The Risk of Darkness Read Free Page A

own.”
    “Lorry driver … van man, that sort …”
    “Repressed … sexually inadequate …”
    “Unmarried.”
    “Not necessarily … why do you say that?”
    “Can’t make relationships …”
    “Abused as a child …”
    “Been humiliated …”
    “It’s a power thing, isn’t it?”
    “Low intelligence … class C or below …”
    “Dirty … no self-esteem … scruffy …”
    “Cunning.”
    “No—reckless.”
    “Daring, anyway. Big idea of himself.”
    “No, no, dead opposite of that. Insecure. Very insecure.”
    “Secretive. Good at lying. Covering up …”
    On and on they went, the cards snapping down faster and faster. Chapman did not speak, only looked from face to face, following the pattern. Serrailler, too, said nothing, merely watched like the DCS, and with a growing sense of unease. Something was wrong but he could not put his finger on what or why.
    Gradually the comments petered out. They had no more cards to snap down. They were slumping back intheir chairs again. DS Sally Nelmes kept snatching glances at Serrailler—not especially friendly glances.
    “We know what we’re looking for well enough,” she said now.
    “But do we?” Marion Coopey bent forward to retrieve a sheet of paper by her feet.
    “Well, it’s a pretty familiar type …”
    For a second the two women seemed to confront one another. Serrailler hesitated, waiting for the DCS, but Jim Chapman said nothing.
    “If I may …”
    “Simon?”
    “I think I know what DC Coopey means. While everyone was throwing their ideas into the ring I started to feel uneasy … and the trouble is … it’s just a familiar ‘type’ … put everything together and it paints a picture of what you all suppose is your typical child abductor.”
    “And isn’t it?” Sally Nelmes challenged.
    “Maybe. Some of it will fit, no doubt … I’m just concerned—and this is what always concerns me with profiling when it’s swallowed whole—that we’ll make an identikit and then look for the person who fits it. Great when we really are dealing with identikit and it’s of someone several people may have actually seen. But not here. I wouldn’t want us to become fixated on this ‘familiar type’ and start excluding everyone who doesn’t fit.”
    “You’ve got more to go on in Lafferton then?”
    He wondered whether DS Nelmes had a chip on her shoulder or had simply taken a dislike to him, buthe dealt with it in the way he always did, and which was almost always successful. He turned to her and smiled, an intimate, friendly smile, with eye contact, a smile between themselves.
    “Oh, Sally, I wish …” he said.
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Jim Chapman had registered every nuance of the exchange.
    Sally Nelmes shifted slightly, and the trace of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
    They broke for lunch, after which Serrailler and Jim Chapman took a walk out of the flat-roofed, 1970s HQ block and down an uninteresting road leading towards the town. In Yorkshire there was no sun and apparently no summer. The sky was curdled grey, the air oddly chemical.
    “I’m not being much help,” Simon said.
    “I needed to be sure we weren’t missing something.”
    “It’s a bugger. Your lot are as frustrated as we’ve been.”
    “Just not for so long.”
    “These are the ones that get to you.”
    They reached the junction with the arterial road and turned back.
    “My wife’s expecting you for dinner, by the way.”
    Simon’s spirits lifted. He liked Chapman, but it was more than that; he knew no one else up here and the town and its environs were both unfamiliar and unattractive and the hotel into which he had been booked was built in the same style as the police HQwith as much soul. He had half wondered whether to drive back to Lafferton at the end of the day’s work rather than stay there, eating a bad meal alone, but the invitation to the Chapmans’ home cheered him.
    “I want to take you over to Herwick. I