“Surely it would be protocol to send a female officer to interview Linda Palmer?” said Banks.

“Not necessarily,” said McLaughlin. “The detective she talked to when she first called in is a female, a DI MacDonald, and she asked the same question, but Ms. Palmer said she didn’t care as long as it was someone who would believe her. She doesn’t want any special treatment. That having been said, you have three extremely competent female officers on your team.”

“What did Linda Palmer accuse Caxton of doing, exactly?” Banks asked.

“According to Ms. Palmer, Danny Caxton raped her.”

“And she’s just come out with this story?”

McLaughlin sighed and glanced at the police and crime commissioner.

“That’s irrelevant,” Margaret Bingham said. “The reasons women have for coming forward so many years after a traumatic event are complex. It’s not, at the moment, your job to question these motives, merely to ascertain their veracity.”

“And how do we do that?” Banks asked.

“The way you usually do it,” McLaughlin answered. “Use your detective skills. We also have trained child protection officers who specialize in knowing the sort of details true victims are likely to remember, and whether they are telling the truth. If you have any doubts after you’ve talked to her, you’re welcome to go over her statement with one of them, if you wish. And if it makes you feel any better, Ms. Palmer did report the incident shortly after it occurred in 1967.”

“And what happened to that investigation?” Banks asked.

“That will be another aspect of the case for you to determine,” said McLaughlin. “Clearly it was derailed at some point, for some reason, as Mr. Caxton wasn’t brought to justice at the time, and he’s never been charged with raping Linda Palmer or anything else since.”

“Don’t you think that might be because he never did anything?” said Banks. “I mean . . . nearly fifty years ago . . . It’s about as cold a case as you can get.”

“I know,” said McLaughlin, “and I sympathize, Alan. But some of Jimmy Savile’s crimes went back further than that. We’ve got historical abuse going back to the early sixties and before.”

“I get that you don’t like it,” Margaret Bingham interrupted. “But you’d better get used to it. All of you. We might have dropped the ball in the past, but not again. Not on my watch. There’s going to be more and more cases of historical abuse coming up over the next few years. People who think they’ve gotten away with something forever. Men who think they’ve gotten away with something forever because of their fame or their wealth or their power. Or just because they’re men. This was the brutal rape of an underage girl by a man of thirty-seven, and I expect you to go about investigating it as you would if it had happened yesterday.”