Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [17]
“What has?”
“There’s been another Moor Murder!”
“A child?”
“A seven-year-old girl from Muiredge.”
With a quick glance at the four closed bedroom doors, Rex led Alistair back downstairs. He did not want to upset his guests and worse, have them all get up again. However, Shona was still about, he saw with surprise. She looked up from the front door, where she appeared to be hiding something in her coat.
“All right, hen?” Rex asked, using a Scottish endearment reserved for women.
“I was just getting a bit o’ air to clear my head. I had a wee bit too much to drink tonight,” she added with an artificial laugh.
What an odd creature Shona Allerdice is, Rex thought. Yet he was too concerned with his friend to pay her much mind. Once they were in the library, he splashed whisky into two tumblers. The television, housed in an armoire with retractable doors, was set on low volume. Alistair stared at the screen as the clean-cut news anchor reiterated the details of the case.
“Melissa Bates was abducted from her cottage late this afternoon,” he relayed in somber tones. “She was in the care of a baby-sitter, nineteen-year-old Gail Frith, who had left her playing in the front garden while she answered the phone. She did not report Melissa’s disappearance immediately, hoping to find her before the parents got home. She knocked at the neighbours’ doors. When a small boy mentioned seeing a green van with no windows in the back driving slowly down the road, Gail alerted the police. The surrounding moor was scoured for three hours before a police dog led authorities to an isolated spot seven miles from Muiredge. The girl’s body was dredged from a bog near Loch Laidon. Heavy rain has impeded further investigation for the time being. If anyone has seen a green van in the area …”
Rex muted the volume. Alistair continued to gaze at the screen.
“This is my fault,” he said, loosening his cravat. “I feel sick. I’m going to find Collins.” He made purposefully for the door.
Rex held him back. “The police will already have picked him up for questioning. They’ll round up all the pedophiles in a fifty-mile radius. They’ll widen the net if they have to. Nobody wants to catch this monster more than the Bill.” Or the parents, Rex thought. “This may be the crime that gets him convicted.”
“The rain will have washed away all the evidence. It’s a miracle the police found the body.”
“I imagine they gave the dog an item of the girl’s clothing and the animal was able to track the scent in spite of the rain. That dog deserves a medal.” Rex was aware he was waffling on, but he could see how devastated his colleague was that he had not been able to put Collins away—if indeed Collins was responsible for the murders. It was, granted, a huge coincidence that no abductions had been reported while he was in custody. “It’s amazing they found the body at all. Seven miles is a lot of ground to cover in such a short time, considering the rugged terrain.”
“The wee boy was able to give the direction in which the van took off. He was looking out his bedroom window, wondering if the rain would stop for his birthday tomorrow.”
“Lucky break.”
“Collins got a lucky break when I was called upon to prosecute him,” Alistair said bitterly, swirling his Scotch. “I wish Britain would bring back the death penalty for child killers. Oh, God, if I could just get a hold of him, I’d wring his neck with my bare hands.” He flexed his long, pale fingers, a look of pure hate disfiguring his handsome features.
“Same M.O. as the others?” Rex asked reluctantly, dreading the answer.
“They haven’t released specifics yet. And they may not.”
Certain details of the Kirsty MacClure case had not been divulged to the press. Only the police and those involved in the trial knew about the means of strangulation and nature of the molestation. In the previous cases, other than ligature marks around the neck, no other evidence of physical trauma had been found, even though the victims had each been found stripped naked from the waist