When the Music's Over

Alan Banks has just recently been appointed Detective Superintendent, and now with other senior officers he is to head up an historical sexual abuse case that occurred nearly 50 years previous.  He and DS Winsome Jackman interview the first complainant and then the supposed rapist.

DI Annie Cabbot and DC Gerry Masterton have been called out to a body found on the side of a country lane.  It appears that the dead girl has been badly beaten.  In fact, so badly beaten that her insides were completely messed up.  She was also brutally sexually assaulted before being beaten.

Tox screens show that the girl had alcohol and ketamine in her system.  She may not have felt anything.  Also there is DNA from three different men who sexually assaulted her.  Not long after posting an artist’s sketch of the victim, Masterton receives an anonymous phone call identifying their victim.  She had come from a poor estate.

Bank’s victim had been raped by two men.  One had been murdered shortly after she had been raped.  Was he now investigating a murder as well as a rape?  Is it possible that both murder and rape were covered up by people powerful enough to protect the rapist?

Although the two cases are years apart, author Peter Robinson neatly ties them together.  A good read, hard to put down.