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stretch of road between the A1 and Eastvale in the early hours of the morning. We’ve got people going from house to house, but there’s nothing except a few holiday cottages and the occasional farmhouse within a mile each way of the car. Nothing’s turned up so far.”
    “Nobody heard the shot?”
    “Not so far.”
    “An ideal place for a murder, then,” Gristhorpe commented. He scratched his chin. Annie could see by the stubble that he hadn’t shaved that morning. Hadn’t combed his unruly hair by the looks of it, either. Still, personal grooming sometimes took a back seat when it came to the urgency of a murder investigation. At least as far as the men were concerned. Kev Templeton was far too vain, of course, to look anything but his gelled, athletic and trendy best, not to mention cool as Antarctica, but Jim Hatchley had definitely taken a leaf out of Gristhorpe’s book. Gavin looked like a trainspotter, right down to the National Health specs held together over his nose by a plaster. Winsome was immaculate in pinstripe navytrousers and matching waistcoat over a white scallop-neck blouse, and Annie felt rather conservative in her plain pastel frock and linen jacket. She also felt unpleasantly sweaty and hoped it didn’t show.
    Finding herself doodling a cartoon of Kev Templeton in full seventies gear, complete with the Afro and tight gold lamé shirt, Annie dragged herself away from her sartorial musings, admonishing herself once again for having difficulty concentrating these days, and got back to the matter in hand: Jennifer Clewes. Gristhorpe was asking her a question, and Annie realized she had missed it.
    “Sorry, sir?”
    Gristhorpe frowned at her. “I said do we have any idea where the victim was driving from?”
    “No, sir,” said Annie.
    “Then perhaps we should set about canvassing all-night garages, shops open late, that sort of thing?”
    “If the victim really is Jennifer Clewes,” Annie said, hoping to make up for her lapse in concentration, “then the odds are that she came from London. As the road she was found on leads to and from the A1, which connects with the M1, that makes it even more likely.”
    “Motorway service stations, then?” Kevin Templeton suggested.
    “Good idea, DC Templeton,” said Gristhorpe. “I’ll leave that to you, shall I?”
    “Wouldn’t it be better to get the local forces on it, sir?”
    “That’ll take too much time and co-ordination. We need results fast. Better if you do it yourself. Tonight.”
    “Just what I always fancied,” Templeton grumbled. “Driving up and down the M1, sampling the local cuisine.”
    Gristhorpe smiled. “Well, it was your idea. And I hear they do a very decent bacon panini at Woodall. Anything else?”
    “DC Jackman mentioned that there had been a similar crime some months ago,” Annie said.
    Gristhorpe looked at Winsome Jackman, eyebrows raised. “Oh?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Winsome. “I checked the details. It’s not quite as similar as it appears on first glance.”
    “Even so,” said Gristhorpe. “I think we’d like to hear about it.”
    “It was near the end of April, the twenty-third. The young woman’s name was Claire Potter, aged twenty-three, lived in North London. She set off at about eight o’clock on a Friday evening to spend the weekend with friends in Castleton. She never got there. Her car was found in a ditch by the side of a quiet road north of Chesterfield by a passing motorist the following morning and her body was found nearby – she’d been raped and stabbed. The way it looks is that her car was forced into a ditch by her assailant. The pathologist also found traces of chloroform and characteristic burning around her mouth.”
    “Where was she last seen?”
    “Trowell services.”
    “Nothing on the service station’s closed-circuit TV?” asked Gristhorpe.
    “Apparently not, sir. I had a brief chat with DI Gifford at Derbyshire CID, and the impression I got was that they’ve