“Yes, they did. But don’t expect me to remember the make and number. Look, Bill Marshall might have been a bit of a Jack-the-Lad, but he wasn’t a child molester.”

“How do you know that was the motive behind Graham’s abduction?”

“Have some brains, woman. Why else does a fourteen-year-old boy go missing without a trace? If you ask me, I’d still say he might have been one of Brady and Hindley’s victims, though we could never prove it.”

“But it’s way out of their area. A geographical profiler—”

“More benefits of a university education. Profilers? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve had enough of this. It’s about time you stopped nosing about down here and got back on the bloody job.” And he turned and stalked out.

Michelle noticed that her hand was shaking when he left, and she felt her breath held tight in her chest. She didn’t like confrontation with authority; she had always respected her bosses and the police hierarchy in general; an organization like the police couldn’t run efficiently without a quasi-military structure, she believed, orders given and obeyed, sometimes without question, if it came right down to it. But Shaw’s rage seemed out of proportion to the situation.

She got up and returned the files to their boxes and gathered together her notes. It was well after lunchtime and time for some fresh air, anyway. Perhaps she would make a few phone calls, find someone who’d been on the job during the Kray era and head down to London the next day.

Back in her office, she found a message slip on her desk informing her that Dr. Cooper had rung and wanted to know if she would drop by the mortuary sometime that afternoon. No time like the present, she thought, telling DC Collins where she was going and heading out to her car.

The search of Luke’s room didn’t reveal much except a cassette tape marked “Songs from a Black Room,” which Banks, with Robin’s permission, slipped in his pocket to listen to later. Luke’s desktop computer contained nothing of interest. There was hardly any e-mail, which was only to be expected, and most of the Web sites he visited were connected with music. He also did a fair bit of online purchasing, mostly CDs, also to be expected from someone living in so remote a spot.

Banks was surprised at the range of Luke’s musical tastes. There was the usual stuff, of course, the CDs Annie had told him about, but also among the grunge, metal, hip-hop and gothic, he found other oddities, such as Britten’s setting of Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations and Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way. There were also several indie CDs, including, Banks was thrilled to see, his son Brian’s band’s first recording, Blue Rain. Not your usual listening for a fifteen-year-old. But Banks was coming to believe that Luke Armitage had been far from a typical fifteen-year-old.

He had also read some of the stories and poems Annie had collected from her previous visit, and in his humble opinion they showed real promise. They didn’t tell him anything about what might have happened to Luke, or his feelings about his father or stepfather, but they revealed a young mind preoccupied with death, war, global destruction and social alienation.