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her.’ The injuries to the eyes were caused by gouging – probably manual. ‘He was wearing gloves. Look for bloodstains on gloves,’ Berryman told his team. The general bruising and laceration was most probably caused by dragging of the – unconscious?, and later dead – woman along the ground. The lack of bruising and bleeding from some of these injuries suggested they were postmortem. There was possible impact injury, as though, after death, she had fallen heavily. Some gravel had been retrieved from the cuts. There was glass on the body. It was Lynne Jordan, the only woman on the team, who asked which of the other injuries were pre- or postmortem. Berryman couldn’t reassure. The sexual assault was carried out while the woman was alive. The other injuries? ‘Around the time of death,’ was all the information the pathologist could give them.
    ‘Did the glass come from the broken lights at Moreham station?’ That was Lynne again. Berryman shook his head. The glass came from the broken light near where the bodyhad been dumped. There was no guarantee that Julie had gone to Moreham station, though it was probable that she had done so. They still hadn’t been able to trace her beyond the time she left work. Though the team had made extensive enquiries, no one had been found who had been on that route at the relevant time.
    ‘We’ve got one statement that just came in,’ Berryman said. ‘It relates to the crucial time – shortly after nine-thirty. This woman says that the station was deserted, except for one person, a man, who was behaving a bit oddly. I don’t have to tell you, we need to track him down. I’m still hoping for a car as well. There must have been cars going that way.’ Berryman took a deep breath. ‘OK. Let’s run through everything we’ve got. Let’s see what we’re missing here. He might be a lucky bastard, but he can’t do this and leave us nothing. There’s something we’re missing.’
    That evening found Mick Berryman still at his desk. He’d been woken up at four the previous morning by the call from the station reporting Cath Hill’s find. He probably wasn’t going to see his kids today, nor his wife, for that matter. His family was on the back burner until this enquiry was over – if it ever was. He was going over some of the earlier statements, and was looking at the information that had come in from that teacher this morning. Could be nothing, or it could be something very important. It could be their first sighting of the killer. If only they could establish where Julie had been when she was taken. They’d searched the station at Moreham, but there was nothing much to see. Unless forensics came through with something. They needed to track her movements. He began to make notes.
    She’d left work at nine-twenty, as usual for a Thursday. That had been easy to establish. She’d almost certainly walked to the station, despite the bad weather. It only took five minutes. She hadn’t called a taxi and there wasn’t a bus. Could she have accepted a lift? The people who worked with her were pretty certain: not Julie, she was far too careful, only with someone she knew. (And how often was it someone they knew, someone they trusted?) It was no distance to thestation, anyway, she’d almost definitely gone there. But her train had been cancelled. She would probably have seen that on the screen as she arrived, but it had also been displayed on the platform screen. Could she have caught an earlier train? No, the earlier one had left over half an hour before, at eight-thirty-three, and yes, it had been running on time. So what had she done? Had she decided to wait for the next train? That seemed unlikely as it was over forty minutes before the next train was due. She would surely have gone for a bus or a taxi. Was she so broke she couldn’t afford to? Or so tight-fisted? He made some notes and thought on.
    She hadn’t been at the station at nine-forty, according to the statement