I turned to Wozza and whispered, ‘Blanket.’ He retreated to the boot, clicked it open and reappeared with a thermal blanket that I wrapped around the girl’s trembling shoulders. I led her to the back of the police car and helped her inside. I closed the door, then hurried around to the other side of the car and climbed in beside her. I reached over and helped buckle her seatbelt.

Wozza gunned the engine and U-turned, heading straight for the hospital.

I pulled my iPhone from my pocket and tapped a few buttons until the recording app filled the screen. I kept my voice low and even as I spoke to the girl. ‘I’m going to record you to get the details of what happened.’ As soon as we reached the hospital, the girl would be whisked away, and hours could be lost in the hunt for whoever did this to her. There was a fine line between the detective’s need to get as much information as soon as possible and the needs of the victim. And from the looks of things—the girl’s unfocused, enlarged pupils, the blood on her dress and her injured feet—she had been drugged, probably sexually assaulted, and dumped on the road somewhere further on, left with little but the presence of mind to head towards town.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked gently.

The girl was like a fawn, shaking, wide-eyed. Bewildered. ‘It’s—’ She broke off and her eyes looked downwards. Tears spilled onto her dress. ‘They just threw me out of the car … I didn’t do anything wrong.’ She wept.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

The girl nodded, still dazed, staring ahead at nothing. ‘I don’t really remember …’

‘You said, “They just threw me out of the car.” Who’s they?’ The use of the plural had worried me—it implied more than one offender.

The girl shook her head as if to clear the haze. ‘All I remember is going out to the pub last night to celebrate my eighteenth.’ Her voice was slurred, and from this angle I could see her swollen lip. She had been hit as well.

‘Your name?’ I took the girl’s cold hand in mine, trying to radiate some warmth into her.

‘Meg. Meg Mulligan.’

‘Good girl, Meg,’ I said. ‘Which pub were you at last night? Can you remember?’

‘The Royal,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It was my first night. You know, to drink legally.’ She shifted in her seat and flinched in pain.

‘Who were you with?’ Anyone who was there with Meg would be interviewed as a potential witness.

‘Rachel, Jess, Anna—’ Meg scrunched her eyes shut, wincing. She held a shaking hand in front of her stomach, clearly in great pain. ‘They’re from school. They’re eighteen as well.’

I saw Wozza dart a sharp glance into the back seat. Meg was a schoolkid; somehow that made it worse.