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undergrowth on the building site. The pathologist said, ‘If death had been from asphyxia, her face would have been purple and there would probably have been bleeding from the nose or the ears. You can see the marks of your man’s thumbs clearly enough.’ He pointed with his ballpoint at the girl’s neck, which looked now as if it had been elongated to accommodate the huge, ugly bruises on each side of the slim throat.
    Mercifully, Burgess had exposed only the face and neck of the corpse and not his workings lower down the body. Lambert forced himself to take the sheet and pull it back across the unlined face, so unnaturally serene in spite of the violence it had suffered. He turned away, drawing Burgess with him, putting distance between the two of them and the mutilated flesh they were discussing, guarding against any more visual demonstrations from the pathologist. Then he said, ‘What about those small abrasions on the neck?’
    Burgess shook his head. ‘They were made by the girl herself, I’m afraid. When she tried to drag her killer’s hands away. It must have been all over in seconds.’
    â€˜Anything under her fingernails?’
    â€˜Nothing useful. The skin and tissue are the girls’ own, from those neck scratches you noticed.’
    â€˜Did you find anything on the corpse that might be from the man who killed her?’
    â€˜No. He wore gloves, as did the murderer of Julie Salmon. I can’t even tell you what kind of gloves, because I’ve found no fibres on the neck.’
    â€˜Leather?’
    â€˜It’s possible. Plastic of some kind is probably more likely. But I’m guessing – no traces of the gloves have been left on the girl’s neck or arms.’
    â€˜So this killer was at pains to leave no trace. And he probably went out expecting to kill.’
    Burgess was immediately interested as always in the workings of the detective mind. He looked his question, and Lambert said, ‘On a warm night, he went out with gloves in his pocket. I can’t think of many people in Oldford who would do that.’
    Burgess said with uncharacteristic humility, ‘Yes, I see that as soon as you say it. Has your Scene of Crime team collected any fibres from her clothing?’
    â€˜A few. It remains to be seen whether they’re useful ones. They may have no connection with her assailant.’ In his present gloomy mood, Lambert felt already that they would not. ‘What about the time of death?’ It was the question they always wanted answered, but in this case he did not think Burgess would be able to give them much more than they already knew.
    â€˜She’d eaten fish and chips about five hours before death. She died between nine o’clock last night and one o’clock this morning.’
    Lambert nodded, suppressing a smile at how much wider this old hand set the boundaries than Don Haworth had last night. But the police surgeon was a younger man, enthusiastic to help them. And it was not his evidence which would be quoted and possibly challenged in court. He said, ‘You’ve conducted the autopsies on both Julie Salmon and Harriet Brown, Cyril. Would you say they were killed by the same man?’
    Burgess prepared himself for an elaborate series of medical cautions to explain why it was impossible and undesirable to look for such certainties on the evidence available. Then he saw Lambert’s strained face and thought better of it; he would like to be as helpful as possible to a man he now thought of as an old friend. Moreover, he was fascinated by the processes of detection, and loved to become involved in them.
    â€˜It’s impossible to be certain, on the forensic evidence so far available.’ The pathologist dropped his voice into an awful American intonation: Hollywood B movie, circa 1950. ‘But you’re asking me to play a hunch, Lootenant, and I’m gonna do that for you. I’m gonna