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her chair into the circle. “I assume you mean each woman was raped more than once?”
“Precisely,” said Trevor, slightly flushed. “They reported this to the bobbies of course, but the
men investigating were mere youngsters and didn’t think anything of it. But as the case remained
unsolved and thus bumped its way up the chain of command…”
“I quite see where you’re going,” Rayley said. “As the case moved under the jurisdiction of
older men they found the vigor of the assailant more noteworthy.”
“Proving what?” Tom said. “That the rapist was a young enough man to be able to initiate
sexual congress twice in rapid sequence? From a medical standpoint, I scarcely find that a
persuasive line of reasoning. Assaulting a person, no matter who or why, is bound to raise levels of
adrenalin, as does the act of sex itself. So I would imagine that rape, which combines intercourse
and violence, creates enough of a surge to make even an older man capable of exceeding his normal
limits.”
“Maybe so,” said Trevor, still flushed. “But apparently in speculating on the dual nature of the
assaults, one of the supervising officers made a joke about how it must have been two men. And you
know how it is, sometimes a remark made in jest can introduce an entirely new line of thought.
Someone began to think what if it truly were two men working together in tandem. It seemed an
unlikely notion, for while everyone accepts that crimes such as robbery are most efficiently carried
out with a whole contingent of criminals, rapists usually act alone. At least in these planned,
methodical sort of rapes. But once the idea of two men had been raised, the investigation took a
different turn.”
“It explains the blindfold at least,” Emma said. “The woman would have no idea, I presume,
that she was being attacked by two different men.”
“Indeed,” said Trevor. “And as the story unfolded it seems that the fact it was two men had
worked to confuse the time line. While one was busy with the victim, the other made it a point to be
seen on the street and vice versa, thus giving each of them an alibi for the time of the crime. For they
were local lads, you see. Would have been recognizable to their victims. But they were able to use
their proximity to the village station, the coming and going of the trains, and the blindfold to convince
everyone from the women to the local coppers that the assailant must have been from out of town. We
immediately jumped to the same faulty assumption, as you might recall.”
“Fascinating,” Rayley said. “And you have a reason for bringing this story up now, I
presume?”