There were murmurs of surprise. Carson’s eyes widened. ‘Why the hell would he do that?’

‘Doctor Barker asked him the same question, and it was all down to squeamishness. Can you believe that? Young Shane Grix couldn’t stand the noise and mess, because when the animals got scared, they would squeal and shit and piss all over him. So he jammed things in their mouths and elsewhere.’

Carson shook his head. ‘He tortured animals and he was fucking squeamish?’

‘It seems that way,’ Joe said, nodding. ‘But you have to remember why he was doing it. He was hitting back.’

‘At what?’

‘The local bullies, all those kids who taunted him for being different. His mother tried to help, in her own way, by giving him too much love, but he wasn’t the loving type. He hurt animals because it gave him some satisfaction, as if he was hitting out at those who hurt him.’

‘But animals are not inanimate,’ Carson said, picking up on the theme. ‘They get frightened and screech and crap on your clothes.’ He shook his head. ‘There are some really weird ones out there.’

‘There always have been, but then things happen to them that change them,’ Joe said. ‘If he’d grown up somewhere different, where the kids were less cruel, or if his parents had taught him how to deal with bullies better…’

‘Or karate,’ Carson said.

‘Yes, or taught him karate,’ Joe agreed. ‘People find ways to deal with the crowd. Some people learn to be funny, or choose to run with the pack rather than against it. Some even form their own little clique, like minds together, the chess club types, but they’re all just trying to cope with life. Except that some don’t do it as well as others, and so they end up like Shane Grix. Miserable, lonely and resentful.’

‘And dead,’ Carson said. ‘The families don’t know anything about Emma.’

‘So we think. If Doctor Barker was still alive, I would tell him that he’d just got it wrong, but now he’s dead too, with underwear from the second victim jammed into his mouth.’

‘So what now?’ Carson said.

‘We wait to hear back from the Met,’ Joe said. ‘Or else we hope that he made a mistake with Doctor Barker. It was more spontaneous, and so we have a higher chance of getting a forensic result.’

As Carson thought about that, Joe went to sit next to Rachel Mason. As Laura watched them, she spotted something. A look that passed between them. A flirt. A smile.

Laura smiled to herself. Now she knew why Joe was cagey about his private life, and why Rachel was frosty whenever Laura got too close to Joe, because it seemed like Joe and Rachel were more than just colleagues.

Joe must have caught her looking, because he returned the smile and looked embarrassed. Laura was about to say something when someone shouted ‘Shit!’ from the back of the room.

‘What is it?’ Carson asked, walking over.

Laura and Joe lost their smiles as they watched Carson’s expression change as he read something from a computer screen. Then he stood up and stroked his cheek, a puzzled look on his face.

‘We have a problem,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the results back from Google and it looks like the emailer used proxy servers.’ There were some confused looks. ‘He went to proxy websites and accessed the web-based email through those, as the proxy websites provide internet addresses that are random and not recorded. People use proxy servers when they’ve got something to hide – like people who look at kiddie porn, or fraudsters.’

‘So we’ve hit a dead end?’ Laura asked. ‘Like with Emma.’

Carson shook his head. ‘Not quite. Remember the two emails he sent yesterday morning, the one about finding the newspaper not writing all the details unamusing and Ask them about Emma? Well, they came from an internet address that is very close to home.’ He pointed downwards. ‘Right here.’

There were gasps.

‘He accessed his email from a police computer,’ Carson said, looking around the room.

‘So he is a police officer then,’ Laura said.

‘It was just possible before,’ Carson said. ‘Now it’s a definite, which means that he can find out about the investigation. Leads. Witnesses. Forensic results. So we are going back to pen and paper. Don’t put any witness details on the computer. Everything stays in this room. No one must talk about the case outside this room. The squad has got to be locked down. He must not know how we are getting on.’

People looked serious, but Carson broke the mood by smiling and saying, ‘He might have just made his first mistake.’

Chapter Forty-Five

Jack continued to drive around the estate, looking for something that would define the story. The differences in the houses were stark. Many were pristine, with well-tended gardens and shiny double-glazing brightened by his headlights, but they sat next to houses that seemed just the opposite, with cracked or broken windows, the walls splattered with paint and eggs. Graffiti covered many doors, with words like paedo or nonce sprayed in black. On others, the letters WYD were sprayed in large letters.

As he drove, the darkness seemed like a cloak, as whole groups of houses seemed to fade into the night, with street lights broken, and the further he went, the more obvious it became that the lights were broken where the damage was being caused, so that it seemed deliberate, to create a dark space for people to do what they would rather not be seen doing.

He turned into another street, a long stretch of town-houses and three-storey blocks of flats, when his lights caught a group outside a house. He heard shouts and laughter, but it was mocking, not fun. They were dressed in black, although he caught the glimmer of a bike wheel. They must have known he was there, but they didn’t look round. He heard shouts of encouragement, and then something crashed on the floor, like a garden pot being broken.

Jack stopped and climbed out of his car. He was wary, but he knew that Dolby would want this in the story. He pulled out his camera and pointed it towards the group. There was a shout when the flash went off, the burst of light showing up a group of teenagers, pale faces in dark hoods. Some had scarves over their mouths, so all Jack saw was the gleam in their eyes.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ someone shouted, with the deep burr of a man’s voice in a wiry adolescent body.

Jack heard the group move closer to him, the movement just shifting shadows. ‘Do you want to be in the paper?’ Jack said, trying to keep the edginess out of his voice.

‘Fuck, no,’ the same voice said, behind Jack now.

Jack was in darkness, the street light above him not working. He could hear them bouncing around him, muttering, cursing.

‘Which paper?’ someone else asked, the voice higher-pitched this time.

‘Just the local one. I’m writing about the estate.’

They all laughed but Jack stayed still. He wasn’t sure how this would go. He knew he could deal with them one-on-one, but he was outnumbered, in the dark, and he had written enough court stories to know that some teenagers didn’t know when to stop hitting.

‘Why are you throwing things at the house?’ Jack said.

‘Who said we were throwing things?’ the deep voice countered.

Jack’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now, and he saw that the leader was leaning forward across his handlebars, staring, just his eyes visible above his scarf.

‘What does WYD stand for?’ Jack said.

‘Whitcroft Young Defenders,’ someone said, making them all whoop with laughter, apart from the leader, who didn’t move or say anything.

‘Defending it from what?’ Jack said.

The laughing subsided, and the leader edged forward with his bike, until Jack felt the tyre hit his shin. ‘What the fuck has it got to do with you?’