She was halfway through it when the session was opened by Chief Superintendent Forbes, who wanted everyone to know how commendable their efforts had been so far, and how tantalisingly close to success he believed them to be. The monster who had killed Kerri Vlasich was in their hands, had been identified at the scene. One last push, he concluded, one last effort to find the extra strands of evidence that must still lie waiting out there to tie him to his brutal crime, and their hard work would be rewarded with public acclaim.
Though less lofty in his vision of their future rewards, and more circumspect in relation to Testor’s guilt, Brock’s report supported Forbes’s general drift. Testor was an unusual man, not to be easily written off as a steroid junkie. He had suffered brain damage as a teenager, and his behaviour was unusual and difficult to predict. At one moment he would appear helplessly child-like, at another devious and calculating. He seemed extraordinarily passive and gentle, yet he had been capable in the past of blind and violent rage. They had been unable to find any sexual partners, of either gender, nor even evidence of sexual interest, yet his greatest hobby seemed to be his own body and its appearance. He could perform extraordinary mental feats, but also appeared to suffer confusion and genuine sporadic memory loss. And these characteristics were compounded by his eclectic drug habits. But the important thing to remember was that he knew he was odd, and had learned the hard way that his oddness got him into trouble. When pressure was put on him, as now, his instinctive reaction was to clam up, roll into a ball, and say nothing.
So he was not confident that they would get anything like a confession from him, and that meant they needed more eyewitnesses. They had one, a seven-year-old girl who, despite her age, was an extraordinarily confident witness, and who had, that morning, picked out Testor from a line-up without the least hesitation. But she was only seven. Others must have seen Testor and Kerri on that afternoon of the sixth, particularly during that crucial one-hour period from 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. when Testor had switched his meal break and couldn’t account for his whereabouts. And then there was the matter of the beating that Testor had been given on the previous Sunday evening, apparently in his own flat, after he’d been allowed home after being questioned for the first time at Hornchurch Street.
As he said this, Kathy found herself wondering about the state of Gavin Lowry’s knuckles. She glanced across at him, sitting on a table at the back of the room, looking as if he knew it all.
Eyewitnesses, then, Brock concluded, more eyewitnesses. Then he asked Leon Desai to bring them up to date on the forensic side. Leon got to his feet and spoke with his usual stylish composure.
‘The lab has now identified the antigen antibodies in Kerri’s hair, and confirmed a match with traces in the blood and some organs. It seems that during the final week of her life she took, or was given, ketamine hydrochloride. Ketamine, you probably know, is popularly known as “K”, or “special K”, and is taken as an intense hallucinogenic, but it can also cause paralysis and coma. It’s used in various proprietary forms as a veterinary anaesthetic.’
‘Hang on…’ Gavin Lowry spoke up. ‘Testor had animal steroids in his possession. Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence?’
‘Probably not,’ Leon replied. ‘It’s true that Stenbolol, the anabolic steroid you found in Testor’s room, is manufactured as a veterinary product, but it’s widely available in gyms and among body-building types. We think the batch Testor had was manufactured in Holland and never legally imported into the UK. Similarly, ketamine hydrochloride is manufactured for veterinary use, but is bought and sold on the club scene as a rather risky alternative to Ecstasy. There’s unlikely to be a link. Unfortunately the antigen tests can’t narrow the ketamine down to a particular make or source. One indication that it was a veterinary product could be the way in which it was administered. Almost all veterinary ketamine makes are presented by injection, whereas the stuff they sell for kids is in pills. The pathologist didn’t find any needle marks on Kerri’s body, but they can be hard to spot. He said’-Leon hesitated, then went on-‘he said the best way to make sure would be to remove her skin. Apparently needle marks are more visible if you hold the skin up to the light.’
There was a general whisper of disgust at the thought of skinning the girl, but not, Kathy noticed, from Dr Nicholson, who observed their discomfort from beneath her fringe with a little smile of amusement.
‘Well,’ Brock said, ‘maybe we should consider that. An injection might indicate whether or not it was self-administered, depending on where it was. Anything else, Leon?’
‘Yes. The samples from the compactors. They’ve identified blood traces.’
There was a murmur of approval at this.
‘But it’s badly contaminated, and they can’t say yet whether it’s even human.’
A groan of disappointment.
‘And it was from the orange compactor, not the blue one.’
There was silence as they tried to work out the implications of this, and the thought passed through Kathy’s mind, how come forensic evidence so often seemed to be two-edged, clarifying and confusing at the same time?
Then it was Alex Nicholson’s turn. She disarmed them immediately by saying that they knew far more about it than she did, and she had nothing brilliant to offer, but maybe it would be helpful if she sort of facilitated-she apologised for the word, which she hated, but they knew what she meant-a discussion, to get ideas out into the open. They might begin with Kerri’s motivation. If she was really running away to see her father, why would she have been talking to Eddie Testor? Was it a chance meeting? Did she know him? Did she buy drugs from him? Could it be that she never had any intention of going to Germany, but instead wanted to frighten and punish her mother, and had used her friends to spread the false story unwittingly?
The group was slow to respond to this, but gradually one or two offered their ideas, which she wrote up on a white board, and a more general discussion began to build up. She was good at it, Kathy conceded, even with such a large and unfamiliar group, getting them to participate. Kathy herself said nothing for some time. She thought the focus on Kerri’s character and motivation was leading nowhere, for the reason that they didn’t really know enough; anything seemed possible. And so eventually she decided to lob a little hand grenade into the debate.
‘What if this has nothing to do with Kerri and her father?’ she asked. ‘What if Kerri was no more than a chance victim? What if this has happened before at Silvermeadow?’
The room went very quiet.
Alex Nicholson was writing on the board at that moment, but she immediately swung round and fixed Kathy with bright eyes. ‘Yes!’ she said, as if she’d been waiting all the time for someone to suggest this. ‘What about that?’
Lowry broke in, irritated. ‘What if? What if? Come on, Kathy, we’ve killed this one. There’s no evidence this has happened before.’
‘But why shouldn’t it?’ Alex said. ‘The method of disposing of the victim was perfect, or should have been. So perfect that it must have been very deliberate, surely. Not a lucky chance. So then, why couldn’t it have happened before? Perhaps many times. Come on, Gavin’-Kathy thought it interesting that she already knew their names- ‘let’s just explore the idea for a minute. Because it changes everything, doesn’t it?’
She let them think about it, then said, ‘Kathy’s right. Kerri becomes almost incidental, merely this month’s target. The whole focus shifts. Instead of looking at character and motivation, we look instead at…?’ She left it hanging in the air, but they didn’t get it. Nobody spoke, and eventually she answered her own question. ‘Place! The setting becomes the central thing. Right? The place where it happens!’ She turned to Brock, as if to check whether it was all right to go on, and he nodded with an indulgent little smile and she turned back to the group, and abruptly the tutorial was over and the lecture began.