COLD KILL. Neil White

dirt,’ Joe said, before standing up and going to the wall at the front, which was covered in photographs and maps. He tapped at the first picture: naked legs, flaccid and pale, sticking out of a large overflow pipe that took water from a reservoir into a nearby river. ‘Deborah Corley,’ Joe said. ‘Just the same. Leaves and dirt and grit jammed into her mouth, her vagina, her anus, dumped so that she could be found easily. I thought at first that the dirt might have been for some forensic reason, to make it harder to pick up DNA, but now I’m not so sure.’

      ‘Just because it is repeated doesn’t mean that it wasn’t done for the same reason,’ Carson said.

      Joe shook his head. ‘When it’s repeated, it’s more than that. It’s the fantasy, part of the act. Remember what we said from the scene, that she was alive when he jammed the stuff in there. They both died from strangulation, so if we go with the forensic clean-up, then he must have attacked her and then jammed her full of debris, but that doesn’t fit in with a violent sexual offender. Sex attackers get off on the violence, so it doesn’t seem right that the violence would come after the sex. That’s when they are normally trying to get away. Some even stay to apologise, to try and comfort the victim.’

      ‘Maybe he couldn’t finish the job and acted out of frustration?’ Laura said.

      ‘What, twice?’ Joe said, his eyebrows raised. ‘Frustration suggests lack of control, because it wasn’t planned, but if you are out of control, you don’t act identically twice.’

      ‘So what do you think?’ Carson said.

      Joe chewed on his lip for a few seconds, and then said, ‘The best I can come up with is that the removal of the clothes from the scene is part of the forensic clean-up. I think the debris and the strangulation is part of the act, and the motivation will have been sexual. If he didn’t have sex with her, he must have got his kicks in some other way. My guess is that he masturbated at the scene, maybe even onto her when she was still wearing clothes. That might be why she was naked and there were no clothes at the scene, because when her clothes went, his DNA went with them.’

      ‘Perhaps they were trophies?’ Carson said.

      ‘Possibly,’ Joe said. ‘Do you remember the small cuts on her body and legs?’

      Laura and Carson exchanged glances and then nodded that they remembered.

      ‘I think that happened when he cut off her clothes,’ Joe said.

      ‘So what scenario do we have?’ Carson asked.

      Joe looked at the photographs again, and then he went back to his chair. ‘He attacks the victim and fills her mouth with dirt and debris, perhaps to keep her quiet. He jams her with dirt wherever he can, for some sexual motive, and then strangles her. As she dies, he masturbates over her, and then cleans up.’

      ‘So it’s a pure sex attacker?’ Carson said.

      ‘That would be my guess,’ Joe replied.

      ‘What about a diversion?’ Laura said.

      ‘What do you mean?’ Joe said.

      It was Laura’s turn to walk towards the photographs, but this time she went to a glamour shot of Deborah Corley, a soft-focus picture from one of the high street make-over studios, her hair over her face, her top pulled down from her shoulder.

      ‘From what you’ve said, Jane Roberts is from a bad family, the sort that makes enemies,’ Laura said. ‘Nothing like Deborah. Her father’s a copper, for Christ’s sake, a different world to Don Roberts. She was rebelling a bit, maybe, sleeping around, but no different to a lot of young women.’

      ‘So what are you suggesting?’ Carson said.

      ‘Do you remember the whispers we heard about Deborah’s father?’ Laura said. ‘Good cop on the street, bad man at home; that he was a bully, spent too much of his off-duty time with a bottle in his hand. His wife has called in twice when he’s come home drunk and got too heavy-handed. Maybe he got the same with Deborah, argued about her private life, and ended up killing her? Was Jane Roberts just a cover-up, to distract us from the first family, to make it look like a serial killing rather than someone closer to home?’

      ‘Why expose himself a second time, just to rig up a smokescreen?’ Carson said. ‘It’s too much of a gamble. If he wasn’t seen the first time, and there is nothing forensically to link him, he is taking a big risk in doing it again. No, if Deborah’s father was behind it, he would sit tight and wait for it to blow over.’

      ‘And it wouldn’t be so sexualised,’ Joe added. ‘But it could be a distraction for a different reason.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Carson said, sitting forward now.

      ‘Some kind of turf war,’ Joe said. ‘Perhaps someone found out how Deborah died and replicated it, so that it hurt Don Roberts and distracted us.’

      Carson shook his head, unconvinced. ‘Don Roberts is an old-school crook,’ he said. ‘So are his enemies. Just small town big fishes. They would tear each other’s fingernails out, but they still play by certain rules. You don’t go into each other’s houses. You keep family out of it. The rules are the only things that keep things stable, because they don’t want to attract attention. That’s why all the new drug dealers get spotted, because they think the game is all about power and Bentleys, about baseball bats and guns. It’s not. It’s about secrecy.’

      ‘But was the dirt in the vagina meant as an insult, not a sex act?’ Joe said. ‘We’re only guessing that he masturbated.’

      Carson groaned and put his head back. ‘How many bloody angles do we need?’

      ‘But she was the target, we know that,’ Joe said.

      ‘What do you mean?’ Carson said.

      ‘The location. There was too much risk of being seen, because it’s overlooked by houses. And nice houses, where they would perhaps be more likely to investigate a scream or a fight. If it was random, I would expect the killer to be somewhere more secluded, or driving around, looking for the right victim.’

      ‘Maybe he was driving around?’

      ‘But if you had transport, would you choose that location for a dumping ground?’ Joe shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t expect so, and so it makes me think that Jane Roberts was meant to be the victim. But why?’

      ‘We do know one thing, though,’ Laura said. ‘We have only ever told the press that the first victim was strangled, and so the girl we found today was either killed by the same person, or by someone who knew all about the first.’

      ‘Do we keep it secret from the press again?’ Carson said.

      Joe sighed. ‘It will stop anyone copying if we do,’ he said, ‘but it will also stop anyone from recognising the method. There is no easy answer.’

      Carson nodded and pulled at his lip, before he said, ‘Keep it quiet for now. We could let it out later, if we get nothing from the phones or the scene in the next couple of days.’ He checked his watch, and then looked at Laura. ‘The press will be here soon. Will Jack be?’

      Laura felt her cheeks flush. ‘Probably. He was at the scene earlier.’

      ‘I know, I saw him,’ Carson said.

      Laura was rescued by the opening of the door and a detective appearing, holding a camera in the air.

      ‘Who wants to look at the gawkers?’ he said. He was dressed in his scruffs to blend in, jeans and a T-shirt, but the short hair and muscles gave him away as police. The detective went to a computer terminal and hooked up the camera. He clicked the first photograph to make it fill the screen, and then stepped back as Carson stepped forward.

      ‘McGanity, you need to look at these,’ he said. ‘You’ve been based in Blackley.’

      ‘Look for people who are standing apart from the crowd,’ Joe said. ‘The person who is alone,