Dangerous Pursuits by Jo Bannister

Author:Jo Bannister [Bannister, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304394
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

As the kind of boy who had distinguished himself, insofar as he had distinguished himself at all, more at sports than any of the academic subjects dear to head teachers’ hearts, the young Dave Gorman had been summoned to the principal’s office on more than one occasion. It hadn’t bothered him unduly at the time, and in the years since he’d come to see it as useful training for working in the police. The expression of attentive neutrality he had acquired had got him through any number of interviews which would otherwise have ended in tears.

Monday morning presented him with another such. In the CID offices on the second floor of Meadowvale Police Station, they referred to it as being Up In Front Of Miss, an expression which caused a certain amount of juvenile sniggering in the largely male preserve.

Superintendent Grace Maybourne may or may not have been aware of this – the smart money was on the former: not much happened at Meadowvale that escaped her notice. Either way, and even when she was under pressure from Division, she avoided the temptation to treat her officers like errant schoolboys who Could Do Better, and would Never Amount To Anything Until They Learned To Apply Themselves.

She welcomed Detective Chief Inspector Gorman with a smile and gestured him to a chair. He noticed with dismay that space had been cleared on her desk for a tea-tray. Her china tea set terrified him: the cup handles were too small for his thick fingers, and he never knew if he was allowed to dunk his biscuit.

‘I shan’t keep you long, David.’ She called him David, possibly because of her genteel upbringing, possibly to annoy him. ‘I know you’re busy. I thought we should speak about the Phillips inquiry.’

Gorman nodded, waited for her to start. But it seemed she meant him to speak, which she indicated with an encouraging look.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. We’re not making much progress. Forensics haven’t come back with anything useful. We have no blood except for the victim’s, no fibres at the immediate scene except for those from Phillips’ clothes or the girl’s, no footprints good enough to take casts from, no tyre-tracks fresh enough to be relevant. I don’t know if the attacker was careful or just lucky, but so far we have no physical evidence to indicate who he was or help convict him if we find him by other means. And time is passing. Anything we haven’t found already, I doubt we’re going to find now. I hate to say it, but it’s beginning to look as if our best chance of finding this man is if he attacks another girl.’

‘The other girl who said she’d been attacked …’

‘… Was lying,’ said Gorman plainly. ‘She was scared of what her dad would do if he found out she’d been making whoopee with her boyfriend.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Superintendent Maybourne. It might have meant anything; it probably didn’t mean she knew how that felt. Although looks, as Gorman knew very well, could be deceptive.

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