The child killer Robert Black may face a new prosecution over the death of a nine-year-old girl in Northern Ireland 26 years ago.

It is also understood that he may be charged in connection with the disappearance of Genette Tate in Devon 30 years ago.

Detectives have questioned Black, who is serving a minimum of 35 years in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire, and have sent a file to the Public Prosecution Service in Belfast.

Jennifer Cardy was abducted and murdered as she cycled to a friend’s house in Ballinderry, Co Antrim, in August 1981. Her bike was found in a field near her home and her body was discovered six days later at a dam near Hillsborough in Co Down. Black, 60, was first questioned about the murder in 2005. He could now face a new trial in Northern Ireland. It is understood that detectives from Northern Ireland have alerted the parents of the three girls whom Black killed in the 1980s that there would soon be another trial.

The pending charge indicates the winding up of an exhaustive joint investigation spanning more than four years, involving the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

Sources suggest that the Crown Prosecution Service may also be considering charging Black, a van driver, with the death of Genette Tate, 13, from Aylesbeare, in August 1978. The mystery of Genette’s disappearance was never solved. Her body has never been found.

Black was sentenced to a minimum of 35 years by Newcastle Crown Court in May 1994 for the murders of Susan Maxwell, 11, from Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, in July 1982; Caroline Hogg, 5, from Edinburgh, in July 1983; and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds, in March 1986.

The prosecution described Black, a Scot who lived in London, as every parent’s worst nightmare, and detectives who dealt with him were certain that he had claimed other victims.

The PSNI declined to confirm officially that charges were imminent, but a senior source stated: “Papers for his trial are now being prepared . . . he will be charged with Jennifer’s murder within days.”

Work records from his job as a van driver were used to convict Black of the three murders already resolved. Bonus records and petrol receipts placed him at the scene where each of the girls was abducted on the relevant day and later at the sites in the Midlands where the bodies were dumped.

It is understood that Black’s delivery records for 1981 place him within a couple of miles of the area on the day that Jennifer was abducted. He made a delivery the same day in Belfast, a few miles from Ballinderry.

In a series of conversations that Black held with Ray Wyre, a sexual crimes expert, while he awaited trial for an abduction and sexual assault in Scotland in 1990, Black admitted that he looked for girls on bikes.

Black was finally caught in the Borders village of Stow in July 1990 when he abducted a six-year-old girl and assaulted her in a lay-by just south of the village, then drove back through the village. A local man witnessed the abduction and called the police. Black was stopped by a police officer - the father of the little girl – who was discovered bound and gagged inside a sleeping bag on the stifling hot day. She was judged to be only 20 minutes away from suffocation.

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu