“Me, too,” said Banks. “I think we’re in with a chance on this one. I think we might just nail the bastard, especially if her memory gets jogged a bit by writing about it. We could do with finding out that other man’s identity, though. Let’s get back to the station and prep a few questions for Mr. Caxton tomorrow, then I think we can head out early tonight. We’ve got a lot of homework to do before our trip to the seaside tomorrow.”

3

WHEN THE TWO DETECTIVES HAD GONE, LINDA Palmer breathed a deep sigh and refilled her glass with orange juice. It hadn’t been as terrible an ordeal as she had worried it would be, but she still was wrung out. She had felt again while talking to them how terrified she had been all those years ago when she went to the police station in Leeds with her mother. It had taken a great deal of her inner reserves to appear as calm and relaxed about the whole thing as she had done today, shaking inside the whole time.

She wondered if she had seemed too detached to the detectives, too unemotional. Perhaps they hadn’t believed her. Weren’t victims supposed to behave differently? Cry, perhaps, or tremble with fear at their recollections? She worried that she may have been too flippant, too devil-may-care, laughed too often. She had wanted them to know that what had happened hadn’t ruined her life—that was important to her—though it had caused her a great deal of pain and suffering. She hoped she hadn’t gone too far in the direction of nonchalance to make them suspicious of her story. She hadn’t told them everything, of course, not all the myriad details that were etched somewhere in her memory and would, she knew, remain there forever, along with the buried feelings that accompanied them. Though they weren’t easily accessible, the memories and feelings were locked in the box she had put them in to retain her sanity in the months after the events of that summer’s day in Blackpool.

She drank some juice, then felt in her jeans pocket for the packet of Marlboro Lights and the disposable lighter. She didn’t smoke much, but she needed one now, despite the wonderful sweet-scented summer air. Go on, she told herself, pollute it. Make the birds cough on your secondhand smoke. Give the blue tits cancer.