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was an art, the murder squad soon discovered. Two sergeants extracted all local handwritten records on everyone with indecency offenses, deleting those of men who were deceased or serving time in prison. They listed indecency offenders by putting rapists at the top, followed by those who'd committed rape in the general area of the Midlands, followed by rape in Leicestershire. The rape category was followed by less serious indecent assaults on females, all the way down to flashing offenses. They also computerized assaults on males, including boys, and broke these down to the flashing of males by males. Hundreds of man-hours were needed for this manual extraction before the information could be put in, and retrieved from, their new computer system. The overall plan was to link all information with names that might appear on the house-to-house inquiry.
    It wasn't nearly as bad in The Rosings as it was for the hospital squad and house-to-house teams who occupied the cricket pavilion. That pavilion, across from the hospital's cricket pitch, was like a drafty shoe box built off the ground on an exposed foundation and "warmed" by an unvented gas heater. They held briefings in the pavilion, stopped there for tea and biscuits, and despite the thirty bodies working cheek to jowl it was said the pavilion stayed as cold as a lawyer's heart.
    But no matter how cold and cramped it was in the pavilion or in The Rosings, they persevered, in the belief that it couldn't last long. Any one of them would've been shocked to think they'd be there at Christmas. They couldn't foresee that they'd be jogging around that cricket pitch for exercise on warm spring days, or that they'd be there long enough to watch the birth of daffodils in the hospital gardens, and stay to see them die.
    The house-to-house teams did what the name implies--they wen t d oor to door, to every residence in the three villages, filling out a pro forma document on each male resident between the ages of thirteen and thirty-four. That age had been arbitrarily selected when it was learned from lab technicians that the sperm count in the semen sample was high. Which prompted ad-libs from the over-forty cops, such as: "Well, if I'm out of the age group, how is it I inflate the old woman every time I roll over in bed?"
    Protests from middle-aged detectives notwithstanding, they investigated only younger men, and because the house-to-house teams went back five years, so did the hospital teams. It was a massive task to dig into hospital records and try to trace likely outpatients and resident patients who'd passed through Carlton Hayes over that period of time.
    They had formed a hospital squad because of the number of sexual offenders, drug abusers and alcoholics treated at Carlton Hayes, not to mention the ordinary psychotics capable of rape and murder. Hospital spokesmen were cooperative after the police offered reassurances, but were understandably cautious about opening up confidential psychiatric files. The hospital would not give background information on patients but repeatedly assured police that the killer of Lynda Mann could not possibly have been one of the resident patients.
    "Our wards are secure," the murder squad was told.
    After which, Derek Pearce told his men, "About as secure as Woolworth's on Saturday afternoon. You'll just have to be resourceful and sort out as many loonies as you can."
    When he was able to assemble a true picture of the monumental job they faced, Pearce said, "Bloody hell! There's more people comes through this place every day than in Euston Station at rush hour, and that doesn't even include the day center!"
    There was a little brick outbuilding across the road from The Black Pad, on the grounds of The Woodlands, a large hospital residence made into a day center for people with mental problems not severe enough to be treated in the hospital. The inquiry teams discovered that teenagers would hang around the little brick building drinking beers or