STEVEN DUNNE

The Reaper

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

An earlier edition of The Reaper was first published by Troubador Publishing Ltd 2007

Copyright © Steven Dunne 2007

Steven Dunne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847561633

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007336845

Version: 2018-06-26

Dedicated to my beautiful wife Carmel, whose wholehearted and constructive support made this book possible.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

An interview with Steven Dunne

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

The cat froze, suppressing its instinct to run, and peered into the swirling gloom towards the noise. To break cover, even in this fog, could be its undoing. That’s what its own prey did. That’s when it had them. The animal stared, unblinking, head locked in the direction of the approaching footfall.

From the gasps of fog a figure emerged as though exhaled from the bowels of the earth. The boy was tall and though his clothes were baggy, he was identifiably lean as the cold breeze folded his roomy, low-slung trousers around his legs. He scuffed his Nikes along the rutted pavement, as though wiping something from them, before stopping to sniff the air. The peak of his grimy baseball cap came up as he looked around, sensing the animal nearby.

For a second he stopped hunching himself against the cold and looked towards the cat. He saw its eyes and stood perfectly still.

Softly the rumble in the boy’s throat grew until his armoury was fully loaded and he let fly. An arc of spittle landed near the cat’s front paws, splashing its legs. The cat tensed then leapt to the side, wide-eyed.

To banish any chance of feline forgiveness, the boy darted towards the animal and aimed a kick at its retreating rear.

‘Here puss puss,’ coaxed the boy bending down to click his fingers, scouring the dark ground for missiles. Surprisingly there were none. The boy had alighted upon the only spot on Derby’s Drayfin Estate that wasn’t crumbling.

‘Shit.’ The boy continued to grope but with dwindling enthusiasm. He cursed the absence of street lighting, forgetting it had been he and his crew who’d spent a diligent evening the month before breaking as many as they could find still working. The only illumination now shone from limp Christmas lights winking out from the odd door and window. No-one on the estate put on much of a show at this time of year. It didn’t do to advertise.

The boy stood up without ammunition and shrugged his shoulders. The cat had already taken the hint. No point trying to catch the little sod anyway–he’d run out of lighter fuel. Plus it was no fun torching the little bastards without your crew there to see it.

He peered down at his pale hand clutching an old tab end from the ground. Too big to throw, so he buried it deep in the pocket of his Stone Island jacket for future consumption.

After a noisy piss into a puddle–pissing quietly didn’t unsettle nervous residents–he adjusted his baseball cap and hunched himself into the position offering greatest protection against the biting wind. By happy coincidence, it was also the posture designed to radiate maximum menace, the posture of choice for that invisible brotherhood of disaffected youth around the world. Wicked.

Jason Donovan Wallis wiped his moistening pink nose on his sleeve and stared up at the gun-metal sky through the billows of fog. Nothing but grey. Shame. He liked a clear sky. Enjoyed seeing all those stars and planets and meteors and stuff. Not that he was so gay that he wanted to learn anything about the universe. Fuck that. But one day he hoped to meet an alien and be abducted, taken somewhere with a spaceship full of supermodels to colonise a new world. Then he would return in triumph, a split-second after being taken in earth time. He’d be a hero, the most famous man on the planet. Gash would be queuing round the block to screw him then. Safe.

The man placed the boxes onto a blanket then covered them over to keep the food warm. He closed the back doors of the van and returned to the driver’s seat, darting a glance from side to side. The fog rolling down from the Peaks was perfect. No-one was braving the cold on such a filthy night. The streets were already empty. He had them to himself.

He looked at his watch and smiled. The time was near.

He switched on the CD player and closed his eyes to let the soft music flow over him for a moment, then pulled the leather gloves from his hands and placed them on the dashboard. He had on a pair of surgical rubbers already and his hands were clammy so he extracted a container from a hold-all, tapped a little powder on each wrist and shook it down under the surface onto his palms.

Having returned the powder to the hold-all, he placed the bag into the back of the van and picked up the small leather case from the floor and gently drummed his fingers on it, nodding. He looked at his watch again. The time was right. His final contribution was about to begin.

He picked up the brand new mobile the second it began to ring. He thumbed the answer button, lifted the phone to his ear and listened for a second. Then he ended the call, removed the battery and SIM card and placed the pieces in the leather bag for future disposal. He reached for the ignition, turned on the engine and lights and drove away. The time was now.

Jason examined the murky sky. No aliens tonight. Still, no moon meant a good night for teafin’ though there weren’t nothing worth stealing on the Drayfin no more.

He resumed his trudge to The Centre, a moribund sixties complex of boarded shop windows and grim food stores, housed in a cold grey slab of a building, surrounded by dark and windy walkways: the brainchild of an architect who doubtless lived in an ivy-covered cottage in the Peaks.

He peered into the gloom as he walked. What the fuck to do tonight? There were only so many things he could break to sustain his interest and the council had given up replacing the glass in the bus shelters.

Drugs were great but once the free samples from Banger had been toked, it was hard finding the cash to buy. Booze was easy to get but with no money, he’d been forced to apply for a Saturday job, washing cars at the Jap garage. Already the taste of a life turning sour.

There was always sex to take his mind off things, but that was nothing special. Sure he’d bust his cherry last year, at the age of fourteen, but somehow the way it was offered by the slappers at school put him off. He wanted more than to plant it up the downy fuzz box of those slappers followed by all that crap about him being their boyfriend. Even before he’d washed his dick. Fuck that!

Plus they enjoyed it too much for Jason’s liking. Slags! He liked it better when they didn’t want to, even though they really did. They all did. Like in those videos his dad let him watch. They were the best. So was his dad. All his mates said. Their dads got narked about them being out all hours. Not his dad. Jason was dead lucky. He’d hate a dad who did his head in.

Mum could be a drag though. That was women for you. ‘Only good for one thing,’ his dad would say.

‘That’s one more than you then,’ his mum would shout back. There’d be a slanging match after that. Weird. Sometimes his mum seemed tougher than his dad, though Jason knew that couldn’t be right.

The man drove the unfamiliar van slowly along the unfamiliar roads. It didn’t matter. There were no other road users to complain. The only sign of life he’d seen was a foraging cat.

He glanced at the A-Z and peered at the nearest street sign through the waves of fog. He nodded, took a deep breath and turned left. He could sense he was near.

Jason pulled his mobile from his pocket on the first ring. He stared at the display and pulled a face. ‘What?’

‘It’s me. Your mother.’

‘I told you to text me if you need me, woman. I could have been wi’ my mates.’

‘Piss off yer little shit or you won’t have a phone.’

‘Er, likely? What do you want?’

‘We’ve ordered those pizzas we won.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yeah, yer coming back?’

Jason hesitated. It was cold plus he was hungry. ‘Save me some,’ he ordered, before ending the call without waiting for a response.

He walked on, pulling his jacket tighter. He thought again about the film his dad had shown him last week and felt the stirring of a stiffy to warm him. The slag in that film hadn’t seemed keen at first. She’d soon warmed up, mind, after the first two or three geezers had popped her.

Fuckin’ aaay! The best sex he’d ever had was the blow from that girl at the posh school. Fatboy and Grets had picked her up and led her off the footpath by the lane. It was wicked. She hadn’t wanted to either, not at first, but it was clear by the end she was into it. There were a few tears but you expect that.

‘It’s all part of the act,’ his dad said. ‘Bit of attention. Makes ’em feel loved.’ That’s why Jason’s teacher said what she did. Frustrated cow, she was. His dad supported him all the way. He knew about women. Got married at seventeen–though Jason was too young to remember the wedding. Rape Mrs Ottoman? A teacher! Er, likely? Sayin’ it was one thing. Doin’ it was another. All he’d done was feel her up a bit when he grabbed her, but she couldn’t prove nothin’.

Got him suspended from school just the same. A month. Some kind of record Mr Wrexham, the head teacher, said. Not that Jason cared. He loved all the fuss. School was for gays. As soon as he was old enough he’d get himself on the Social and win the lottery. That’d show those fucking teachers, telling him what to do. Jason Wallis looked after Number One. Nobody else mattered. It was the law of the jungle.

‘It’s a hard world out there,’ his dad had said. Not that he’d seen much of it. Bobby Wallis had lived in Derby all his life.

‘Have some fun; play around as long as you can. Don’t let some bitch trap you, son,’ he’d said.

‘Thanks a bundle,’ his mum had replied. ‘Stop filling that boy’s head with crap. It’ll have more in than yours at this rate.’

Funny. His dad had turned to him with that look. See what I mean, son. Keep clear. Sow a few wild oats. Not that I couldn’t walk away any time…

‘Jace!’ shouted Grets from the doorway of the chip shop. The only intact window in the Centre glowed warmly at Jason. Like a moth to flame he headed for the only bright light for miles since the pub had closed its doors and boarded its windows for the last time.

‘Yo!’ shouted Jason back at his friend who also wore the de rigueur baseball cap and Stone Island top, over low slung baggy jeans. These guys knew how to big themselves up.

‘How’s it hanging, man?’ said Jason, with a faint Brooklyn twang–Manchester was out–offering a clenched fist which Grets punched in greeting.

‘Safe, man.’ Grets held out his chips and Jason helped himself.

‘Thanks man. Starving, innit?’

‘Eh! It’s the superstar. How’s it hanging, bro?’ cried another of his crew, Stinger, emerging from the chip shop’s cocoon of light and steam. ‘You’re a Celebrity; get me out of ’ere.’

Jason would’ve tried to look modest if he’d ever had anything to be modest about. Instead he savoured the inner heat stoked by acclamation and basked in his notoriety. It was the only reason to venture out on a bitter December night. He was famous, on the Drayfin at least, and he had to milk the attention before the whole thing blew over.

There’d been something about his suspension in the local rag, but that was two weeks ago. It cracked on about what the world was coming to and why schools had stopped using the cane. Like any kid would stand for that. They got rights, you know.

There was also a snippet on East Midlands Today though Jason’s name hadn’t been mentioned. His dad was hoping they’d let it slip so he could sue the arse off ’em. His dad was dead proud of the family honour.

Then the clincher–his passport to a thousand back-slaps–a brief clip of him strutting out of school with his dad. Everyone local would know who he was.

‘How you coping, man? Bitches still lining up to daisy chain yo ass?’

‘Chill guys. It’s chilling a bit now,’ he said, making more of an effort to be self-effacing.

‘Dread. Wish I’d been there, man,’ grinned Stinger, shaking his head. ‘Tell us what Grottyman did again?’

Jason grinned, feigning a reluctance that lasted no more than a second. ‘She freaked man…’

‘Safe.’

‘…started crying. She’s fucked up, man. Like I’d risk my dick in that dirt track.’

‘Fucking aaay to that, man,’ laughed Grets and they tapped fists.

‘Got any smokes?’ asked Jason, fingering the tab end in his pocket.

‘Nope, we’re busted, man, but I know how we can get some. Banger promised me some gear and some folding in exchange for help with this gig.’

‘Safe,’ drawled Jason. ‘Lead the way, homey.’

The van drew to a halt outside the house and the man got out and stepped to the rear of the van. He wore black overalls and a black peaked cap.

A crack of light from the house fell on the van as a curtain was pulled aside and was gone. The man closed the back doors more carefully than seemed necessary then moved towards the house, well camouflaged against the blackness except for the white boxes in his hands. The door of the house opened.

‘Pizza Parlour?’

Chapter One

Detective Inspector Damen Brook woke with a shudder and gathered himself for a moment, eyes clamped shut, damp fists clenched, poised between realities, each one disagreeable. With a mind divided he could escape both, have a foot in neither, bliss, for that second, before he opened his eyes to take in the blankness of his conscious world.

He raised his head from his desk and looked around his spartan office. He scanned the floor and listened. Nothing. No scratching, no telltale scurrying.

He pulled himself upright and massaged his aching neck, then stood to do the same for his back. He checked his watch. Gone midnight. His shift had finished four hours ago. He could have been at home now. Home. He could never resist a smile at the word. What would he do there?

He picked up the phone and yawned, tapped a pencil on his notepad and began to doodle. He moved his head from side to side in a silent Eeny meeny miney mo then punched the keys.

‘Taj Mahal.’

‘I’d like to order a takeaway please.’

‘Hello Mr Brook. How are you tonight?’

‘Never better. I’d like Chicken Jalfrezi…’

‘…and pillau rice. Would you like any bread with that?’

‘Do I ever have bread?’

‘Never.’

‘Well then. How long?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘I’ll be right there.’ Brook replaced the receiver and left, closing the door of his office softly. He walked quickly and quietly towards the main entrance.

He was in luck. Sergeant Hendrickson had his back to the counter and Brook was able to slide across the door to Reception without being noticed. He was in the clear and about to stride away when Hendrickson’s voice held him.

‘Bastard! He wants stringing up.’

‘Too right,’ replied a voice. Brook recognised PC Robinson–Hendrickson’s straight man.

‘Well if we get whatever bastard’s done this, you’ll see me at the front of the queue when the knuckle sandwiches are being served up.’

‘Me too.’

Another voice, too indistinct to hear, said something by way of disagreement, judging by Hendrickson’s response.

‘No good at all. But it’ll make me feel a fuck of a lot better.’

Brook stood poised, grimacing, urging himself to make his escape. But he couldn’t let it go. He was a DI. He had rank. He took a deep breath and stepped back in front of the counter. ‘Sergeant.’ All heads turned. ‘I could easily be a member of the public standing here listening to that language,’ he said, with an effort to sound forceful. ‘Or worse the Chief Super…’ He stopped in mid-sentence when he saw WPC Wendy Jones was the third person in the conversation. Their eyes locked briefly before each looked away.

Brook pursed his lips and let the sentence hang, hoping it would appear a natural break. He shouldn’t have said anything. He knew it. He could have been away. His resolve was melting so he pretended to examine the desultory Christmas streamers darted around the ceiling before returning his eyes to Hendrickson.

‘Still here? Sir.’ Sergeant Harry Hendrickson wore the mocking smile he reserved for his dealings with Brook. The pause he took before acknowledging Brook’s seniority was a new technique for him though Brook knew it well enough. It was one he’d used himself when dealing with any Joe or Josephine Public who stimulated his contempt. That was in the days when he could still be stimulated.

‘And people wonder why you didn’t make detective,’ smiled Brook, with a bravado he didn’t feel. Hendrickson’s grin vanished and Brook heard sharp breaths being sucked in. He took one himself and decided he had to play on for all it was worth. ‘Well?’

‘Well what? Sir?’ replied Hendrickson.

‘Foul language and threats of violence. Explain yourself.’ Brook knew he sounded lame. Hendrickson sensed it. He found his mocking smile again and stared back at Brook with unconcealed hatred.

PC Robinson decided to step in. ‘There’s been a murder, sir. Some old dear. Strangled and beaten to death.’

‘I see…’ began Brook.

‘And some of us with mothers get very hot under the collar,’ spat Hendrickson, ‘when we see what some scumbags will do for a few quid. Sir!’

There was a crackling silence that prompted even WPC Jones to look up for Brook’s reaction. When it came, it surprised even Hendrickson. Brook smiled a sad little smile and nodded. ‘Who took the call?’

‘DI Greatorix was on duty, sir,’ said Robinson.

‘Right.’ Brook turned from Hendrickson’s triumphant grin and his eyes sought the floor. A second later he spun back to face Hendrickson, trying to get control of his voice. ‘Some of us who had mothers also got hot under the collar, sergeant, until we realised those feelings made us worse policemen who couldn’t do their job properly. I may not find your language offensive in itself but it’s a symptom of a mind that’s not under control.’ Brook paused before adding softly, ‘And control is what they pay us for.’

Hendrickson’s grin remained but it had lost some of its wattage. Now it was Robinson’s turn to look at the floor as Jones looked up at Brook. He, in turn, permitted himself a brief dart towards her eyes and fancied he detected a scintilla of approval in her expression. He couldn’t hold the look for long and turned away, throwing a ‘Good night’ over his shoulder as he left.

Brook walked away more calmly than he felt, listening for the telltale mutter and laugh that signalled some further insult. It arrived, as usual, as Brook rounded the corner and descended the stairs to the car park. He shook his head.

‘Why didn’t I just slip away? Why?’

‘Who does that twat think he is?’ spat Hendrickson. ‘Fucking London ponce.’

‘He’s from Yorkshire originally,’ offered Jones, not looking at either of her colleagues. This was a subject best avoided.

‘Yeah. So what the fuck was he doing in the Met then?’

Jones took a breath and looked straight back at Hendrickson to signal her final say on the matter. ‘He was some kind of rising star, they say. The best criminal profiler on the Force. Until he got sick.’

The portly figure of PC Aktar walked in. ‘Come on, my duck. Let’s get out there,’ he said to Jones. ‘We’ve got a city to look after.’

‘Coming.’

‘Sick my arse. I’ve seen his file. He had a fucking breakdown. So what’s he doing here then?’ asked Hendrickson. ‘I’ll tell you what he’s doing here, my girl…’

‘I’m not your girl…’

‘…he couldn’t hack it in the Met, see. A college boy who thought he could do a better job than us ordinary coppers but he couldn’t handle it, could he? So what happens?’ He glanced at Robinson as though he wouldn’t continue unless people insisted then carried on a split-second later. ‘We have to take him off their hands, don’t we? Why? Because Derbyshire’s a second class county and we can make do with middle-aged burn-outs who are treading water until they retire. That’s why. We’re shit and he’s better than us so we should all bow down and kiss his arse.’

‘Sounds like fun, sarge,’ laughed Robinson.

Hendrickson smiled back at him. ‘Ai. It’s true though, innit? And there’s not a copper in this nick who doesn’t agree with me.’

‘He does his job,’ chipped in Jones, on her way out.

Hendrickson smirked. ‘I might have known you’d defend him.’

‘What does that mean?’ flashed back Jones, her colour rising, though she knew only too well.

This time Robinson joined in with a leer. ‘We all know he’s your boyfriend, Wendy.’

‘He is not my boyfriend,’ she replied through gritted teeth, ‘I danced with him once and he gave me a lift home. Nothing happened. How many times?’

‘Would that be a fireman’s lift?’ asked Hendrickson. He and Robinson cackled as Jones headed for the corridor.

‘Piss off the pair of you.’

‘Please try and control your language, constable,’ Hendrickson shouted after her. ‘Your boyfriend might hear you.’

As they headed for the car park, Aktar kept his eyes trained on Jones, waiting for the explanation. She ignored him for a few moments then, without looking at him, said, ‘Not a bloody word.’

Brook pushed through the heavy metal door at the foot of the stairs and stepped into the artificial half-light. It was cold and dark, the chill winter’s day having left a permanent freezing damp coating the ground. Brook shivered and pulled the collar of his overcoat up.

As was his custom, he stepped into the middle of the ramp to get to his car. He couldn’t go near other cars. He needed space between himself and any obstacles. There’d been a rat once. So now Brook trod a path equidistant from both lines of vehicles.

He reached his old sports car, all the while scanning the floor for movement. He opened the creaky door and launched himself onto the cracked leather seat to avoid being nipped on the ankle by a stray psychotic rodent. He felt like a child launching himself into bed to escape the talons of the Bogey Man skulking below. He didn’t care.

As he swung his battered Austin Healey Sprite out of the car park, Brook was appalled at its throaty din. The reverberations of the old car’s straining engine clattered against the dark structures gathered around Derby’s Police Headquarters and were flung back at Brook in a fit of pique by the empty office building across the road.

What a racket. He was aware of it now, once the bustle of the day had long departed. The roar he savoured with a connoisseur’s pleasure on a sunny Sunday drive in the Peaks made him wince in the echo chamber of the night. It was a cacophony that could have shattered the walls of Jericho, had the biblical city been no more than a 50 mile round trip from Derby.

Brook picked up his takeaway and was home in a few minutes, one of the advantages of living in a city as small as Derby. A quick trip round the inner ring road past the Eagle Centre, skirting the new shopping precinct, and Brook was back at his down-at-heel rented flat on the Uttoxeter Road.

It wasn’t much of a front but it was as good a place as any. And it was central. No Barrett home in a suburban development for Brook. No tasselled sofa and MFI flat packs. Brook was used to city living, where he could be quiet and anonymous: unless, of course, he was driving the Sprite home after midnight when everyone could mark his progress through the streets. Not that he cared about disturbing people. Like all insomniacs, he assumed everyone else slept like babies.

Brook slowed the Sprite to a crawl and carefully manoeuvred the delicate bodywork onto the pavement-cum-drive outside his ground floor flat. He killed the engine, heard the fan belt call a cranky halt to its day’s work and stepped out of the driver’s seat holding his Chicken Jalfrezi, listening to the pre-ignition running before the engine finally died. He closed the door gingerly, not bothering to lock it.

Instinctively he turned to the upstairs window of the flats next door in time to see the curtain fall. Brook nodded, satisfied. Old Mrs Saunders probably slept less than he did. He supposed she’d be having ‘a word’ with him tomorrow about ‘all that noise in the middle of the night’. Comforting really, having such a busybody keeping an eye on the place. Not that he bothered about security. He had nothing of value. But then again, he was a policeman and, as such, was as interested as Mrs Saunders in the ‘comings and goings’, if only out of a kind of default curiosity.

Brook hesitated before going in. He wanted a cigarette. He’d gone without for two days. He extracted a dog-eared pack from the boot of the car and flipped open the box. One left. That was good. And bad. If he were still in Battersea, he could have gone for more, any time of night. But he wasn’t. He was in Derby and it was closed.

Brook lit up and inhaled deeply, enjoying the sting and feeling an immediate and gratifying nausea. He stood by his car and looked out over the building site across the road and on, past the sweep of Derby’s low horizon. There wasn’t much to be seen. It was a dark, misty night and cold air was blowing down from the Peaks.

For the first time in the three years since his transfer, Brook was beginning to look at the skyline like an old friend. He hadn’t chosen Derby as a place to live and work. He’d picked up the first available transfer out of London. If it had been to Baghdad he would have taken it. Just to get out.

And Derby hadn’t let him down. It was a pleasingly unremarkable place to lose himself. An engineering town by tradition, which marked out the population as hard working and straightforward, it also boasted a large and well-integrated Asian population.

Frank Whittle, pioneer of the jet engine, was much honoured in a city where Rolls Royce was the main employer. Derby also had one of the largest railway engineering works in the world. It was a city built on transport, going nowhere. Obligatory retail parks ringed the city and much of the population and traffic had followed, making Brook’s neighbourhood, if not any more glamorous, then certainly a little quieter.

And despite the inevitable decline of such an industry-dependent city, crime was not excessive and murder was rare.

But what really marked out this East Midlands backwater was the Peak District, a few miles to the northwest. Brook had fallen in love with it and took every opportunity he could to drive into the hills and soak up the peace of the countryside. Ashbourne, Hartington, Buxton, Bakewell, Carsington Water. All were favoured haunts, where he could dump the car and walk for hours alone, clearing his mind of all the clutter.

And now, as a bonus, he was discovering a sense of belonging. That was good. It would prepare him for the biggest challenge of all; retrieving a sense of himself.

For the first time since joining the Met as a callow, yet confident twenty-three-year old, Brook began to believe that it might be possible to wash the garbage from mind and body. Now, here, he was only wading in the gutter. In London he’d been drowning in a sewer.

Chapter Two

Brook took a final urgent drag and tossed the cigarette. He walked up the communal access road and unlocked the back door into the kitchen of his flat. He never used the front door as it opened into his living room, a quaint reminder of a childhood spent in a back-to-back terrace, with which he wasn’t comfortable. Memories of strange, rubicund men collecting rent or insurance and breathing light ale fumes into his pram were still keenly felt forty-odd years on.

He looked briefly at the answer machine. For once it was flashing so he played the message. It was from Terri, his daughter, wishing ‘a happy birthday for tomorrow to my number one dad’, her nickname for him since acquiring a second father. She’d moved with her mother and ‘number two dad’ to Brighton after the divorce. Brook didn’t wipe the brief message but left the machine flashing to remind him to ring her.

It didn’t sit well with Brook that a father should need a reminder to talk to an only daughter and his unexpected good mood soured as a result. He looked at his watch. It was his birthday. He could see the single envelope on the mat by the front door. He left it there.

After picking at his curry and downing a celebratory glass of milk, he showered and went to bed. He remembered to leave a little food by the flap, in case Cat tired of its nocturnal foraging, and lay down to read in his box-sized bedroom, head grazing one wall, feet flat against the other for the warmth from the radiator on the other side.

For a change, sleep came quickly, though it rarely lasted beyond an hour. And too often it would be an hour of visions exploding across his brain. Some he could recognise, some he couldn’t. Then sometimes, on a case, he would see something–a face, a crime scene, a piece of evidence–and recall an echo of it in a dream he’d already had. It bothered Brook at first until he’d been able to write it off to the Job. The things he’d seen were enough to fever any brow.

Tonight even the concession of one fitful hour was withdrawn and he woke to the noise of the phone a few moments later. It was DS John Noble.

‘Sir, you’re awake.’

A sigh was Brook’s only answer. ‘What’s up, John?’

‘Murder, sir. A bad one.’

‘Bad as in poorly executed or bad as in not nice?’

‘The latter I think,’ replied Noble, making a conscious effort to impress with his vocabulary. Eighteen months hanging on to DI Brook’s coat tails had taught Noble three things. ‘Avoid swearing, John, in my presence at least. Try to speak proper English, if you know any. And most important, don’t ever call me guv.’

‘DI Greatorix should be dealing but he’s already on a call.’

‘So he is. Where are you?’

‘ASBO-land.’

Brook let out a heavy sigh of frustration. ‘John, if you’re on the Drayfin, just say so.’

‘I’m on the Drayfin Estate.’

‘What’s the address?’ Brook jotted it down. At this time of night it wouldn’t take him long to get to the rundown housing estate on the south side of the city, built in the sixties when Britain’s city planners had decided that people were keen to live cheek by jowl in identical, low-cost boxes. It was little surprise to Brook that residents in such areas attracted more than their fair share of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. ‘I’ll be ten minutes.’

Fifteen minutes later the noise from Brook’s Sprite ensured that those houses on the Drayfin Estate still in darkness were fully alerted to the commotion in their midst, and soon switches were being flicked and curtains twitched.

If he spent much more time driving around in the middle of the night, the National Grid would be inviting him to the staff parties. The idea brought a brief smile to Brook’s lips. A pity he couldn’t introduce such levity into his dealings with others, he thought.

Brook was mulling over the comedic potential of his future transactions with Sergeant Hendrickson when, without warning, he jumped onto the brakes. The car shuddered to an unconvincing halt. Seconds later a black and white cat hurtled across the path of the Sprite and skittered away into the mist, a pink tail hanging from its mouth.

Brook exhaled heavily and, fully awake now, pulled over to the huddle outside Number 233–a small red brick semi-detached–as an ambulance was pulling away. He killed the engine, aware of looks and smiles exchanged between the knot of uniformed constables attempting to keep warm on the verge outside the house.

He wondered if the earlier incident with Hendrickson had been thrown into the mix for general sport. Such disputes spread like wildfire amongst the smaller, close knit stations and D Division was no exception.

A young man stepped from the throng. Detective Sergeant Noble was a good looking, fit twenty-seven year old who took a keen interest in his own advancement. Apart from a regulation-stretching blond mop, parted in the middle, he was smartly presented, even at this late hour. The contrast with his own hurriedly assembled and shapeless clothing wasn’t lost on Brook.

‘Evening, John–or rather morning.’ Noble nodded but Brook could tell he wasn’t his usual ebullient self because he fidgeted with his latex gloves, not meeting Brook’s eye. ‘Have you puked, John?’ he enquired with a hint of mockery.

‘No sir.’ A pause. ‘Not yet.’

‘Who was that in the ambulance?’

‘PC Aktar, sir. He was first on the scene. He fainted.’

‘Causing great hilarity amongst his colleagues no doubt.’ Despite himself Brook took a little comfort from this alternative explanation for the smirks that had greeted his arrival. ‘Is it that bad, John?’

‘Not so much to look at. I’ve seen worse. It’s just…’ he tailed off and looked at the floor.

‘Is the PS in there?’ asked Brook.

‘The surgeon’s been delayed.’

Brook raised an eyebrow then nodded. ‘Right, the other murder. And SOCO?’

‘Same.’

‘A fresh crime scene. Talk me through it.’

‘The family’s name is Wallis.’

Brook narrowed his eyes in recognition. ‘Bobby Wallis. Yes. Petty theft and an ABH. General scourge if memory serves. Which one is it?’

‘Well.’ Noble looked round as though he were afraid of making a fool of himself before turning back to Brook. ‘There are four bodies.’

‘Four?’ Brook fixed his DS with a stare. A long-buried echo sounded in the vaults of his heart, quickening its beat. He ignored Noble’s faint nod and ran his bottom lip underneath his upper teeth, a gesture of calculation that he hoped would mask his unease. ‘Go on.’

‘Bobby Wallis, his wife we’re assuming, plus his daughter–Kylie–and a baby. One survivor. The son. Jason Wallis. He was out cold and a strong smell of booze on him. Could be drugs as well. He’s gone off to hospital.’ Brook turned to Noble with his eyebrow cocked. ‘He’s under guard,’ answered Noble. ‘But there are no obvious bloodstains on his hands or clothes. And if he was in there…’ Noble looked away.

Brook nodded then looked around as though a cigarette vendor might recognise his need and come forward with a pack. It seemed he was about to make one of those periodic visits to hell that he’d moved to Derby to escape. Months of stultifying boredom, interspersed with sporadic journeys through the entrails of the human condition, Brook a mute witness to the black hole of depravity and despair that sucked all virtuous emotion from him. Black. The colour of man’s heart. The colour invisible in the night. The colour of old blood.

‘Witnesses?’

‘A neighbour across the street, Mrs Patel, says she saw a white van make a delivery. Around 8.15. There are pizza boxes from Pizza Parlour inside so it looks legit. She remembered a partial plate. I’ve put it out on the wire. No hits yet.’

‘Score one for the busybodies. Are you checking with Pizza Parlour?’

‘They’re closed but we’re running it down. Do you think it’s important?’

‘Yes. The van’s wrong. In my experience most pizza deliveries are done on a moped. If Pizza Parlour did have a van, they’d have their livery all over it.’

‘So why would our nosy neighbour not see that if she can remember a partial?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’ve been onto Traffic to be on the lookout on all the major roads.’

‘Good. Give it to the motorway boys as well though he may be long gone. And tell them we’ll need to look at all the CCTV for our time slot.’

Brook waited while Noble got on the radio to Dispatch, all the while scanning the uniformed officers for the chance to bum a cigarette. But no-one would light up until the senior officer had disappeared into the house.

Noble rejoined Brook. ‘Well, let’s take a peek, John.’ And with that Brook attached his mental blinkers and concentrated fully on Noble’s brisk summary as they walked towards the front door.

‘The next door neighbour found them, sir. A Mr Singh. He came round at about half past twelve to complain about noise–loud music–the front door was ajar so he walked into the front room and there they all were. Apart from the son–Jason–who was flat out in the kitchen.’

‘How were they killed?’

‘Throats cut, and, well, you can see for yourself. You won’t believe it.’ Noble’s recollection began to gnaw at his composure. His features adopted the pained squint of a man holding on to himself, so useful at funerals.

Brook stopped and almost to himself echoed his DS. ‘Throats cut.’ Then with a turn of the head he roused himself to keep step with Noble. ‘I’ll believe anything where people are concerned, John.’

‘The weird thing is the victims were just sat there, facing the telly, like they were watching Big Brother’

‘Big…?’

Noble looked at Brook with a momentary puzzled expression then looked away, realising his mistake. ‘Big Brother. It’s a TV programme, sir. Very popular, with ordinary people, I understand.’

Brook caught the undertone of Noble’s gibe with a flush of pleasure. He was learning a healthy disrespect for superiors. It would make him a better copper. ‘Please don’t explain the tastes of the nation to me, John, I’m tired. Sitting around the TV like a normal family, you say.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Since when has it been normal for a family to sit down together–as a family. Not since the golden age of Ovaltine and Dick Barton.’

‘Dick Barton?’

‘The radio. Or the wireless, to be strictly accurate.’

Noble nodded. ‘You mean kids have a TV in their own room…’

‘Or their own music or computer. The point being, never fail to question what initially hits you as normal. Families rarely socialise as a unit these days.’ A sliver of personal grief deformed Brook’s features for a second and was gone.

‘So having the family in one place is part of the MO. The killer’s staged it.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Well that would rule out Jason as the perp.’ Noble was conscious of his gaffe before he’d finished the word and prepared himself for Brook’s disapproval.

Instead Brook smiled thinly and looked him briefly in the eye. ‘Perp? Have you got indigestion, John?’

Noble smiled back.

They stopped at the Wallis front door. It was open. Noble handed Brook a pair of latex gloves which he pulled on.

‘Was the front door forced?’

‘No obvious sign of it.’

‘How many have tramped through already?’

‘Besides myself, PC Aktar and the neighbour, Mr Singh. Also the ambulance crew had to stretcher Jason out from the kitchen.’

‘What about Aktar? Where was he?’

‘He fainted out here.’

‘Did he? That’s interesting.’

‘Delayed shock maybe.’

Brook nodded. ‘Maybe.’ Avoiding the handle, Brook pushed the front door back with a latex finger. There was another door on the right off the hallway with red smears on the handle. The door was open just a crack and Brook noticed Noble make a conscious effort to suppress a shudder at the thought of what lay beyond. Ahead, in full view, lay the brightly lit kitchen, door wide open. The sink was visible, as was the lid of a cardboard pizza box lying open on the drainer.

‘How many have been in the living room?’ asked Brook, fleetingly aware of his unintended joke.

‘Mr Singh went in and found them. Aktar had to go in to check for signs of life. He went in the kitchen to check on Jason too. I only looked in at the door. I didn’t want to disturb anything.’

‘I don’t think we can compromise the hall any more than it is but watch out for any obvious bloody footprints, John. Step right up against the wall.’ With that Brook picked his way past the murder room, towards the kitchen, Noble following in his superior’s footsteps.

Once in the bright stark room, Brook knelt down to examine the linoleum. ‘What do you think that is?’ he said, indicating a small knot of dark red matter on the floor.

Noble felt his gorge rising. He managed to wrench out a, ‘Dunno,’ keeping his eyes averted from the offending unction.

Brook removed a pencil from his coat and prodded the floor then raised the red tip of the pencil to his nose. He sniffed, suppressing a smile, aware of the discomfort of his audience. This must be how the boy who ate earwigs at Brook’s primary school had felt. He stood and turned to look at the open pizza box on the drainer. Two closed boxes were neatly stacked under the top one.

‘Tomato sauce. From this pizza. Pizza Parlour’s Quattro Stagioni–Four Seasons to you and me,’ he added with a smile. ‘And very good they are too.’

‘You know your takeaways,’ said Noble.

‘I went to university, John. That’s how I was able to read it off the box. Note two pieces missing. One cut from the ham and mushroom segment, the other torn from the pepperami. Jason Wallis was found unconscious here, this is where he fell, but the rest of the family are in the living er…lounge?’

‘Right.’

‘Good. Remind me. Is PC Aktar heavy?’

Noble was taken aback but had become accustomed to not reacting to Brook’s odd questions.

‘Fairly heavy, yes.’

‘Right.’ Brook’s expression took on a faraway look. There was silence as both men realised they’d used up all their distractions. Suddenly, with a full swallow of air for Dutch courage, Brook sought the eye of his DS and nodded towards the living-room door. ‘Am I right in thinking the killer’s left us a message in there, John?’

Noble’s lips parted in surprise. ‘How did you…?’

As Noble’s voice began to falter, Brook, alive to his discomfort, tapped into one of his meagre seams of humanity–the mother lode had been exhausted long ago–and he threw Noble a straw to clutch.

‘I’d like a peek at the scene before SOCO start bagging and tagging. You’ve already seen it, John, so wait outside for the surgeon. I don’t want anybody else in the house until SOCO have done their stuff. No-one else comes through that front door.’ He paused before adding, ‘Okay?’ The two men, normally cloaked in layer upon layer of emotional cladding, looked at one another as men rarely do. Noble’s instinct was to turn away and adjust his protective layers but something made his eyes linger, the need to communicate his gratitude.

‘There’s a lot of blood on the floor. You might compromise footprints.’

‘I’m just going to look from the door not traipse round shaking hands and sitting on laps. If this has been staged I want to see it as the killer intended it to be seen. Atmosphere, John, remember.’

‘Right. Get a feel for the crime before anything else. Mind the handle. There are blood smears on it.’

As Brook prepared a finger to push open the bloodied door, he turned to Noble. ‘Get onto SOCO and the PS and give them a hurry-up. And get on to the hospital. They probably know but tell them they might need to pump Aktar’s stomach. Young Wallis too. Just to be on the safe side.’

It was the smell that hit Brook first. It wasn’t new to him, the smell of death, the sweet smell of ageing blood, the excrement expelled by a body no longer able to maintain its integrity, the sweat no longer evaporated by the heat of its host. These things weren’t new to Brook but the smell of a victim’s terror was. Almost. Only twice before. In London. Brixton 1991. And the first time, 1990. Harlesden. Harleshole of the Universe, as his old DI, Charlie Rowlands, had dubbed it.

And the same thoughts were intruding then, as now. Did his own fear give off the same scent on those rare occasions his nightmares overpowered his reason?

Brook wondered–no he knew–this was the smell discharged as people watched their own deaths unfold. Yes, he knew, as he knew the other smell, the hint of perfume–talcum powder. To keep sweaty palms dry inside latex gloves. He wished he had some now.

Brook stood to one side of the door and tried to take it all in. Bobby Wallis sat in his armchair, facing the TV. His body was contorted with effort, his fists clenched and spotted with blood. His head was tilted at an angle, as though puzzled by something. Brook peered at the half-closed eyes and turned to follow the victim’s sightless gaze, squinting above and beyond the TV to the word ‘SAVED’ daubed in blood on the alcove wall. Rivulets wept from all the letters except the D. This letter was fainter than the others though the writer hadn’t been short of ink. A message from the killer. SAVED. Who was saved and from what? Brook was no nearer knowing. The Reaper was back. He knew that much.

The memories came flooding in and Brook was tempted to move around the room as if physical activity could quell the images in his mind. But one of those images was of stepping in a pool of blood all those years ago in Brixton so he managed to anchor himself.

He noted the poster on the chimney breast and nodded in recognition. Van Gogh’s ‘Irises’. It didn’t belong in this house. Rich, vivid colours stood out against the grubby walls. The blue and golden flowers, the single white flower. But now the picture was different, scarred by the slash of red, like a giant approving tick on a piece of artwork. He was held for a moment. Harlesden in 1990, Brixton a year later. And now Derby. Why such a long gap? It made no sense.

Brook forced his mind back to the present and returned his eyes to Bobby Wallis. There was a new orifice under his chin and his dark blue sweater was saturated black with blood. Arterial sprays were everywhere. Walls, clothing, furniture, the small silver Christmas tree in the corner, the dark carpet probably, though it was difficult to tell.

There would be blood all round the bodies and footprints in the blood–the neighbour’s and PC Aktar’s–who would have had to tramp around the room checking for signs of life. They wouldn’t be hard to distinguish for today’s Scene of Crime Officers with their digital imaging technology. The killer’s footprints would eventually be isolated–for what it was worth. They’d still need a suspect before they could find a match.

Brook moved his head, trying to catch a look at the front of the man’s face. Then he saw it, reflected in the dim light, a faint glimmer scarring his cheeks. It was there as before. The man’s cheeks were encrusted with it–salt from tears. Something had made this man cry and sure as hell, it wasn’t Big Brother.

Brook remembered him now. Bobby Wallis had form and Brook was willing to bet he hadn’t cried since early childhood. He was a local hard man, a man’s man, a petty criminal, who graduated from years in the system and drifted in and out of menial work. Sometimes he got drunk and beat up those who were sure not to fight back. Not his family though. They were part of him. He’d protect his kids. He’d protect his wife. Love was another matter.

Brook remembered his own dead father, a miner in Barnsley. Although as different from Bobby Wallis as chalk from cheese, Brook recognised the symptoms. A life built on small successes, hungrily sought and endlessly trumpeted to drown the background hum of failure.

With his father it had been his work as a union official and coaching the church boys’ football club. With Wallis it would have been a good result at the bookies or the chance smile of a barmaid ‘asking for it’.

Brook turned his gaze to the ample figure beside Bobby. Mrs Wallis was on the sofa comically dressed in a towelling tracksuit that stretched itself, with more than a hint of complaint, around her abundant flesh. At least in death she’d discovered irony, thought Brook, trying to suppress a grim smile.

A pack of cigarettes and gold lighter sat neatly beside her. They would surely have been knocked over in the death struggle so they had to have been placed there post mortem. If there was a reason apart from the killer’s sense of order, Brook didn’t know it. His eye lingered on the pack. He was sorely tempted to take one and light up.

Mrs Wallis had also cried. Her face was contorted with pain and effort, though Brook doubted whether she’d have been able to plead for her life. Like her husband, she wore the large, sopping bib of a bloodstain beneath telltale sinew, protruding like a bag of giblets from her throat. Another life to make no mark. Gone forever. Brook nodded. The same format. And the gore wasn’t too bad. He could cope. Except. There was always ‘except’. That was the same as Harlesden and Brixton too.

The girl lay face down on the fake animal skin rug. Brook was glad he couldn’t see her face–an oversight on the part of the killer perhaps.

Her feet were bare up to her ankles where her pyjamas took over. The bottoms were relatively free of blood and were dotted with cartoon characters. Her top lay in tatters around her torso. It had been slashed open, exposing her back and shoulders. Something had been carved onto the smooth alabaster skin below her shoulder blades and Brook strained his neck to make it out. SAVED again. The lettering was cut in straight lines including the S. The blade had been thin and very sharp, as Brook could see no evidence of effort or hacking around the deep cuts; another cutthroat razor perhaps, or even a scalpel.

The area around the girl’s torn neck shone dark with blood though not as much as might be expected for such a major wound. Nor was there much blood coming from the cuts on her back.

He decided these wounds were administered post mortem to prevent excessive bleeding. That fit the pattern. The killer wouldn’t want his message obscured. Dr Habib would have to confirm it but Brook was sure enough and took some measure of comfort from the fact.

Now he scanned the floor. He could see no obvious sign of the weapon. The Reaper had taken it with him this time. The Reaper. Brook was annoyed with himself. How quickly he’d parcelled up the crime and assigned it to his old quarry. He had to keep an open mind.

He began to scan the room itself. For a family home there was very little mess. Some Christmas cards on a string had been taken down to make way for the Van Gogh poster but even then they’d been neatly stacked behind the little Christmas tree in the corner. If you didn’t count the bloodstains, there was order. The killer had arranged everything, tidied everything so only the important things remained to catch the eye. Before or after death, Brook couldn’t tell. A bit of both, probably.

A few crumbs of food on the carpet were the only other signs of disorder. Probably caused by the victims as they knocked over their meal in the struggle to understand what was happening to them. The pizza boxes were now in the kitchen, out of the way. They’d done their job and were now just clutter as far as the killer was concerned. Everything was deliberate, put in place for Brook to see.

He shook himself to gaze again at the girl, trying not to imagine her ordeal. A few hours before, she would have been pink with life, the rug a deathly white. Now the roles were reversed. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. What had she done to deserve this? She hadn’t chosen her parents. Brook could write off their useless existence with little guilt. But the girl should have had her whole life in front of her.

Next Brook glanced at the carry cot beside the TV, glad he couldn’t see inside. It must have been the thought of the little mite that had eaten away at Noble’s sangfroid. This was a new outrage for The Reaper: murdering a baby. He remembered what Charlie Rowlands used to say in London, ‘The smaller the victim, the bigger the crime’.

Was that what started the tears for Bobby and Mrs Wallis? Or was it their young daughter’s throat being torn open in front of them? He wished he could be sure it was one of the two but he knew not to take it for granted. Impending death could induce terrifying selfishness.

And the son, Jason, a petty thief and general chip off the old block, Brook recalled. He was alive and the girl and the baby were dead. Why? That didn’t tally with the past. In Harlesden and Brixton no-one was spared.

For a split-second Brook was consumed by the hope that this was different, just a one-off, mindless slaughter, not the work of The Reaper but the drug-addled frenzy of a teenage boy or a disgruntled neighbour pushed over the edge. He looked back at the Van Gogh poster and the bloody daub on the wall and the thought died in its infancy.

Brook wanted to step outside. His need for a cigarette was becoming almost clinical. He swept his eye round the room one last time. On the shelf of the fireplace above the gas fire stood a bottle of red wine with two half full glasses either side. ‘Nice symmetry,’ nodded Brook. He couldn’t make out the label from where he was but suspected the killer had brought it. It looked too expensive for the weekly Wallis shop at Lidl.

To the left of one of the wine glasses what looked like a lipstick had been stood on its end. Brook glanced at Mrs Wallis to see if she was wearing any. It was difficult to tell. It had probably fallen out of her pocket and had been tidied up by the killer.

Brook turned and then looked back. Whatever impression the killer wanted to convey, the chances were he would want it seen as someone came through the door. Many serial killers enjoyed creating a tableaux. In this case, family life as it should be: gathered together to discuss the events of the day, then wiped out by a single act.

As Brook turned again to plot a path back to the cold night air a noise from behind halted him and his head snapped back towards the murder scene. He froze, not daring to move, listening for further noises. He stared at Bobby Wallis for a long time, watching for any sign of movement, examining the wound on his neck again to be sure he was dead.

He turned to leave but the noise returned. This time it was unmistakeable. A rustling of material. Someone or something was moving in the room. Brook stood like a statue for what seemed an age, his breathing shallow, his ear cocked, only his eyes allowed to move. The next sound was one Brook had not heard for many years. Not since Terri had been a baby. It was an infant gurgling, preparing itself to wake and scream for a feeding with that disproportionate power that robbed so many new parents of their sleep.

Brook stepped round the room as quickly and as delicately as he could manage before peering into the carry cot next to the TV. A baby wriggled, its eyes closed, trying to kick off its blanket. Tiny eyes flickered but instead of joy Brook’s mouth fell open in horror. On the child’s forehead–in small lettering–the word ‘SAVED’ again. Brook narrowed his eyes and pulled the restrictive blanket away from the baby and felt around its torso for any further signs of injury. The baby wriggled even harder and began to kick out and cry. Brook plucked the infant from its swaddling, hardly daring to look at the disfigurement inflicted although there was something odd about it.

He walked towards the door holding the child but stopped suddenly. Then he bent down to sniff the baby. A second later Brook had produced a handkerchief, dabbed it into his mouth then wiped away a corner of the letter D from the baby’s forehead. ‘Lipstick.’ Brook sighed with relief and hurried out of the room.

‘Sergeant!’ he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘Get over here!’

At this terrifying noise, the baby opened its mouth and began to scream as loudly as its tiny lungs would allow. Brook was unable to keep from laughing out loud and long at the baby’s distress. In a bad mood, he’d once said there was, ‘No finer sight than a child in tears,’ and finally his words had found a more worthy setting.

He’d forgotten how to hold an infant and he marched the baby out of the front door at arm’s length, as though he’d set the chip pan on fire. Noble flew to him and took the bundle, amazed.

‘I thought…’

‘Get the little sod off to hospital. If you can, get a shot of the forehead before it gets cleaned off. And when you’ve done that get this place completely sealed off. See to it yourself, John, and let’s get it right this time.’

Two hours later Brook stood at the gate of the Wallis house, pulling hard on a ‘borrowed’ Silk Cut and stamping his feet to keep warm. It wasn’t yet five o’clock but despite that and the biting cold a small huddle of interested bystanders stood shivering in the blackness on the other side of the potholed street, their faces glowing in the burnished light of flashing squad cars and ambulances. A Scientific Support van was parked next to Brook’s Sprite, its back doors open. Noble pulled up and got out of a squad car and approached Brook looking sheepish.

‘How’s the baby, John?’

‘It seems fine. No injuries.’

‘Did you get a shot of the writing…?’

Noble waved a disposable camera at Brook and nodded.

‘…and was it lipstick?’

‘It looks like it. The hospital’s sending us a sample.’ Brook nodded. ‘Sir, I’m sorry about…’

‘It’s not your fault, John. I’m sorry I snapped.’

‘I didn’t check…’

‘You had a crime scene to preserve. You had every right to accept what Aktar told you. It’s his mess.’

‘Even so.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m just pleased we found out before the PS arrived. That would have been embarrassing.’

‘How could Aktar have made such a mistake?’

‘I suspect he was already feeling unwell.’

At that moment, a scene of crime officer in bright protective clothing carrying one end of a carpet emerged from the house. The other end of the carpet followed supported by another officer. They placed it carefully in the back of the van.

‘Do you want a look round before the bodies go, Inspector?’ he said.

‘Please.’

Brook leapt up to the front steps with Noble in reluctant pursuit.

Inside more officers in bright clothing were photographing the victims before bagging the hands, feet and heads to preserve any trace evidence adhering to them.

Brook stepped across the now bare floor to the girl still lying face down on the rug. He examined the cuts on her back but saw nothing new. Then he looked hard at her ankles and wrists and finally, the back of her head.

‘No marks,’ he said across to Noble who was doing the same examination of Mr and Mrs Wallis.

‘Same here. No obvious contusions or restraint marks as far as I can tell.’

Brook nodded. ‘They were drugged.’ He went to look more closely at the wine bottle on the fireplace.

‘You think the wine’s drugged?’ asked Noble.

‘I don’t think so. The girl wouldn’t have had wine. The killer brought it for some reason. Maybe for himself–to celebrate a job well done.’

Noble managed a chuckle. ‘Yeah, good health. Perhaps he’s left saliva in the glasses.’

‘We’ll see.’ Brook walked back to the door and looked again at the scene as a whole. The TV was pushed back into the alcove, the CD player against the far wall. Brook had checked. It was an old one. Not like Brixton. No entry there. It was the pizzas. They were the way in. He approached the CD player.

‘This has been dusted, I take it,’ asked Brook of no-one in particular.

‘Yeah,’ answered a SOCO kneeling down by the fireplace.

Brook turned the power on with his knuckle and ejected the tray. A CD of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony lay there. There was no case nearby.

Brook smiled. Mahler: something to listen to, something beautiful. He pressed play. The tray returned to the body of the machine. Brook waited for the music. Nothing. The display told Brook that fifteen seconds of the first track had elapsed. He located the volume control and moved it round to the right. At once the low strains of Mahler’s melancholic lament could be heard. He held the circular button and turned it further round. Shuddering horns filled the room.

Brook turned it to full blast and everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to the source of the annoyance. The sound was distorted. Brook returned the volume control to its original position with an apologetic smile then turned off the power.

As he looked round the room for the last time, Brook knew the killer was a man, the man. It couldn’t be a woman. Course it couldn’t. It wasn’t just statistical. Women give life–at least biologically–men take it. No need for offender profiling to tell him that.

Chapter Three

As the pale light of a December dawn broke over the city skyline, Brook’s weary eyelids began to close. Odd the way he always felt more tired when he was denied his eight hours of solid insomnia. He could lay awake reading and thinking–all night sometimes–and still feel viable in the morning, but if he wasn’t horizontal it drained him.

For the second time that morning the phone shattered his fragile peace. It was Chief Superintendent McMaster, before eight in the morning no less. She wasn’t usually sighted before noon, what with all the courses, seminars and consultations she had to attend. She had an endless timetable of heavy-duty liaison to get through, but here she was, in her office, at the end of the criminal rush hour, wanting to speak to him.

Brook hadn’t spoken to the Chief about a case in months, so little was she involved in criminal matters. The last time they’d spoken at all, McMaster had dialled the wrong extension. Brook knew that wasn’t the case this time. Local TV and radio had already been sniffing round and she had to have basic facts to release.

‘DI Brook?’ She had a mellifluous voice, a crucial selling point at her promotion interview.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Can I see you right away, in my office, please? I need to pick your brains about last night.’

‘Right away, ma’am.’

‘Thank God, you were on call last night, Damen. We can hit the ground running. I’ll have a coffee waiting.’

Brook replaced the receiver with a smile. Even at half past seven in the morning she felt able to play him like a violin.

Brook picked up his preliminary report and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was a mess. He knew he had a good excuse but he also knew that the Chief Super would be immaculate, even at this early hour.

Brook stood outside her office, hand raised to knock, when Noble turned the corner carrying a plastic beaker of coffee. He had a large envelope under his arm. He hadn’t slept either but at least he wasn’t wearing a tatty polo neck.

‘Are those the SOCO photos, John?’

He nodded. ‘I put a rush on them.’

‘Good. I’m going to brief the boss. You’d better join me.’

Noble examined his watch and raised an eyebrow. ‘She’s actually here?’

Brook hesitated. He was sensitive to snipes at the Chief Super. They were alike–outsiders against the rest–and a dig at her was a dig at him. He decided to say nothing, then knocked and entered.

‘Morning ma’am. DS Noble’s with me to fill in some of the blanks.’

If McMaster noticed Brook’s dishevelled condition, she didn’t let it show. ‘Fine,’ she beamed, emptying a cafetiere into two solid French coffee cups, complete with matching saucers. The woman’s touch–a little strategy to make her male colleagues feel subliminally masterful and at ease. Brook knew the routine. At some point she’d feel compelled to water her spider plants. ‘I hope he’s brought his own. Black with sugar isn’t it, Inspector?’

‘Yes ma’am. The bitter and sweet,’ he said after a brief pause. She glanced slyly back at him and Brook felt he saw the ghost of a smile crease her 45 year-old features.

Evelyn McMaster was short, with wavy blond cropped hair and a tidy figure. And yes, her general appearance, make-up and all, was immaculate. She was what the politer elements in the division referred to as a handsome woman. To the less polite elements, this meant that while her looks wouldn’t make you vomit neither were they likely to induce an erection.

Brook liked McMaster. He enjoyed seeing somebody beside himself stir the simmering pot of resentment bubbling away in the division. But it was more than that. He admired the strength of the woman: not just the character she needed to drive her way to the top despite the Force’s inbuilt sexism–but also the will and the energy required to keep her mask in place, to play her role to the hilt, all day, every day.

Everybody wanting to speak to you, soliciting your thoughts, goading you into newsworthy errors, forcing you to discipline every word and tunnel your vision to their agenda. Dealing with people who don’t respect you, who don’t want you there yet still retaining the self-possession to treat all comers in an even-handed way, was something Brook had to applaud. The effort would have consumed him. Brook’s mind needed vast lumps of downtime, even during the day, to uncouple his thoughts from their moorings and set them adrift from the images of his past that tried, too often, to clamber aboard.

McMaster sat down and invited Brook and Noble to do the same.

‘Well, gentlemen. A busy night. DI Greatorix picked up a murder as well.’ Brook managed to exhume an interested expression. ‘Annie Sewell. Poor old dear killed in her so-called sheltered house, though I doubt it’ll knock yours off the front page.’ She nodded sadly at the horror of it all. ‘Is that for me?’ she said, indicating the sheaf of papers in Brook’s hand. He handed it to her and watched her read it quickly and without emotion.

‘Three deaths?’ she enquired. ‘I heard four.’

‘No ma’am,’ Brook returned evenly. ‘You know how these rumours start–the first impression of the neighbour.’

Brook and Noble exchanged a glance when McMaster resumed reading.

‘Windpipes severed. Time of death between eleven and midnight. I assume that’s preliminary,’ she asked with a glance at Brook. He nodded. ‘Very unpleasant,’ McMaster concluded. ‘At least from these bare facts,’ she added with perhaps a suggestion of criticism. ‘Thoughts gentlemen?’

‘The only suspect we have is the Wallis boy, Ma’am. Jason.’ Brook offered. ‘He was drunk and may have been on drugs. It’s just possible he may have gone berserk. He’s still unconscious in hospital. We’ll be seeing him later to question him and hopefully get the results of any tests.’ Brook sipped at his coffee.

‘But you don’t see him as our killer?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Why so sure?’

‘The scene isn’t disorganised enough for that kind of chemically fuelled slaughter,’ said Brook.

‘And his clothes and hands show no visible blood stains, ma’am,’ added Noble.

‘I see.’

‘Also there’s no weapon. If Jason’s our killer we have to accept that in his drunken and/or drugged stupor he killed his family, turned on loud music to attract attention, stumbled out to hide the murder weapon and stumbled back in to munch on a leftover pizza before keeling over.’

‘Stranger things have happened on drugs.’

‘True but there are a couple of other factors that diminish the likelihood.’

‘And what are those, Damen?’ she asked.

Whenever she called him Damen, Brook knew she was trying to convey approval. He accepted it without ego. It was a compliment to his powers because it was her way of coaxing the most, and best, information from him. As she saw it, the more she knew, the better her ability to outflank any criticism from below or, more importantly, above. An in-control bad leader looks like a good leader under almost all scrutiny. Not that she was a bad leader.

‘Well, Forensics will have to confirm this, but it’s clear from the blood patterns that the family were killed where they were found. Even if we assume that Jason was in full control of his faculties, we then have to accept that he walked into the room and cut his sister’s throat where she lay, without father or mother moving a muscle to intervene. Then he did the same to his parents, in which order I don’t yet know, though I suspect it was ladies first. Again, little sign of physical struggle.’

DS Noble’s face betrayed a caveat to Brook’s theory but he had trained himself, after several painful lessons, not to lay himself open to ridicule. That applied doubly in the presence of the Chief Super.

‘Couldn’t he have overpowered his father first, taken him by surprise?’ asked McMaster.

‘The mother as well? No, we checked. Again, subject to forensic confirmation, there are no marks on any of the victim’s wrists or ankles. They weren’t tied up. There were no injuries or contusions on the parents’ skulls so he didn’t creep up and knock them unconscious.’

‘What’s the second reason?’ asked McMaster.

‘Sergeant?’ asked Brook, fixing Noble with a stare. He couldn’t let him have it too easy.

Noble hesitated but knew not to wait too long. A swift error would pass notice much easier than a long anticipated one. ‘The baby?’ he offered, trying to keep the question mark out of his response.

‘Right. The baby completes the family. Its…’ Brook looked at Noble for a prompt.

‘It’s a girl, sir. Bianca.’

‘…her presence on the scene is part of the killer’s strategy. The baby was brought from her bed as part of a logical choice, as was the decision not to kill her. If Jason had done this under the influence of narcotics or alcohol, why bring the baby down? Surely, if it’s a drunken mindless act, he would have killed his baby sister upstairs, where he found her. It doesn’t make sense. Our killer sees it differently. He wants the baby in the family portrait but chooses not to kill it. Her.’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps he’s showing us he has the intelligence and humanity to feel mercy. God knows. But he needs the baby there to fulfil his need.’

‘What need?’

‘Maybe he’s a Barnardo’s boy, an orphan in search of a family. Whatever that is,’ Brook added, with an unexpected trace of bile that surprised even himself. ‘It’s difficult to say.’

After a suitable consoling pause, McMaster ploughed on. ‘What about writing SAVED on the wall and cutting it on the girl? What’s that all about?’

Brook looked at the wall behind her head as though he were casting around for a solution to a question he hadn’t yet considered. It didn’t do to over-egg the pudding. ‘Some kind of religious claptrap I imagine. Maybe crowing that he’s saved her soul from a life of sin and packed her off to Heaven.’

‘A God squadder,’ she nodded. ‘Why he?’ she queried.

‘The usual reasons,’ replied Brook.

‘Statistically sound, I know,’ she countered, with a more confident edge in her voice. She was on her own turf. ‘But why so sure?’ She stood and picked up a small water jug on her desk.

‘Do you want the classic profile of the serial killer?’

She turned sharply from her spider plant, spilling a little water on the floor. ‘Is that what this is?’

‘I think so. This has been planned for a long time. All that was missing for the killer were the right victims.’

‘And if it is a God squadder we’re looking for a middle-aged male,’ nodded McMaster, ‘which rules out the Wallis boy.’

‘Why middle aged?’ asked Noble before he could stop himself.

‘Jason’s too young to be appalled by the moral cesspool of society,’ said Brook. ‘That’s more a function of my age group.’

‘Are you saying that whoever did this has picked the Wallis family out at random?’ Noble asked.

‘No. Our killer has sound reasons for wanting this family dead.’

‘Well,’ said Noble, deciding to risk humiliation in the hunt for brownie points, ‘if they weren’t selected at random, surely the killer must know the family, or some members of it.’

‘I don’t think so, John. He just thinks he does.’

‘This is idle speculation,’ rejoined McMaster, deciding she’d learned all she was going to learn. ‘I’m cancelling my course in Birmingham. I’ll be briefing the press this afternoon so I’ll need your CID/57’s as soon as possible. I think DS Noble has a point. I don’t like the idea of serial killings, Damen. This isn’t London.’

‘That’s what the Yorkshire Ripper team said. One of the reasons he was free to kill for years.’

‘Point taken,’ said McMaster, adopting her non-threatening, conciliatory body posture, ‘but I want all other avenues explored first. Use whatever resources you need. Bobby Wallis was a nasty piece of work–with previous. I want to know about enemies, neighbourhood feuds and so on. And check out this Mr Singh who found the bodies. Maybe he took his complaint about the noise too far. Maybe there was an argument about something. Who knows what people will do under stress? Have you run the MO through CATCHEM?’

CATCHEM, Central Analytical Team Collating Homicide Expertise and Management, a computer database introduced in 1992 which could build an identikit profile of any serial offender from the distinctive characteristics of the offence, one of the fruits of the review carried out after the Yorkshire Ripper debacle and an overdue response to the American violent crime profiling system, VICAP.

‘We will but it won’t yield anything new,’ said Brook.

‘Why so sure?’ she flashed back at him.

‘Because this isn’t a murder, it’s an execution. This family’s been punished.’ There was silence. Neither McMaster nor Noble understood his meaning and they waited for Brook to elaborate. He failed to take up their invitation. ‘Anything else, ma’am?’ he offered finally.

‘Yes. Be certain Jason Wallis is in the clear before you let him back into the community, assuming he has any living relatives. Better get someone onto Social Services come to think of it. Find out where he and the baby might go.’ Brook and Noble rose to leave. ‘And Inspector. You report directly to me on this. And only me.’

Brook nodded and ushered Noble out of the office. She knew. He could sense it in her demeanour. This was no domestic argument or spur of the moment killing. It was part of a series–the first as far as she was concerned. It made her uneasy, that was clear. And not just for the community at large. This could be a Godsend for the pack of hounds that dogged her every move.

Chapter Four

Back in his office Brook drained his coffee and massaged his eyes. He reached for the envelope left by Noble and flicked it open.

The top picture showed the pathetic, spindly corpse of Kylie Wallis, marble white, sightless eyes. It caught Brook momentarily unprepared and he recoiled as though from a red hot poker. Careless. Being tired he’d forgotten to erect the shield around his emotions, as much a part of his daily routine as pulling on his trousers.

Once his feelings were correctly attired, he looked again and began to sift through the evidence, these peep shows of insanity, with the detachment of the automaton.

He paused over a photograph of the wine bottle before putting it on one side. Then he extracted and retained a couple of others. Noble entered with two cups of vending machine coffee.

‘We can land a spacecraft on Mars, John, but we still can’t create a machine to deliver a decent cup of coffee,’ Brook grimaced, as he sipped the frothy liquid. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

‘I thought you’d quit.’

‘Cut down, John. There’s a difference.’

‘Just quit buying,’ Noble said with a playful grin. Brook decided to deliver the chuckle Noble required as payment and accepted the proffered cigarette, inhaling deeply even before Noble had extinguished his lighter.

‘Sir.’ Noble was suddenly uneasy. ‘I wanted to thank you…’–Brook glanced at Noble with a look of mild bemusement though he knew what was coming–‘…for not mentioning my cock-up last night.’ Brook smiled.

‘Forget it, John. It wasn’t your fault. You had good reason not to enter the crime scene, especially as another officer had told you there were no signs of life. I’m not sure I can be quite so forgiving with Aktar though. Tampering with the evidence is a very serious matter.’

‘What do you mean?’

Brook searched for the relevant photograph. ‘Remember the pizza, the Four Seasons? Look at it. What do you notice?’

‘Notice?’

‘Be boring and factual.’

Noble hesitated briefly, unsure of what was required of him. After a pause to verify Brook’s serious intent, Noble took a stab at it. ‘It’s a half-eaten…’

Brook raised an admonishing eyebrow to Noble who knew the signal well and corrected himself.

‘…partially-eaten pizza.’

‘Better.’

‘It’s had two pieces taken from it.’

‘Go on.’

Noble looked at a loss.

‘Describe the pieces, John.’

‘Well, one’s a triangle cut out of the ham and mushroom bit…’

‘Triangle,’ said Brook with heavy emphasis. Noble looked back at him, perplexed, trying not to laugh.

‘The other piece,’ Noble smiled suddenly, ‘is torn from the salami segment. This pizza could have been eaten by two different people. Presumably Jason Wallis tore a piece off…and someone else took the trouble to cut a slice. The killer?’ he said hopefully, before shaking his head the instant Brook shook his own. ‘Aktar. The…idiot,’ barked Noble with real venom, remembering to omit the adjective.

Brook decided not to string it out any longer. ‘And what happened to both of them?’

Noble nodded now. ‘They both collapsed. The pizzas were doctored in some way. That’s how the killer was able to cut the family’s throats without a struggle.’

‘Right.’

‘That’s why you asked me about Aktar’s weight. Jason’s just a skinny kid. He fell where he was eating, where there’s tomato sauce on the floor, but the drug would take longer to be ingested by a heavier man so he would have finished his piece and still have been able to move around for a while. People would think he’d fainted after seeing the bodies.’

‘That’s very impressive, John.’

‘What? Telling you what you already knew?’

‘I only knew because I was looking for it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well…I’ve seen this MO before.’

‘When?’

‘A long time ago.’

‘With throats cut and the blood on the walls?’

‘Similar.’

‘That’s how you knew there was a message for us.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the doctored pizza?’

‘No. That’s different. Things change each time–just enough to muddy the profile.’

‘But he immobilised and killed families?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was the killer?’

‘We never found him.’

‘What…?’

‘I don’t want to say any more at the moment because the connection’s not certain. And I need you to keep an open mind about things so you can pull me up if I start barking up the wrong tree.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Noble was annoyed but did a good job of not showing it. ‘So what now?’

‘Now? Until we find the van we concentrate on the house.’

‘SOCO are still going over it.’

‘They won’t find anything.’

‘They might.’

‘Not a chance. The planning that went into this. He’s not going to take his gloves off and touch things, or get peckish and leave a perfect set of dentures in a lump of cheese.’

‘I guess not. He might have had a sip of wine though.’

‘Don’t bank on it. What about the weapon?’

‘Nothing so far.’

‘How many uniforms have you got looking?’

‘Dozens.’

‘Get more, at least for a day or two, and widen the search. Fingertip. Get onto the council and suspend refuse collection in the area. Search all dustbins and grates on the estate. We’re not going to find it but we need to have looked.’ Brook sighed and then yawned. This was the part of the job he hated most. Clearing away the debris, the procedural minutiae that delayed everything, prevented him bringing his skills to bear on the nub of the case. ‘There’s so much garbage to organise.’

‘When do we speak to Jason?’

‘This morning. But you’re going to Pizza Parlour first. We need to know how the killer set this up in case Jason doesn’t know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well if Forensics confirms that the pizzas were drugged, it means our killer must have delivered them…’

‘So he’s used them to make sure the family are unconscious which suggests he came back later, after they’d been eaten.’

‘Right.’ Brook paused, waiting to see if his point had hit home.

‘But if he’s delivered them, how can Pizza Parlour have taken the order?’

‘Good question, John.’

Noble thought for a moment then his jaw dropped open. ‘Christ! The bastard rang the Wallis family. He’s taken the order pretending to be Pizza Parlour.’ Noble shook his head and squinted at the floor. ‘Hang on, you wouldn’t order food from a takeaway that called out of the blue. Not unless they were giving it away.’ Noble looked up at Brook’s expectant face and smiled. ‘Maybe they were. Of course–a free meal like a promotion or prize or something. Who’s gonna turn that down? Was that the MO in the other case?’

‘We thought so. Though we never had any survivors to confirm it.’

‘But not pizzas.’

‘No. A video recorder and a CD system.’

‘Like winning a competition,’ Noble nodded with a smile. ‘Neat.’

Brook checked his watch and helped himself to another cigarette, looking at Noble for an objection. He lit up and took another huge pull. Soon the news would be hitting the streets of Derby. Not that he expected The Reaper to be within earshot. He was long gone.

Having roused his complaining car for the fourth time that morning, Brook dropped in at his flat on the way to the hospital. He needed to shower and change before meeting Noble there.

After showering he lay on the bed for five minutes and closed his eyes to relieve the stinging. Before he left, he rang the station to requisition a car for the afternoon. He couldn’t keep traipsing around in the Sprite. The water pump wouldn’t stand for it.

He booked a taxi to take him to the DRI. As he waited for the cab, he stared at the still-flashing answering machine, but decided against ringing Terri back.

Too often, in the last ten years, he’d danced around his feelings for his daughter, curtailing difficult conversations with phoney interruptions. Sod’s Law dictated that the cab driver would honk his horn the moment he started talking to her. He didn’t want another, albeit genuine, interruption to reinforce her jaundiced view of his love for her. Now he needed to talk, needed to spend some time with her, even if all he could embrace was a disembodied voice.

Noble was late so Brook left him a message at hospital reception, telling him to wait. He didn’t want him seeing Jason Wallis on his own. Then he went to see PC Aktar. He was sitting up in bed reading The Sun. Fortunately, it wasn’t visiting hour so he was alone, though clearly his family had arrived with armfuls of provisions earlier that morning.

‘I hate to butt in on someone trying to improve himself Brook was amused by Aktar’s panic-stricken attempt to acknowledge his superior–lying horizontal in hospital-issue pyjamas–though he made sure he didn’t show it.

‘I’m sorry, guv. I wasn’t expectin’ yer, anybody…’

Brook noted Aktar’s broad northern accent. Not a trace of Asian inflection. He kept silent while Aktar flustered, determined to make him sweat. There was an empty plastic bag on a chair beside the bed. Brook picked it up and pulled out Aktar’s boots from the locker and slid them into the bag.

‘Give these to Noble when he comes in. Forensics needs all the shoes from the Wallis house.’

‘Guv? Is there…?’

Brook put a finger to his lips and held Aktar’s dark eyes in his own. ‘Don’t ever call me guv, Constable. If you’re still in the Force after today, you’ll call me sir or Inspector, is that clear?’

‘Guv?’

‘Is that clear?’

PC Aktar was suddenly very abashed and Brook began to feel sorry for him. ‘Yes sir.’

‘That’s better. Your career depends on the answers you give me in the next few minutes,’ said Brook, peeling one of the photographs he’d set aside earlier, from his jacket. ‘Look at this.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘What do you see?’

‘It’s the living room of Mr and Mrs…’

‘What do you see, Constable?’

‘The CD player in the Wallis house.’

‘What do you notice?’

‘N-Nothing, sir.’

‘Exactly. It’s been turned off. DS Noble tells me that a Mr Singh went round to the Wallis household to complain about the noise. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir. I think so.’

‘Explain it to me then, Constable.’

‘It was Mr Singh, sir. He went round. Said the front door was open. He went in and turned off the CD player. Said it was on very loud. I told him he shouldn’t have but he said he had no idea, at that time, what had happened. Until he turned the lights on, he thought they were all asleep.’

‘The lights were off?’

‘Yes sir. According to Mr Singh.’

‘Then how did he manage to turn off the CD player?’

‘The display, sir. He said it was very bright, sir. He could see to move round the room okay and well…’

Brook’s tone softened. ‘I see.’ He tossed the picture of the partially eaten pizza towards Aktar who examined it briefly before looking away. He wouldn’t lift his eyes from the bed cover. He looked, and clearly felt, a fool. ‘You’re very lucky, Constable. I think we may be able to forgive one mistake as your actions haven’t compromised the case–this time.’

‘It won’t happen again, sir.’

‘It better not. And I wouldn’t mention it to anyone unless you want the Force and yourself held up to ridicule.’

‘Don’t worry, sir.’

‘When are you out of here?’

‘This afternoon, sir.’

‘Report for duty to DS Noble, he’ll have some chores for you. Who’s your partner?’

‘WPC Jones, sir.’

‘Wendy Jones.’ Brook felt a tic of apprehension. ‘Good officer. Take her with you. This order is direct from the Chief Superintendent and you take your orders from DS Noble and myself. Understand?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’

Brook made to leave but turned back. ‘And Constable. The next time you feel peckish at a crime scene, send out for a bag of chips.’

Aktar’s foolish expression returned. ‘Yes sir. Thank you, sir.’

Brook drained his third plastic coffee of the day and shuddered. He tossed the thin beaker into the adjacent bin. ‘What have you got, John?’

Noble flicked a notebook. ‘Pizza Parlour didn’t send anyone round to the Wallis house with anything last night and you were right, they don’t deliver in vans. I spoke to the manager. He said they did have an identical order to the one at the crime scene. A Four Seasons, an American Hot and a Seafood. All family size…’

‘Let me guess. They were collected, not delivered and the customer paid cash.’

‘Right.’

‘What about CCTV?’

‘They don’t have it.’

Brook smiled. ‘Our boy’s determined not to make it easy for us. Description?’

‘Nothing useable. A man. Middle-aged maybe.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Nobody remembers who picked it up. They only look at the money–as you suspected.’

‘Yeah, it’d be nice to be wrong for a change. What else?’

‘DC Morton took a formal statement from Mr Singh next door. Singh said he went round to the Wallis house about half an hour after midnight. The front door was open but he didn’t suspect anything. The CD player was on loud so he turned it down and then off. He said he had no idea the Wallis family were dead because the lights were off. When he turned on the lights–bingo!’

‘And the volume?’

‘He said the music was distorted.’

‘So it must have been on full. Interesting. Okay. Have Forensics got his clothes and shoes?’

‘They have.’

‘Prints?’

‘Yep.’

‘Did we ask him about times?’

‘He said he didn’t go round straight away. He said he heard the music start earlier but it got really loud just past midnight–he looked at his watch. He stood it until half past before going round.’

‘So our killer turned the music up and left just after midnight.’

‘It looks that way.’

‘And Jason got home soon after and had his pizza.’

‘Wouldn’t he have heard the music?’

Brook nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s a strange one. Even out of his head you’d think he’d hear it and investigate.’

‘Maybe he thought it was the TV.’

‘Even so.’

‘And there’s the baby. Surely it would have woken up.’

‘Babies are funny, John. They can sleep through anything. Maybe it did wake up, maybe not. But unless she was screaming her head off who’s going to notice? With Aktar struggling to stay conscious that leaves Mr Singh, who’s in a situation for which he has no training.’

‘I suppose.’

‘What about the CD?’

‘Sent for dusting. It was’–Noble checked his notes–‘Symphony No. 9 by Mahler. I thought he was reggae.’

Brook smiled at Noble. ‘Bob Mahler and the Wailers. You know your music, John. And the case?’

‘No sign. Looks like the killer brought the CD and took the case with him. So we’ve very little chance of tracing the purchase.’

Brook nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. DC Cooper found a phone number for a Mrs Harrison at the Wallis house. Apparently she’s Mrs Wallis’ sister. A nurse. Divorced. Lives in Borrowash. She’d just heard the news and was obviously in a bit of a state. Says she hasn’t seen the family for a couple of weeks, though Mrs Wallis phoned her two days ago. Nothing in her manner to suggest she was worried about anything. I sent a WPC round for tea and sympathy. She says she’s willing to do the formal ID.’

‘Good.’

‘We got a fax from BT. Every call to the Wallis house up to two days before the murder came from numbers listed in Mrs Wallis’ address book, except one. That came from a public phone the day before.’

‘So he could check out the menu before ringing to take their order. Is it close to Pizza Parlour?’

‘Near enough. And it’s coin-operated not card.’

‘Really?’

‘Hard to believe they still exist, I know. Forensics is giving it a quick once-over but there’s no telling how many people have been in there since.’

‘What about enemies?’

‘We asked Mrs Harrison. She says not. Bobby had an occasional word with a neighbour or someone down the pub at chucking-out time. But nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing on this scale.’

‘And nothing in his jacket about dealing?’

‘Not even a sniff of drugs, no joke intended. He wasn’t the type.’

‘Check with the Drug Squad anyway. Just to tick it off.’

‘A message from the Chief. There’s a press conference at four, in time for the local evening news and she wants you there.’

‘Damn. I wish brass could jump through these hoops by themselves.’

‘I reckon she needs a man there to give the public a bit of confidence.’

Brook turned to Noble, this time without amusement. He had to stop letting these remarks slide, if only for the sake of balance. ‘That’s right. Evelyn McMaster knows exactly what kind of small-minded bigots are out there, John. And to her credit she’s big enough to swallow her pride and pander to their intolerance if it will bolster confidence in what we’re doing. That makes our job that bit easier, don’t you think?’

Noble was suitably abashed.

‘Here,’ continued Brook, pointing to the photograph of the Wallis fireplace. ‘You’ll have to follow this up now. I’ll speak to Jason on my own. What do you see, John?’

‘A bottle of wine.’

‘Not quite. It’s a bottle of expensive wine. A Nuits-Saint-Georges to be precise. From Burgundy.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Noble, with a hint of suspicion. It was still an offence in most station houses to drink anything other than lager and cheap whisky.

‘Because I spent my honeymoon on a barge in Burgundy and that was a wine we could never afford. We weren’t well off, but I imagine it would still cost you at least fifteen to twenty pounds in a supermarket. Assuming you can get it round here. I doubt the Wallis family are oenophiles,’ he flicked a glance at Noble but his constable was maintaining the face of a stoic, ‘so get someone to find out where it was bought and by whom, if you can. Who else is on the team apart from Cooper?’

‘DC Morton, DC Bull, DC Gadd.’

‘Jane Gadd? Good officer,’ said Brook evenly, ignoring Noble’s quick glance. Jane Gadd was Noble’s girlfriend. Brook wasn’t supposed to know that–nobody was–but receding proximity to sexual relationships had sharpened his antennae in such things. More importantly she was young and hungry for promotion, as were DCs Dave Bull and Rob Morton. This was a big opportunity for them and he knew they’d toe the line and work hard.

‘Try the big supermarkets centrally. They’ll know if they stock it. When Aktar’s discharged get him and Wendy Jones to help. Send them round the off licences.’

WPC Wendy Jones was reading a magazine as Brook peered through a crack in the curtains. He hesitated. This could be difficult and Brook wasn’t sure how to play it. That was nothing new. He hadn’t been sure on any of the chance encounters since their little fling the previous New Year’s Eve had left them both with a severe case of embarrassment.

Nearly a year ago. Brook could scarcely believe it. The power of alcohol had a miraculous power to transform behaviour. Brook could scarcely tally the demure, black-stockinged professional before him now with the reckless passion of that night. The energy and the urgency of her lovemaking had left its mark on Brook, a casualty of a more repressed generation.

It had been the best sex he could remember–and he had a good memory–and had offered him a glimpse of a happiness he thought he could never experience after his divorce.

He hated to admit it, but the touch of young flesh had thrown open the stable door on emotions he hadn’t allowed free rein in a long, long time–lust, the poignancy of retreating youth, the urge to retrieve his wasted life. For the first time in years, Brook had experienced fleeting optimism. It was a very unhealthy period.

He coughed as he entered to allow her a few seconds to prepare. Her generous mouth dropped open briefly to reveal a glimpse of her perfect teeth. Her large dark eyes met his and she stood up. Brook was reminded of her long legs and stunning figure–what one of his poker-playing colleagues in the Met used to call a ‘Full House’.

‘Sir!’ she said her eyes almost level with his. She was only a couple of inches shorter than Brook’s six feet.

‘I didn’t know you were riding shotgun, Constable.’ Brook decided only at the last second not to call her Wendy.

‘Only while PC Aktar’s in here, sir.’ She fiddled with the grip restraining her long brown hair.

‘I’ve just seen him.’

Jones seemed very nervous and Brook was reminded of her acute awkwardness at waking up, not just with a senior colleague, but in his hovel of a flat. She’d scuttled back to her riverside development as quickly as she could. ‘How is he, sir?’

‘He’s feeling a little sorry for himself.’

‘I daren’t imagine what he saw to cause him to pass out like that.’

‘No. It was pretty bad,’ he added, deciding not to expand. ‘How’s this one?’ Brook enquired, nodding towards Jason Wallis who was unconscious.

‘The doctor says he’ll be fine–unfortunately.’

Brook gave her a quizzical smile.

‘Sorry, sir. But the little girl…I didn’t see her.’ She looked to the ground, suddenly embarrassed, as though she’d let down her sex by not forcing herself to see such a sight. ‘And this…lowlife gets away with a headache and even more celebrity. There’s no justice.’

‘Celebrity?’

‘Young Wallis, sir. After that hoo-hah a few weeks back. He assaulted a teacher in a lesson at Drayfin Community School. Threatened to rape her.’

Enlightenment creased Brook’s features. ‘That was Jason?’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Thanks for the reminder, Constable. Has anybody spoken to him?’

‘About last night? No sir. He’s not really been conscious. Why?’

‘So he hasn’t said anything?’

‘Not a dickey bird,’ she replied with an unexpected, if hesitant, smile which vanished before it had a chance to wrinkle the edge of her mouth. ‘Doesn’t he know?’

‘I don’t think so. Given the state he was in, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have killed anyone and…’ Brook tailed off, unsure of the words.

‘Would you eat pizza if you’ve just found your family butchered?’ concluded Jones with a nod. ‘Do you need me to stay?’

She seemed very efficient all of a sudden. There was also the merest whisper of affection in her voice and a small seed of pleasure took root in the barren soil of Brook’s ego. He smiled, trying to imagine the question in a different context. ‘No, take a break, but keep yourself handy. Shouldn’t there be a social worker with him?’

‘She’s gone for a coffee, sir. She’ll be back in a minute.’ Brook nodded. She made to leave the cubicle then turned. ‘One thing. Jason’s under technical arrest, as a suspect…’ she hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘We emptied his pockets. He’s got a hundred pounds on him. And a strip of tablets. Ecstasy, I think. Might be helpful.’

She left and Brook turned to young Jason. He stared at the childlike face for a moment trying to square his innocent expression with a threat to commit rape. He was just a kid. What had gone wrong with the world when little idiots like this felt they could threaten such violence?

Jason’s mouth lay open and a small stalactite of saliva was hanging from his bottom lip. Brook frowned and shook his head. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen, same as Terri? Just a kid. Oblivious. Snarling defences taking a time out. Without the posturing, without his warped sense of self, Jason Wallis was just another scared little baby, needy and lost and dribbling.

If he was lucky–or unlucky–Jason might live another sixty years and Brook knew he could map out his sorry life now. From birth to death it was a story he’d heard many times before.

Drugs, booze, fags, the search for cheap thrills, school’s boring, skip it, hanging out with friends, no qualifications, no future, hanging out with more friends, now petty criminals, stealing for fag money, destroying stuff, windows are good, milk bottles, bus shelters, phone booths, yeah I did it, what you gonna do about it?

He does what he likes. No-one to stop him. Jason and his friends aren’t nobodies no more–they’re big fish in a tiny puddle of piss. They’ve got power, the power to change things, not people, people can’t hear them, people walk by them, unless it’s dark, then they cross the road. Not people. Inanimate objects. They can’t run; they’ve got to listen; they can be changed by the power, from one state to another; the alchemy of destruction.

And sex? Plenty of that. Sex with a minor, still at school, willing to bury her despair under his. No need to take precautions, that’s the girl’s job. So what if she’s up the duff? Her problem. But wait. There’s a baby, that’s a nailed on income, your own place. Respect. Give it a whirl. I can walk away any time.

Shut the fucking brat up! I’m off out. Few beers. With my mates. Roll a couple of drunks. I’ve got to live, haven’t I? They’re insured.

I’m better off in pokey. I’ve learnt some good stuff. Get out. Get some dosh together. Go back in. Lesson learned. If only I’d listened in school, made more of myself. Too late now. Gotta tough it out. Can’t admit I’ve gone wrong. What’s wrong with driving a minicab? Life’s okay. We’re coping, waiting for those numbers. Doing fine. Kids have left. We’ll get by. Is this it? All there is.

Brook looked at his watch. He had a lot to do. He looked around to see if anybody was watching then cocked his leg back to kick the bed but then thought better of it.

But suddenly the patient snorted and began to stir. Brook looked through the gap in the curtain for the social worker but saw no sign.

‘What’s happening? Where am I?’ he croaked.

Brook went to the bed and looked down at him. ‘You’re in hospital, Jason.’

Jason sat up and blinked at his surroundings. He rubbed at the tube inserted in his forearm then looked up at Brook.

‘I’m thirsty,’ he said in that whining voice children use to ask for something without the bother of having to ask. Brook poured him some water from a jug and he drank it down in one, occasionally darting an eye at his impassive visitor. The wariness of the guilty conscience was the first defence mechanism to be revived. He thrust the glass back at Brook for a refill and drank again, more slowly this time.

Thinking time, thought Brook. Eventually Jason cracked.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Detective Inspector Brook.’ The answer didn’t seem to surprise Jason.

‘Fuck do you want?’ he snarled. The routine fear of authority, accepted in Brook’s distant youth, was now a faded memory–a museum piece of a reaction. Today the obligatory response of youth was contempt. Contempt for those who couldn’t stop them doing exactly as they pleased. Parents, teachers, coppers.

‘I can’t talk to you without an adult present. The social worker…’

‘What you on about?’

‘I can’t talk to you without another adult present. Those are the rules, Jason. I’m sure you know the procedure by now.’

Jason leered at Brook. ‘Oh I get it. It’s that fuckin’ teacher been spreadin’ her lies again. I told you lot before, I never laid a finger on it. Get my dad in here.’

‘That would be difficult.’

‘You can’t interview me without an adult.’

‘I just told you that.’

‘Then stop hassling me.’

‘I’ve gotta say, Jason, you’ve got this whole performance down perfectly.’

‘Fuck off! And who the fuck are you?’ demanded Jason looking past Brook.

‘My name’s Carly Graham, Jason. I’m a social worker.’

Brook turned and smiled at her. ‘Detective Inspector Brook.’ She was young and slim with long brown hair, attractive in a pale, mousy kind of way. She wore a tight brown sweater and a brown corduroy skirt down to her calves, where fur-lined brown suede boots took over. Jason looked her up and down, thinking what to say next.

‘Inspector. You shouldn’t be interviewing Jason without at least one adult present. He’s under age and vulnerable.’

‘I keep fucking telling him,’ spat Jason.

‘No I keep telling you, Jason. I’m not interviewing him, Miss Graham. I just got here and Jason just woke up and I’ve told him repeatedly I can’t speak to him on his own.’

‘It’s against the rules,’ she continued, to establish her firm grip on procedure.

‘That could’ve been me talking, Miss Graham,’ replied Brook, a half-smile on his lips.

‘I don’t feel too good,’ wailed Jason, holding his recently pumped stomach.

‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think you should be taking things so lightly, Inspector.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ replied Brook, making no effort to take things more seriously.

‘What circumstances?’ moaned Jason.

‘It can wait until…’ began Carly Graham.

‘No it fucking can’t. I want to know why he’s here so keep your mouth shut, bitch, until I tell you to open it.’

Carly Graham glanced at Brook. She didn’t show a flicker of emotion. Like Brook, she’d probably seen Jason’s expression of scorn and hatred a thousand times. Finally she shrugged and waved her palm from Brook to her client.

‘I’m here about a murder, Jason,’ began Brook.

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ Jason sneered. This conversation had a well worn path and Brook wondered whether he could see it through. The Jasons of this world went out of their way to alienate. Unless they were spraying their scent over everything and everyone they weren’t happy and Brook, in his fatigue, was tempted to jettison the script and give it to him straight. He fought the urge and tried to find his most sympathetic tone.

‘We’ve got bad news,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah. What is it?’

Brook smiled at Carly Graham. This was her field.

She sighed and took up the baton. ‘Jason, I’m afraid your father and mother are dead, your sister Kylie too. I’m sorry for your loss.’

They both looked at Jason’s uncomprehending face. After a moment Jason’s face broke into a wide grin. ‘You lying bitch,’ he finally said. ‘That’s bollocks.’

‘Jason…’ began Brook.

‘What are you trying to pull, you lying bastards? What do you take me for?’

Brook removed a crime scene photograph of Jason’s father from his pocket and held it in front of his face. Jason’s eyes widened then squinted in confusion. He made to grab the photo but Brook returned it to his pocket.

‘They’re dead. They were murdered last night.’ A tear began to dampen the corner of Jason’s eye. The baby had returned. Brook wondered whether to be sorry for his loss but was unable to dredge up any sincerity.

Jason seemed unable to take it in. ‘Fuck off, will yer. You’re doing my head in.’

‘Their throats were cut. The baby was unharmed. I’ve got more pictures if you don’t believe me.’

‘Inspector!’ warned Carly Graham.

He’d gone too far but knew in his heart that the longer he dealt with this boy, the more he’d be glad he was able to affect him, to hurt him, to reach behind that curtain of aggression and find the heart of a child.

Jason’s features crumpled and, like all but the newest men, he tried to hide his tears. Brook was pleased with the reaction despite the gnaw of guilt on his conscience.

‘Me mum and dad?’ he quivered.

‘Yes.’

‘Kylie?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Yes you do.’

Now the tears began to fall. He sobbed for a minute, Carly Graham’s hand patting his, before getting control of his emotions. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he sniffed.

Brook stared at the boy, then at Carly, trying to hide his disgust.

‘Don’t think about that now, Jason,’ cooed Carly. ‘Your aunt will be in to see you later. You should get some rest.’

‘And rest assured you’ll be fully protected.’

Carly Graham flashed Brook a warning look.

‘Protected?’ said Jason, almost to himself.

Brook wasn’t proud of his satisfaction at seeing Jason squirm but knew it was the best guarantee of cooperation. ‘If you’d been home a little earlier last night we wouldn’t be talking to you now. And it’s possible whoever did this may see you as unfinished business.’

Jason looked up, saucer-eyed. ‘Me?’

‘Inspector. What good is this doing? Can’t this wait?’

‘Not if we want to catch the murderer quickly. Particularly as Jason may have been the main target.’

‘What you talking about? This is so gay. Fuck off and leave me alone.’

‘I’m talking about you, Jason. You’re the celebrity in the family. There’s a chance whoever did this was after you.’

Jason began to sob again. A tear for his butchered father, a tear for his butchered mother, perhaps a couple for his torn sister and a bucketful for himself.

‘We need your help,’ continued Brook.

‘I don’t know nothing,’ he snorted, managing to resurrect a little aggression.

‘That’s a pity because the longer this man is free, the greater the danger to you.’ Brook’s reassuring smile had the desired effect.

‘You’re doin’ my head in. I don’t know nothing,’ he insisted.

‘So where were you last night?’

‘Hanging.’

‘Where?’

‘Around.’

‘Who with?’

‘Some mates.’

‘I want names.’

‘Fuck that. I’m no grass.’

‘Where did you get a hundred pounds?’

‘I won it on a horse,’ Jason sneered with the standard and-you-can’t-prove-otherwise leer.

‘Really Well as you’re too young to legally place a bet, that money will have to be confiscated.’

‘You can’t do that…’

‘And the Ecstasy?’

Jason’s triumphant manner subsided. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve planted that on me. I’ve been out cold. Anyone…’

‘Look,’ began Brook then paused for a deep breath to compose his thoughts, ‘I’m not interested in your…habits, Jason. If you want to pop a few pills to brighten your drab existence, who am I to care?’

Jason prepared to protest but was unsure how to go about it.

Carly Graham eyed Brook with concern. ‘Inspector, I don’t think…’

‘Under the circumstances, I can overlook possession. If you co-operate,’ said Brook, making an effort to keep to the script.

Jason withdrew his unformed objection and stared down at the bed, sullen but yielding. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Take me through what happened when you got home.’

Brook took a few notes although it wasn’t really his forte. Jason told him little that he didn’t already know so he didn’t have much to record. But he confirmed that his parents had ‘won’ a competition at the local Pizza Parlour and that he’d nearly stayed in. He had no idea what time he got home, though he had a feeling it was after closing time–he was self-absorbed enough not to worry about admitting he’d been in a pub. He’d got home starving and headed straight for the kitchen. He tucked into the first pizza to hand. And then…nothing. Until now. No, his parents didn’t drink wine and no, they didn’t listen to any of that classical bollocks.

‘But did you hear it when you got in?’

‘Don’t know, alright. I don’t remember.’ Jason lowered his head in despair at the thoughts and images crowding in. He sighed and looked up at Brook. ‘I don’t think I heard no music. Okay.’

‘Fair enough.’ Brook flipped his notes shut and stood up to go. Jason was leaving a lot out but it could wait.

Suddenly the patient seemed animated, as though Brook’s imminent departure left unfinished business. Then his face brightened. ‘What about the telly?’

‘Telly?’ asked Brook. ‘It’s still there.’

‘No, you know. An appeal for witnesses and stuff. They can interview me and I can ask people for help to catch the bastard. I can handle it.’

Brook stood motionless for a second, unable to think of a suitable response. He could see Carly Graham open-mouthed. ‘I bet you can,’ he said, and walked away.

Brook passed Jones at the coffee machine. ‘What happened about Jason’s clothes?’

‘Bagged up with his shoes and sent to Forensics, sir.’

‘Good. And you’ve booked in the money and the drugs?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Which means we’ve got Wallis on possession, possibly dealing. We’ll leave out suspicion of triple homicide.’

‘Sir?’

‘He’s a suspect, Constable. Possibly dangerous. Cuff him.’

‘The doctor said…’

‘Never mind the doctor. It’s procedure. Cuff him.’

Chapter Five

The press conference started promptly at four in the revamped media centre of D Division. Brook hadn’t been in there since McMaster had been promoted. He knew she’d refurbished the place but hadn’t realised how much. The last time he’d taken part in a press briefing, he’d sat at the end of a long table by the door, facing the window. The sun had slammed into his eyes throughout and he’d become bad-tempered and impatient with the stupidity of a local reporter, who took his dismay out on the Force in print the next day.

Being a consummate politician, Evelyn McMaster had spotted this handicap and had set about changing the layout of the room. The harsh colours were gone, the acoustics had been improved but, most significantly, the officers now doing the briefing sat with their backs to the windows and the journalists had any sun shining in their eyes.

The police had another advantage; the psychological benefit of a raised platform, boxed in to afford a view of head and upper torso only. They could now look down on the journalists literally, as well as metaphorically.

Brook sat stony-faced throughout McMaster’s briefing-by-numbers, allowing his eyes to wander round the room at all the unfamiliar faces. A chord had obviously been struck with the nation’s editors, because all the nationals were here, as were the BBC, ITV and other TV crews. The local media were all present, including Brian Burton from the Derby Telegraph, whose nose Brook had so firmly put out of joint a couple of years back. He was also the reporter who’d splashed important details of the Plummer rape case the year before, causing a great deal of damage to the prosecution, not to mention arousing suspicions between officers at the station about who’d provided him with key information.

McMaster drew to a close and invited DI Brook to add his own observations.

‘I can only reiterate the comments made by Chief Superintendent McMaster,’ Brook began. ‘From the brutal nature of these murders, we know this man is extremely dangerous. Any information, relating to his movements in Drayfin last night, or any other suspicious occurrences, that could help us catch this man, will be gratefully received. All such information will be treated in strict confidence and will be followed up, no matter how insignificant it may seem.’

‘What progress have you made so far, Inspector?’ ventured one reporter, squinting to counteract the glare from the setting sun.

‘Our enquiries are under way and no stone will be left unturned but at the moment we are awaiting the results of forensic and post mortem examinations. Until that information is available, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further.’

‘Have you found the weapon?’ asked an attractive young woman with a microphone.

‘Not yet.’

‘But you do know what type of weapon was used?’ she said.

‘As I say, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.’

‘Could somebody be shielding this man?’ asked a man with a BBC microphone.

‘It’s possible,’ Brook nodded, unsure of the relevance of the question.

‘You don’t seem too sure,’ jumped in Brian Burton.

‘I’m sure it’s possible, Brian.’ Brook winced from a warning tap on the ankle bone from McMaster–another benefit of the enclosed panelling

‘I’m sure that most normal people, Inspector, find it hard to imagine that anyone could knowingly shelter such a monster.’

‘Then you don’t know a great deal about people, Brian.’

‘And you do?’

‘One man’s monster is another man’s saint. The man we’re looking for kills without pity, quickly, efficiently and for what he considers valid reasons, even if we can’t understand or condone those reasons.’

‘You sound like you know him, Inspector Brook.’

‘It’s my job, Brian, to get inside this man’s head, to see what he sees, think what he thinks. It’s not pleasant but that’s the nature of offender profiling. And although our picture of this man is far from complete, we are able to extrapolate certain scenarios from the details of the crime. So in a sense, although I can’t go into detail, we know things about him…’

‘And when you’ve finished extrapolating scenarios, Inspector, are you able to tell the public at large whether this man has killed before and if he’s likely to kill again?’

Brook eyed Burton, barely masking his distaste.

McMaster, sensing the rise in temperature, stepped back into the fray. ‘Obviously this man is very dangerous, Brian. Certainly he could kill again which is why we need to catch him before he does.’

‘But is it likely he’s killed before?’ asked another reporter, spotting the omission.

‘There’s no possible way we can answer that until…’ Brook rejoined.

Burton interrupted. ‘So, Inspector, your profile contains no mention of the similarities between the murder of the Wallis family last night and the unsolved Reaper killings of the early nineties, in which investigation you played a leading part when you were stationed in London?’ The silence deafened Brook. He was vaguely aware of many faces looking at each other for assistance or clarification. ‘Well, Inspector?’

‘We’re not here to listen to wild speculation, Brian. Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen,’ McMaster said hurriedly, ‘and feel free to contact my office at any time.’ She stood, an amiable smile covering her face, and nudged Brook to leave.

‘Are you going to answer the question?’

‘We cannot give out specific details of last night’s murders until the appropriate time…’ began McMaster.

‘Is there a connection between the killer using the blood of the Wallis family to write on the walls and the Reaper murders in Harlesden and Brixton in 1990 and 1991 and Leeds in 1993?’

Brook became aware of the low muttering of journalists, trying to gather scraps of information. He wanted to speak but McMaster had him by the elbow as discretely as she could and, ignoring the clamour for more sound bites, was pushing him through the door of the small antechamber at the back of the room. She closed the door behind them and turned on Brook.

‘What the hell was all that?’ she blazed, for once dispensing with the reflex niceties of her position. ‘Where has that hack got his information?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am.’

‘Don’t know. That’s not good enough. Now every crank and Edward the Confessor out there knows what we know.’ McMaster was silent. She strode to and fro, examining the floor, trying to regain her equilibrium. Eventually the pacing slowed and deliberation returned.

‘The Reaper. Yes, I remember. Ritual executions. Families cut up. They never caught him.’

‘I never caught him,’ said Brook bitterly.

‘You were on that enquiry?’

Brook nodded. ‘I was a DS.’

‘Is it true, Damen? Could there be a connection after all these years?’

‘There are one or two similarities but, as you say, it’s been a long time. All the same, I’d like your permission to go to London, check it out.’

‘You have it.’

‘Then I’ll need a larger pool of officers here, ma’am. To help DS Noble.’

‘What do you need?’

‘We need the computer manned for logging in any information. We need the Incident Room phones manned to sift through calls from the public. We need the murder book compiled. There’s house-to-house to co-ordinate, the van and weapons search, family background…’

‘How many?’

‘I’ve got enough CID but I’d like to second the two uniforms who answered the call. If we keep them in-house, they’re less likely to gossip…’

‘Fine, fine,’ she replied, putting up a hand.

‘And authorisation for any overtime and unlimited uniform back up when needed.’

‘You have it.’ McMaster suddenly seemed very tired but her anger pulled her round almost immediately. ‘Where did Brian Burton get all that information?’

‘He’s local, ma’am. He’s got local contacts.’

‘But a crime scene is supposed to be sacrosanct, damn it. It’s the Plummer rape all over again.’

‘There were a lot of people there last night, ma’am. Not all on the Force. He’d only need a couple of details and any decent internet search engine would have done the rest. It would have come out sooner or later.’

McMaster narrowed her eyes at Brook. ‘It shouldn’t have come out sooner than it was mentioned to me. Why wasn’t I informed?’

Brook kept his gaze on the floor. ‘It’s not definite, ma’am. I didn’t want to jump the gun before I was sure.’

‘It’s a bit flimsy but we’ll gloss over that for the moment. When’s the full briefing?’

‘Eight-thirty in the morning.’

‘If I don’t make it, I want you to read the Riot Act on this. Somebody in this station is feeding titbits to that journalist. I don’t want anyone on the enquiry with loose lips. Clear?’

Brook was home late that evening. After the press conference he’d made a conscious effort to clear away some of the unavoidable foot-slogging attached to the case. First he’d read up all that was available on file about Wallis and son, including Jason’s recent brush with notoriety in a back issue of the Derby Telegraph. There were few details and the teacher’s name had been omitted. Brook made a note to chase up the information.

Noble was out checking a lead on the van used for delivering the pizzas so Brook rang the lab to check if they’d unearthed anything of use at the scene. They had nothing preliminary, which Brook had expected. Things would be gummed up for a while, what with staff shortages and the occurrence of separate murders on the same night.

Then he rang Dr Habib, the pathologist, and was encouraged to hear that he was performing the Wallis post mortems at that precise moment.

Finally, he made a brief visit to the Wallis house, this time driving to the Drayfin Estate in his shiny new unmarked Mondeo. On his way he listened to a recently purchased tape of Mahler’s Ninth.

As he parked, a uniformed officer stepped towards the car to check out the occupant then nodded in recognition, if not respect, at Brook. It was a dark and cold night with a dusting of snow. A good thing. It discouraged the ghouls who gravitated to such gore. Even the reporters were absent, having been given bigger leads to follow by Brian Burton.

‘All quiet, Constable…?’

‘Feaver, sir. Yes, sir. All quiet.’

‘Dark round here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes sir. Most of the street lighting’s been vandalised. Kids.’

Brook nodded and bent under the police tape. He went into the dying room. It seemed bigger than his first visit but then it was virtually empty now. No corpses cluttering the place. He didn’t go further than the doorway as a SOCO was still working in the room even at this late hour.

He’d seen everything he needed to the night before. He went into the bedrooms as he had before but, as then, there was nothing of interest. If he looked hard enough he knew he could probably find something incriminating in Jason’s room. But to what end? Brook had never been concerned about small time drug abuse or under age drinking. Even the unpleasant porn videos they’d unearthed under a creaky floor board were of no concern to Brook. All such matters fell under Brook’s Law of Victimless Crime. Although the nation’s legislators disagreed, Brook was unconcerned about citizens sitting at home drifting into a narcotic stupor and masturbating themselves to sleep. Best place for it.

And whatever Wallis and son got up to in the privacy of their home, legal or not, had not been the motive for their slaughter.

Eventually Brook sauntered away, like a tourist leaving a disappointing museum, and returned to his car. He paused as he opened the driver’s door and looked across to the house next to number 233. After a moment’s thought he reached into the Mondeo and pulled out the cassette tape of Mahler. ‘Constable Feaver,’ he shouted, waving him over. ‘Have you got a mobile?’

‘Mr Singh. It’s DI Brook. Sorry to bother you at this time. We’ve got a few more questions to ask you. May I come in?’

The slightly-built, middle-aged Asian man lifted a pair of bloodshot eyes towards Brook’s warrant card. He wore an old-fashioned dressing gown and pyjamas. His feet were bare. He hesitated briefly before turning away from the door and leading Brook into his neat living room, a mirror image of the Wallis murder scene on the other side of the wall. The furnishings were perhaps a little fussier and the colours a little brighter but the rooms were essentially the same, even down to the fireplace.

‘I told the other detective everything I know. I’m very tired…’

‘I understand.’ Brook noted a small but plump valise resting on a chair. ‘Going somewhere, sir?’

‘My brother’s house. In Leicester. I’ve…’

‘You’ve had trouble sleeping after what you witnessed. I’m not surprised. But if you could find somewhere to stay in Derby it would be better. We need to be able to contact you…’

Mr Singh sat down on his plush sofa, indicating a chair for Brook. ‘I see.’

‘Do you live here alone?’

‘My wife and daughters are in India for a few weeks. But yes, I’m alone…’

‘A lot of worry, aren’t they?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Daughters. A lot of worry. I’ve got a fifteen year old.’

Mr Singh nodded. ‘Yes. They can be difficult.’ He wouldn’t look at Brook, who sensed Mr Singh was probably picturing the difficulty Kylie Wallis had encountered next door. Finally his eyes turned to Brook. ‘What questions?’

‘Just routine. Like how did you get on with the Wallis family?’

‘Mr and Mrs Wallis are…were racists. And their son Jason. They were unpleasant people and we had nothing to do with them.’

‘So things were strained between you?’

‘Not really. As I said, we had nothing to do with them. We kept out of each other’s way.’

‘What about noise from next door? Was that usual?’

‘Sometimes. Things got a good bit quieter when they had the baby though. Do you mind if I smoke, Inspector?’

‘As long as I can join you,’ replied Brook.

‘Of course.’ Mr Singh took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his dressing-gown pocket and lit up with a heavy sigh then studied Brook, wondering why he hadn’t done the same.

Eventually Mr Singh retrieved his cigarettes, shook one out for Brook and handed him the lighter.

‘Thank you. I left mine in the car.’

‘No problem. That’s where I’ll have to hide mine when my wife gets home.’

Brook smiled but resisted the invitation for man talk. ‘What about Kylie?’

Mr Singh was puzzled. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You said Mr and Mrs Wallis and Jason were racists. You didn’t mention Kylie.’

Mr Singh hesitated for a moment then smiled sadly. ‘She was a lovely girl. Lovely. They didn’t deserve her, the rest of them. They were scum. I’m sorry to speak ill of the dead, but they were. They were trash and won’t be missed. But Kylie was always nice to my girls.’

Brook nodded. ‘When you went next door, you went into the living room first and turned off the CD player.’

‘Yes.’

‘You turned the volume down first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you aware that Jason was in the kitchen at that time?’

‘No. I turned the CD player off then turned the big light on at the wall…’

‘You could see to do that?’

‘Yes. The hall light was on.’

‘Then what?’

‘I saw…’ Mr Singh took a more urgent draught of tobacco and hung his head. ‘…then I went to the kitchen to phone 999.’

‘You didn’t touch the bodies?’

‘No!’

‘Not even to check for signs of life?’

‘No. They were dead. Or I thought they were. I was glad to hear about the baby…’

‘Then you saw Jason in the kitchen?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I called the police.’

‘You didn’t check Jason’s pulse.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I assumed he was dead.’

‘Then you went outside to wait.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you saw no-one and heard no vehicles?’

‘That is correct.’

Brook nodded and pocketed his notebook. ‘May I use your phone, Mr Singh?’

‘Please.’

Brook drew out a piece of crumpled paper from a pocket and proceeded to dial. ‘Constable Feaver, it’s me. Okay. Half way.’ He put his hand over the receiver and smiled at Mr Singh.

From the Wallis house a barely audible noise could be discerned. Brook listened, watching Mr Singh closely. Singh nodded. ‘That’s how it started out.’

‘What time would that have been?’

‘Twenty minutes to midnight.’

‘Why so exact?’

‘When you’re disturbed by neighbours you look at the time. In case…’ He hesitated, then looked away, unwilling to finish.

‘…in case you want to charge round there and have it out with them.’ Brook smiled politely.

‘I suppose so. I wouldn’t have. My wife…’ Again he left the sentence hanging.

Brook spoke into the phone. ‘All the way up, Constable.’ The music was no longer muffled. It pounded through the wall and crashed onto Mr Singh’s floor which vibrated in tune. Then it died somewhat but that was more down to Mahler’s composition. Before long the horns were hammering on the floorboards again.

‘And it was midnight when it became that loud?’ Singh nodded. ‘Okay. Thanks Constable,’ said Brook into the phone. ‘Turn it off.’ Brook replaced the receiver and turned to Mr Singh. ‘I admire your patience. I would have gone straight round and hammered on the door.’

‘I was going to but they turned it off a couple of minutes later.’

‘Sorry. I thought you told DC Noble you put up with it until half past twelve before going round?’

‘I did. I mean I got my slippers on to go round but it stopped completely. So I went upstairs to get ready for bed then it started up again. Really loud. As you said, I stood it for as long as I could then I went to complain.’

‘And that would have been at half past.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’

‘I’ve only just remembered with you playing the music.’

‘And how long was the music off?’

‘A few minutes, Inspector. Maybe five, no more than ten.’

‘I see.’

‘Is it important?’

Brook shrugged. ‘It could be.’

‘Is there anything else, Inspector? I’m very tired.’

‘Me too. Thanks for answering my questions at this hour, Mr Singh.’

Singh took the hint and set off for the front door. As Brook passed through the entrance Singh smiled at him. It was a bleak expression which Brook recognised as that of a fellow insomniac.

‘When will my clothes be returned to me, Inspector?’

‘As soon as we’ve finished with them. Assuming you still want them. There’ll be blood on the shoes and probably the garments too.’

Mr Singh nodded. ‘Yes. I didn’t think.’

Brook left and returned to the Wallis house to retrieve his tape then set off for home.

After a hot shower, Brook lay on his bed to rest his eyes for a few moments. He nodded off but woke a few minutes later. Nonetheless he felt refreshed and rang Noble for a progress report.

There was news on the van. They hadn’t found it but they’d had a hit from the partial plate. It had been hired locally. Brook had expected this. He made a mental note of the van hire company and told Noble to save the rest for the briefing.

Also, the bottle of wine hadn’t been bought in a Derby supermarket, Noble confirmed. They were checking French suppliers and off-licences the next morning.

Brook told Noble about the discovery of the drugs and cash on Jason. He also mentioned Jason’s involvement in the near rape of a teacher at the local school to see if it seemed equally significant to Noble.

‘Pity we can’t leave him unguarded so the killer can finish the job then,’ said Noble.

‘Maybe,’ replied Brook. ‘You know, his family are dead and all he could think about was getting on TV for his fifteen minutes of fame.’ Mr Singh was right. The Wallis family were trash. Only poor Kylie had ever held a thought for the sensibilities of others. Her death was the real tragedy. Suddenly Brook had a brainwave.

‘John, have you set up the ID with the aunt?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Why?’

‘Good. They’re releasing Jason from hospital tomorrow. Have him brought there so we can hand him over to his aunt for safe keeping. His reaction might tell us something.’

‘We’re not charging him with possession?’

‘No. His family are dead, John. Let’s give the kid a break.’

Their conversation meandered on for a few more minutes then eventually there was silence and Brook could think of nothing else to say. He noticed the puzzled tone creeping into Noble’s voice. Brook rarely spoke to him on the phone and had even chided him for it once. ‘Always better in our job to talk face to face, John,’ he’d said. ‘You get the full picture that way.’

All possible distractions exhausted, Brook rang off, then, with a deep breath, dialled his ex-wife’s number. He had to look up the number for Brighton and felt a pinprick of shame–it had been months since he last spoke to Amy and Terri. He told himself it was pressure of work but knew that was no excuse. Nor was it a lingering sense of awkwardness–he enjoyed talking to Amy, better than when they were married, in fact. Even Tony, Number Two Dad, was okay. For a PR man.

‘Hello stranger,’ said Amy smoothly. ‘It’s late.’

‘Is it?’ Brook was struck by the self-confidence his ex-wife had acquired since the divorce. Certainly her new husband was bland enough to make anyone feel worthy but there had to be something more to her new-found contentment.

Perhaps Tony was one of those weirdos who refused to spend his waking hours telling his wife that the world was a sewer and that death was their constant companion and, ultimately, their friend. It was also possible that he was a better lover than Brook–unlikely but just possible.

His favoured theory was that Tony Harvey-Ellis had that most compelling attraction to divorced women of a certain age: the outward appearance of sanity.

Now, Brook could see the funny side. That time in London, he had been losing it. His obsession with a girl had wrecked his marriage. And, if anything, the fact that the girl was already a corpse when Brook met her made matters worse.

‘How are you, Amy?’

‘Never better.’

A pause. ‘Is Terri there?’

‘She certainly is. Would you like to speak to her?’ she said with the suggestion of a tease.

‘That would be nice.’

‘Ther-es-a! It’s your dad. Can you hear me? Your dad. So Damen, on the telly, ’eh?’

‘Was I?’

‘Yeah. A small bit on BBC and ITV. Very exciting. Just like the old days.’

‘Yeah. I’m getting an agent.’

‘Good to see you haven’t lost your old detachment,’ she giggled.

‘Ha ha,’ said Brook without rancour.

‘Okay Mum. I’m on the other line.’

‘Bye Sherlock. And happy birthday.’

‘Bye, darling. How are you, Terri?’

‘I’m fine, dad. To what do I owe this pleasure?’ Brook was a little taken aback at this smokescreen. He was suddenly uneasy, sensing that she was under strain. Brook decided to play ball.

‘Can’t a father ring his daughter, whom he loves, without opening a public inquiry?’ he breezed. Brook always managed to shunt declarations of affection into a subordinate clause. They were safer there. ‘I just wanted to see how you were.’ There was a click as an extension was hung up. Either his ex-wife or her husband had wanted to know why he was ringing. Brook didn’t like it. ‘What’s wrong, petal?’ he asked with more urgency.

‘Dad…I…’ Brook heard a noise in the background that might have been a door. ‘My mocks aren’t ’til June.’ The guard was around her voice again.

‘Can’t you speak, Terri?’

‘I’m afraid not, Dad.’

‘Can you ring me later?’

‘I don’t see how but I’ll try.’ The strain was audible in her voice.

‘Is it something to do with Mum?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, no,’ she answered back with a feigned jocularity.

‘Tony?’ he ventured.

‘Mmm, yes. That’s right.’ Brook’s veins turned to ice and he found himself catching at a breath.

‘What time does he go to work in the morning?’

‘Seven.’

‘Ring me here, as soon as he leaves. I’ll be waiting. Any problems, you just bluff him. Tell him I know everything, whatever it is, and I’m coming down to sort things out. Okay. Got that, darling?’

‘I understand. Bye then, Dad. Nice to hear from you. And happy birthday.’ The line went dead but Brook was unable to replace the receiver for a few seconds. Problems with Tony. He didn’t dare think. It was pointless jumping to conclusions. Terri was at a difficult age. It could be anything, he decided. Personality clash–he knew about those–or maybe she just needed some attention, needed to play the two dads off against each other for a while. That was the rational explanation.

He gleaned some surface comfort but a few fathoms down the fish were nibbling at his peace of mind. Tony Harvey-Ellis was a man. With men, at one level or another, everything could be reduced to sexual gratification. If that bastard had…

Brook sought solace with a familiar ally and made a conscious effort to return to the case so he trudged down the rickety steps to the dank and dingy cellar and from a rusty metal trunk recovered a large beige folder. He removed an antiquated rubber band, wiped off some of the dust, and what looked like mould, and returned to the discomfort of his living room.

The furniture in the room was sparse to say the least. Minimalism was the fashion but that implied design and expense. Most of Brook’s objets could have been recycled from the council tip or unearthed in the furthest backroom of a teeming, hand-me-down warehouse.

There was a squeaky plastic sofa nestling along the wall next to the never-opened front door. Just to ensure that the door was never used, Brook had placed a peeling formica-topped occasional table in front of it. In another corner, stood an old-fashioned standard lamp which vomited its dingy flower-studded light onto a sturdier table, on which had been placed the phone and an ashtray.

The overall colour scheme, if scheme it could be called, for that again implied planning, was a grimy light brown, save for the once-white ceiling which had been gradually stained tobacco yellow.

Brook unwrapped the cellophane from the next pack, lit up with a sigh more relaxed than he felt, and sat down to inspect the folder. He tipped out a silver necklace and gazed at the heart-shaped links, remembering the dead girl, Laura Maples.

Eventually he dropped it back into the folder and pulled out various documents. A tightly wrapped plastic bag fell out with them. Brook held the plastic bag for a moment then took the small package back to the cellar and dropped it into the trunk then returned to examine the pile of documents.

He skimmed quickly through the chronological landmarks of his descent into hell and extracted the relevant photocopied reports, newspaper cuttings and the photographs Brook had taken with his own camera while on stakeout. Technically he shouldn’t have taken photocopies of official documents, but the Met was fairly relaxed about procedure in those days. Now they would have had his warrant card on the fire before he’d have time to call the Police Federation.

There was a number, scribbled on the back of a report. He picked up the phone and pondered. It was a long time ago. He shrugged and dialled. Coppers rarely moved house unless they were transferring. They needed a familiar haven around them, like a favoured tatty shirt–a place to hide in safety and comfort from the hell of other people’s society. The other end picked up on the first ring.

‘Hello.’

Brook discerned more than a suspicion of alcohol in the voice. ‘Charlie, is that you?’

‘Fuckin’ ‘ell. Brooky. I’ve been hoping you’d call. Wasn’t sure you’d still have the number.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fucking shit-faced, mate. How are you?’

‘Considering it.’

‘You lying bastard,’ ex-DCI Charlie Rowlands laughed. ‘That’ll be the day that I die. You might lose a bit of that famous iron control of yours.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time, sir.’

‘Well. I saw the press conference. Tell me, Brooky. Does that dyke with the brush handle up her arse have any idea what you’re dealing with?’

‘The Chief Super? I don’t know, sir.’

‘Call me guv, not sir. And another thing. Don’t call me guv. I’ve been retired since the last ice age.’

‘What should I call you, guv?’

‘Call me Charlie, you daft sod.’

‘Charlie.’ It didn’t sit right with Brook, even though he’d always hated calling him “guv”–too much of the professional cockney about it. ‘I need to see you.’

‘Is it true? Is it another?’ An audible strain of foreboding suddenly surfaced in Charlie Rowlands’ voice.

‘I think so. Yes.’ Brook waited. He knew the effect his call was having.

‘Same MO?’

‘Similar.’

‘Who was the target?’

‘The son. He got himself in the news a few weeks ago. He was chucked out of school for assaulting and threatening to rape a teacher.’ Brook spoke softly so as not to excite Rowlands. He had a bad heart and had taken early retirement in 1994 at the age of 56. That was fairly late for today’s career-minded desk jockeys, but Charlie Rowlands was one of the old school. He’d always said he’d never retire, that they’d have to drag him out kicking and screaming. The job was his life and that was very nearly the cost.

Given that, it was a surprise to Brook that he’d managed to hang onto life for more than a decade since. He’d been expected to keel over within six months. He wasn’t exactly a health nut. He smoked and drank heavily off-duty–and on, for that matter.

‘Good riddance. And he did all of ’em, did he?’

‘All he could lay his hands on but the son got lucky and didn’t turn up and he left the baby.’

‘Okay. Dad had form, did he?’

‘Minor stuff but he was a thug.’

‘That’s a comfort then.’ Rowlands sounded sober now. He was moving into the stage of melancholy clear thinking. ‘Signatures?’

‘Music. A picture. And expensive wine.’ Brook knew what was coming, though Rowlands was putting it off.

Eventually he said, ‘Was there a message?’

‘SAVED.’

‘In blood?’

‘In blood.’ Brook was now scarcely audible so keenly did he feel the need to monitor Rowlands for signs of strain.

For what seemed an eternity the two men listened to each other breathing before Rowlands, with a huge sigh, said, ‘Come when you like. I’m never out.’ Brook confirmed the address and prepared to hang up. ‘Damen,’ said Rowlands. He rarely called him that. ‘Sorenson’s a goner.’

The line clicked and Brook was left with the receiver in his hand, lost in thought until the whirring from the ear-piece brought him back. He replaced the receiver and went into the kitchen. He needed a drink. Actually he needed a drink in a public place to satisfy himself that a normal world still existed but he decided against it in case Terri tried to ring.

He rooted around in the kitchen. He knew he had booze somewhere. Eventually he pulled a dusty bottle of sweet Martini–won in a raffle a couple of years before–from the highest cupboard. The cupboard had sixties sliding glass doors caked in grease and Brook kept everything he never wanted to see again in there. He glanced at the photograph albums but resisted.

He cracked the seal on the bottle and examined the rust-coloured liquid. He’d only kept it in case of female visitors. Fat chance. There’d only been the one night with Wendy…WPC Jones, and she’d asked for a beer. Nobody but winos drank this garbage any more. Brook poured a large measure and drank it down with a grimace. He poured another and sat back down at the table to nurse it. He turned back to the yellowing file. Like it or not it was time to think.

He put his hand in the folder and pulled out the necklace again and draped it around his fingers. The silver hearts glistened in the half-light and Brook stared at them, seeing the face of the girl who’d worn it all those years before–what was left of it, after the rats had eaten their fill.

He returned the necklace to the folder and began to organise reports and photographs from The Reaper killings into one chronological pile.

Chapter Six

It was cold. Very cold. The air above the duvet was crisp enough to blue the two noses peeping out from the cocoon like a pair of stunted periscopes.

Amy Brook flinched at the intrusion of the phone and uncoupled herself from her groaning husband. She didn’t need waking in the middle of the night in her condition; she woke plenty with no disturbance.

Delicately, trying not to take the full weight of the mass in her womb onto her stomach, she swivelled towards the offending noise.

‘Sorry to wake you, love. Can I speak to him?’ Detective Inspector Rowlands, soon to be a DCI, spoke with unusual gentleness, as though a lowered voice was less irritating. To hear him, Amy Brook was forced to concentrate even harder, pushing sleep further away.

‘It’s for you,’ she droned, jabbing the phone into her bleary husband’s huddled form. She swung her legs onto the floor without breaking the crust around her eyes. ‘Tea?’

‘Don’t bother, gorgeous,’ Damen Brook replied, hand over the mouthpiece, his eyes resolutely closed.

‘No bother, I’m suffering for two now.’ She rose gingerly, supporting her large belly in her forearms, clambered to her feet and waddled down to the kitchenette, yawning and shivering in equal measures.

‘What’s up, guv?’

‘Murder. A bad one. Meet me at 67b Minet Avenue, above the launderette.’

Brook scribbled furiously. He’d soon learned to keep pad and pencil by the phone. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Harlesden.’ The phone clicked. Brook swung his legs onto the cold floor and dressed, though not as quickly as usual. The inclement weather had provoked him into wearing pyjamas for the first time since his early teens and he fiddled with the outsize buttons and starched material, unaccustomed to such a test of dexterity.

Having dressed sufficiently he crept downstairs and cast around for the A-Z, sweeping it up as he clambered into his overcoat.

Amy stood by the door, one arm supporting their first child–their only child as it turned out though they’d planned four–one holding out a mug of tea.

Brook looked at her eyes, virtually closed save for a glimmer of pupil which shone between the lids. He took the outstretched mug and turned away, stifling a tic of horror. It was the same face, the death mask of a butchered prostitute he’d seen the year before. He’d noticed the face. She’d been stabbed repeatedly in the vagina and the killer had tried to cut off her breasts.

Brook took a sip of tea and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Go upstairs before I go out,’ he said, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Don’t want the baby catching its death.’

‘His or her death,’ she corrected him, obeying like a robot. Brook looked after her, aching to follow. He blinked at his watch. Gone three. A fine night to leave your warm bed and milky soft wife. She’d long since stopped asking him what time he’d be back. He’d long since stopped apologising.

Brook hurried through the spitting wind to his temperamental Triumph Stag, the usual will-it-won’t-it knot pulling on his gut. He’d need something more practical in a month, he reflected not without regret. Another expense though. Another temptation to give in to the Kick Back Squad.

‘It’s only fifty quid. Everybody else is in. You don’t have to do anything illegal.’

‘What do you call this?’

No, they’d manage. He wasn’t going to put himself at the whim of crooked businessmen and seedy night club owners. He’d joined the Force to catch criminals, not become one. The Brooks would get by without brown envelopes.

Besides, he was a graduate. He knew his Economics. He’d seen the way things were shaping. After the stock market crash, property in London was cheap–but not forever. If they could afford to hang onto the flat when they moved into their Battersea house, they’d clean up in a few years. Fulham was up and coming. There was money to be made. Not that he cared about money. Not as much as Amy. Brook worried more about choice, that’s what money bought: freedom to choose. That was something they might need soon, especially as it was becoming clear to both of them that his current choices weren’t making him happy.

He shook the worries from his mind and turned to more practical matters. He drained his cup and placed it onto the passenger seat with the others, before pulling on his carefree face and patting the leather-clad steering wheel with affection.

Then he rotated the ignition key nonchalantly as though expecting no resistance. ‘Come on.’ The engine coughed a haughty response, complaining in injured tones at being disturbed at this ungodly hour. ‘Come on,’ he pleaded a little more insistently.

‘Start please,’ he ordered with a hint of teeth beginning to grind. The Stag decided it had made its point and spluttered into life on the fourth turn and Brook swung off the kerb and north onto Fulham Palace Road, towards Hammersmith. Traffic was light though London was never deserted, even at three in the morning, something which never ceased to amaze Brook. His hometown, Barnsley, became a ghost town after what local publicans, without irony, called Happy Hour.

Twenty minutes later Brook pulled onto Minet Avenue. For a second the headlights illuminated a fox, nonchalantly nuzzling through shredded bin bags. It turned to face Brook, calm, at home. This was its patch, its time.

Brook killed the engine behind the flashing lights of a squad car and nodded to the constable on crowd control, though there wasn’t much interest at that time of the morning.

‘What have we got Fulbright?’

‘A nasty one, sir.’

‘Brooky Up here.’ DI Charlie Rowlands was leaning on the top of the stairwell that climbed to the first floor flat from the alley at the side of the grimy launderette. He pulled urgently on the inevitable Capstan Full Strength.

Rowlands was a tall, well-built man with the permanent flush of excessive drinking on his face. His eyebrows knotted in the middle above intelligent black eyes and a large, pockmarked nose. He had an air of the thinker, though, to Brook, he always seemed not to be wrestling with present problems but distant mysteries.

Unlike Brook he was in regulation dress for an officer of his age: dark grey suit, grey raincoat, flecked with moisture, and a tie that would last have had sartorial approval on VE Day His brown suede brogues confirmed the impression of a man who cared nothing for his appearance save that it wouldn’t be noticed.

At this moment, he was in imminent danger of falling through the flimsy iron rail on which his weight rested.

‘Guv.’ Brook stepped carefully up the damp metal stairs and perched at the top, fearing the whole structure might suddenly tear itself away from its fastenings under their combined presence. Rowlands’ features seemed drawn and apprehensive and Brook felt his superior’s unease was not selfish. ‘What have we got?’

Rowlands flicked his cigarette onto the wall across the alley and swept his nicotine-stained fingers across the thin wisp of grey hair he habitually trained across his bald head. It amused and comforted Brook that someone with so little idea of fashion could channel his vanity into such a hopeless venture. More hopeless than ever, now the rain had left the umbilical to Rowlands’ youth matted against his crown.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to train his penetrating dark eyes onto Brook’s. The smell of stale whisky defeated the stench of urine rising from the alley and infused the air between them. Rowlands’ drinking had been virtually constant since the death of his daughter the year before. Shed been at university in Edinburgh and, despite being the daughter of a senior policeman, or maybe because of it, she’d succumbed to the attractions of heroin.

Brook was worried about him. He didn’t need to be out on a night like this. Not with his heart. But Brook understood the self-perpetuating disease of police work. The more you saw in the job, the more you wanted to be away from it, but the more time you spent recreating yourself the more you dwelt on the terrible things you’d seen. The only answer was to keep working. Work was the only consolation, the only solution.

But there was a cost. Sooner or later something would have to give. Health, marriage, sanity. Take your pick. With Brook it would be two out of three. All he could hope was that it would be later rather than sooner.

‘Sammy Elphick.’

‘Sammy Elphick? Oh dear, what’s he been up to? Got himself in with the wrong crowd, has he?’

‘It looks like it. Whatever Sammy’s got into, it must have been pretty bad because they’ve all been done. And it’s no robbery. There’s a room full of stolen goods that’s not been touched.’

Brook screwed his face, sifting through scraps of memory. ‘Did he have kids?’

Rowlands nodded. ‘A boy. I’ve never seen anything like this, Brooky In all my years…’

‘How bad is it?’ Brook replied, damping down the fear and excitement that swelled in him at the start of a case. This didn’t sound like a routine refuse disposal.

‘I don’t know any more,’ Rowlands replied with a curt little laugh. ‘I need you to tell me.’ Brook caught the little look of envy thrown at him. Charlie Rowlands was on the final bend of the course and his emotional resources were spent. But he still saw scraps of humanity, of feeling, clinging to his DS and he needed it now to inform his own dead soul.

He ushered Brook through the door into a short hallway, in which it was difficult for both men to stand in comfort. It smelt of damp and stale beer and vomit. The walls were lined with peeling wallpaper. There was a halo of worn grime around the outdated circular light switch.

A gilt-framed picture of Jesus hung on the back wall. It hadn’t seen a cloth in decades. The incongruity didn’t escape either man and they exchanged a bleak smile. Sammy Elphick in the House of God? Only if there was lead on the roof.

Ancient, ill-fitting linoleum clung to the floor, the pattern long since obscured by substances which tugged at the soles of Brook’s Hush Puppies, announcing his every step with a squeak. The dim light was provided by a wall fitting, wittily shaped as a candle with a small bare bulb as its flame.

Brook took all this in, as might a man about to be executed, seeing everything, drinking in the banal details around him to assert his connection to life–the spider dropping from its web, the nipple of damp forming on the ceiling, the pounding of his heart.

Brook didn’t enjoy this part of the job. Or rather he didn’t enjoy the thrill it gave him. The adrenaline of dread. What was behind that door? He’d been told it was bad but that made it worse.

Would it be a study in scarlet? Would Colonel Mustard be prostrate on the floor of his library, smoking jacket wrapped around his tidy corpse, spotless lead pipe lying beside him? Unlikely.

At school Brook had dreamt of being a superstar detective grappling with unfathomable clues, crossing swords with fiendish criminals, saving the day. As a child he hadn’t considered wading through pools of blood and vomit.

Rowlands pushed open the door and Brook began assessing the scene. The worst was over. The not-knowing. In fact, he was surprised by Rowlands’ misgivings. There seemed to be order and purpose about the room with only the smell of faeces to gnaw at Brook’s equilibrium, offset by a hint of perfume. Talcum powder, Brook guessed. There was another smell, intermingling. Hospitals.

As he took everything in he was aware of the distant mumbling of lowered voices, could see the flash of the police photographer adding another chapter to his Book of the Dead.

The boy hung from the ceiling by the light cord, his head to one side, purple tongue peeping through parted teeth. Brook’s first thought was of Ariel in the Tempest, hovering above Prospero, awaiting instruction. He stared, expecting a horror that didn’t arrive. It was okay. He could function. He paced around the body trying to gather facts and impressions, not moving his eyes from the boy.

Yes. The boy was Prospero’s angel, floating, invisible, watching over his earthly charge. He had on thin nylon pyjamas and couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. He was very slight but even so the ceiling rose was hanging off at the unexpected burden it had been asked to support and looked like it might give way at any second.

Brook looked past the boy briefly, at the fireplace alcove and the daubing of ‘SALVATION’ in blood red finger-writing. Trickles had formed at the base of some of the letters and Brook nodded appreciatively at this dramatic touch. Perhaps he was going to tangle with Professor Moriarty after all.

‘Our boy fancies himself as a bit of a Stephen King,’ chuckled Rowlands.

Brook smiled in agreement and moved closer to the boy. His eyes were closed and sunken and his tousled hair fell in a heap across his face, a couple of strands touching the light bulb still in situ. They were singed.

‘Was that light on when we got here?’

Rowlands looked nonplussed for a second then turned to enquire of the photographer who shrugged. ‘Not when I got ’ere, it weren’t,’ he answered.

‘Maybe the bulb has blown. Check that, will you, when you’ve finished?’ Brook said to the man combing for fibres on the carpet. ‘It should have been on,’ he said to Rowlands.

‘How do you know?’

‘Just an impression. A good show needs lighting.’

Brook moved around the corpse as though it were a maypole, being careful to avoid stepping in any blood. The only sign of violence on the boy was the congealed blood around the stump of his missing middle and forefinger. From the small lump above a slight blackening stain in his breast pocket, Brook deduced that the sliced off fingers had been placed neatly in there. Neat was the word. There’d been no major struggle here. This was highly organised.

Brook examined further, wondering why he wasn’t appalled. Perhaps it was the neatness. Yes, that was it. He could focus. He could take it all in. Why was that? Was he just a good copper or had he become so hardened?

Rowlands was right. It was a bad one. Killing children was the last great taboo. Even regular criminals abhorred child killers. They weren’t safe anywhere, least of all in prison where child killers were vital to the self-esteem of other inmates. Run-of-the-mill lags could feel good about themselves once they no longer clung to the bottom rung of the ladder. They were better than child killers and had a duty to inflict righteous retribution on any in their midst who’d abused, raped or murdered children. Society demanded it.

But despite society’s abhorrence, Brook was unmoved, could look at this child without tears or nausea. Was it because he wasn’t yet a father? Was it the absence of blood and gore? He didn’t know. Rowlands, who had known fatherhood, also seemed calm but then he’d been ‘seeming’ calm for thirty years.

‘What do you see, laddie?’ Rowlands eyed him closely looking for any sign of distress. Brook became aware of the scrutiny, grimaced to affect displeasure, and was sickened by the hypocrisy. He stared intently at the face of the boy.

‘From the look on his face, I’d say he was dead before he was strung up there. I don’t think that wire could support a struggle. It had to be a dead weight. There’s no terror in his expression, he looks at peace.’

Rowlands nodded, declining to reveal if this was a revelation or a confirmation. ‘Go on.’

‘His fingers were removed post mortem because there’s not enough blood from the wounds. The blood was already starting to congeal when the killer cut them off. The spots below his hand could indicate that they were sliced off where he hung. Impossible if he was struggling. Neat job too. I can’t see any hacking. Scalpel maybe.’

Brook wrestled with himself for a moment and the photographer paused, impressed, as did the officer now looking for fibres on the sofa.

‘It’s almost as if…’ Brook looked around for the first time at the mute figures of the man and woman, agog on the sofa, tape over their mouths, their sightless eyes frozen in shock forever.

‘What is it?’ asked Rowlands.

Brook looked carefully at the position of the couple on the sofa. Both had been elaborately tied together and the rope around their ankles disappeared under the sofa and re-emerged over the back to be wound round their chests and hands. Their throats had been cut and blood caked their clothes, the rope and the sides of the sofa. Sprays from the first arterial cuts had even landed on the other side of the room.

They posed for another picture but yet again failed to say ‘Cheese.’ As the flash died, Brook caught the silver slug trail of their tears.

He went behind the sofa to take in the final terrible view afforded them.

‘What’s that doing there?’ Everybody stopped and followed Brook’s finger to a poster on the wall. He walked over to it and examined it. ‘This shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t fit.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s all wrong. Take a look around, guv. I don’t wish to sound like a snob but this poster is tasteful. ‘Fleur de Lis, oil on canvas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,’ said Brook, reading from it. ‘This art doesn’t belong here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean Sammy Elphick is not going to have such a thing in his pokey little existence. He’s not remotely interested in any art he can’t fence.’ Brook turned to the couple on the sofa. ‘He just wouldn’t be.’ The enormity of Brook’s assumptions began to slow him down. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the family’s pain. He’d dismissed these people’s lives as worthless.

‘You think the killer brought it?’

‘Probably,’ Brook replied softly.

‘Why?’

‘I guess to tell us something. To communicate his superiority over Sammy and his family and tell us he’s not our usual, run-of-the-mill murderer. Look around, guv. This has all been staged. Sammy and Mrs Elphick…?’ Brook raised an eyebrow at Rowlands who confirmed their union with a nod, ‘…have been…they’ve been immobilised here, facing their son to watch him die. I think the killer is taunting them.’

‘Okay.’

‘They’ve had to watch their son die, guv. And yet…’ Brook shook his head.

‘What?’

‘Look at the boy. He’s at peace. The killer hasn’t made him suffer. He’s been killed before being strung up so the parents can witness it. Look at their tears. Maybe the kid’s been drugged and smothered, then strung up in front of his mum and dad.’ Brook put his nose up to Mrs Elphick’s. ‘Chloroform. Guv, he’s put them out and revived them. Perfect. What’s the first thing they see? Their son. Is he dead? Possibly. But they can’t be sure. They cry. The killer is pleased–the desired effect. He’s not had the heart to kill the boy in front of them. That would be too hard on him, he’s young. But once he’s dead, he has no scruples about brutalising the corpse, cutting off his fingers, showing them off to the parents to make them suffer, to increase their misery.’

‘So he wants them to think their son has died in agony even if he hasn’t. Interesting.’

‘You don’t sound convinced, guv.’

‘We’re just talking. Go on.’

‘They’ve been drugged and revived to see the fact of their son’s death. They’ve been punished for something and their son is the method. But they haven’t been tortured either. There’s no frenzy here. They’ve been killed quickly, almost as an afterthought to the main event. It’s not their physical pain he’s after but their mental torment. He wants them to cry, he wants them to see their son dead and know they’re going to die. He doesn’t relish the actual killing, just the fact that his victims will no longer exist. In fact, I bet he almost wishes he could let them live.’

‘Why the fuck do you say that?’ asked Rowlands.

Brook pondered for a moment then turned to Rowlands with a half-smile. ‘Because they’ve learned their lesson.’

Chapter Seven

Brook was jolted awake by Cat rubbing herself against his legs. He lifted his head from his arms and squinted down at the squirming, affectionate fur ball at his feet. He felt a little dizzy so he returned his head to his arms for a moment and instead tried to move his lips but they seemed welded together, caramelised almost, by the stale sweet alcohol. His first drunken stupor for years.

He lifted his head again and was surprised to feel only a dull ache. He drank so rarely these days, he expected heavier punishment. For a few months in the nineties he’d tried to hit the bottle but soon tired of it. His insomnia wouldn’t be denied by an alcohol-induced coma.

Brook stood and winced in unexpected pain. His back muscles were tight from the wooden chair. That’s what came of getting a plush new car. No sooner had he experienced the pleasure of a cushioned seat than his back protested about having to accept second best.

He padded off to the kitchen taking the empty bottle and brimming ashtray with him. The linoleum was icy on his bare feet and he hopped from foot to foot before jumping onto the hall carpet for relief. He slipped on his loafers and returned to the kitchen to turn out a large tin of mush into a bowl.

Cat ate remorselessly until the bowl was empty then sauntered past Brook as though he didn’t exist, to seek out the hottest radiator to doze under.

‘Enjoy that, monkey?’ Cat ignored him and trotted off to the living room. ‘Don’t mention it.’ He smiled. There was a time when Brook would have preferred dogs. He still did, but over the years, as his job took him full pelt away from childhood, he’d noticed the resemblance the dumb mutts had to victims of crimes–battered wives and abused children, in particular. Dogs were too innocent for this world. They belonged in boyhood, in a past of hot endless summers and English sporting supremacy.

Cats were different. Nothing was unconditional. If you played ball you’d be given the appropriate amount of love and affection. But if you didn’t feed and house them properly they’d find somewhere better to live. Their demands provided a behavioural straitjacket from which you couldn’t deviate.

Brook flung open the back door to clear his head and ventilate the flat. He didn’t believe in aspirin. The freezing morning air felt good so he stepped out to have a cigarette. It’d been many months since he’d smoked in the morning but as it was the last in the packet best to get it finished. Already he was thinking like an addict again.

Brook lit up and exhaled towards the heavens. The sky was still black but the occasional early bird drove by.

On one such pass, a car’s headlights picked out a figure standing on the other side of the Uttoxeter Road. Brook narrowed his eyes, curious. People didn’t stand around in this weather, at this time of the morning.

From the shock of long blonde hair, it had to be a girl and she appeared to be staring back at Brook standing in the communal alley at the side of his building. He must look odd, outside in the bitter cold in shirtsleeves.

Brook continued to glance over, glad of the cigarette as pretext for loitering. There wasn’t a bus stop nearby so her presence was mildly interesting and he continued to observe her. Perhaps she was a prostitute or someone waiting for a lift into work.

She wore a dark blue padded jacket, buttoned up to her chin, faded blue jeans with horizontal slashes in the knees, brown boots and a pair of garish pink ear muffs, the sort of garb only young people seemed able to wear and not feel self-conscious.

One thing was clear. She was cold, jogging up and down in an effort to keep warm. Brook, in shirt and trousers, was reminded of the bite of winter morning and shuddered. Flicking his cigarette against the wall for the satisfying spray of orange, he turned to go inside.

As he did so, he noticed the girl crossing the road towards him so he tarried a moment longer. Perhaps she wanted directions.

She walked steadily towards him, her gaze locking onto Brook’s face so blatantly that he felt no embarrassment about staring straight back at her.

She was young, twenty perhaps, and had straggly unkempt hair, parted vaguely in the middle. Brook noticed a touch of darker root. She was medium height with a pretty face and a button nose. Her complexion was clear and soft and her grey eyes were large, with a hint of Eurasian slant. She moved well on her slim legs, like a model, aware of her attractions.

When she was a few yards from Brook, she hesitated, as though she’d remembered something, and rummaged in a generous, fleece-lined pocket.

‘Good morning,’ she smiled, revealing a full set of teeth in a large, slightly protruding mouth. There was no trace of an accent, which Brook, rightly or wrongly, always took as a sign of a middle-class upbringing.

Brook returned her smile, resisting the urge to flap his arms around his freezing torso. She consulted a piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Could you tell me where the Casa Mia Hotel is please?’

‘The Casa Mia?’ Brook knew it well. He could’ve taken her there blindfolded so many times had he been called in to deal with the unfortunates who fetched up in that DSS fleapit. Sergeant Hendrickson joked that it would be cheaper to have an officer permanently stationed there, to save on petrol. He wasn’t a natural comedian.

‘Why would you want to go to that dump?’

She seemed nonplussed by Brook’s frankness but she smiled, her grey eyes fixing him. ‘I’m staying there tonight. I’ve got an interview at the university, tomorrow.’

‘For what?’ asked Brook.

‘To study there,’ she replied. Her expression carried a semblance of reproach, as if Brook had suggested she looked like she’d be applying for a cleaning job.

Brook was tempted to challenge her further but he was shivering so he gave directions and darted inside.

He looked at his watch. He had an hour before Terri could call so he nipped inside to pull on a coat and went back out into the cold.

A couple of minutes later, he was staring up at the menu board in the steamy warmth of Jimbo’s Café, known to regulars as Jumbo’s because of the girth of its proprietor.

Brook sat down with his mug of tea to await his Farmhouse Special, having helped himself to one of the tabloids on the counter. He wasn’t feeling hungry, as a purely functional eater he rarely did, but he knew he hadn’t eaten for over a day so he had to take on board some fuel.

As he smirked at the nursery school alliteration of the Page Three caption, he suddenly became aware of a tightening of lips and stomachs amongst the only other customers, two stout lorry drivers tucking in to two oval plates of saturated fat, at the table in front of him. Brook turned to follow their gaze and saw the girl. She closed the door and smiled at him.

‘Hello again.’ She passed Brook and ignored the other table with its four eyes moving up and down her body like a barometer in a British summer. She ordered a cup of tea and painstakingly counted out the change from a small beaded purse.

‘Nothing to eet, meese?’ enquired Jumbo, in his broken English.

‘No thanks.’ She returned to Brook’s table with a smile and a nod at the chair in front of him.

‘Please,’ said Brook, folding the paper away. She sat opposite him and took off her coat. Full House Brook noticed, trying not to stare. To sharp intakes of breath from Jumbo and the other table, she pulled her baggy sweater over her head, almost pulling her flimsy T-shirt away from her unfettered breasts.

Eventually she sat down, pulling her T-shirt back over her midriff. Heavy sighs were released around the room and Brook almost expected a round of applause to follow. He tried to ignore the looks of exquisite pain directed at her from the other table and hoped his own expression didn’t betray the same yearning. Unattainable pleasures were to be avoided at all costs. The emotional epidermis of this male was pocked with enough wounds.

Still, it wasn’t easy for Brook to find a place to rest his eyes. Even looking directly at her face couldn’t hide the dark rim of her nipples goading him. Fortunately his breakfast arrived to distract him and he tucked in with more gusto than he’d felt a moment earlier. ‘No joy, then?’ he mumbled, through a mouthful of toast.

‘No, you were right. It wasn’t a very nice place,’ she replied absently.

Brook looked up to try and fathom why she’d need to lie. He saw her looking at his plate and realised that she didn’t have enough money to buy herself any food. Come to think of it, when he looked again, her cheeks did seem a little hollow, gaunt even. He was savvy enough to avoid wounding her pride by offering to buy her something so he just rolled his two sausages to the side of his plate and shook his head.

‘I told him no sausages,’ Brook complained. ‘I hate sausages. Look, I’ve paid for them already. Would you have them? I can’t stand waste.’

She seemed to perk up a little. ‘Well if you’re sure you don’t want them?’

‘I’m certain,’ he said and before the last syllable was out, she’d fallen on them as delicately as she could manage. Watching her mimic fellatio, Brook wished he’d offered her some toast instead but they were gone in a trice and she smiled gratefully at him.

Brook returned her smile but was puzzled. What did she want? She hadn’t had time to get to the Casa Mia and back and he knew, as a graduate himself, there was little likelihood of entrance interviews in the week before Christmas. She looked far too classy to be on the game but you never could tell; it wasn’t the exclusive preserve of pressured single mothers and granite-faced fortysome-things. She wouldn’t have been out of place in better parts of London but this was the rough end of Derby.

‘Where will you go now?’ he asked, trying to get to the bottom of it. He didn’t have long to wait.

‘I’ve tried everywhere else. All full,’ she said, unable to look at him. ‘I’ll have to go back there, I suppose.’

Brook scrutinised her, chewing both his food and his thoughts. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’ She looked at him for the first time without the discomfort of deceit so Brook decided it was the truth. He had nothing to lose, certainly nothing valuable in his flat, except Cat.

‘Look. I go to work at eight. I’ll leave a key under a brick near the back door, right.’ She feigned surprise quite well. ‘It’s a bit shabby but if you can’t find anywhere else at all, there’s a sofa for the night, if you want it? No strings and no charge.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that? For a complete stranger, I mean.’

‘Why? Because I was a penniless student once, for all the good it did me, and because you’re not much older than my daughter and I’d hate to think of Terri wandering around a strange city without a place to stay. Also I’m a policeman, so it’s my job to prevent crime.’ He looked hard at her for signs to betray that she was on the make in any way. There were none.

Instead recognition flickered across her features. ‘You were on the TV last night,’ she said, open-mouthed, pointing at him, ‘about those murders.’ Brook nodded his confirmation, basking ever so slightly in his new-found celebrity. Top of the world ma. ‘Well, I’d feel much safer under a policeman’s roof than some of the hotels I’ve seen. Thanks very much for the offer.’

She stood up to leave and held out her hand to shake his. ‘I’m Vicky.’

‘Damen.’ Brook shook her hand and shot her a mechanical smile, trying to mask his fresh doubts about her age. If she thought being a policeman was a guarantee of moral rectitude, she must be more naive than he’d assumed.

She reassembled her layers, drained her cup and headed for the door, throwing a beautiful smile over her shoulder at him. This time four pairs of eyes took the tour around her southern hemisphere.

Brook turned back towards the occupants of the neighbouring table who were radiating a mixture of resentment and respect. He shrugged his shoulders modestly and pulled his best ‘Yeah-I’m-a-babe-magnet’ face before resuming his breakfast.

The phone rang just after seven-thirty. Brook picked up before the end of the first ring.

‘Terri?’

‘Dad.’

‘Talk to me.’

‘Dad, stop panicking. There’s nothing wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean there’s nothing wrong. I just got worked up about some silly thing, that’s all.’

There was silence as Brook wondered what to say. He wasn’t able to square away his daughter’s reassurances with her barely contained anxiety of the previous day. He decided to gamble.

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