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Danielle, that she hadn’t met him like she was supposed to, and he hadn’t seen
her when he drove down the road, and that was good enough for them.”
    “What did the police do after speaking to
Michael Davis?” Justin asked.
    “Nothing, or as good as; I don’t think they
even attempted to check that his story was true. They just accepted what he
told them and left it at that.” Patricia picked up a flowery cup from the desk
in front of her and brought it to her lips, grimacing when she discovered her
tea had gone cold.
    Listening to what he was being told Justin
felt his excitement grow; he’d come to the village expecting to get a good,
possibly great, story about a community torn apart by a serial killer. The
possibility that Michael Davis had been left free to kill repeatedly, because
the police had failed to do their job, made him think the story could be bigger
than he’d thought. It might even be the biggest of his career. “So you’re
saying the police failed to conduct a proper investigation following the
disappearance of Danielle Pale?”
    “Yes! If they had done their jobs properly my
Emma would never have been harmed.”
    “Didn’t they make an effort to locate
Danielle Pale?” Justin tried to keep the excitement he was feeling from his
voice. “Surely they searched the village for her.”
    “Oh they did that, sure.” Both her tone and
the expression on her face were dismissive, revealing her opinion of the
efforts made by the police. “At least they said they did. According to them,
they searched the village repeatedly, without finding any sign of Danielle.”
    From what he had seen of the village, Justin
was sure it couldn’t have taken long for the police to search it, even if they
included the outlying areas in their searches. “Where was she eventually
found?” he asked, thinking that it would be a good idea to get some pictures of
every location in the village that was relevant in some way to the murders.
Even if they weren’t used with the story he wrote, he was sure they would prove
useful; they might even be inspiring, if any of the locations were atmospheric
enough.
    “I was told that poor Danielle’s body was
found along the riverbank, past the pub. Mr Denton, whom Sergeant Underwood
incorrectly suspected of the murders, discovered her while out running on
Saturday morning. My Emma was discovered later that day in the woods alongside
the river, near to where Danielle’s body was found.”
    “When is it that your daughter went missing?
I gather some time passed between Danielle’s disappearance and the
disappearance of your daughter.”

TEN
     
    At the side of Leonard Dean, the owner of the
Dean Stables, Donna made her way across the yard to the office. “Do you have
any idea who might have wanted to vandalise your vehicles in such a fashion?”
she asked; despite her inexperience as an investigator, she was sure the damage
was not the result of someone simply looking for fun.
    “No, not really, except maybe Gordon Pale and
his friends. They’re usually responsible for anything like this that happens in
the village,” Leonard said, moving ahead of Donna to unlock the office door.
    “They graduated from vandalism a few years
ago; they don’t generally waste their time with it now unless they have a
grudge against someone,” Donna remarked as she followed the stud farm owner
into the office. Idly, she wondered if Leonard Dean had had some kind of run-in
with Gordon Pale and his friends, which would explain why he suspected them.
“Besides, it can’t have been Gordon or his friends on this occasion; Gordon’s
been in hospital since Saturday night, and his friends haven’t been up to doing
much since then either.
    “Have you let anyone go recently? Anyone who
might be upset with you, upset enough to want to come back and cause you
problems?”
    Leonard shook his head. “I haven’t had to let
anyone go in a long time; wait, I remember my wife telling me last