Like This, for Ever

The third boy, Noah, was watching television with his childminder and got up to answer the door. Jason and Joshua were in the front garden of their home. No one saw anything and that tells me two things. First, that the killer can make himself very inconspicuous, and second, that he’s patient. The chances are he had to lie in wait more than once, waiting for the opportunity to get at the boys.’
    ‘You’re assuming Tyler King is part of the investigation,’ said Anderson. ‘We haven’t as yet.’
    ‘There’s a very good chance,’ said Richmond. ‘He matches the victim profile completely and the circumstances of his disappearance are the same. I suspect his body was dumped like the others but not found. It’ll have been washed out to sea.’
    ‘Actually that doesn’t happen,’ said Anderson. ‘If someone goes in the river, sooner or later, we pull them out.’
    ‘Then sooner or later I think you’ll pull Tyler out too,’ said Richmond. ‘Does anything else strike anyone about the abductions?’
    ‘He’s not threatening,’ said Mizon. ‘All four – five – went with him without a struggle. If they’d cried out, someone would have heard them. No one did.’
    ‘So he’s either someone they know or someone they would instinctively trust,’ said Richmond. ‘Yet you’ve found no common denominator other than that they were all football players, albeit for different clubs.’
    ‘Someone in uniform,’ suggested Tom Barrett, one of the DCs on Dana’s team. Barrett was young, black and handsome, and seemingly incapable of taking life seriously. ‘Someone posing as one of us.’
    ‘Kids of that age still instinctively trust the police,’ said Richmond. ‘And most people in uniform. So, we’ve got inconspicuous, unthreatening, possibly known to the victims, and patient – maybe someone in uniform or a figure of authority.’
    ‘Actually, we do have some new information on how he might beabducting the boys in the first place,’ said Dana. ‘The pathologist found evidence of carotid baroreceptor compression on both the latest victims.’
    Of all the people in the room, only the profiler looked mystified.
    ‘You’ve heard of pressure points?’ Dana asked her. ‘Points of the body where relatively modest amounts of pressure can cause disproportionate levels of pain.’
    Richmond nodded slowly.
    ‘Police officers are trained to use pressure points to restrain and subdue difficult and violent suspects,’ Dana continued. ‘They’re of limited use, frankly, because people’s natural reaction when faced with pain is to fight against it rather than submit. The trick is to take them by surprise, get them in some sort of limb lock, then get the cuffs on quick.’ She got up and crossed to where Richmond was sitting. ‘I’ll give you an example,’ she said. ‘Let’s imagine you’re a protestor, sitting on the ground, refusing to budge, and I want to move you.’
    She moved to behind Richmond’s chair and placed three fingers beneath Richmond’s jawbone on either side of her chin. ‘OK with that?’ she asked.
    ‘OK so far,’ replied Richmond. ‘Whoa!’
    With barely any effort, Dana had pulled upwards, lifting Richmond just a centimetre or two off her seat. She let her go.
    ‘Wow,’ said Richmond, rubbing her jaw.
    ‘Another second or so and you’d probably have pulled free,’ said Dana, ‘because you and I are very similar in terms of weight and strength. If Pete did it to you, on the other hand, you’d probably have to do exactly what he wanted you to.’
    ‘So with a size advantage as well, pressure points can be a very effective way of subduing someone?’ Richmond asked, still looking uncomfortable. ‘So was that used on the Barlow brothers?’
    ‘No,’ said Dana. ‘The bruises on the boys were lower on the neck, round about here.’ On her own neck, she indicated two points on either side of her throat. ‘Baroreceptors are a sort of gauge that control blood pressure in the body. One on either side of the neck. Apply pressure to both of them and they send a signal to the brain that the body’s blood pressure is dangerously high. So the brainresponds by lowering it. What happens when your blood pressure falls?’
    ‘You feel dizzy, faint,’ said Richmond. ‘Eventually you pass out. Well, that would certainly explain how he got them away quietly. They were in a faint.’
    ‘It’s not that easy though, is it, Boss?’ said Anderson. ‘It’s not like the