‘Furthermore, Hunt claims to have been alone in the ticket office at Stoke during the murder of Joe, without witnesses or proof he remained there.’

Becker spoke behind him. ‘And we don’t have a suspect?’

McGee continued to look straight ahead. ‘Nope. We surely don’t. There was no sign of blood or injury to Hunt when he left the trees. There were no footprints round the boy’s body, or indeed any traces on the corpse to intimate Hunt’s involvement. Plus whoever killed Joe had to not only get up there onto the pass in a blizzard that had all but closed the road to do the deed which involved just as much gore as the boy’s death, but would have had to push the truck with Joe in it over the cliff and get down off the pass. Now the truck could have been pushed over with another vehicle, but that would have left marks and the truck that Hunt was driving that night has already been checked by Benson and shows no signs of even a scratch.’

Becker was silent at his back.

‘We think there is a remote possibility the killer may have hitched a ride with a truck driver who we subsequently found dead of natural causes in a parking pass on the Trans-Canada. It can’t have been Hunt, since he was spotted driving back from Stoke behind the ploughs at ten the next morning.’ Craig left a pause then turned his head to address Becker sitting back in the leather armchair Craig used in the briefing room. ‘Messy. Huh?’

Becker nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

McGee continued, knowing this was going to cause a stir. ‘There’s the other problem of motive, of which there appears to be none. The murders are of course gruesome but unconnected. In the case of Joe there was a deliberate manipulation of the remains.’

He paused here. He remembered when Joe used to sit here on these plastic chairs taking notes and grinning at the guys who liked to make smartass comments during briefing. His throat tightened at what Joe would have made of being the subject instead of the investigator.

Craig swallowed and went on. ‘But in the boy’s case it appears to have been a less calculated frenzied attack. The head of course was sliced open down one side first, we know, but it seems as though the killer then went on to destroy the entire body even though the victim was clearly dead.’

Constable Laing coughed at the back. It sounded like it was covering a retch.

‘Now the only similarity in Joe’s case was a murder that happened on the Redhorn reserve twenty years ago. The corpse was found in a state of near-mummification and the manipulation of the remains was identical to that of Joe’s. Sam Hunt grew up on the Redhorn reserve, and would have been there at the estimated time of that death.’