Murray had held out his arm and Waters had taken hold of it at the biceps. Apart from the fact his fingers didn’t reach around it, he’d been even punier then than he was now. After thirty seconds his hands were hurting and after a minute his fingers were in agony. He had let go at one and a half minutes. As far as he could tell, Murray’s hand had never lost consciousness.

  Smith said, ‘Not easy, is it? You’ve got to really want them dead.’

  It was a lesson one would not forget. Someone really wanted this young woman dead. What could she possibly have done to deserve that?

  The wound in her neck was a deep, single gash with a sharp weapon, most likely, according to the pathologist of the time, an un-serrated knife blade. It had been made just before, during or just after the act of strangulation but both carotid arteries were intact and loss of blood had not been a contributory cause of death. She had also suffered a single blow to the back of her skull, causing a contusion but without breaking the bones; the pathologist could not say whether the blow had caused loss of consciousness. The investigators had tried to establish the sequence in which these injuries had occurred but the only conclusion had been that they all took place within a short space of time.

  John Murray was looking at a photograph of her dead face. It was misshapen and ugly after those days in the heat of the summer Jim Goodrum had told them about. This was not an image one could ever have shown to the public in the efforts to discover her identity; Freeman’s decision to have the face regenerated by computer was a long, long shot but you have to take those sometimes – Waters had learned that by now.

  He said, ‘What are you thinking, John?’

  Murray said, ‘I’m thinking she was about the same age as Roxanne Prescott. Most murder victims are male. The odds are against us getting two of these in a row, even if this one is well past its sell-by date.’

  This wasn’t a line of thought that had occurred to Waters, but it was correct; young males are much more likely to have their lives ended by violence. And when young women are killed, it is usually for reasons that differ from those of their male counterparts. Despite the media headlines and the endless TV box sets about sadistic serial killers, women usually know the person who murders them. It is young men whose lives are ended by strangers, most often on the street or in a public place. That’s why, when the victim is female, the investigators look even more closely at her relationships.

  Waters said, ‘So if we apply the sex or money rule, you’d say it’s the former?’

  It was impossible to put words into John Murray’s mouth. After the usual pause, he said, ‘I wouldn’t rule sex in but I think we can rule money out as a motive.’

  ‘Why?’

  Waters had come to the same conclusion but he wanted to know whether Murray had reached it by a different route – talking it through is a vital part of the process. Murray said, ‘Her clothes were standard chain store issue – the jeans, the T-shirt and underwear. They couldn’t trace the sandals because there was no maker’s name. Probably bought on a market stall somewhere. The glasses they found near the body – assuming they were hers – were mass-produced frames, sold in tens of thousands to multiple retailers. The maker was French but they were exported to many other countries, including the UK. Standard single-vision lenses for short sight, nothing traceable in the prescription. The wrist watch was worth a few quid at most when it was new. No handbag or purse but she wasn’t killed for them. You don’t tie people up and take them to a wood before you nick their handbag. She wasn’t murdered for her money. I don’t think she had much money.’

  Waters said, ‘Agreed. So we do have to come back to sex, don’t we?’

  Murray straightened his legs, leaned back in the chair which creaked in protest, and crossed his arms. He said, ‘Yes, but it’s just your age. You’ll get over it.’

  Murray had never objected when the young detective constable had been made his line manager; nevertheless, as with Serena Butler, they had been equals once upon a time. The relationship is always different to the one that is formed when a promoted person arrives from another place. Waters didn’t mind, but recently Cara Freeman had asked whether he had a plan for moving his career on once more, and the thought had occurred to him that next time he might change more than the name tag on his locker.

  He said, ‘The original post-mortem showed she had had intercourse recently – they found semen where you’d expect to. So we know she was in some sort of relationship that didn’t involve male contraception.’

  Murray pointed to the files on his desk and said, ‘She was on the pill. It’s in there.’

  ‘Right. You’ve got further than me. Maybe she was in a steady relationship, then. A boyfriend. Maybe she was married but for some reason the ring was never found.’

  Murray said, ‘Or maybe she was single and just taking sensible precautions. Twenty years ago wasn’t the dark ages – lots of young women were on the pill.’

  Waters didn’t know Murray’s exact age and had no intention of looking it up in the personnel files to which detective sergeants have access; he had realised, however, that if the girl hadn’t been killed in Spring Covert that day – or that night – she would have been more or less John Murray’s age now. He said, ‘The semen sample is one of those that can no longer be used. It would have been our first move, to check that against the national database. At the time, nothing showed up but if he’d been pulled subsequently, for anything at all…’

  Murray nodded and said, ‘It would – it’s a case with a lot of ifs from the start. Mostly to do with not knowing who she is, still, after all this time. It was one of DC’s golden rules – study the victim to find the killer. But if you don’t know who she is…’

  Waters looked around the room. There was almost complete silence, with everyone either leafing through folders and papers or studying something on a screen. He said quietly to Murray, ‘Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”’

  After a little reflection, Murray said, ‘Well, obviously he never worked a case like this one.’

  Waters had to smile at the thought of it – DS Will Shakespeare taking charge of the crime scene at the end of Act Two. Then he said, ‘Well, at least nothing in the post-mortem suggested she had been assaulted sexually. She had not been raped. That tells us something, John.’

  But Murray was still reflecting on what had just been said. He sat forward again, elbows on the table and said, ‘She ought to have a name, until we find her real one. We can’t keep calling her the woman in the woods or the dead girl. We could call her Rose.’

  Chapter Seven

  The briefcase DCI Cara Freeman took home on Friday evening was heavy because it contained much more than witness statements. The summaries written by the two senior investigating officers who had worked on the case were nevertheless lengthy documents, as they invariably are; in addition to those, she had brought the term reviews, the evidence that police have not forgotten a case but are regularly examining it in the light of new evidence or developments. As ever, the timing was less than perfect. She really could have done without the extra work this weekend in view of what she had planned but it was impossible to un-make the arrangements put in place a fortnight before. At two o’clock tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, Isabel would be visiting for the first time.

  To give herself more time today, Freeman had arranged for Daria to switch one of her own days so she could be here to help with her mother. The girl was a treasure, and in those rare moments when she hadn’t enough actual things to worry about, Freeman sometimes tortured herself by imagining what would happen if Daria ever decided to return to the Ukraine, as she had hinted she might one day. The private agency was very good but when it comes down to people, you can never replace like with like. We’re all unique, she thought – it’s just that some are more unique than others.

  The change to Memantine had stabilised her mother’s condition, just as the consultant had predicted; he had warned her, though, that it was not a cure. There are no cures; the damage done is irreversible. Proteins and plaques in the brain… Freeman had a trained mind, of course, and was able to limit the uptake of new data to that which she needed to understand what was happening and how her mother’s care needs would change. She said sometimes, ‘Don’t worry, mother, I’m on the case,’ and there was often a smile or a little laughter because her mother still remembered her daughter was a policewoman.

  Life had made Cara Freeman an early riser. She looked in on her mother at ten minutes to six and found her still sleeping soundly. Downstairs she made coffee and took it into the conservatory, where her work files and laptop awaited her on the table, put there in readiness last night. The conservatory faced south and it was already warm from the morning sun – she opened the French doors and stepped out into the cooler air.

  The lawn had been newly cut but she couldn’t see what else the gardener was doing for his weekly fee. Maybe it was time for a few questions, a pep-talk; on the other hand, the roses looked nice. She didn’t know much about the business. It was what people called “a mature garden” with lots of trees and shrubs, and it matched the house which, let’s be honest, was also mature but rather magnificent. Her mother’s money had seen to that, the money from the sale of the jewellery businesses. The estate agent had said that with a little work, the place would also be an excellent investment. They, or rather she, Freeman, had done none of that work since they moved in two years ago, there being other more pressing matters to think about, but it had been the right choice, nevertheless; her mother had been happier here than she would have been in a more modern place in a town. Peace and quiet benefitted her as much as the drugs they were giving her, Freeman was sure of that. And the property market was still on the up – there would be plenty of cash when they needed to sell to pay for residential care.

  Back in the conservatory, she began with the reports written by the original senior investigating officer, Bert Hardwick. She hadn’t been able to discover much about him but he was long since retired and must be well into his seventies by now. She knew he had moved to Malaga – there seemed to be something about Spain which attracted retiring policemen. The odd thing is, the same part of the world also attracts retired villains… Right now, she could not picture herself calling Bert Hardwick on his sun terrace and chatting about that case he had been unable to solve twenty years ago, but she read his reports anyway. They seemed detailed enough but she could feel it – the lack of engagement with an investigation which some might call objectivity. If the case had ever been personal for Hardwick, it didn’t show in the final words he had written about it.

  Almost a year after the body was found, the case was passed on to another DI – Luke Hallam, who had been brought in from Norwich. Nobody likes this but it’s standard procedure, a fresh pair of eyes and all that. So far, it had not happened to Freeman – more by luck than judgement, she thought – but it’s something you have to face as a senior detective. Sooner or later you’ll get one you cannot solve and be moved to the side of the board. Hallam, she already knew, had actually brought fresh eyes with him: a couple of his own people who worked out of Lake Central for several weeks.

  This has been a thorough review. Key parts of the previous investigation were analysed and in some cases repeated. The DNA was re-submitted to the national database, both that of the young woman – whom her team had agreed amongst themselves to call Rose for some reason – and of the semen sample. Hallam looked at the cord again, quite correctly, because that’s not an everyday piece of string; they tracked down the handful of companies still in the business, sent small samples and spoke to a technical representative from each one. The only useful conclusion from all this was that the cord used to strangle Rose was not a modern replacement – it was original material and might be fifty, even a hundred years old. The killer might have grabbed the nearest thing, or he – or she – might have some connection to the world of old sash windows. But it had been premeditated; what were the chances of finding a length of that sash cord lying in the clearing in the woods? That she had died there was not in doubt. The bleeding from the wound in her neck was in the soil beneath her, and typically, the lab had said that sample was still usable.

  Dental records were already going out of fashion when the girl’s body was examined but Hallam had them looked at, and turned up something interesting. The endodontist consulted was of the opinion that some of the work Rose had had done was more typical of European dentistry than of that usually carried out in the UK. Of course, it might be explained by a European-trained dentist working in the UK, but Hallam widened the search of missing persons reports to include some countries in the EU. He had to stay within fairly narrow parameters to keep the number manageable; Freeman studied them but thought that under normal circumstances, if Rose was a European national who had been reported missing, Hallam’s efforts should have found her. They didn’t.

  A public appeal for information produced little new – the response had been poor on the first occasion, and wasn’t much better when Hallam tried it. There were a few reports from locals of there being too many hitchhikers around at that time, hippies, two of them complained. This was related to some sort of unofficial music festival taking place at Wissingham Hall that summer.

  Freeman frowned, drank some coffee and re-read those statements – Hallam must have had a close look at this. A strangled young woman in the Norfolk countryside is very out of the ordinary – increasingly so, judging by the fact her team was exhuming old corpses to give themselves something to do. An unofficial – whatever that means – music festival on a country estate is also somewhat out of the ordinary, at least according to the local people who were complaining. Two out of the ordinary events that summer and at more or less the same time. Coincidence? Come on, Luke – you looked at that, didn’t you?

  Fifteen years ago or thereabouts, Freeman had gone to Glastonbury. The tickets had been booked long in advance, as they have to be, and she had subsequently been accepted into the police force – she remembered debating with Louise whether it would still be an ‘appropriate’ thing for her to do, as a probationary constable. That’s how seriously she used to take herself. In the end the pair of them had gone. It was the year of the great, once-in-a-century deluge when the entire site was flooded and then became a sea of mud. The tent was washed away and everything they owned was ruined, but the acts carried on regardless and on the Sunday the sun broke through the clouds. That was a magical afternoon. Looking back on it, she often thought she had never laughed so much in her life as when she found herself dancing ankle-deep in the mire with a thousand other people. And it had been special too because she had known then that if this police thing worked out, she would never do anything like it again.

  From those memories she took what she needed now; the wanderers, waifs and strays coming from all parts of the country – and maybe from other countries – and converging on a place. It’s about much more than the music. Something much older, something primal, something deep in the human psyche – that need to meet, to sing and dance with strangers, to celebrate. Many thousands go to Glastonbury – how many would have gone to this unofficial festival on the Wissingham estate? She couldn’t find the exact dates yet, and it was not clear from the summary whether the festival was taking place at the time the body was found. But if it was, wasn’t it possible that one fewer left than the number who had arrived? Wasn’t it more than possible?

  Hallam had looked at this more carefully than the first SIO. She found new statements from members of the Leadsom family, who owned the estate at the time. There had been similar events on their land for several years previously, each year becoming more popular. Hallam had made a note himself, pointing out that in the year following the discovery of the girl’s body no festival had been held – Freeman wondered whether they had resumed afterwards. She Googled the question and found no reference to a Wissingham festival at all.

  Freeman was reading slowly now, line by line, not skimming at all. She had sensed something. There was no need to stop and puzzle it all out now – that would come later – but there was something here. Hallam had been aware of it, too; the line of inquiry he had taken was clear but it hadn’t led him to an answer, and she needed to see why. In the final paragraph of the section, she found one of her questions answered. Hallam had noted that New Age travellers had come to Wissingham to celebrate the summer solstice on the 21st of June, a Monday that year, and this was something they had done for several years. The dates relating to the case were already fixed in Freeman’s memory by the unconscious processes of association and rehearsal: the old man spoken to by Chris and Serena eleven days ago had visited the wood on the 19th of June and there had been no body. The solstice was two days later, meaning the festival was happening that week. On Friday the 25th, the girl’s body was discovered. The pathologist suggested she had been there for a few days. She didn’t have the pathologist’s reports, John Murray did, back in the office. She could call him today but the team already viewed her as a tragic figure, and nothing would change between now and Monday, because it’s history we’re dealing with here, and the facts are trapped in it like flies in amber. A few days, you said, Mr Pathologist? How about exactly five of them?

  This was not as remarkable a leap of intuition as certain former detective sergeants might have allowed you to believe. Freeman had speed-reading skills and had cast her eye over most of the material that had appeared in Tom Greene’s in-tray. There had been a detective constable on the original investigation, the one led by Bert Hardwick, who had raised the question of whether this might have been some sort of ritual killing. Perhaps he’d been told to look into it himself, perhaps he’d been told it was a daft idea – either way, it had never become an active line of inquiry in Hardwick’s investigation. Hallam had considered it but it seemed to have petered out. Freeman’s personal knowledge of religious rituals extended no further than accompanying her mother to midnight mass on Christmas Eve, but she knew that the summer solstice had been and maybe still was important to cultures all around the world. Presumably that would include the nutcases who had believed in the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Someone on the team would be taking a look at it, anyway. And there was only one choice for a job like that.