I drank in his face, flushed and glowing, and nodded. Take away those dimples and we’d look roughly the same age. ‘Seemed a lot back then.’
‘But not any more?’
‘No,’ I told him truthfully. ‘Not any more.’
He replaced his drink and moved his hand to my knee. ‘Good,’ he said and shot me a look that had my stomach flipping. God, those eyes were as dark as chocolate. How had I never notice that before? But I brought myself upright – must focus – and shook myself to attention.
I pointed to the map of Essex, pinned up over the fireplace. ‘I need your expertise, PC Joe.’
He tugged his gaze away from my face and looked at the map.
It took me about five minutes to explain as concisely as possible what the crosses and circles meant. When I finished he stood up and took his glass over to the map and leant against the wall, taking a couple of minutes to process everything I had said.
‘Okay?’ He looked up expectantly. ‘And your query is?’
I turned the New England map around to face him.
‘Right, well this is New England: Massachusetts and Connecticut.’ Then I took him through the red marks, drawing my finger inland down from Hartford to New Haven and Old Lyme on the Long Island Sound, an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean.
‘Now look at the coastal region here.’ I read out the names and recounted some of the accusations and trials, not forgetting to mention Margaret Jones, the first victim, whose trial took place slap bang in the middle of Boston, where immigrants from England were likely to have first disembarked.
He came back to my map and squatted over it. Despite the booze I could see Joe’s interest was piqued. He listened to me going over the chronology of the trials, citing some of the methodologies used, shaking his head and tutting. I was so used to the casual brutality evoked in these trials I forgot about how Joe might react. I supposed that as a policeman he was hardened to the grotesqueries that life and criminality threw his way. But I could see from the paling of his face that he was horrified by it all.
There was certainly something pathetic about the nature of the witches’ crimes. And in most cases their status was already at the bottom of the social scale in the place kept for the mad, debased, disabled, starving. It made the aggression of the accusers all the more despicable. I saw Joe physically wince when I told him about Alice Lake and her phantom baby.
Though my position had changed a bit. I still sympathised and wanted justice for them but I was also on the hunt for the bullies. I gave him some time to recover before I asked him, ‘In your view, can you see similarities? Could this American map chart the same MO?’
For three long minutes Joe didn’t speak. Then he stood back and rubbed his hand across his short crop. ‘I’m not a profiler, Sadie. With something like this I’d suggest you take it to Chelmsford and try and get someone there to look at it.’
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. It wasn’t an answer at all really.
I had to push him. ‘Come on, Joe. I told you – it’s off the record. I’m not going to quote you on this. Just give me a clue. What do you think?’
He stroked his chin and picked up the New England map, holding it up next to the Essex map. After another long pause he straightened up. ‘I’d say it was worth investigating.’
I breathed in deeply. ‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘You’d need to go into more detail with victims and areas if you wanted a profiler to give you a full report, but I’d say something is going on here.’
He cast the map down. It swung through the air, landing a foot from me.
I gathered it up and thanked him very genuinely for his time. ‘Are you ready for pasta?’
He nodded but he looked weary. His eyes had lost their benevolent gleam.
Over dinner Joe was more reserved. I guess this wasn’t the sort of evening he’d anticipated. I sat him with his back to the window in the best chair and tried to chat about his work. He didn’t bite. In the end he said, ‘This is dark, Sadie.’
I scooped a spoonful of sauce and parmesan into my mouth. ‘Tell me about it.’
Joe put his elbows on the table. ‘Has it occurred to you that