Kim knew he perfectly understood police procedure, so he was repeating her words in a ‘need to get this to sink in kind of way’.
‘We gotta get something, guys. We can’t get this close and then release him. There’s a little girl out there somewhere and we can’t rely on Steven Harte to tell us where she is.’
They all nodded their agreement except for Alison.
‘Thanks for following my guidance in there. Good job,’ she said, holding up her two thumbs.
Kim raised an eyebrow.
‘But to be fair you weren’t going to get anything out of him.’
Kim already knew that. ‘And the next time you give me advice, make sure it’s something I can actually do. How much of that you expected me to take, I’ll never know.’
‘I got enough to make a start.’
‘Good, now what you got for me?’ Kim asked.
‘Boss, me and Penn are already looking to see if Melody was his last victim,’ Stacey said as Penn walked over to the board.
‘So far every abduction seems to occur in two-yearly intervals. He took Libby in ’92 and released her in ’93. He took Suzie in ’94 and released her in ’95. He took Melody in ’96.’
‘So you’re thinking the murder of Melody marked some kind of change in his behaviour towards the girls but that he might have taken another one in ’98?’
‘Looking at it, boss,’ Stacey confirmed.
‘Okay, stay on it, Stace. Penn, I want a list of every inch of property he owns.’
‘Okay, boss,’ Penn answered.
Kim turned to the behaviourist. ‘Alison, study every minute of footage we have and find me something I can use. We have to be able to control this.’
‘On it,’ she said, returning to the screen.
Bryant glanced her way, and she nodded towards the door. They had a lot to do and not much time to do it.
Thirty-One
There was something instantly sobering about seeing the bones of a child laid out on a gurney.
Both she and Bryant took a moment to process the sight. They had visited this morgue hundreds of times over the years. They had witnessed bodies in every state of decomposition. They had observed tortured bodies and self-inflicted injuries. Most times they’d formed a vague storyline in their heads of the person’s family, their life, their likes and dislikes from just the tiniest of clues.
Here, there was nothing, which made the situation all the more poignant because there was no meat on the bones – literally.
In some ways, Kim wished the skeleton hadn’t been arranged quite so accurately. It showed just how small and defenceless this child had been.
‘Bryant,’ Kim said, regaining the attention of her colleague, who hadn’t yet looked away from the table.
‘We have the majority of the bones,’ Doctor A offered sombrely. ‘My team is still shifting for more tiny bones.’
Kim guessed the woman meant sifting but made no move to correct her.
‘Any development on gender?’ Kim asked.
Doctor A sighed heavily. ‘There are a number of macroscopic methods for determining the sex of infant and juvenile skeletal remains which have been developed, but current standards generally recommend that we don’t attempt them because the methods have a low level of reliability. Differences between male and female skeletons arrive from the interplay between genetics, hormonal variations, culture and environment. For individuals who have completed skeletal maturity, sex determination is considered to be reliable; however, skeletons can’t always be placed into two neat categories. The traits relevant for sex determination exist on a spectrum from very feminine to intermediate to very masculine.
‘Five categories are used in anthropological analysis: female, probable female, intermediate, probable male and male.’
‘Can we not tell from the skull?’ Kim asked, looking down at the tiny head.
Doctor A shook her head. ‘The bones are not yet fully formed; boys typically show a more prominent chin, an anteriorly wider dental arcade, a narrower and deeper sciatic notch than girls. The assessment of these traits is accurate in approximately seventy per cent of cases.
‘The most effective sex indicators do not begin to develop until adolescence, and some are not fully expressed until adulthood. Sex estimation in children remains problematic.’
Keats stepped forward. ‘There is DNA analysis which requires good DNA survival and is very time-consuming.’
‘What about peptide analysis?’ Bryant asked.
‘Who?’ Kim asked as all eyes in the room turned towards him.
‘I am impressed, Bryan,’ Doctor A said. Even Keats was smiling.
‘What? I like to keep up to date on stuff,’ he offered with a shrug.
‘I shall put our young victim back to bed while Doctor A explains,’ Keats said, covering over the bones.
Bryant opened the door for Keats to wheel the trolley back to storage before they both focused on her response.
‘Peptide analysis is a minimally destructive surface acid etching of tooth enamel and subsequent identification of sex chromosome. Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the human body and survives burial exceptionally well, even when the rest of the skeleton or DNA in the organic fraction has decayed.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ Kim noted.
‘Sounds like there’s a big but coming,’ Bryant observed.
‘It is prohibitively expensive and not yet in widespread use.’
Would Woody be prepared to commit thousands of pounds of their budget for one single state-of-the-art forensic test? She suspected not.
‘Okay, given what you do know at this stage, what would be your classification of the five you listed?’ Kim asked.
‘I would state probable female aged between seven and thirteen,’ she said as Keats re-entered the room.
‘Thanks, Doctor A,’ Kim said, turning to the pathologist.
‘No pressure for something good from you after that, eh Keats?’
‘I’m not a seal that performs on demand, Inspector. Although I should mention that the cause of death…’
‘Yes?’ Kim asked hopefully.
‘Is likely to remain a mystery indefinitely.’
‘Keats,’ Kim moaned.
He shrugged. ‘In the absence of any soft tissue, it is impossible to deduce. I can say that there is no obvious trauma to the remains that we have.’
‘Damn.’
Keats moved away and recorded something on his clipboard. Kim got Keats’s problem. If the victim had been stabbed but no bone had been nicked in the process, there would be no evidence as the flesh and organs were long gone.
‘How long ago are we talking, folks?’ Kim asked, unsure who was best to ask. If their answers differed, she would choose the one she liked the best.
‘Twenty to twenty-five years,’ they said together.
Keats held up his hand, uncharacteristically, to receive a high five. Doctor A looked at him as though he’d lost his mind and moved away.
Keats lowered his hand.
‘That may be the first time I’ve see you two agree on anything but, really, can you not narrow it down any more than that?’
‘Oh, Keatings, we forgot to mention the newspaper,’ Doctor A said, holding up her hand to Keats.