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would or would not incriminate him? But now you are happy to accept that it was an eighteen-year-old boy with no experience of such a police investigation?”
    “There is a great deal of literature on the subject of both rape and its forensic detection,” she said. “And literature of this sort was found in the defendant’s possession. This is again not unusual.”
    “And does this literature contain references to
coitus interruptus
, which the assailant apparently practices with the ease of a considerate Victorian husband?”
    The doctor smiled. “No,” she said. “But I don’t imagine it was
coitus interruptus
as such. I think it much more likely that the assailant suffers from ejaculatory inhibition whereby penile erection can be maintained for long periods, but emission during coitus cannot be achieved. Self-stimulation may be an alternative to the eventual loss of penile erection without emission.”
    “Is this condition common in eighteen-year-old boys?”
    “It’s not common at all, but less uncommon amongst sex offenders than the rest of the male population. Offenders have a marked tendency to sexual dysfunction, and since dysfunction is almost always psychological, eighteen-year-olds are as likely to have the condition as anyone else.”
    “The court has heard that Mr. Drummond was in the habit of visiting a prostitute,” said Harper. “If she were to give evidence to the effect that Mr. Drummond functions quite normally in this regard, would that preclude his being the assailant?”
    “Mr. Harper,” said the judge. “Is it your intention to produce this witness to the court?”
    “Not at the moment, my lord. As the court has heard, the lady in question gave up the profession, or at least gave uppracticing it in this area, alarmed by these very rapes. We have unfortunately so far been unable to trace her.”
    “Then unless and until this witness is located, such evidence as she might present cannot be evaluated. Please confine your questions to the evidence which has been or will be presented to the jury.”
    “I beg your lordship’s pardon,” said Harper, having achieved what he wanted to achieve merely by asking the question. Judy shook her head slightly.
    The courtroom emptied almost as rapidly that afternoon as it had filled up that morning as the scientist who had carried out the DNA tests explained at considerable, and to Judy at least, virtually incomprehensible, length how a DNA profile was arrived at. She wasn’t convinced that any of the jury was still awake; she was having to work hard at keeping her own eyes open.
    “DNA analysis is as accurate and as reliable a means of identification as a fingerprint,” he said, in what she sincerely hoped was a winding-up tone, “hence its popular name. No two people have the same DNA profile, except identical twins.”
    But it seemed he had only just started. The first lecture had been on the nature of DNA, and the reasons why it was such a powerful tool of identification; now, he was explaining exactly how this specific test had been carried out, with illustrations which necessitated the bringing in to court of an overhead projector, which at least caused sufficient diversion to waken everyone up, if only for a moment. At last, the result of this test was being shown.
    Judy looked at the two profiles; one, with the DNA fragments showing as bold black bands, was Drummond’s DNA profile, while the other, with paler but clearly matching lines, was the profile obtained from what the man called, rather coyly, “the scene.”
    What had happened to Rachel Ashman had been reduced to lines on a piece of paper, as impersonal and untraumatic as a supermarket bar code. Her life had been shattered to the extentthat it had seemed to her no longer worth living, but science was there to come along and tidy everything up for the investigators, for the judge and jury. It had yet to come up with a similarly painless treatment for the victims.
    “Forensic