“Makes sense. Could they have come back and finished her off?”

“Apparently not,” said Annie. “At least that’s not what Mandy Ketteridge heard. And I keep going back to the unlikelihood of some wacko happening along and killing her.”

“You still think it was someone she knew?”

“Yes. Don’t forget, Mandy Ketteridge said she thought the second vehicle turned around and went back the way it came.”

“Maybe the victim didn’t see who it was, or if she did, she didn’t think she had anything to fear from him. Maybe she thought it was a friend. She was disoriented, remember. Hurt. Naked. On drugs, as far as we know. She heard a car. She thought she’d be rescued. It must have been the first thing that came into her mind. Joy. Relief. I mean, how do you think you’d feel if you’d just been through what she’d been through?”

Annie swallowed and turned away. Gerry had no idea, of course. As far as Annie was aware, Banks was the only one in Eastvale who knew she had been raped several years ago, before her transfer there, by fellow detectives after a promotion party. She remembered exactly what she had felt like, and she had fought tooth and nail. She would also know how long it took several men to rape a woman if she hadn’t managed to fight her way out after the first attacker.

Annie took a long slug of Black Sheep. “Right. She’s hurt, heading away from where her attackers went. Another car comes. She’s hoping for help, wherever he’s going. It stops a few yards beyond her. As you said, she must have thought she’d found help. A Good Samaritan.”

“Hmmm, maybe,” Gerry said. “But it turned out to be some psycho killer who decided to beat her to death? We’re back to that again.”

“No,” said Annie. “There was nothing psycho about it. That’s my point. And why would a psycho bother to turn around and go back the way he came? Wouldn’t he be more likely to just carry on down Bradham Lane?”

“Depends where he was going.” Gerry frowned. “What are you getting at? I don’t understand. Someone followed her right from the start of the journey, from before she was raped?”

“Or someone knew where she was going and followed at a distance. That would explain how the second vehicle could be ten or fifteen minutes behind the first, as Mandy Ketteridge said it was. It makes sense if the killer knew they were heading down Bradham Lane. Had to take Bradham Lane to get where they were going from the road they were already on. If he knew all that, I’m thinking he may have held back a little while before following them down the lane so they wouldn’t see his lights behind them.”

“So you have them going from the northeast to West Yorkshire?”

“It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

“But how could whoever’s in the second vehicle know they’re going to throw her out of the van?”