well, the type of people we’re dealing with. It disappears from the system very quickly.
“As you all know, the areas around where the body was found, and where the victim was stabbed, have both been searched exhaustively by our search teams and by specially trained police dogs. They turned up a small amount of blood at the scene, some on the ground and more on some nearby leaves. The blood matches the victim’s group and we submit that the killer used the leaves to wipe her blood from his hands and perhaps from the murder weapon, a narrow, single-edged blade, the kind you often find on a flick-knife. There are no footprints in the woods, and the footprints found near the sleeping bag were so muddled as to be useless.
“Upon examination, the sleeping bag yielded traces of the victim’s blood, along with hair and… er… bodily fluids that contain the respective blood types of Ian Tilbrook and June Betts, neither group A, by the way, who claimed the sleeping bag was stolen from them while they sought out a better viewing position on the field.”
“In all this, then,” said McCullen, “there are no traces of the killer? No blood? No hair?”
“We still have unidentified hairs, some taken from the tree trunk near which the girl was killed,” said Green. “As you know, hair comparison is weak, to say the least, and it often doesn’t stand up in court.”
“But you do have hairs, and they might belong to the killer?”
“Yes. We also have some fibers, again some from the tree and some from the victim’s dress, but they’re common blue denim, which I’m sure just about everyone was wearing, and black cotton, which is also common. There’s a chance we might be able to make a match if we had the clothes, but I’m afraid these fibers aren’t going to lead us to anything you can’t get at Lewis’s or Marks amp; Spencer’s.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Just one more thing, really.”
McCullen raised his eyebrows. “Do tell.”
“We found stains on the back of the girl’s dress,” Green said, hardly able to stop the smile spreading across his large mouth. “They turned out to be semen, a secretor, type A blood, same as the victim. Hardly conclusive, of course, but certainly interesting.”
McCullen turned back to Dr. O’Neill. “Doctor,” he said, “do we have any evidence of recent sexual activity on the part of the girl?”
“As I said to DI Chadwick at the postmortem, the victim was menstruating at the time she was killed. Now, that doesn’t rule out sexual activity, of course, but vaginal and anal swabs reveal absolutely no signs of it, and the tissue shows no signs of tearing or bruising.”
“Was she on the pill?” McCullen asked.
“We did find evidence of oral contraception, yes.”
“So perhaps,” Chadwick said, “our killer got his pleasure by ejaculating
“Or perhaps he couldn’t help himself, and it happened as he was stabbing her. Was there a great deal of semen, Mr. Green?”
“No,” said Green. “Minute traces. As much as might have seeped through a person’s underpants and jeans, say.”
“So what do we know about our killer in total, Mr. Green?” he asked.
“That he’s between five foot ten and six feet tall, left handed, wore blue denim jeans and a black cotton shirt or T-shirt, he’s a secretor, and his blood type is A.”
“Thank you.” McCullen turned to Enderby. “I understand you’ve got something for us, Sergeant?”
“It’s not much, sir,” said Enderby, “but DI Chadwick asked me to track down the girl who was doing the body painting backstage at Brimleigh. It seems there’s some question about the flower painted on the victim’s face, whether it was pre-or postmortem.”
“And?”
“Robin Merchant, one of the members of the Mad Hatters, told DI Chadwick that he saw her with a painted flower on her face late that evening. Her friend Tania Hutchison can’t remember. Hayes was also uncertain. If she did have one, we were wondering if the killer did it for some reason, sir.”
“Did he?”
“I’m afraid we still don’t know for certain. The body painter was a bit… well, not so much stupid as sort of lost in her own world. She couldn’t remember who she painted and who she didn’t. I showed her the victim’s photograph, and she thought she recognized her. Then I showed her the design, and she said it could have been one of hers, but she didn’t usually paint cornflowers.”
“Wonderful,” said McCullen. “Do any of these people have the brains they were born with, I wonder?”
“I know, sir,” said Enderby, with a grin. “It’s very frustrating. Should I continue my inquiries?”
McCullen looked at Chadwick. “Stan? You’re in charge.”
“I’m not sure if it’s relevant at all,” Chadwick said. “I simply thought that the drawing of such a flower by the killer indicated a certain type of mentality.”
“A nutcase, you mean?” said McCullen.
“To put it bluntly, yes,” said Chadwick. “And while I’m not saying our killer didn’t do it, I’m beginning to think that if he did, it’s simply another clumsy attempt at sleight of hand, like moving the body.”
“Explain.”
Chadwick took Green’s place at the front by the boards. “Yesterday in London, with the permission of the local police at West End Central, I questioned Rick Hayes, the festival promoter. He’s lied to me on a couple of occasions, and when I confronted him with this, he admitted to knowing the victim previous to the festival. He denies any sexual involvement – and I must add that a couple of other people I have spoken with regard this as highly unlikely, too – but he did know her. He’s also the kind of man who asks just about every girl he meets to hop into bed with him, so I’m thinking there’s a chance that if he was attracted to Linda and she rejected him… well, I think you can see where I’m going.”
“What about his alibi?” McCullen asked.
“Shaky, to say the least. He was definitely onstage at one o’clock to introduce the last group. After that, who knows? He claims he was in the backstage enclosure paying people – I gather a lot of this sort of thing operates on a cash-in-hand basis, probably to avoid income tax – and seeing to various problems that came up. We can reinterview everyone who was there, but I don’t think that’ll get us anywhere. The point is that things were so chaotic back there when Led Zeppelin were playing that Hayes could easily have followed Linda out of the compound, stayed away for long enough to kill her and get back without really being missed. Don’t forget, it was dark as well as noisy, and most people were at the front of the stage watching the band. The drugs they take also make them rather narcissistic and inward-looking. Not a very observant lot, by and large.”
“Have we enough to hold him?”
“I’m not sure,” said Chadwick. “With West End Central’s help we searched his Soho office and his flat in Kensington and turned up nothing.”
“Is he left-handed?”
“Yes.”
“The right height?”
“Five foot eleven.”
“So it’s all circumstantial?”
“We’ve had worse cases, but there’s nothing to directly link him to the murder, without the weapon, except that he knew the victim, he fancied her, he had a bit of a temper, he’s left-handed and his alibi’s weak. He’s not a nutcase, so if he did paint the flower on her cheek, he did so to make us
“I see your point,” said McCullen. “He still sounds like the best bet we’ve got so far. He could have ditched the knife anywhere. Talk to the kid who found the body again, ask him at what point Hayes turned up and what sort of state he was in. And organize another search of the woods.”
“Yes, sir,” said Chadwick. “What do we do about him in the meantime?”
“We’ve got enough to hold him, haven’t we? Let’s bring him back up here and treat him to a bit of Yorkshire hospitality. Arrange it with West End Central. I’m sure there must be someone down there looking for a chance to come up and watch tomorrow’s game.”
“Which game would that be, sir?”
