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the half-lidded wistful gaze and clenched tongue belonged to his pretty stepdaughter, Lynda Mann. He knew because he recognized the donkey jacket that she'd been paying for a bit at a time.
    Pearce was allocated to deal with the family. He took with him Detective Sergeant Mick Mason, a perfect choice. The family immediately took to Mason.
    "Mick's that kind of bloke," Pearce said. "One hundred percent solid."
    Mick Mason promised the Eastwoods he'd keep them informed of th e p rogress of the inquiry until it was over. Like the others, he thought it might last a week at most.
    Kath Eastwood was, as she later put it, "in a daze" that day. She sat at home and offered tea to the various detectives who came.
    "I had ever so much trouble," she later remembered, "just trying to understand anything said to me."
    Did Lynda have a boyfriend? How about a former boyfriend? Lynda's ears were pierced but she wasn't wearing earrings. Was she wearing earrings the last time you saw her? Questions like that.
    That day, Kathleen Eastwood sat and tried to recall whether or not Lynda had been wearing her ear studs. The last time you saw her. It took a few minutes even to begin to conceptualize what that must mean.
    "She might've been wearing ear studs" was all Kath could offer. "And gloves. Perhaps she had her gloves, ones without fingertips."
    But she couldn't be sure. Everything was mixed up. This couldn't be happening because Lynda had planned her future so completely! It was all Kath could think about. Lynda's future was assured.
    The last time I saw her.

    Chapter 5.
    Victims
    A postmortem was conducted at 2:00 P . M . on the 23rd of November at the Leicester Royal Infirmary with Chief Supt. Baker and Supt. Coutts in attendance.
    The body of Lynda Mann measured five feet two inches. It weighed 112 pounds. Facial abrasions were noted on the right upper cheek and orbit, as well as on the chin and the front of her neck. Detectives speculated that she may have been punched on the chin, perhaps knocked unconscious by her assailant. There was bruising below the middle of the left and right clavicles.
    As to those chest bruises the pathologist wrote: "Conditions would suggest that this girl was struck a heavy blow to the upper chest." Detectives, however, speculated that the bruising might have been caused by an assailant kneeling on the girl to provide leverage as he tightened her own scarf around her neck as a ligature. By the left knee if he was right-handed.
    The fingernails were long, partly painted and unbroken, indicating that Lynda Mann probably had not put up a terrific fight. There was no damage to the anus, and the vagina showed no tears or bruises. The tongue had been gouged by her own teeth as she died strangling. She was probably not unconscious when the final force was applied.
    The principal scientific officer from the Forensic Science Laboratory at Huntingdon doubted there had been a protracted struggle. He wrot e t hat the arrangement of the tennis shoes "indicated voluntary removal." He found the pubic hair around the vagina to be matted with dried fluid, probably semen. Soil marks on the back of her bare heels suggested that her body had been dragged by the upper half, perhaps by the donkey jacket.
    It was discovered that the zip tab on her jeans was jammed, consistent with the belief that they had been stripped from her body by the assailant who had left them rolled up, inside out. Officially, the cause of death was from asphyxia due to strangulation.
    At the conclusion of the postmortem report the pathologist wrote: "Sexual intercourse was attempted and premature ejaculation occurred."
    A worried spokesman for Carlton Hayes Hospital gave a statement to inquiring reporters: "Although this tragedy is right on our doorstep, there is no reason to suspect there is any connection with the hospital."
    Which, when reported to Derek Pearce, caused him to look at the looming psychiatric hospital and say, "Oh yeah. Loonies and maniacs