Jenny had never felt entirely at ease with Superintendent Gristhorpe, but she didn’t know why. He seemed very much his own man — self-contained, strong, determined — and he projected a solid, comforting presence. But something made her feel awkward. Perhaps, she speculated, it was the underlying sense of isolation she sensed, the fortress he seemed to have built around his feelings. She knew about his wife’s death from cancer several years ago, and guessed that perhaps a part of him had died with her. Susan Gay, she remembered, had said that she also felt uncomfortable with him, yet he had a reputation as a kind and compassionate man.
His physical presence was difficult to ignore, too. He was a big man — bulky, but not fat — with bushy eyebrows and an unruly thatch of grey hair. With his reddish, pock-marked complexion and the slightly hooked nose, he was very much the dalesman, she thought, if indeed there was such a creature, weathered and moulded by the landscape.
“I did a bit of preliminary research last night,” Jenny began. “I can probably give you a capsule version of the paedophile types.”
Gristhorpe nodded. As she spoke, Jenny somehow felt that he probably knew more than she did about the subject. After all, some of his books dealt with criminal psychology and forensic psychiatry, and he was reputed to be well read. But she didn’t feel he was simply being polite when he let her speak. No, he was listening all right, listening for something he might not have come across or thought of himself. Watching her carefully with those deceptively innocent eyes.
She balanced her black-rimmed reading-glasses on her nose and took her notes out of her briefcase. “Basically, there are four types of paedophile,” she began. “And so far it doesn’t seem like your couple fits any. The first kind is someone who hasn’t really been able to establish satisfactory relationships with his peers. It’s the most common type, and he only feels sexually comfortable with children. He usually knows his victim, maybe a family friend, or even a relation.”
Gristhorpe nodded. “What about age, roughly?”
“Average age is about forty.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
“The second type is someone who seems to develop normally but finds it increasingly difficult to adjust to adult life — work, marriage, et cetera. Feels inadequate, often turns to drink. Usually the marriage, if there is one, breaks down. With this type, something sets things in motion. He reaches a kind of breaking-point. Maybe his wife or girlfriend is having an affair, intensifying his feelings of inadequacy. This kind doesn’t usually know his victim. It may be someone he sees passing by in a car or something. Again, not much like the situation you described at Brenda Scupham’s.”
“No,” agreed Gristhorpe. “But we’ve got to keep an open mind at this point.”
“And I think we can dismiss the third type, too,” Jenny went on. “This is someone who generally had his formative sexual experiences with young boys in an institution of some kind.”
“Ah,” said Gristhorpe. “Public school?”
Jenny looked up at him and smiled. “I suppose that would qualify.” She turned back to her notes. “Anyway, this type is generally a homosexual paedophile, the type that cruises the streets for victims or uses male prostitutes.”
“And the last?”
“The wild card,” Jenny said. “The psychopathic paedophile. It’s hard to pin this type down. He’s in search of new sexual thrills, and pain and fear are generally involved. He’ll hurt his victims, introduce sharp objects into the sexual organs, that kind of thing. The more aggressive he gets, the more excited he becomes. A person like this usually has a history of anti-social behaviour.”
Gristhorpe held the bridge of his nose and grunted.
“I’m sorry I can’t really be of any more help yet,” Jenny said, “but I’m working on it. The really odd thing, as I told Alan, is that there were two of them, a man and a woman. I want to look a bit further into that aspect.”
Gristhorpe nodded. “Go ahead. And please don’t underestimate your usefulness.”
Jenny smiled at him and shuffled her notes back into the briefcase.
“This stuff the newspapers were on about,” Gristhorpe went on, “organized gangs of paedophiles, what do you think of that?”
Jenny shook her head. “It doesn’t figure. Paedophiles are like other sexual deviants, essentially loners, solo operators. And most of the allegations of ritual abuse turned out to be social workers’ fantasies. Of course, when you get abuse in families, people close ranks. They might look like organized gangs, but they’re not really. Paedophiles simply aren’t the types to form clubs, except…”
“Except what?”
“I was thinking of kiddie porn, child prostitution and the like. It’s around, it happens, there’s no denying it, and that takes a bit of organization.”
“Videos, magazines?”
“Yes. Even snuff films.”
“We’re doing our best,” Gristhorpe said. “I’ve been in touch with the paedophile squad. Those rings are hard to penetrate, but if anything concerning Gemma turns up, believe me, we’ll know about it.”
Jenny stood up. “I’ll do a bit more research.”
“Thanks.” Gristhorpe walked over to open the door for her.
Jenny dashed back to her car, got in and turned her key in the ignition. Suddenly, she paused. She couldn’t remember where she was supposed to go or why she was in such a hurry. She checked her appointment book and then racked her brains to see if she had forgotten anything. No. The truth was, she had nowhere to go and no reason at all to hurry.
IV
Banks breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh air outside the flue. Claustrophobia was bad enough, but what he had just seen made it even worse.
After Gristhorpe had gone to meet Jenny, the SOCOs had slowly and carefully removed all the stones from the body of a man in his mid- to late-twenties. When they had finished, Dr Glendenning bent forward to see what he could find out. First, he opened the bomber-jacket and cursed when he had to stop the tangle of greyish intestines from spilling out of the man’s shirt. A couple more flies finally gave up the ghost and crawled out from under the tubing and took off indignantly. The wind moaned down the flue. Quickly, Banks had searched the dead man’s pockets: all empty.
Banks lit a cigarette; fresh air wasn’t enough to get the taste of the flue and of death out of his mouth. The smell was difficult to pin down. Sickly, sweet, with a slight metallic edge, it always seemed to linger around him like an aura for days after attending the scene of a murder.
Glendenning had been crouched in the flue alone for over half an hour now, and the SOCOs were still going over the ground inside the taped-off area: every blade of glass, every stone.
Banks wandered into the smelting mill and looked at the ruins of the furnace and the ore hearth while he waited, trying to put the first shocking glimpse of those spilled intestines out of his mind. He had seen the same thing once before, back in London, and it wasn’t something even the most hardened policeman forgot easily.
He stared at the dullish brown patch in the corner, marked off by the SOCOs as blood. The murder, they said, had probably taken place in the mill.
At last, Glendenning emerged from the flue, red in the face. He stood upright and dusted his jacket where it had come into contact with the stones. A cigarette dangled from his mouth.
“I suppose you want to know it all right away, don’t you?” he said to Banks, sitting on a boulder outside the smelting mill. “Time of death, cause of death, what he had for breakfast?”