“Two cars?”

“Yes. Even from such small samples and skid marks we can see how the tracks differ. There was the van here, the one she was likely dumped from, traveling south. Then there was another van that stopped to give a naked girl a lift half a mile up the road in the middle of the night. It was also traveling south, but it didn’t get as far as here.”

“Van? You said van.”

“Judging by the track width, both were commercial vehicles of some kind.”

“You say this second van was traveling in the same direction as the one that had dumped her?”

“Yes. Again, if you look closely, you can see the way the grass is flattened a short distance south from where her trail ends.”

“So the van would have been coming towards her, and she’d have had to turn to run back to it when it stopped. That would explain why her tracks continue on north past the spot where she’s lying back there. Bloody hell,” said Annie. “What a mess. She ran back to the car when it stopped, and then the driver killed her. Or could the car have hit her? Could this have been a hit and run, despite what Dr. Burns said?”

“I really can’t speculate on that, but you’ve seen her body, same as I have. You’ll have to talk to Dr. Glendenning when he’s done the postmortem. No doubt the good doctor will be checking her skin for any signs of paint or any traces that might have transferred from a car. But you also have to remember that if she was hit by a car, it could have been an accident.”

“She’d have been like a deer in the headlights.”

“Probably. But there’s always the possibility.”

“Was the other car following the first one?”

Stefan thought for a moment. “I’d say not. She had time to walk some distance from where she was dumped from the first vehicle before it came along. That would probably have taken her ten or fifteen minutes, the shape she was in.”

Gerry walked over and stood beside them. “Did you catch that?” Annie said. “A naked girl gets tossed in a ditch from a moving vehicle. She gets out, makes her way back up the road, maybe hoping for a Good Samaritan or at least a working telephone box, then someone else comes along and either runs her down or kicks the living daylights out of her.”

“That’s about the way I see it,” Stefan said. “And judging from the skid marks and pattern on the verge up there, I’d say that when he’d finished with her, he turned around and headed back the way he came.”

“You’re saying ‘he,’ Stefan. Is it just a figure of speech or do you really think it was a man?”

“Sorry,” said Stefan. “It’s mostly just a habit. Easier than saying ‘he or she.’ But now that you mention it, I find it harder to see a woman than a man doing what was done to her.”