Page 61 of First Blood

Genitally mutilated

Sexual abuser

Beheaded

Packing paper

Two days ago

‘So, we have to be careful just how much time we give to the other cases although we can’t afford to discard them completely. The beheading of Luke Fenton sets him apart from the other victims. We know he was a paedophile whose first victim appears to have been his sister. We also know that a woman named Hayley with a facial birthmark lived with him for a time with her daughter. There’s no evidence to suggest the child was his as the photos began when the child is around nine years old. Incidentally, that’s the age his sister was when he began with her.’

‘Sister did it,’ Dawson said.

‘Not according to her clock card at the supermarket that says she was doing an extra shift on nights to cover annual leave.’

‘Could have been—’

‘Let it go. She’s not a suspect,’ Kim stated.

‘We know that he had no friends to speak of and kept everything about himself private.’

‘Neighbours are just as—’

‘Dawson, if you’d like to interrupt me one more time I sure would appreciate it.’

‘Sorry, boss,’ he said, not sounding sorry at all.

‘And we’ll get back to Fenton’s neighbours in a minute. But what we don’t know about Fenton is whether there are any other victims of his deviant behaviour. He’s never been charged with an offence and hasn’t crossed our radar, why not?’ She held up her hand. ‘It’s rhetorical, Dawson. I just want you to give it some thought. If his first act of abuse was to his sister when she was nine and he was fifteen, what about the fourteen years that followed? Why has he never been a person of interest in any intelligence, operation or surveillance?’

Kim knew that the force had achieved great success in uncovering and breaking up paedophile rings both online and physical and yet his name had appeared nowhere.

‘Okay, so, Stace, I want you on the phone records and chasing up the lab for anything further.’

The constable nodded her understanding.

‘Dawson, I want you looking for any links between Luke Fenton, Lester Jackson and Tommy Deeley. There has to be something. And Bryant and I are going back to the neighbours to find out more about this girl.’

Dawson’s face fell. ‘Boss, I already…’

‘You may have missed something,’ she said, honestly. He’d spoken to one elderly lady. There were doors he hadn’t knocked and this woman and her child needed to be found.

She offered him a warning glance to leave it alone. They all had their instructions and she was hoping to make it out of this briefing without murdering one of her team.

‘Boss, can I say something?’ Dawson asked.

Or not, she thought as her hands clenched in her pocket.

‘Go ahead.’

‘I have something I’d like you to see,’ he said, sliding a piece of paper to the edge of his desk. ‘It’s Lester Jackson’s post-mortem report.’

She looked at him before reaching for the piece of paper.

‘I know a woman…’

‘Dawson,’ she said, narrowing her gaze.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. An assistant at the morgue owes me a favour. I gave her son a bit of a talking to when he was making some bad decisions.’