The Risk of Darkness Read Free

half a mile away. He had carried a sports bag containing swimming things—Lewis’s father was taking them to a new Water Dome half an hour’s drive away.
    Scott had never arrived at the Tyler house. After waiting twenty minutes, Ian Tyler had telephoned the Merrimans’ number and Scott’s own mobile. Scott’s eleven-year-old sister Lauren had told him Scott had left “ages ago.” His mobile was switched off.
    The road down which he had walked was mainly a residential one, but it also took traffic on one of the busiest routes out of the town.
    No one had come forward to report that they had seen the boy. No body had been found, nor any sports bag.
    There was a school photograph of Scott Merriman on the conference-room wall, a foot away from that of David Angus. They were not alike but there was asimilar freshness about them, an eagerness of expression which struck Simon Serrailler to the heart. Scott was grinning, showing a gap between his teeth.
    A DC came into the room with a tray of tea. Serrailler started to make a calculation of how many plastic cups of beverage he had drunk since joining the police force. Then Chapman was on his feet again. There was something about his expression, something new. He was a measured, steady man but now he seemed to be sharpened up, shot through with a fresh energy. In response to it, Simon sat up and was aware that the others had done the same, straightened their backs, drawn themselves from a slump.
    “There is one thing I haven’t done in this inquiry. I’m thinking it’s mebbe time I did. Simon, did Lafferton use forensic psychologists in the David Angus case?”
    “As profilers? No. It was discussed but I vetoed it because I thought they simply wouldn’t have enough to work on. All they would be able to give us was the general picture about child abduction—and we know that.”
    “I agree. Still, I think we ought to turn this thing on its head. Let’s play profiling. Speculate about the sort of person who may have taken one, or both, of these children—and others for all we know. Do any of you think it would be a useful exercise?”
    Sally Nelmes tapped her front teeth with her pen.
    “Yes?” Chapman missed nothing.
    “We’ve no more to go on ourselves than a profiler would have, is what I was thinking.”
    “No, we haven’t.”
    “I think we need to get out there, not sit weaving stories.”
    “Uniform and CID are still out there. All of us have been out there, and we will be again. This session, with DCI Serrailler’s input, is about the core team taking time out to think … think round, think through, think.” He paused. “THINK,” he said again, louder this time. “Think what has happened. Two young boys have been taken from their homes, their families, their familiar surroundings, and have been terrified, probably subjected to abuse and then almost certainly murdered. Two families have been broken into pieces, have suffered, are suffering, anguish and dread, they’re distraught, their imaginations are working overtime, they don’t sleep, or eat, or function normally, they aren’t relating fully to anyone or anything and they can never go back, nothing will ever return to normal for them. You know all this as well as I do, but you need me to remind you. If we get nowhere and all our thinking and talking produces nothing fresh for us to work on, then I intend to bring in an outside expert.” He sat down and swung his chair round. They formed a rough semicircle.
    “Think,” he said, “about what kind of a person did these things.”
    There was a moment’s charged silence. Serrailler looked at the DCS with renewed respect. Then the words, the suggestions, the descriptions came, one after the other, snap, snap, snap, from the semicircle, like cards put down on a table in a fast-moving game.
    “Paedophile.”
    “Loner.”
    “Male … strong male.”
    “Young …”
    “Not a teenager.”
    “Driver … well, obviously.”
    “Works on his