LUKE DELANEY
Cold Killing

DEDICATION

There are so many people I could dedicate this book to, without whom my writing career would have been over before it even began, but I feel a shared dedication can some how lose much of its power and I didn’t want that as this particular dedication is so personal to me and indeed others who were close to the man.

So I dedicate this first novel to my dad, Mike. For reasons of maintaining the anonymity of my family, friends and myself, I cannot say too much and nor would he want me to. I could talk about his brilliance in his own field and the worldwide respect and admiration he is held in amongst his peers. I could talk about his meteoric rise from very humble beginnings to the very top of his difficult trade, but that’s not really what I remember about him most.

What I remember about him most was his gentleness, kindness, incredible generosity and painful honesty. He was the best moral compass a young man could have had, especially one with ambitions to join the police. I would be lying if I said tempting opportunities didn’t present themselves, but the thought of letting not just myself but my parents down kept me well and truly on the straight and narrow.

My dad taught me one thing above all others – that no matter how much we achieve in our chosen professions, no matter how much wealth and power we obtain – what is really important is to be a good man. Just be a good man. He was a very good man.

Sadly Mike passed away three years ago aged a very young seventy-two. Another victim to the great taker of men – cancer. The world has felt a poorer place ever since. He is much missed and much loved.

For Mike.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Read on for an extract of The Keeper

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Saturday. I agreed to come to the park with the wife and children. They’re over there on the grassy hill, just along from the pond. They’ve fed themselves, fed the ducks and now they’re feeding their own belief that we’re one normal happy family. And to be fair, as far as they’re concerned, we are. I won’t let the sight of them spoil my day. The sun is shining and I’m getting a bit of a tan. The memory of the latest visit is still fresh and satisfying. It keeps the smile on my face.

Look at all these people. Happy and relaxed. They’ve no idea I’m watching them. Watching as small children wander away from their mothers too distracted by idle chat to notice. Then they realize their little darling has wandered too far and up goes that shrill shriek of an over-protective parent, followed by a leg slap for the child and more shrieking.

I am satisfied for the time being. The fun I had last week will keep me contented for a while, so everyone is safe today.

I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with the little queer. I made it look like a domestic murder. I’ve heard fights between people like him can get nasty, so I had a bit of fun with the idea.

He was easy enough to dispatch. These people live dangerous lives. They make perfect victims. So I hunted amongst them, looking for someone, and I found him.

I had already decided to spend the evening stalking the patrons of a Vauxhall nightclub, Utopia. What a ridiculous name. More like Hell, if you ask me. I told my wife I was out of town on business, packed some spare clothes, toiletries, the usual things for a night away and booked a hotel room in Victoria. I could hardly turn up at home in the early hours. That would arouse suspicions. I couldn’t have that. Everything at home needed to appear … normal.

I also packed a paper decorating suit that I bought at Homebase, several pairs of surgical gloves − readily available from all sorts of shops − a shower cap and some plastic bags to cover my feet. A little noisy, but effective. And last but not least a syringe. All fitted neatly into a small rucksack.

Avoiding the CCTV cameras that swamped the area, I watched the entrance to the club from the shadows of the railway bridge as the sound of the trains reverberated through the archways.

I had already spied my target entering the club earlier that evening. The excitement made my testicles tighten. Yes, he was truly worthy of my special attentions. This wasn’t the first time I had seen him. I had watched him a couple of weeks earlier, watched him whore himself inside the club with whoever could match his price. I had been searching for the perfect victim, knowing the police would only check CCTV from the night he died or, if they were especially diligent, maybe the week before.

I had stood in the midst of the heaving throng of stinking, foul humanity, bodies brushing past my own, tainting my being with their diseased imperfection, while at the same time inflaming my already excited, heightened senses. I so wanted to reach out and take each and every one of them by the throat, crushing trachea after trachea as the dead began to pile at my feet. I fought hard to control the surging strength within, then terror gripped me, terror like I have never felt in my entire life. Terror that the real me was revealing itself, that all those around me could see me changing in front of their very eyes, my skin glowing brilliant red, bright white light spilling from my eyes and ears, vomiting from my mouth. Heavy drops of sweat had snaked down my back, guided by my swelling, cramping back muscles. Somehow I had managed to move my legs, pushing through a crowd of squabbling worshippers until I reached the bar and stared into the giant mirror hanging behind it. Relief washed over me, slowing my heart and cooling my sweat as I could see I hadn’t changed, hadn’t betrayed myself.

Now the time for watching was over. It was time for my prize, my release, my relief. All was in place. All was as it needed to be. At last I saw him leaving the club. He was shouting goodbyes, but seemed to be alone. He walked casually under the railway bridge, heading towards Vauxhall Bridge. I moved quickly and silently to the other side of the railway bridge and waited for him. As he neared, I stepped out. He saw me, but didn’t look scared. He returned my smile as I spoke to him.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Yes,’ he replied, still smiling, stepping closer to the street light to better see me. ‘Is there something I can do for … you,’ he said, recognition spreading across his face. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’ Yes, I’d been with him before. A risk, but a calculated one. A little more than a week ago, inside the nightclub, I’d introduced myself without speaking, making sure he saw my smiling face just long enough so he’d recognize it again. Later I met him outside. I paid him what he asked, all in advance, and we went back to his flat where I defiled myself inside him and even allowed him to defile the inside of me. The sex wasn’t important, or even pleasurable – that wasn’t the point of being with him. I wanted to feel him while he was alive, to understand he wasn’t merely an inanimate thing, but a real live person. I couldn’t be with him like that the night I dispatched him in case I left the faintest trace of semen or saliva on his body. Being with him a week or so before would give any such evidence time to degrade and die. And of course we practised safe sex: he to protect himself from the Gay Plague and I to protect myself from detection. I’d shaved away my pubic hair and wore a full-faced rubber mask that also covered my head, stopping any head hairs from being left at the scene, as well as rubber gloves to eliminate the risk of leaving fingerprints – all of which the little queer thought was simply part of the fun. But the fun, the real fun, was yet to come and I had more than a week to fantasise about events that lay ahead.

The days had passed painfully slowly, testing my patience and control to the limit, but the memories of the night I had been with him and the thought of things to come carried me through and before I knew it he was standing in front of me, his small, straight white teeth glistening in the street lights, his oval-shaped head too large for his scrawny neck, perched on slim, narrow shoulders. His hair was blond and straight, shoulder-length, styled to make him look like a surfer, but his skin was pale and his body weak. The most athletic thing he had ever done was drop to his knees. His T-shirt was too tight and short, revealing his flat stomach, disappearing into hipster designer jeans worn to provoke the sexual urges of his peers.

I told him I needed to be with him again. I lied that I had been inside the club and had seen him dancing, that I had been too nervous to approach him then, but now I really wanted him. We talked some more crap then he said, ‘You know I’m not cheap. If you want to be with me again it’ll cost.’

He suggested we go to my place so I told him my boyfriend would be there, but he started rambling on about not taking people back to his flat and how last time had been an exception, until I pulled another two fifties from my wallet and thrust them into his hand. He smiled.

We went to my car, fixed with false plates, and drove to his shit-hole in south-east London where I was sure not to park too close to his block. Telling him I didn’t want to take the risk of being seen walking to his flat with him, I suggested that he go ahead and leave the door unlocked.

I waited a couple of minutes, then, as the street was empty, no one staring from windows, I walked to the flat. The block was old, cold and smelled of piss, but he had been a good boy and left the door unlocked. I quietly entered and flicked the lock on. He appeared around the corner at the end of the corridor, from what I knew was the living room. He spoke.

‘Was that you locking the door?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Can’t be too careful these days.’

‘Afraid someone’s going to burst in on us and spoil the party?’

‘Something like that.’

The excitement was unbearable. My stomach was so cramped with anticipation I could hardly breathe. Inside, my mind was screaming, but I was still wearing my nervous smile as I walked into the living room.

The whore was crouched by his CD player. I told him I wanted to clean up a little and headed for the bathroom down the hallway.

I took my bag with me and quickly, if somewhat awkwardly, pulled on the suit, the shower cap, rubber gloves and finally the plastic bags over my shoes. I looked in the mirror, filling my lungs with air drawn in hard through my nose. I was ready.

Fully prepared, I returned to the living room. He turned and saw me dressed and resplendent. He’d already removed his T-shirt, and he started to giggle, covering his mouth as if to stop himself.

He spoke to me. ‘Is this how we’re going to get our kicks tonight then?’

‘Sort of,’ I replied. ‘Sort of.’

They were the last words he spoke, although he may have said ‘please’ a little later. By then the blood bubbling up into his mouth made it just a gargle.

With a smooth, swift, practised hand I grabbed an iron statue of a naked Indian he kept on his side table and I used it to smash his skull, not hitting him hard enough to kill him straight away, merely to render him semi-conscious and virtually paralysed. He had been on his knees when I hit him, which was good − less distance to fall meant less noise when he hit the floor.

I watched him for a while, standing over him like the victor in a prizefight, watching his chest rise and fall with each painful, strained breath, the blood initially spurting from the wound in his head, then slowing to a steady flow as his heart grew too weak to pump it at the pressure his body required to stay alive. Every few seconds his right leg would twitch like a dying bird.

It wouldn’t have been as I had dreamed if he hadn’t been at least partly conscious when I went to him with an ice pick I found in his drinks cabinet. I needed him to be alive as I cut him. I needed to see him try to stop me each time I pushed the ice pick into his dying body: not stabbing frenziedly, but placing it deliberately against his pale skin before pushing the point through with a deliciously satisfying popping sound. Now and then he would reach up and pitifully try to defend himself from the torture. I told him not to be a naughty boy and continued with my work. It was a shame his brain haemorrhaging had caused his eyes to turn red, as I had wanted to contrast his blue eyes against the pale bloodied skin. Next time I’d do better.

His perforated body almost began to disgust me, to make me want to flee from the scene, but I couldn’t stop yet. Not until all was as close as it could be to how I had seen it in my mind the first time I knew I would be visiting him. I would continue with my work, despite the foul stench emanating from the holes in his stomach and intestines, the urine and excreta that were now leaking from his transformed body.

He held on for forty minutes, his eyes flickering slightly open for a few minutes at a time. When they were open I did my work, stopping whenever he passed out, unable to bear the pain or grasp his situation. I had to punch him in the face every so often to stop him calling out. Not that he could have realistically raised more than a whimper. Still, I had to be sure.

When he finally died, a slow, quiet hiss of air escaping from his lips and the breaches in his chest wall told me that my fun had come to an end. I put on a clean pair of surgical gloves and took the three hundred pounds cash I had given him earlier from his trouser pocket. I really didn’t want to leave that behind. I carefully and quietly broke apart some furniture and generally arranged the room as if a violent struggle had occurred. Next I used the syringe I’d brought to draw blood from his mouth and sprayed it about the room: on the walls, over the furniture, the carpet, making spray patterns to suggest a violent struggle had taken place. Then I moved to the corner of the room I had left clean. I removed my clothes and put them inside a plastic bag and put that bag inside another plastic bag and repeated this twice more. I ensured each plastic bag was tied securely and finally put them in my rucksack. I put new plastic bags on my feet, not wanting to take the chance that I might step on a spot of blood – that sort of evidence can be difficult to explain. I put on another clean pair of rubber surgical gloves and left the living room. I would burn the lot in my garden the following evening, the safest way to dispose of such incriminating items. To burn them in a public place risked attracting attention, while burial would leave them at the mercy of inquisitive animals.

I moved quietly to the front door. I took the plastic bags off my shoes and looked through the spyhole. Nobody about. Just to be sure, I listened at the door, careful not to let my ear press against it and possibly leave a mark like a fingerprint, which I hear can happen.

When I was totally happy I slipped out of the flat, leaving the front door open so as not to make any more noise than necessary. The statue of the Indian and the ice pick I threw in the Thames as I headed north to my hotel. The thought of the police wasting hours searching for weapons that wouldn’t help their investigation in the slightest pleased me.

When I reached my hotel I slipped in through the side door next to the bar, only generally used as a fire exit. I knew it could open from the outside and had no CCTV camera trained on it. I already had the key card for my room, having checked in earlier that day. I took a long shower, keeping the water as hot as I could bear, scrubbing skin, nails and hair vigorously with a nail brush until my entire body felt like it had been burned by flames. I had removed the plug cover to allow any items washed from my body to flow easily into London’s sewage system. After the shower I took a long steaming bath and scrubbed myself again. Once dry, I lay naked on the bed and drank two bottles of water, at peace now. Satisfied. Soon sleep came and I dreamed the same beautiful dream over and over.

2
Thursday morning

It was 3 a.m. and Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan drove through the dreary streets of New Cross, south-east London. He had been born and raised in nearby Dulwich, and for as long as he could remember, these streets had been a dangerous place. People could quickly become victims here, regardless of age, sex or colour. Life had little value.

But these worries were for other people, not Sean. They were for the people who had nine-to-five jobs in shops and offices. Those who arrived bleary-eyed to work each morning, then scuttled home nervously every evening, only feeling safe once they’d bolted themselves behind closed doors.

Sean didn’t fear the streets, having dealt with the worst they could throw at him. He was a detective inspector in charge of one of South London’s Murder Investigation Teams, dedicated to dealing with violent death. The killers hunted their victims and Sean hunted them. He drove with the window down and doors unlocked.

Less than an hour earlier he’d been asleep at home when Detective Sergeant Dave Donnelly called. There’d been a murder. A bad one. A young man beaten and stabbed to death in his own flat. One minute Sean was lying by his wife’s side, the next he was driving to the place where a young man’s life had been torn away.

He found the address without difficulty. The streets around the murder scene were eerily quiet. He was pleased to see the uniformed officers had done their job properly and taped off a large cordon around the block the flat was in. He’d been to scenes before where the cordon started and stopped at the front door. How much evidence had been carried away from scenes on the soles of shoes? He didn’t want to think about it.

There were two marked patrol cars alongside Donnelly’s unmarked Ford. He always laughed at the murder scenes on television, with dozens of police cars parked outside, all with blue lights swirling away. Inside, dozens of detectives and forensic guys would be falling over each other. Reality was different. Entirely different.

Real crime scenes were all the more disturbing for their quietness − the violent death of the victim would leave the atmosphere shattered and brutalised. Sean could feel the horror closing in around him as he examined a scene. It was his job to discover the details of death and over time he had grown hardened to it, but not immune. He knew that this scene would be no different.

He parked outside the taped-off cordon and climbed from the isolation of his car into the warm loneliness of the night, the stars of the clear sky and the street lights removing all illusion of darkness. If he had been anyone else, doing any other job, he might have noticed how beautiful it was, but such thoughts had no place here. He flashed his warrant card to the approaching uniformed officer and grunted his name. ‘DI Sean Corrigan, Serious Crime Group South. Where’s this flat?’

The uniformed officer was young. He seemed afraid of Sean. He must be new if a mere detective inspector scared him. ‘Number sixteen Tabard House, sir. It’s on the second floor, up the stairs and turn right. Or you could take the lift.’

‘Thanks.’

Sean opened the boot of his car and cast a quick glance over the contents squeezed inside. Two large square plastic bins contained all he would need for an initial scene examination. Paper suits and slippers. Various sizes of plastic exhibit bags, paper bags for clothing, half a dozen boxes of plastic gloves, rolls of sticky labels and of course a sledgehammer, a crowbar and other tools. The boot of Sean’s car would be mirrored by detectives’ cars across the world.

He pulled on a forensic containment suit and headed towards the stairwell. The block was of a type common to this area of London. Low-rise tenement blocks made from dark, oppressive, brown-grey brick which had been thrown up after the Second World War to house those bombed out of old slum areas. In their time they’d been a revelation − indoor toilets, running water, heating − but now only those trapped in poverty lived in them. They looked like prisons, and in a way that’s what they were.

The stairwell smelled of urine. The stench of humanity living on top of each other was unmistakable. This was summer and the vents of the flats pumped out the smells from within. Sean almost gagged on it, the sight, sound and smell of the tenement block reminding him all too vividly of his own childhood, living in a three-bedroom, council owned maisonette with his mother, two brothers, two sisters and his father – his father who would lead him away from the others, taking him to the upstairs bedroom where things would happen. His mother too frightened to intervene – thoughts of reaching for a knife in the kitchen drawer swirling in her head, but fading away as her courage deserted her. But the curse of his childhood had left him a rare and dark insightfulness – an ability to understand the motivation of those he hunted.

All too often the abused become the abusers as the darkness overtakes them, evil begetting evil – a terrible cycle of violence, virtually impossible to break – and so the demons of Sean’s past were too deeply assimilated in his being to ever be rid of. But Sean was different in that he could control his demons and his rage, using his shattered upbringing to allow him insights that other cops could only dream of into the crimes he investigated. He understood the killers, rapists and arsonists – understood why they had to do what they did, could interpret their motivation – see what they had seen, smell what they had smelt, feel what they had felt – their excitement, power, lust, revulsion, guilt, regret, fear. He could make leaps in investigations others struggled to understand, filling in the blanks with his unique imagination. Crime scenes came alive in his mind’s eye, playing in his head like a movie. He was no psychic or clairvoyant, he was just a cop – but a cop with a broken past and dangerous future, his skill at reading the ones he hunted born of his own dark, haunted past. Where better for a failed disciple of true evil to hide than amongst cops? Where better to turn his unique tools to good use than the police? He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and headed for the crime scene – the murder scene.

Sean stopped briefly to acknowledge another uniformed officer posted at the front door of the flat. The constable lifted the tape across the door and watched him duck inside. He looked down the corridor of the flat. It was bigger than it had seemed from the outside. Detective Sergeant Donnelly waited for him, his large frame filling the doorway, his moustache all but concealing the movement of his lips as he talked. Dave Donnelly, twenty-year plus veteran of the Metropolitan Police and very much Sean’s old school right-hand man. His anchor to the logical and practical course of an investigation and part-time crutch to lean on. They’d had their run-ins and disagreements, but they understood each other − they trusted each other.

‘Morning, guv’nor. Stick to the right of the hallway here. That’s the route I’ve been taking in and out,’ Donnelly growled in his strange accent, a mix of Glaswegian and Cockney, his moustache twitching as he spoke.

‘What we got?’ Sean asked matter-of-factly.

‘No sign of forced entry. Security is good in the flat, so he probably let the killer in. All the damage to the victim seems to have been done in the living room. A real fucking mess in there. No signs of disturbance anywhere else. The living room is the last door on the right down the corridor. Other than that we’ve got a kitchen, two bedrooms, a separate bathroom and toilet. From what I’ve seen, the victim kept things reasonably clean and tidy. Decent taste in furniture. There’s a few photies of the victim around the place − as best I can tell, anyway. His injuries make it a wee bit difficult to be absolutely sure. There’s plenty of them with him, shall we say, embracing other men.’

‘Gay?’ Sean asked.

‘Looks that way. It’s early days, but there’s definitely some decent hi-fi and TV stuff around the place, and I notice several of the photies have our boy in far-flung corners of the world. Must have cost a few pennies. We’re not dealing with a complete loser here. He had a decent enough job, or he was a decent enough villain, although I don’t get the feel this is a villain’s home.’ Both men craned their heads around the hallway area, as if to confirm Donnelly’s assessment so far. He continued: ‘And I’ve found a few letters all addressed to a Daniel Graydon. Nothing for anyone else.’

‘Well, Daniel Graydon,’ Sean asked, ‘what the hell happened to you? And why?’

‘Shall we?’ With an outstretched hand pointing along the corridor, Donnelly invited Sean to continue.

They moved from room to room, leaving the living room to the end. They trod carefully, moving around the edges so as not to disturb any invisible footprint indentations left in the carpets or minute but vital evidence: a strand of hair, a tiny drop of blood. Occasionally Sean would take a photograph with his small digital camera. He would keep the photographs for his personal use only, to remind him of details he had seen, but also to put himself back at the scene any time he needed to sense it again, to smell the odour of blood, to taste the sickly sweet flavour of death. To feel the killer’s presence. He wished he could be alone in the flat, without the distraction of having to talk to anyone – to explain what he was seeing and feeling. It had been the same ever since he was a young cop, his ability to step into the shoes of the offender, be it a residential burglary or murder. But only the more alarming scenes seemed to trigger this reaction. Walking around scenes of domestic murders or gangland stabbings he saw more than most other detectives, but felt no more than they did. This scene already seemed different. He wished he was alone.

Sean felt uncomfortable in the flat. Like an intruder. As if he should be constantly apologizing for being there. He shook off the feeling and mentally absorbed everything. The cleanliness of the furniture and the floors. Were the dishes washed and put away? Had any food been left out? Did anything, no matter how small, seem somehow out of place? If the victim kept his clothing neatly folded away, then a shirt on the floor would alert Sean’s curiosity. If the victim had lived in squalor, a freshly cleaned glass next to a sink full of dirty dishes would attract his eye. Indeed, Sean had already noted something amiss.

Sean and Donnelly came to the living room. The door was ajar, exactly how it had been found by the young constable. Donnelly moved inside. Sean followed.

There was a strong smell of blood – a lot of blood. It was a metallic smell. Like hot copper. Sean recalled the times he’d tasted his own blood. It always made him think that it tasted exactly like it smelled. At least this man had been killed recently. It was summer now – if the victim had been there for a few days the flat would have reeked. Flies would have filled the room, maggots infesting the body. He felt a jolt of guilt for being glad the man had just been killed.

Sean crouched next to the body, careful to avoid stepping in the pool of thick burgundy blood that had formed around the victim’s head. He’d seen many murder victims. Some had almost no wounds to speak of, others had terrible injuries. This was a bad one. As bad as he’d seen.

‘Jesus Christ. What the hell happened in this room?’ Sean asked.

Donnelly looked around. The dining-room table was overturned. Two of the chairs with it had been destroyed. The TV had been knocked from its stand. Pictures lay smashed on the floor. CDs were strewn around the room. The lights from the CD player blinked in green.

‘Must have been a hell of a fight,’ Donnelly said.

Sean stood up, unable to look away from the victim: a white male, about twenty years old, naked from the waist up, wearing hipster jeans that were heavily soaked in blood. One sock remained on his right foot, the other was nowhere to be seen. He was lying on his back, the left leg bent under the right, with both arms stretched out in a crucifix position. There were no restraints of any kind in evidence. The left side of his face and head had been caved in. The victim’s light hair allowed Sean to see two serious head wounds indicating horrific fractures to the skull. Both eyes were swollen almost completely shut and his nose was smashed, with congealed blood clustered around it. The mouth hadn’t escaped punishment, the lips showing several deep cuts, with the jaw hanging dislocated. Sean wondered how many teeth would be missing. The right ear was nowhere to be seen. He hoped to God the man had died from the first blow to his head, but he doubted it.

The pool of blood by the victim’s head was the only heavy saturation area other than his clothing. Elsewhere there were dozens of splash marks: on the walls, furniture and carpet. Sean imagined the victim’s head being whipped around by the ferocity of the blows, the blood from his wounds travelling in a fine spray through the air until it landed where it now remained. Once examined properly, these splash marks should provide a useful map of how the attack had developed.

The victim’s body had not been spared. Sean wasn’t about to start counting, but there must have been at least fifty to a hundred stab wounds. The legs, abdomen, chest and arms had all been brutally attacked. Sean looked around for weapons, but could see none. He returned his gaze to the shattered body, trying to free his mind, to see what had happened to the young man now lying dead on his own floor. For the most fleeting of moments he saw a figure hunched over the dying man, something that resembled a screwdriver rather than a knife gripped in his hand, but the image was gone as quickly as it arrived. Finally he managed to look away and speak.

‘Who found the body?’

‘That would be us,’ Donnelly replied.

‘How so?’

‘Well, us via a concerned neighbour.’

‘Is the neighbour a suspect?’

‘No, no,’ Donnelly dismissed the idea. ‘Some young bird from a few doors down, on her way home with her kebab and chips after a night of shagging and drinking.’

‘Did she enter the flat?’

‘No. She’s not the hero type, by all accounts. She saw the door slightly open and decided we ought to know about it. If she’d been sober, she probably wouldn’t have bothered.’

Sean nodded his agreement. Alcohol made some people conscientious citizens in the same way it made others violent temporary psychopaths.

‘Uniform sent a unit around to check it out and found our victim here,’ Donnelly added.

‘Did he trample the scene?’

‘No, he’s a probationer straight out of Hendon and still scared enough to remember what he’s supposed to do. He kept to the edges, touched nothing.’

‘Good,’ Sean said automatically, his mind having already moved on, already growing heavy with possibilities. ‘Well, whoever did this is either very angry or very ill.’

‘No doubt about that,’ Donnelly agreed.

There was a pause, both men taking the chance to breathe deeply and steady themselves, clearing their minds, a necessary prelude before trying to think coldly and logically. Seeing this brutality would never be easy, would never be matter-of-fact.

‘Okay. First guess is we’re looking at a domestic murder.’

‘A lover’s tiff?’ Donnelly asked.

Sean nodded. ‘Whoever did this probably took a fair old beating themselves,’ he added. ‘A man fighting for his life can do a lot of damage.’

‘I’ll check the local hospitals,’ Donnelly volunteered. ‘See if anyone who looks like they’ve been in a real ding-dong has been admitted.’

‘Check with the local police stations for the same and wake the rest of the team up. Let’s get everyone together at the station for an eight a.m. briefing. And we might as well see if we can get a pathologist to examine the body while it’s still in place.’

‘That won’t be easy, guv.’

‘I know, but try. See if Dr Canning is available. He sometimes comes out if it’s a good one, and he’s the best.’

‘I’ll do what I can, but no promises.’

Sean surveyed the scene. Most murders didn’t take long to solve. The most obvious suspect was usually the right suspect. The panicked nature of the crime provided an Aladdin’s cave of forensic evidence. Enough to get a conviction. In cases like this, detectives often had to do little more than wait for the laboratory to examine the exhibits from the scene and provide all the answers. But as Sean looked around something was already niggling away at his instincts.

Donnelly spoke again. ‘Seems straightforward?’

‘Yeah, I’m pretty happy.’ He let the statement linger.

‘But …?’

‘The victim almost certainly knew his killer. No forced entry, so he’s let him in. A boyfriend is a fair bet. This smells like a domestic murder. A few too many drinks. A heated argument. A fight kicks off and gets nastier and nastier, both end up beaten to a pulp and one dies. A crime of passion which the killer had no time to prepare. He’s lost it for a while, killed a friend. A lover. Now all he wants to do is run. Get away from this flat and be somewhere safe to think out his next move. But there’s a couple of things missing for me.’

‘Such as?’

‘They’ve probably been having a drink, but there are no glasses anywhere. Can you remember dealing with a domestic murder where alcohol wasn’t involved?’

‘Maybe he cleaned the place up a bit?’ Donnelly offered. ‘Washed the glasses and put them away.’

‘Why would he bother cleaning a glass when his blood and fingerprints must be all over the place after a struggle like this?’

‘Panic?’ Donnelly suggested. ‘Wasn’t thinking straight. He cleaned up his glass, maybe started to clean up other stuff too before he realized he was wasting his time.’

‘Maybe.’

Sean was thinking hard. The lack of signs of alcohol was a small point, but any experienced detective would have expected to find evidence of its use at a scene like this. An empty bottle of cider. A half-empty bottle of Scotch, or a champagne bottle to fuel the rage of the rich. But it was the image he was beginning to visualize that was plaguing him with doubt – the image his mind was piecing together using evidence that was missing as much as evidence that was present. The image of a figure crouching very deliberately over the victim. No frenzy, no rage, but evil in a human form.

‘There’s something else,’ he told Donnelly. ‘The killing obviously took place in the living room. We know he must have gone out the front door because everything else is locked up nice and tight. But the hallway is clean. Nothing. The carpet is light beige, yet there’s no sign of a bloody footprint. And the door handle? Nothing. No blood. Nothing.

‘So our killer beats and stabs the victim to death in a frenzied moment of rage and yet stops to clean his hands before opening any doors. After killing a man who may have been his lover, he’s suddenly calm enough to take his shoes off and tiptoe out the place. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

Donnelly joined in. ‘And if our boy did stop to clean himself up before leaving, then where did he get clean? He had two choices. The sink in the bathroom or the sink in the kitchen.’

Sean continued for him. ‘We’ve seen both of them. Clean as a whistle. No signs of recent use. Not even a splash of water.’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly said. ‘But it’s probably nothing. We’re assuming too much. Maybe forensics will prove us wrong and find some blood in the hallway we can’t see.’

Sean wasn’t convinced, but before he could reply the uniformed constable at the front door called into the flat. ‘Excuse me, sir, your lab team is here.’

Sean shouted a reply. ‘Coming out.’

He and Donnelly walked from the flat carefully, keeping to the route they’d used on entering. They walked to the edge of the taped-off cordon where they knew Detective Sergeant Andy Roddis would be waiting with his team of specially trained detectives and scene examiners.

DS Roddis saw Sean and Donnelly approach. He observed their forensics suits but was not impressed. ‘I take it you two have already been trampling all over my scene.’ He was right to be annoyed. The book said no one into the house except the scene examination team. ‘Next time I’m going to seize your clothing as exhibits.’

Sean needed Roddis on his side.

‘Sorry, Andy,’ he said. ‘We haven’t touched a thing. Promise.’

‘I hear you have a dead male for me in flat number sixteen. Yes?’ Roddis still sounded irritated.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Donnelly.

Roddis turned to Sean. ‘Anything special you want from us?’

‘No. Our money’s on a domestic, so stick to the basics. You can keep the expensive toys locked away.’

‘Very well,’ Roddis replied. ‘Blood, fibres, prints, hair and semen it is.’

Donnelly and Sean were already walking away. Sean called over his shoulder. ‘I’m briefing my team at eight a.m. Try and get me a preliminary report before then.’

‘I might be able to phone something through to you. Will that do?’

‘Fine,’ said Sean. Right now he would take anything on offer.

It was shortly before 8 a.m. and Sean sat alone in his bleak, functional office in Peckham police station, surrounded by the same cheap wooden furniture that adorned each and every police building across London. The office was just about big enough to house two four-foot battered oblong desks and two uncomfortable chairs for the frequent visitors. Two ancient-looking computers sat one on each desk and the harsh fluorescent lights above painted everything a dull yellow. How he envied those TV detectives with their swivel leather chairs, banks of all-seeing all-dancing computers, and most of all the Jasper Conran reading lamps slung low over shining glass desks. Reality was mundane and functional.

Sean thought about the victim. What sort of person had he been? Was he loved? Would he be missed? He would find out soon enough. The phone rang and made him jump.

‘DI Corrigan.’ He rarely wasted words on the phone. Years of speaking into radios had trimmed his speech.

‘Mr Corrigan, it’s DS Roddis. You wanted an update for your briefing?’ Roddis didn’t recognize any ranks above his own, but his powerful position meant he was never challenged by his seniors. He decided the forensic resources assigned to each case, and it was he who knew the right people at the right laboratories across the south-east who could get the job done. Everybody, regardless of rank, respected his monopoly.

‘Thanks for calling. What you got for me?’

‘Well, it’s early days.’

Sean knew the lab team would have done little more than get organized. ‘I appreciate that, but I’d like whatever you’ve got.’

‘Very well. We’ve had a cursory look around. The entry and exit point is surprisingly clean, given the nature of the attack. And the hallway was clean too. Perhaps we’ll find something when we get better lighting and some UV lamps. Other than that, nothing definite yet. The blood spray marks on the walls and furniture have me a little confused.’

‘Confused?’ Sean asked.

‘Having seen the victim’s wounds, I’m pretty sure the blow to the head all but killed him and it certainly knocked him down. I have a blood spray pattern on a wall that would be consistent with a blow to his head with a heavy object.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘If the victim was prostrate when the other injuries were inflicted then I would only expect to find small, localized sprays, but I’ve got numerous others, over the carpet, broken furniture, up the walls. They’re not consistent with his wounds.’

‘Then he must have other wounds we haven’t seen yet,’ Sean suggested. ‘Or maybe the blood is from the attacker?’

‘Possibly.’ Roddis sounded unconvinced. ‘No obvious murder weapon yet,’ he continued, ‘but it will probably turn up when we get into the search properly.’

‘Anything else?’ Sean asked, in hope more than expectation.

‘There are plenty of corres: address books, diaries, bank books and so on. It shouldn’t be too hard to confirm the victim’s identity. That’s it so far.’

Sean may not have particularly liked Roddis, but he valued his professionalism. ‘Thanks. It’ll be a help in the briefing. Might keep the team awake.’ He hung up.

Reclining in his chair, Sean stared at the lukewarm cup of coffee on his desk. What would it mean if the splash patterns didn’t match the wounds on the victim? Had the killer been badly injured himself and the blood sprays came from his wounds? He doubted it, especially if Roddis was right about the victim being all but taken out with the first blow to the head. And if he was knocked down with the first blow, then what the hell were the other injuries about? The answers would come, he reassured himself. Wait for the full forensic examination of the scene, the post-mortem of the victim. The answers would come. They always did.

He stood and looked out of his window down at the station car park. He saw DS Sally Jones outside furiously smoking a cigarette, laughing and joking with a couple of girls from the typing pool.

He watched her, admiring her. A five-foot-three bundle of energy. Her slender athletic legs contrasted with her slightly stocky, masculine upper-body. He tried to remember if he had seen her fair hair not tied back in a ponytail.

He loved her ability to connect with people. She could talk to anyone and make them feel that she was their best friend in the world, and so Sean sometimes used her to do the things he would find impossible to do well. Speaking with grieving parents. Telling a husband his wife had been raped and murdered in their own home. Sean had watched in awe as Sally told people unthinkable things and then half an hour later she would be laughing and joking, puffing on a cigarette, chatting with whoever was close enough. She was tough. Tougher than he would ever be. He smiled as he watched her.

Sean wondered why she was still alone. He couldn’t imagine doing this job and then going home to an empty house. Sally told him she was clearly too much for any man to handle. He had often tried to sense some sorrow in her. Some loneliness. He never could.

He checked the time. She was going to be late for the briefing. He could call out the window and warn her, but he decided it would be more fun to leave it.

He walked the short distance along the busy, brightly lit corridor: doors on both sides; old and new posters pinned and stuck to the walls, uniformly ignored by passers-by all too single-mindedly trying to get to wherever they were going to stop and take notice of someone else’s appeals for assistance. He reached the briefing room and entered. His team continued to chatter away amongst themselves. A couple of them, including Donnelly, mouthed a greeting. He nodded back.

The team was relatively small. Two detective sergeants − Sally and Donnelly − and ten detective constables. Sean sat in his usual chair at the head of a rectangular wooden table, the cheapest money could buy. He dropped his mobile phone and notebook in front of him and looked around − making sure everyone was there. He nodded to Donnelly, who understood the cue. They’d been working with each other long enough to be able to communicate without the need for words.

‘All right, people, listen up. The guv’nor wants to speak and we’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s park our arses and crack on.’ The murmuring faded as the team began to sit and concentrate on Sean.

Detective Constable Zukov spoke. ‘D’you want me to grab DS Jones, boss? I think she’s having a smoke in the yard.’

‘No. Don’t bother,’ Sean told him. ‘She’ll be here soon enough.’

The room fell silent, Sean looking at Donnelly with a slight grin on his face. They both turned to the briefing room door just as DS Sally Jones came bursting in. There was a low hum of stifled laughter.

‘Shit. Sorry I’m late, guv.’ The hum of low laughter grew. Sally swatted one of the constables across the head as she walked past. He threw his hands up in protest. ‘I told you to come and get me, Paulo.’ The constable didn’t answer, but the smile on his face said everything.

Sean joined in. ‘Afternoon, Sally. Thanks for joining us.’

‘It’s a pleasure, sir.’

‘As I’m sure you’ve all worked out, we’ve picked up another murder.’ Some of the team groaned.

Sally spoke up. ‘We’re only in summer and already we’ve had sixteen murders on this team alone. Eight still need preparing for court. Who’s going to put those court presentations together if we’re constantly being dumped on?’ There was a rumble of approval around the room.

‘No point moaning,’ Sean told them. ‘All the other teams are just as busy as we are, so we get this one. As you’re all no doubt aware, we don’t have a live investigation running so we’re the obvious choice.’

Sean was prepared for the grumblings. Police officers always grumbled. They were either moaning about being too busy or they were moaning about not earning enough overtime. It was a fact of life with police.

He continued. ‘Okay, this is the job. What we know so far is our victim was beaten and stabbed to death. At this time we believe the victim is Daniel Graydon, the occupier of the flat where we’re pretty certain the crime took place. But his facial injuries are severe, so visual identification has yet to be confirmed. We are treating the flat as our primary crime scene. Dave and I have already had a look around and it’s not pretty. The victim would appear to have been hit on the head with a heavy object and that may well have been the critical injury, although we’ll have to wait for the autopsy to confirm that. The stab wounds are numerous and spread across a wide area. This was a vicious, brutal attack.

‘It is suspected the victim may be gay, and the early theory is that it was probably a domestic. If that’s the case, then the killer himself could be hurt. We’re already checking the hospitals and custody suites on the off chance he was picked up for something else after fleeing the scene. I don’t want this to get complicated, so let’s keep it simple. A nice, neat, join-the-dots investigation will do me fine.’

Sean looked towards Sally.

‘Sally, I want you to pick four guys and start on door-to-door immediately. That time of night, beaten to death, someone must have heard or seen something. The rest of you, hang fire. The lab team is looking at the victim’s personal stuff, so we’ll have a long list of people to trace and chat with soon enough. I don’t expect it to be long before we have a decent idea who our prime suspect is.

‘Dave. You go office manager on this one.’ Donnelly nodded acknowledgement. ‘The rest of you check with Dave at least three times a day for your assignments. And remember,’ Sean added, ‘the first few hours are the most important, so let’s eat on the hoof and worry about sleep when the killer’s banged up downstairs.’

There were nods of approval as the group began to break up. Sean could sense their optimism, their trust in his leadership, his judgement. He hadn’t failed them yet.

He prayed this case would be no different.

It was almost 1 p.m. and Sean had spent the morning on the phone. He’d told the same story a dozen times. To his superintendent, the Intelligence Unit, the Gay and Lesbian liaison officer, the local uniformed duty officer, the Community Safety Inspector. He was sick of telling. Sally and Donnelly had returned for their meeting and sat in his office. Sally had brought coffee and sandwiches, which Sean ate without tasting. It was the first thing he had eaten since the phone call from Donnelly early that morning, so he was happy just to get something into his stomach.

Between bites they talked, all of them aware they hadn’t a moment to waste on a proper lunch. The first days of a murder inquiry were always the same – so much to get through and so little time. Forensic evidence degraded, witnesses’ memories faded, CCTV tapes would be recorded over. Time was Sean’s enemy now.

‘Anything from the door-to-door, Sally?’ he asked. ‘Give me good news only.’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I’ve still got guys down there knocking on doors, but so far all we’re being told is that Graydon kept himself to himself. No noisy parties. No fights. No problems. No nothing. Everybody says he was a nice kid. As for last night, nobody saw or heard a thing. Another quiet night in South London.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Sean argued. ‘A man gets beaten to death within a few feet of what, four other flats, and no one heard it?’

‘That’s what we’re being told.’

Sean sighed and turned towards Donnelly. ‘Dave?’

‘Aye. We’ve managed to make copies of his diary, address book and what have you. I’ve got a couple of the lads going through that now. Expect to be informed about next of kin pretty soon. No boyfriend yet, though. No one name coming up over and over. I’ll be sending the troops out to trace friends and associates as and when we have their details. Oh, and the Coroner’s Officer has been on the blower. The body’s been moved from the scene and taken to Guy’s Hospital. Post-mortem’s at four p.m. today.’

Sean’s mind flashed with the images of previous post-mortems he’d attended as he pushed what was left of his sandwiches to one side.

‘Who’s doing it?’

‘You’ve got your wish there, boss. It’s Dr Canning. Anything more from the forensics team at the scene?’

‘Not yet. Roddis doesn’t reckon they’ll be finished until about this time tomorrow, then as usual everything gets sent to the lab and we wait.’

A young detective from Sean’s team appeared at the door holding a small piece of paper pinched between his fingers. ‘I think I’ve found an address for the parents.’ The three detectives continued to look at him.

‘I’ll take that, thanks,’ Sally told him. The young detective handed her the note and backed away from the door.

Sean knew his responsibilities. ‘I’ll come too. Shit, this is gonna be fun. Dave, I’ll see you back here at about three thirty. You can take me to the post-mortem.’

‘I’ll be here,’ Donnelly assured him.

Sean tugged his jacket on and headed for the door, Sally in pursuit. ‘And remember,’ he told Donnelly, ‘if anyone asks, this is a straightforward domestic murder. No need to get anyone excited.’

‘Having doubts?’ Donnelly managed to ask before Sean was gone.

‘No,’ Sean answered, not entirely truthfully. For a second he was back in the flat, back at the scene of the slaughter, watching the killer moving around Graydon’s prostrate form, but he saw no panic or fury in his actions, no jealousy or rage, only a coldness – a sense of satisfaction.

Donnelly’s voice snapped him back. ‘You all right, guv’nor?’

‘Sorry, yes I’m fine. Just find me the boyfriend – whoever he is. Find him and you’ve found our prime suspect.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will,’ Sean told him as he watched him stride back into the main office.

3
Late Thursday afternoon

Sean and Donnelly walked along the corridors of Guy’s Hospital, heading for the mortuary. They were accompanied by Detective Constable Sam Muir who would be acting as exhibits officer – taking responsibility for any objects the pathologist found on or in the body during the post-mortem. Sean wondered if he would bump into his wife, Kate, one of the all too few doctors attending to the never-ending flow of patients through the Accident and Emergency department – the sick and injured from the surrounding areas of Southwark, Bermondsey and beyond. Some of London’s poorest and most forgotten, living in council flats where violence and crime were seldom far away, yet all of their degradation and suffering going unnoticed and unseen by the swarms of tourists wandering around Tower Bridge and Tooley Street. If only they knew how close they were to some of London’s most dangerous territory.

His mind returned to the victim’s parents. He and Sally had called at the small terraced house in Putney. A desirable neighbourhood on the whole, but boisterous on weekend evenings. Sally had done most of the talking.

Daniel had been their only child. The mother was devastated and didn’t care who saw her fall to the floor screaming. Her despair was a physical pain. When she could speak, all she could say was the name of her son.

The father was stunned. He didn’t know whether to help his wife or collapse himself. He ended up doing neither. Sean took him into the living room. Sally stayed with the mother.

They knew their son was gay. It had bothered the father at first, but he grew to accept it. What else could he do other than push the boy away? And he would never do that. He said his son worked as a nightclub manager. He wasn’t sure where, but Daniel had been doing well for himself and had no money problems, unlike other young people.

He hadn’t met any of his son’s friends. Daniel hadn’t kept in touch with his old school friends. He came home quite often, almost every Sunday for lunch. If he had a boyfriend then neither he nor his wife knew about it. Their son had said he wasn’t interested in anything like that. They hadn’t pressed him.

The father had asked what they were to do now. His wife would be finished. She lived for the boy, not him. He knew it and didn’t mind − but with the boy gone?

He wanted to know who would do this to his boy – who would do this to them? Why? Sean had no answers.

As the three detectives entered the mortuary they could see Dr Simon Canning preparing for the post-mortem. A body lay covered with a green sheet on what Sean knew would be a cold, metal operating table. Water continually ran under the body to an exit drain as the pathologist did his work, so that the whole thing resembled a large, shallow, stainless-steel bathtub.

Some detectives could detach themselves from the ugly reality of post-mortems, bury themselves in the science and art of the procedure. Unfortunately, Sean was not one of those detectives. For days to come images of his own post-mortem would blend with the memories of his shattered childhood. Meanwhile Dr Simon Canning was busy arranging his tools – bright, shiny, metal instruments for torturing the dead.

‘Afternoon, detectives.’

‘Doctor. Good to see you again,’ Sean replied.

‘I doubt that,’ said the pathologist. Canning was pleasant enough, but businesslike and succinct. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Inspector. I’ve started without you. I was just having a bit of a clean up before continuing. Right then, shall we get on with it?’

The doctor pulled back the sheet covering the body with one quick movement of his arm. Sean almost expected him to say, ‘Voila!’ like a waiter lifting the lid off a silver platter.

The hair on the back and side of the head was matted with blood − it looked sticky. Sean could clearly see the gashes in the side of the head and the small stab marks all over the naked body.

‘Seventy-seven,’ Canning told him.

Sean realized he was being spoken to. He glanced up at the doctor. ‘Sorry?’

‘Separate stab wounds. Seventy-seven in total. None in the back of the body. All in the front. Made by some form of stiletto knife, or an ice pick, but it’s the first blow to the head that killed him. Eventually.’

Dr Canning pointed to the head wound. Sean forced himself to lean closer to the body. ‘One can see the ear is missing. Not cut off, but more a case of the victim being hit so hard that whatever he was hit with crushed the skull and still had enough energy to tear the ear away as the swing of the object carried through.’

‘Nice,’ was all Sean said.

‘And the victim was on his knees when the first blow was struck,’ the doctor continued. ‘We can see the cut to the scalp is angled downwards, not upwards. The killer swung low, not high.’

‘Or he was hit from behind?’ Sean offered.

‘No,’ Canning told him. ‘He fell backwards, not forwards. Look at the stains from the flow of blood. They run to the back of the head, not towards the face.’

He looked at the detectives, making sure they were concentrating on what he was saying and not what they were seeing. He had their attention.

‘But that’s all straightforward. The interesting thing is the angle of the stab wounds. Bearing in mind of course that our friend here has wounds from his ankles to his throat, I can be almost positive the victim was already prostrate on the floor when he was stabbed. That in itself isn’t unusual.’ The doctor paused to catch his breath before continuing his lecture. ‘The interesting bit is this − most of the stab wounds are at the wrong angle of entry. You see?’

‘I’m not quite with you, Doctor.’

‘It’s like this.’ Canning looked around for a prop. He found a pair of scissors. ‘Firstly, I know the killer is probably right-handed. The angle of the stab wounds tells me that, as does the fact the victim was hit on the left side of his head. Now, imagine I’m the killer. The victim can play himself. In order to stab somebody from head to toe, the killer would have to be at the side of the body. Not on top, as you would first imagine. If he sat astride the body then it would have been difficult to reach around and stab the thighs, shins.’ The doctor twisted his body back towards the victim’s feet so as to give a practical demonstration. His point was well made.

‘Also, the entire body has puncture wounds. There isn’t a large enough unmolested area to suggest the killer was sitting astride the victim.’

‘So the killer was kneeling on the side of the victim when he stabbed him. That doesn’t help me,’ Sean told him.

Canning continued. ‘What I’m saying is that the killer didn’t crouch down next to the victim and stab away as we would expect in most frenzied crimes of passion. This killer moved around the body stabbing at different areas. There’s no doubt about it. It’s as if the killer didn’t want to be uncomfortable. He didn’t want to over-stretch, almost as if he was placing ritual stab wounds, or something of that nature. It’s a strange one.

‘If you ask me, I’d say this was probably not a frenzied attack. These stab wounds are deliberately placed. Controlled. The killer took his time.’

Sean felt a coldness grip his body and mind as he flashed back to the image he’d had of the killer’s careful, machine-like actions as he stabbed the victim to death. He ran a hand slowly through his short brown hair. He could deny many things, but he couldn’t deny his instincts. His gut told him things were going to become difficult. Complicated. The domestic theory was beginning to leak and in all likelihood they weren’t looking for a scared lover any more. There would be no tearful suspect surrendering to custody because he couldn’t deal with the guilt. They were now after something else. Sean was sure of it. He exhaled deeply, his mind swirling with questions.

‘We need to get back to the office. Are you finished here, Doctor?’

‘Almost. One last thing.’ He pointed to the victim’s wrists. ‘It’s very faint, but it’s there. On both wrists.’

Sean looked closely. He could see some discolouration of the victim’s skin. Thin bands of slightly darker tissue. Canning continued his analysis.

‘They’re old bruises. Probably caused by ligatures. He was tied with something. I’ll have a look under ultraviolet; that’ll show up any other old injuries. I’ll check the entire body. All my findings will be in the final report.’

‘Fine,’ Sean said, the sense of urgency clear in his voice.

‘Please, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll keep you informed.’

Donnelly spoke. ‘D’you want me to sack looking for a boyfriend, boss?’

Sean shook his head. ‘No. Let’s check it out as a matter of course. The boyfriend could still be the killer. Young Daniel here may have hooked up with some freak and not even known it. No forced entry to the flat, remember?’ Sean said it, but he didn’t believe it. Besides, if there was a boyfriend around, he had a right to know about Daniel. They needed to find him anyway.

‘We’d better get back and break the good news.’

‘You gonna tell the superintendent about this, boss?’ asked Donnelly.

‘I don’t have much choice.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late. I wouldn’t want to spoil his night. Better to tell him tomorrow – after that it looks like the circus will be coming to town. Just don’t be one of the clowns.’

‘And the rest of the team?’

‘They’ve got more than enough to be getting on with for tonight. Sort out a briefing for tomorrow morning. I’ll put them in the picture then.’

Sean and Donnelly made for the exit. Sean needed the fresh air. They walked through the swing doors and were gone.

4

If only you were capable of understanding the beauty and clarity of what I am doing. You see, my very being is testament to Nature. To her mercilessness. Her complete lack of compassion. Her violence. You have cast aside Nature’s rules and chosen to live by other laws. Morality. Restraint. Tolerance. I have not.

So here we stand, packed into this mechanical coffin, trundling under the streets of London. They humorously call this one the misery line. Look at you. None of you has the faintest idea of what I am. You look at me and see a reflection of yourselves. That is my necessary disguise.

Come closer and I’ll show you who I really am.

Damn, these trains can be unbearable in summer. All of us forced to breathe in each other’s filth. Six thirty in the evening − everybody trying to get home to anaesthetise their brains with alcohol, cocaine, television, whatever. Anything to black out the awfulness of their miserable, pointless lives. But before they can indulge those little pleasures they have to suffer this final torture.

I usually distract myself by picking a passenger at random and imagining what it would be like to cut their eyes out and then slit their throat. The stench of all these potential subjects is very stimulating to my imagination. Maybe I could introduce myself to someone before going home to my dutiful wife and well-behaved children? One day, when I work out how to get away with it, I’ll slit their throats too.

What about that passenger there? A nice-looking young lady. Well dressed, attractive haircut, good figure. No engagement or wedding ring. Interesting. Telltale signs like that give me all the information I need. The lack of rings could mean she lives alone or with some girlfriends. I could follow her back to her flat. Yes, I’m almost certain she lives in a flat. I’d pretend to be a neighbour who has just moved in. We would walk through the communal entrance together. I would be sure to jangle some keys so she wouldn’t suspect foul play. Then she might invite me in for a coffee: it’s happened before. A quick check to see if anyone else was in or expected soon and, if not, well then I could have some fun with the pretty girl with the nice haircut.

Not tonight though. I must get home on time and be the good husband. Disguises as successful as mine need a lot of maintaining. But I can’t wait much longer. Before the little queer it had been a couple of weeks since I visited anyone and that was nothing but a quickie. A mere sketch. Some lawyer-type with a briefcase. I made that one look like a robbery. Stabbed him twice through the heart and remembered to take the cash from his wallet.

He looked surprised. I asked him the time and as his lips parted to speak I stabbed him. I pulled the knife out of his chest, then stabbed him again. This time I left the blade in and held on to it as he slumped to the ground. He had the same look in his eyes as the others. More quizzical than afraid. He was trying to speak. As if he wanted to ask me, ‘Why?’ Always people want to know why. For money? For hate? For love? For sexual pleasure? No, not for any of these petty motivations.

So I whispered the true reason why in his ear. It was the last thing he would have heard. ‘Because I have to.’

5
Friday morning

It was hot in the way only a giant metropolis can get. The heat mixed with the fumes of four million cars, taxis and buses. It made the road warp.

It was Friday morning and Sean was late. He had a briefing to give at ten and had wanted to be at work at least an hour and a half before that to prepare his thoughts. Thanks to the traffic along the Old Kent Road and his three-year-old daughter Mandy, who’d decided to throw a tantrum because of Sean’s broken promise to take her to Legoland, he would barely have time to read through his incoming emails. He’d tried to read them on his iPhone as the traffic staggered forward, but after almost driving into the back of the car in front of him for the third time he’d thought better of it.

His team had been assigned initial tasks the previous day − now he hoped those tasks had progressed the investigation. The briefing he would soon be chairing was an opportunity for the team to tell him what they had discovered so far. DS Roddis and his forensic crew had finished at the scene and he would be present to detail their findings. Findings that could be critical to the investigation.

He rang Sally to let her know he was running late.

‘I’ll be there within half an hour if this traffic starts moving. Briefing is still at ten unless I call again.’

‘Do you want everyone in the briefing room?’ Sally asked.

‘Er … no,’ Sean answered after a second’s thought. ‘We’ll do it in our incident room, there’s more space.’

‘No problem.’ Sally had more to say and knew she would have to speak quickly or Sean would already have hung up. ‘Guv’nor …’

He heard her just in time. ‘What?’

‘I thought you should know some wit’s come up with a name for our killer.’

Sean knew he wasn’t going to like this. ‘Go on.’

‘Some of the guys have christened him “The Fairy Liquidator”.’

There was silence from Sean. He sat stony-faced, thinking about what the family would say if they knew the police investigating their son’s death were calling the killer ‘The Fairy Liquidator’.

After five seconds he spoke. ‘Let them know in advance that from this second onwards anyone using that name will be off the team, back in uniform and directing traffic in Soho just as soon as they can get measured up for a new helmet. Take this as a first and final warning, Sally.’

‘I understand. I’ll make sure it’s not used again.’

‘Good.’ He hung up and continued his tortuous journey through the unbreathable air. Before the murder of Daniel Graydon he’d planned to take the day off and make it a long weekend with his family, doing normal things that a normal family would do – the sort of things he never did as a child. More promises made to his wife and children broken. His stomach tightened with the sense of sadness that suddenly engulfed him – an almost panicked longing to be with his family. He shook the feelings away as best he could, chasing them from body and mind as if they were a weakness he couldn’t afford to carry with him to his work. Besides, there was nothing he could do about it. It was the nature of the beast. It was his job.

Sean and his team were back in the open-plan office that was their incident room and second home. Desks were scattered about, mainly in groups of four, and most were adorned with old oversized computer screens and, if the owner was lucky, a corded telephone. Murders in London were still being solved in spite of the equipment available rather than because of it. Sean stared through the Perspex into the room on the other side, watching the detectives: most preferring to sit on the edges of their desks talking in groups, while others moved with purpose, gathering last-minute stationery or squeezing in one final phone call ahead of Sean’s arrival.

The incident room was already changing as the investigation developed. Where there had been blank whiteboards and bare walls the night before, now there were photographs of the scene, the victim, the initial post-mortem results, pinned up in no particular order. The name of the victim had been confirmed: Daniel Graydon. It adorned a piece of white card and was stuck above the photographs of his mutilated body and violated home. Sean noted they’d been put up in one corner of a wall only. The rest of the wall had been left empty. Clearly someone on his team believed there could be more photographs. More victims.

The whiteboard listed tasks, ‘actions’ to be undertaken and which detective was allocated to each. All were numbered and when complete a line would be drawn through it, so if the investigation was failing the board would tell the tale. It never lied. No progression meant fewer and fewer tasks to be placed on the board, causing Sean’s seniors to grow ever more anxious, more desperate and more likely to interfere; but such concerns were for later. The first couple of days would be busy enough just collecting and preserving evidence. The early days were crucial. Evidence missed now could be lost for ever.

Sean walked the few steps from his office into the main body of the incident room and waited for the detectives to become still and quiet − the noise level fading as surely as if he’d turned the volume down on an amplifier. He spoke: ‘Right, people, before we get into this let’s be clear that if anyone uses the term “Fairy Liquidator” on this inquiry they’re gone. Understood?’ Silent nods of agreement all around the room. ‘Good. Now that nonsense is out the way, we can get down to business.

‘Firstly, you all need to know that in light of the autopsy I no longer believe this is a domestic murder. Dr Canning tells me that the victim would have been incapacitated with the first blow to the head, meaning there was no violent struggle.’

‘What about the broken furniture and the blood spray patterns suggesting a fight?’ Sally asked.

‘Staged,’ Sean told her. ‘Cleverly staged, but staged all the same. He’s trying to throw us off the scent. The stab wounds have the appearance of some sort of ritual killing, not a frenzied attack.

‘Most of you know DS Andy Roddis here, the forensic team leader. Andy’s kindly given up his time to bring us all up to date on any findings from the scene.’

‘That’s very fucking nice of you, Andy,’ Donnelly interjected, to the amusement of his audience.

‘All right, all right,’ Sean hushed the room. ‘I strongly suggest you pay attention to what he’s about to tell you.’ He turned to DS Roddis, gesturing with an open hand for him to begin. ‘Andy.’

DS Roddis walked to the photographs of the scene pinned to the wall behind him. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He paced back and forth as he took up the story. ‘Most of the exhibits from the scene have been taken up to the forensic lab, so we won’t know the full picture until they’ve been examined. That’ll take another few days. Scientists don’t work weekends, so we won’t know much until Tuesday at the earliest.’ There was a small ripple of laughter in the room.

‘In addition to staging the scene, we believe the suspect is forensically aware. There were no obvious signs of semen, saliva or anything else that could have come from the suspect.’

The team listened intently without interrupting. Roddis knew everything about the scene there was to know and they knew nothing. This was the time to listen and learn, not to question and disagree. That would come later, once they knew what Roddis knew, but until then time to honour the ancient detective code: keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open.

‘There’s a lot of blood, but I’m betting it all belongs to the victim. Initial tests show it’s the same blood type that matches the victim’s. DNA confirmation will take a few more days. We found several head hairs about the place, but they also look like they came from the victim. The body was swabbed before removal from the scene, so you never know your luck – we may yet, under lab examination, find some body fluids belonging to the suspect. That’s our best bet for getting the suspect’s DNA.

‘No murder weapons found yet, but it’s possible the suspect cleaned them after use and placed them somewhere in the flat. All possible weapons have been sent to the lab to see if they match the victim’s wounds.

‘The fingerprint search was completed using chemical treatment. We sealed the flat and pumped it full of gas. For the uninformed, we use a chemical that causes any fingerprints to reveal themselves. Much easier than crawling around the place with a brush and aluminium powder. We expected quite a lot of people’s prints to flash up, which is usual for this kind of search, but we were surprised to find only a few different marks. I’m pretty sure the scene wasn’t cleared of prints by the killer. I base that on the fact we found a lot of prints about, but they were predominantly the victim’s.’

Sean intervened. ‘But there were prints at the scene other than the victim’s?’

‘Yes,’ replied Roddis. ‘Unless the victim was a total recluse, you would expect to find alien prints at the scene.’ He paused for a second and began again. ‘Could these alien prints belong to our killer? Well, yes they could, but somehow I doubt it. The killer has gone to great trouble to avoid leaving evidence at the scene, so I think it unlikely he would be so kind as to leave us a nice clear fingerprint.’

He could see Sean was about to jump in again, but he wasn’t ready to surrender the floor just yet.

‘However, the prints we have recovered have already been sent to Fingerprint Branch for searching. At the very least it may tell us something about who the victim associated with. Always useful.’

Sean nodded his appreciation.

‘And last, but not least, we are lucky the carpet in the hallway is new and of good quality. It was nice and deep and we found the scene quickly enough to recover some interesting shoe marks that hadn’t yet degraded.’ Roddis took a series of photographs from his file and attached them to the board like a doctor preparing X-rays for viewing. The shoe marks looked like negatives.

‘This set –’ he pointed to two photographs – ‘belonged to the victim. We matched them easily enough. They belong to a rare type of Converse training shoe and the unique marks on the soles, the scars if you like, matched the individual cuts and marks on the victim’s shoes.’

Roddis took a step to his left and pointed at another footprint photograph. ‘This size ten Dr Marten belongs to the PC who first entered the scene. Fortunately he remembered his training and walked along the side of the corridor the door closes on, so he didn’t destroy what I’m about to show you.’ Again Roddis took a step to his left and pointed to the board.

‘This mark,’ Roddis continued while tapping the next photograph, ‘was made by someone else entering the scene. It was made by a flat-soled leather shoe that was bought recently. We can see by the almost total lack of scars these shoes have hardly been used at all. Even if we recovered the shoe that made this indentation, there wouldn’t be enough unique marks on the sole to be of much evidential value. We would need approximately fifteen unique scars before evidentially we could prove they were one and the same.’

‘Are you suggesting this guy deliberately wore new shoes to avoid leaving a distinctive footprint?’ Sally asked.

‘I’m not here to suggest anything, DS Jones. I’m just here to tell you what we found. Suggestions are your field, I believe.’

Roddis moved to the final set of images. They looked strange even in the photographs. Long scars ran across the sole in all directions and appeared too thick. Roddis touched the photographs, tracing the scars with his finger.

‘We puzzled over this for quite a while,’ he told them. ‘We ran a lot of tests to try and replicate the marks. Nothing. Then, in the absence of any other bright ideas, we tried something. We put normal plastic shopping bags around the soles of a pair of shoes and bingo, exactly the same sort of marks. I’m no betting man, but I’d put my pension on the fact this mark was made by the same shoe as here –’ he pointed at the previous photograph he’d discussed. ‘Only now the shoe has a plastic bag over the sole. You can still see the shape of the shoe sole, and it certainly matches the other sole for size as well.’

Sally spoke again. ‘Why put bags over his shoes? He’s already walked the scene without bags, so why bother to try and hide his prints with plastic bags on the way out?’ The room was silent in thought.

Think simply, Sean reminded himself, break it down. They were jumping ahead – trying to guess the killer in a game of Cluedo before one throw of the dice. Concentrate on the basics. It made no sense to walk into the scene without covering his feet and then cover them to leave. So if he didn’t do it to hide his shoeprints, why did he? Sean’s imagination came to his rescue, taking him back to the murder scene, looking through the killer’s eyes, seeing his hands as he bent over and carefully pulled the plastic bags over his shoes and secured them. Seeing what he saw. Feeling what he felt. The answer leapt into his mind.

‘We’re trying to be too clever,’ Sean said. ‘He didn’t do it to hide his shoe marks. He had the bags over his feet to make sure he wouldn’t get blood on his nice new shoes.’

Sally picked up the train of thought. ‘And if he went to the lengths of protecting his shoes, then it’s probable he protected everything. His whole body.’

She and Sean stared at each other. Everybody in the room was thinking the same thing. The killer was a careful bastard. The killer knew about forensic evidence. The killer knew what the police would be looking for. The killer could think like a cop? Sean broke the silence.

‘Okay. So he’s careful. Very careful. But he will have made a mistake somewhere. We haven’t had the lab results yet, so it’s too early to assume the killer’s left a clean scene. Let’s not give this man too much credit. He’ll probably turn out to be another anorak living at home with his mum, trainspotting and masturbating when he’s not out stalking celebrities − probably watched too many cop shows on the Discovery Channel and now he wants to put all his new-found knowledge to the test.’

The atmosphere in the room lightened. Sean was relieved. He didn’t want a tense team. They mustn’t already fear the investigation could be a sticker, an investigation that dragged on and on without getting anywhere. Failed investigations felt like a contagious disease, infecting all those involved for years, limiting future career options, moves to the more glamorous Metropolitan Police units such as the Flying Squad or the Anti-Terrorist teams.

He spoke again. ‘Sally, did your team finish off the door-to-door?’

‘Pretty much, guv’nor. Nothing to add since last time. Nobody can remember much coming and going from his flat, which fits with the lack of other people’s fingerprints inside the scene. He had the occasional guest, but certainly no parties.’ Sally shrugged. ‘Sorry, boss.’

He moved on. If Sally hadn’t turned up any eyewitnesses, there weren’t any. Sean had no doubt about that.

‘Dave?’ Sean looked at Donnelly, who shifted in his seat.

‘Aye, guv’nor. We’ve been working through the victim’s address book and have got hold of most of his closer friends. The ones who appear frequently in his diary. We’ll track down the remaining friends and associates soon enough.

‘So far, they all say the same thing − victim was a nice kid. He was indeed a homosexual. One of his buddies, a guy called Robin Peak, had a relationship with him in the past. He was pretty sure Daniel was working as a male prostitute. Not hanging around public toilets in King’s Cross, though. Apparently he was relatively high-end, hence the decent stuff in his flat, but this Robin guy said Daniel would hardly ever take clients back there. Only a select few who could afford to pay the extra hundred pound or so he charged for the privilege. He would usually go to their places or a decent hotel, or sometimes he would take care of a punter in nearby toilets, though it cost extra if you wanted him to slum it.

‘His flat was very much a secret hideaway. Only a handful of people knew where he lived, and we’ve spoken to most of them. None of them come across as the knife-wielding maniac type. We have all their details anyway.

‘According to Mr Peak, the victim liked the club scene. The gay club scene. It’s also how he met most of his clients. He’s well known at a number of gay nightspots. We’ll begin checking them out as soon as.’ Donnelly looked around the room.

‘How many?’ Sean asked.

‘About five or six.’

‘Have any of his friends been able to tell us where the victim was on Wednesday night, Thursday morning?’

‘No. But the consensus is that he would probably have been at a club called Utopia, down in Vauxhall. Under the railway arches. His usual Wednesday hang-out.’

‘Good,’ Sean said, before passing out instructions in his usual quick-fire way. ‘Andy – you keep on the lab’s back. I want my results as soon as possible. Sooner.’ DS Roddis nodded.

‘Dave – take who you want and get to work tracking down witnesses who were at Utopia on Wednesday. Start with the employees.’ Donnelly scribbled notes on a pad.

‘Sally – take whoever’s left and begin checking intelligence records for people who have assaulted homosexuals in the past. Not any old bollocks, I mean serious assaults, including sexual assaults. Start with the Met and if that’s no good check our neighbouring forces, and then go national if you have to.’ Sally’s head nodded in agreement as she too scribbled notes. ‘Check the names lifted from the victim’s address book first – you never know your luck.’

Sean threw it open, causing the increasing murmurs to temporarily fade. ‘Can anyone think of anything? Have we missed anything? Anything obvious? Anything not so obvious? Speak now, people.’ No one spoke. ‘In that case the next get-together we have will be on Monday, same time. I need some results by then. The powers that be will want easy answers to this, so let’s find them and finish this one before it turns into a saga.’

The meeting broke up as noisily as a class of schoolchildren being dismissed for the weekend. Sean walked to his office alone, closing the door behind him. He picked up a large envelope waiting on his desk and without thinking emptied out the contents. Copies of photographs of the victim spilled out in front of him. He stared at them, not touching them. He spun his stool around and looked out of the window – the sun still brilliant in the sky. The photographs had caught him off guard. If he had known they were in the envelope he would have taken time to prepare himself before spilling hell across his desk.

Now he wanted to retreat from his world. He wanted to phone his wife, to be in touch with a softer reality for a minute or two − he wanted to hear her reassuring doctor’s voice. He wanted her to tell him unimportant things about their daughters Mandy and Louise. Kate would be getting them ready for a trip to the park. He needed a snapshot of his other, better life, but he delayed a few seconds, long enough for ugly thoughts to rush his mind. He closed his eyes as the image of his father’s fist slammed into his face, the face of his childhood – hot, stinging breath growing ever closer. He pressed his knuckles into his temples and pushed the past away. Once his mind cleared, he reached for the phone on his desk and dialled the number he knew so well, praying it would be answered by a voice that existed in the here and now and not just a mechanical-sounding recording of the person he needed to hear alive. Moments later the phone was answered by a friendly but businesslike voice – the voice of his wife.

‘Hello,’ she said, the pitch of her voice rising on the ‘o’.

‘It’s me.’

‘I guessed it probably would be – the number was withheld.’

‘Aren’t the hospital numbers withheld?’

‘Some are. For a second I was afraid I was about to get called into work for some emergency or another. Anyway – how you doing?’ Sean answered with a sigh she’d heard many times before. ‘That good, eh? Is it a bad one?’

‘Is there such a thing as a good one?’

‘No. I suppose not.’

‘Anyway – what you doing?’

‘In the park with the kids. Too nice a day to be stuck inside. What about you?’

‘In my office looking at … looking at some reports,’ he lied as his eyes fell on the crime-scene photographs. He knew Kate could handle it, better maybe than he could, but such things had no place in the park with his wife and children on a sunny day.

‘Sorry,’ she sympathized, trying to read his voice for signs. ‘Sean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You sure?’

He sighed again before continuing. ‘Just … the block the crime scene was in reminded me of … you know.’

‘Sean,’ she counselled, ‘a lot of things remind you of your childhood – that can’t be helped. Your past will always be part of you – nothing can change that.’

‘I know,’ he assured her. ‘But the memories, the images are so much more real, vivid when I’m in or close to a crime scene. Most of the time I can almost forget my childhood, but not when I’m in a place like that – not when I’m in a scene like that.’

‘I understand, but we’ve talked about this – many times. It becomes more vivid because you use your imagination as a tool, and when you open the door to your imagination you’re going to allow some demons out, Sean. It can’t be helped, but it can be controlled – you’ve already shown that.’

‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Why don’t you come home a little early – have some normal time for a couple of hours – drink too much and fool around?’

‘No chance of that,’ he told her. ‘Not for a few days yet, anyway.’

‘Any idea how long this one’s going to take?’

‘How long’s a piece of string?’

‘That’s not good.’

‘Is it ever?’

‘Yes,’ Kate told him. ‘When you’re at home, with us – that’s good.’

‘When I am there.’

‘Well then be here. Remember all work and no play makes Sean a—’

‘Makes me a what?’ he interrupted, thinly veiled anger suddenly in his voice.

‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘I was just … nothing. I have to go now – the kids have run off. I’ll see you tonight. Be careful. I love you.’ The line went dead – dead before he had a chance to say sorry for snapping at her – before he had a chance to ask about the girls – before he had a chance to tell her he loved her too.

6
Friday − late morning

Sean drove the car through heavy central London traffic while Donnelly spoke, his notebook flipped open on his thigh. ‘The man we need to talk to works for some international finance company, Butler and Mason. After this morning’s briefing I popped into one of the nightclubs on the list. Place in Vauxhall. They were cleaning up last night’s mess, but the head of security was still there. He also works the door at the club during opening hours.’ Sean listened without interrupting. Donnelly checked his notebook. ‘Stuart Young’s the guy’s name. Now, he says he knew our victim; not bosom buddies, but he knew him to speak to and he knew he worked the club for clients too.’

‘He was okay with that?’ Sean asked.

‘Apparently so. As far as he’s concerned, it happens. If he tried to stop every bit of naughtiness that went on in the club they wouldn’t stay in business too long.’ Sean raised his eyebrows. ‘And young Daniel was apparently subtle about it, didn’t have too many clients, kept it all nice and low key.’

‘If I was a cynic, I might suspect Mr Young was turning a blind eye because Daniel was paying him to do so.’

Donnelly continued. ‘Either way, Young confirms that Daniel was in Utopia on Wednesday night.’

‘Was he with anyone particular?’

‘Afraid not. According to Young, Daniel spent some time with a couple of his regulars, guys who have been going to the club for years.’

‘Have we spoken with them yet?’

‘I spoke with them both myself. I gave Young my number and asked him to phone around the victim’s regular tricks. Amongst those who already got back to me are the men he was with Wednesday night.’ Donnelly flicked through his notebook again. ‘Sam Milford and a Benjamin Briggs. Both seemed pretty upset by the whole thing, both happy to provide samples. Neither great suspect material.’

‘Any other clients been in touch?’

‘They certainly have. The grapevine has been working nicely for me, but they all seem much of a muchness − all very upset, all willing to cooperate. No great suspects yet, but maybe that’ll change when I meet them face-to-face.’

‘But you don’t think so, do you?’

Donnelly shrugged. ‘The victim’s clients aren’t looking too likely, so I did a little bit more digging.’

‘And?’

‘Okay.’ Donnelly sounded like a mock game-show host. ‘Possible suspect number one – Steven Paramore, male, thirty-two years old, white. Sally had Paulo check local intelligence records and he found this guy, recently released from Belmarsh having just served eight years for the attempted murder of a teenage rent boy back in 2005. Apparently he almost beat the victim to death with his bare hands.’

‘Nice.’

‘After his release he went back to live with dear old mum, whom I’m sure must be fucking delighted.’

‘What’s his address?’

‘Bardsley Lane, Deptford.’

‘Close to Graydon’s flat,’ Sean said.

‘Close enough,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘And he’s a very angry man – served nearly a full sentence because of his bad behaviour inside. It’s also suspected he’s a closet homosexual himself.’

‘Is that what you think our killer is?’

‘What, a homosexual?’

‘No. Angry.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Maybe. Check him out anyway. In fact, have Paulo check him out – he dug him up.’

‘No problem. Now, moving on to suspect number two: Jonnie Dempsey, male, white, twenty-four years old, an Aussie, works as a barman in Utopia and is known to be a friend of Daniel’s, although no suggestion yet he was anything more, but … Anyhow, he was supposed to be working the night Daniel was killed, only he didn’t show. And he hasn’t been seen since. The manager’s been trying his mobile and home numbers relentlessly, but no joy. Jonnie Dempsey is very much missing. Daniel’s secret lover?’ Donnelly suggested.

‘I don’t know.’ Sean sounded unconvinced. ‘Like I said, this doesn’t feel like a domestic.’

‘Maybe it’s not,’ Donnelly half agreed. ‘Maybe there’s more to Jonnie Dempsey than anyone’s giving him credit for?’

‘Fine. Find him. Check him out. But neither Paramore or Dempsey look like they work at Butler and Mason International Finance, so why are we here? Whose day are we about to spoil?’

‘The guy we’re about to fall out with is called James Hellier.’ Sean noticed Donnelly didn’t have to refer to his notebook to recall the name.

‘And why should I be interested in James Hellier?’ Sean asked, trying to clear his mind of the avalanche of admin and protocol he’d had to deal with since the investigation began. He needed a clear mind if he was going to have any chance of thinking freely and imaginatively.

‘Show me a liar and a man with a lot to lose and I’ll show you a pretty good suspect – Hellier’s both those things.’

‘How so?’

‘Stuart Young told me that Daniel generally liked to play it safe, keep to established, regular customers, so it’s always a wee bit of a surprise when a new guy comes on the scene.’

‘And a new guy had come on to the scene?’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly explained. ‘Only appeared about a week ago. Kept himself to himself, didn’t mix, didn’t cause trouble either, but Young’s pretty sure he had relations of the paying kind with Daniel at least once. He says he saw them outside the club, before they headed off together.’

‘Go on,’ Sean encouraged, listening more intently now, a mental picture of the man they were about to meet beginning to form in his thoughts. Not of his physical appearance, but of his state of mind, his possible motivation, his ability or not to take the life of a fellow man.

‘Okay. Firstly, Young told me he had asked Daniel about this newcomer a few nights after he’d seen them outside together – nothing heavy, just small talk. Daniel told him that the man was called David, no surname mentioned, and that he worked in the City and lived alone somewhere out west. But then things get a little more complicated. You see, Young was working the door the night the newcomer first appeared, when a regular punter came in, a …’ Donnelly quickly checked his notebook again ‘… a Roger Bennett. Now Bennett, who’s known Young for years, sees this newcomer David and makes for the exit sharpish. Young asks him if there’s a problem and Bennett tells him there is, the problem being that Bennett knows our friend David.’

‘How?’ Sean asked unnecessarily.

‘Through work. Bennett works for a big men’s magazine in the West End – you know the type of glossy rag, all cars and tits. Anyway, this new guy’s been to his office a number of times to do their accounts.’

‘So?’ Sean was growing impatient.

‘The problem being, Bennett is gay, as you may have guessed, but he doesn’t want anyone at work to find out. Apparently it wouldn’t go down too well in his office. So he decamps from the club and asks Young to give him a ring if and when David disappears from the scene.

‘No big deal, but I figure if this David’s been with the victim, we need to speak to him anyway. So Young gives me Bennett’s number and I give him a ring and ask him where I can find this David. He tells me he doesn’t have the foggiest what I’m talking about, but when I remind him of the night he left the club on the hurry-up, etc. etc. it all comes back to him and he opens up. And guess what he tells me?’

Sean answered immediately. ‘He’s not called David and he doesn’t work in the City.’

Donnelly froze for a second, a little deflated that Sean had made the leap without needing any more information. ‘Dead right, Bennett reckons that David’s real name is James Hellier and he works for Butler and Mason International Finance. But you already knew that, didn’t you?’

Sean didn’t answer. ‘What you didn’t know,’ Donnelly continued, a satisfied smile spreading across his face, ‘is that, according to Bennett, Hellier also has a wife and a couple of kiddies. Interested?’

‘Hmm,’ Sean replied. He was interested. ‘Like you said, “Show me a liar and a man with a lot to lose …” But this doorman, Young, did he ever see Hellier in the club before that night, or after?’

‘No, but he doesn’t work there every night.’

‘CCTV?’

‘Their system’s ancient – still runs on VHS, if you can believe it. They reuse the tapes after seven days. The tapes from last week are already recorded over, but we can check the current tapes to see if he’s been there any time during the last few days.’

‘Get it done,’ Sean told him as they pulled up outside an old Georgian mansion block converted into exclusive offices. Identical buildings ran the length of the long road, all painted white with black windows, and doors adorned with heavy, shiny brass numbers. Pointed metal railings fenced off the entrances to the basements, curling up and along the short flights of stairs leading to the front door, where visitors were met by pristine brass plates announcing the company within. Only Arabs and the aristocracy could afford to actually live here now.

The two detectives climbed from their Ford and walked across the pavement to the building’s entrance. ‘Here we go, Butler and Mason International Finance. Shall we?’ Donnelly rang the outside security buzzer. They didn’t have to wait long. A female voice crackled back from the intercom. ‘Butler and Mason. Good morning. How can I help?’

‘Detective Inspector Corrigan and Detective Sergeant Donnelly from the Metropolitan Police.’ Donnelly deliberately avoided stating they were from the Murder Investigation Team. ‘Here to see a Mr James Hellier.’ He made it sound as if they had an appointment. It didn’t work.

‘Is he expecting you?’ came the voice through the small metal box. Donnelly looked at Sean and shrugged his shoulders. Time to put a little pressure on.

‘No. He’s not expecting us, but I can assure you he will want to see us.’

Whoever it was on the intercom wasn’t easily bullied. ‘Can I ask what it’s in connection with please?’

‘It’s a private matter concerning Mr Hellier,’ Donnelly told her. ‘We believe someone may have stolen some cheques from him. We need to speak with him before someone empties his bank account.’ The threat of losing money usually opened doors.

‘I see. Please come in.’

The door buzzed. Donnelly pushed it open. They passed through a second security door and into the reception of Butler and Mason, where they were met by a tall, attractive young woman. She wore expensive-looking spectacles and an equally expensive-looking tailored suit. Her hair was hazelnut brown and tied back in a perfect ponytail. Sean thought she looked unreal.

‘The voice on the intercom, I assume?’ Donnelly asked. She smiled a perfect, practised smile that meant nothing.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. If I could just see your identification, please?’

Neither Sean or Donnelly had their warrant cards ready. Donnelly rolled his eyes as they fished their small black leather wallets from inside jacket pockets and presented them flipped open to the secretary.

‘Thank you.’ She looked up at them after examining the warrant cards more closely than they were used to. ‘If you would like to follow me, Mr Hellier has agreed to see you straight away. His office is on the top floor, so I suggest we take the lift.’

Clearly Hellier was doing well for himself. They followed her to the lift where she pulled open the old-style concertina grid and then the lift doors. She stepped inside and waited for them to join her before pressing the button for the top level. They moved silently up through the building until the lift juddered to a halt. She opened the doors and another grid. Sean was losing patience with the charade. They stepped out into the upper reaches of the building and walked along the opulent corridors without talking, the high ceilings providing plenty of wall space to hang portraits of people long since dead. The entire office reeked of money and was much bigger inside than they had expected. Eventually they arrived at a large mahogany door. The nameplate attached bore the inscription James Hellier. Junior Partner. The secretary knocked twice before pushing the door open without waiting for a reply. ‘Some gentlemen from the police to see you, sir.’

James Hellier was as elegant as the secretary. A little under six foot. About forty years old, athletic build. Light brown hair, immaculately cut. He looked healthy and fit in the way the rich do. Good food. Good holidays. Expensive gyms and skin-care products. His suit probably cost more than Sean earned in a month. Maybe two.

Hellier held out a hand. ‘James Hellier. Miss Collins said something about my cheques being stolen, but I really don’t think that’s likely, you see—’

The secretary had already left the office and closed the door. Sean cut across Hellier. ‘That’s not actually why we’re here, Mr Hellier. Your cheques are fine. We need to ask you a few questions, but we thought it best to be discreet until we had a chance to speak with you.’

Sean was studying him. In an inquiry like this a witness could turn into a suspect within seconds. Was he looking at the killer of Daniel Graydon?

‘I hope you haven’t come here to try and obtain client details. If you have, then I hope you’ve brought a Production Order with you.’

‘No, Mr Hellier. It’s about your visits to the Utopia club.’

Hellier sat down slowly. ‘Excuse me. I’m not familiar with that club. The only club I belong to, other than my golf club, is Home House in Portman Square. Perhaps you know it?’

Sean was trying to judge the man. He was sure Hellier was lying, but he sounded remarkably confident. ‘DS Donnelly here’s been making some inquiries at the club. You’ve been recognized.’

‘Who by?’ Hellier asked.

‘I’m not prepared to tell you that at this time.’

‘I see,’ Hellier said, smiling. ‘A silent accuser then.’

‘No. Just someone who wants to remain anonymous for now.’

‘Well, whoever it is, they’re lying. I can assure you I’ve never heard of a club called Utopia.’

‘Mr Hellier, I’ve had all the club’s CCTV tapes from the last couple of weeks seized. As we speak, some of my officers are going through them. They’ll be producing stills of all the people on the tapes. How sure are you that when I look through those stills I am not going to see a picture of you? Because if I do, I am going to start wondering why you’re lying. Do you understand?’

There was a long pause before Hellier answered. ‘Who put you up to this?’ he eventually asked in a calm voice. ‘Who paid you to follow me? Was it my wife?’

Sean and Donnelly looked at each other, confused. ‘Mr Hellier,’ Sean explained. ‘This is a murder investigation. We’re police officers, not private investigators. I’m investigating the murder of Daniel Graydon. He was killed on Wednesday night, Thursday morning, in his flat. I believe you knew Daniel. Is that correct?’

‘Murdered?’ Hellier asked through gritted teeth. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea. How did it …?’

Sean watched every flicker in Hellier’s face, every hand and finger movement, every sign that could tell him whether Hellier’s shock was genuine. Did he sense any trace of compassion? ‘He was stabbed to death in his own flat,’ Sean told him and waited for the reaction.

‘Do you know who did it – and why, for God’s sake?’

‘No,’ Sean answered as his mind processed Hellier’s performance − and that was what he was sure it was. As polished as it was, as convincing as it was, a performance nonetheless. ‘Actually, we thought you might be able to help us with the who and why.’

‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t see how. I hardly knew Daniel. I know nothing about his life. We had a brief physical relationship, nothing more.’

‘Did he know you were married?’ Sean asked.

‘No, I don’t think so. How could he?’

‘You’re a wealthy man. Did he know anything about your financial circumstances?’ Sean picked up the pace of his questioning.

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’ Hellier answered quickly and confidently.

‘Did Daniel Graydon at any time try to extort money or other favours from you, Mr Hellier?’

‘Look, I think I know where you’re going with this, Inspector … sorry, I can’t remember your name.’

‘Corrigan. Sean Corrigan.’

‘Well, Inspector Corrigan, I think my solicitor should be present before I say anything.’

Donnelly leaned in towards him. ‘That’s fine, Mr Hellier. You can have a panel of judges present, for all I care, but you’re a witness right now. Not a suspect. So why do you need a solicitor? And I don’t know for sure, but I suspect your wife is unaware of your nocturnal activities. And what about the other partners here at this lovely firm? Do they know you have a taste for young male prostitutes? I guess it’s all a question of how much you trust your solicitor to show absolute discretion. And me too.’

Hellier stared hard at the two intruders into his life, small intelligent eyes darting between the detectives, before suddenly standing up. ‘All right. All right. Please keep your voices down.’ He sat down again. ‘I went there once, about a week ago, but please, my wife mustn’t find out. It would destroy her. Our children would become a laughing stock. They shouldn’t be punished for my weaknesses.’ He paused. ‘It may be difficult for you to understand, but I do love my wife and children, I just have other needs. I have suppressed them for more than twenty years, but recently I … I couldn’t seem to stop myself.’

‘When did you last see Daniel Graydon?’ Sean asked.

‘I can’t remember exactly.’

‘Try harder.’

‘A week or so ago.’

‘We need to know exactly when and where, Mr Hellier,’ Sean insisted.

‘Try checking your diary, iPhone, or whatever it is you use,’ Donnelly suggested.

‘It won’t be in my diary,’ Hellier told them sharply. ‘I’m sure you understand why.’

‘But something will be,’ Sean said. ‘A false business meeting, a dinner with clients that never took place. You would have put something in there to cover yourself.’

Hellier studied Sean, their eyes unconsciously locked together. He reached for his iPad with a sigh. His finger slid around the screen and within seconds he found what he was looking for − a false overnight meeting in Zurich. ‘The last time I saw Daniel was a week last Tuesday – eight days ago.’

‘Where?’ Sean pressed.

‘In Utopia.’

‘Did you ever go to his flat?’

‘No.’

Sean felt like being cruel. ‘And did you pay him to have sex with you in the club or somewhere else?’

‘I pay for sex because it’s less complicated. Keeps things simple. I can’t risk being involved in a relationship. That would make me vulnerable. You needn’t look so disgusted, Inspector. I don’t like the fact I pay for sex. I don’t like the fact I abuse the trust of family and friends. I keep things simple for all our sakes.’

‘So where did you have sex with him?’

‘I’ve admitted having sex with him – isn’t that enough?’

‘Are you absolutely sure you didn’t go back to his flat, ever?’ Sean asked.

‘Positive.’

‘And Wednesday night. Where were you Wednesday night?’ Sean continued.

Hellier paused before answering, his eyes narrowing. ‘You don’t … you don’t seriously think I had anything to do with his death, do you?’ He looked both incredulous and frustrated.

‘I just need to know where you were,’ Sean repeated with an almost friendly smile.

‘Well, if you must know, I was at home all night. I had a pile of paperwork to catch up on, so I left here at about six and went straight home, where I spent most of the night working in my study.’

‘Can anyone verify that?’

‘My wife. We had dinner together, but, like I said, I spent most of the night working, alone.’

‘Then we need to speak to your wife,’ Sean insisted.

‘Look,’ Hellier snapped. ‘Am I a suspect or not?’

‘No, Mr Hellier,’ Sean answered. ‘You’re a witness, until I say otherwise. But we’ll still need to speak with your wife.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Donnelly reassured Hellier. ‘We won’t tell her what we’re investigating.’

‘Then what will you tell her?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. That we’re looking into an identity fraud, a case of mistaken identity,’ Donnelly offered. ‘The sooner she can confirm you were at home Wednesday night, the sooner we can clear the whole mess up. Fair enough?’

‘You do want to help us, don’t you, Mr Hellier?’ Sean asked.

Hellier sat silently for a time before leaning forward and snatching a pen and paper. He quickly scribbled something down and pushed the paper towards Donnelly. ‘My wife’s name and my home address,’ he said. ‘I’ve assumed a phone call wouldn’t satisfy you gentlemen.’

‘Much obliged,’ Donnelly said, slipping the note into his jacket pocket.

‘Will she be at home now?’ Sean asked.

‘Possibly,’ Hellier answered.

‘Good,’ was all Sean replied.

‘And when my wife verifies that I was at home, I’m assuming that will be the end of it.’

Sean almost laughed. ‘No, Mr Hellier, it’s a little more complicated than that. We need you to come to the station within the next two days. Whenever is convenient to you will be fine. Bring that solicitor too, if you want.’

‘But I’ve told you all I know,’ Hellier argued. ‘I’m sorry, but I really can’t help you.’

‘You had sex with a young man who’s now dead,’ Sean told him. ‘Murdered. We’ve taken samples from the victim’s body. Forensic samples. If you had sex with him within the last couple of weeks, part of you could still be on the victim. We need to eliminate any foreign samples found on the body that may have been left by you.’

‘That really won’t be necessary. I always used a condom. I may be foolish, but I’m not mad. You won’t find any …’ Hellier stalled, trying to think of suitable words ‘… thing belonging to me on his body. You don’t need to examine me.’

Sean stood up and leaned in close to Hellier. ‘Oh yes I do, Mr Hellier. And you will give me what I need. If you don’t, then I’ll arrest you on suspicion of murder and take the samples anyway. I’ll get a warrant and search your home. I’ll search this office – and we won’t be as discreet about our business as we’ve been so far.’

He wasn’t bluffing; the more serious the offence, the more he could stretch his powers to the limit. He opened his wallet, took out one of his business cards and threw it on the desk. ‘That’s my office and mobile numbers. You have a day to call me. And I’ll require a full written statement from you at the same time. You’ll have to tell us about your relationship with Daniel Graydon. Absolutely everything. One day to call, Mr Hellier, and then—’

The door to Hellier’s office unexpectedly swung open. Another well-dressed man entered the office without asking. Sean assumed the rich-looking man in his late thirties or early forties had to be Hellier’s boss. He looked the man over, taking in details only a cop would see. He did it to everybody nearly all the time, an occupational hazard he was almost unaware of. The man had purpose and poise, not just because of his physical presence: he was at least six foot tall, strong and fit, his tailored suit not disguising his deep chest and slim waist. But he also had an aura about him, a sense of power and control. Sean knew the man would be the sort of boss his underlings would both fear and love.

‘James.’ The well-dressed man spoke into the room. ‘I heard about the theft. I trust you got hold of your bank before the bastards had a chance to cash any cheques?’ The man’s voice matched everything else about him: authoritative and dominating, but soothing and reassuring at the same time. Sean felt it was almost gravitational, drawing whoever he was talking to towards him, like a brilliant actor performing on the stage.

‘Yes. Yes I did. Panic over,’ Hellier told him.

The well-dressed man thrust out a hand toward Sean and Donnelly. ‘Sebastian Gibran. Senior Partner here. Always a pleasure to help the police in any way we can. Any idea who you’re looking for?’

‘No. Not yet,’ said Sean, shaking his hand, feeling a little thrown off centre by Gibran’s very presence. The handshake was firm, but not overpowering, although Sean believed Gibran could have crushed his hand if he’d wanted to.

‘Well, anything we can do to help, just let me know.’ Gibran’s smile was perfect – straight white teeth that shone almost as brightly as his eyes − and radiated warmth and charm, all wrapped in a protective sheath of power.

‘Thank you. I will,’ Sean replied. ‘Don’t get up, Mr Hellier. We’ll let ourselves out. And thanks for your time.’ Both detectives stood to leave the office.

‘Allow me to show you out,’ Gibran offered.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Sean said, keen to be away so that he and Donnelly could begin to speak freely. ‘I’m sure you’re very busy.’

‘I insist,’ Gibran argued, once again flashing his mouthful of brilliant white teeth. ‘Please, follow me.’

Sean and Donnelly followed Gibran, who smiled and nodded his acknowledgement to staff members they passed, using Christian names to greet each and every one. Sean had worked in the same office for over two years and still struggled to remember everyone’s names. Gibran’s smoothness only made him dislike him all the more. When they were alone, Gibran spoke again. ‘Where did you say you were from?’

‘We informed Mr Hellier where we are from,’ Sean responded.

‘I’m sure you did,’ Gibran replied. ‘But you didn’t tell me.’

‘Our dealings with Mr Hellier are confidential,’ Sean said firmly. ‘If he wants to tell you more, that’s up to him.’

‘If James is involved in anything that could damage the reputation of this institution, then I should be informed, Inspector,’ Gibran argued. ‘Look,’ he took a conciliatory tone, the smile back in place, ‘a lot of people rely on me for their welfare and security in these uncertain times. It is my responsibility to protect their interests. The need of the many is greater than the need of the individual.’

‘Meaning, if Hellier looks like he’s going to be bad for business, you’ll throw him to the wolves,’ Donnelly accused.

Gibran stared hard at Donnelly before speaking again. ‘James is very privileged to have both a detective inspector and a detective sergeant investigating what appears to be a minor theft.’ He watched Sean and Donnelly look at each other; it was only a glance, but he noticed it. ‘Really, you didn’t think I was that stupid, did you?’

Sean had no answer and felt he needed to counter, to try and knock Gibran out of his stride. ‘What did you say you do here?’ Sean asked. ‘International finance – what exactly does that mean?’

‘Nothing the police need to be concerned about,’ Gibran answered. ‘We help people and organizations raise capital for various business projects, no more. You know, oil people wanting to move into the building and property markets, property people wanting to move into the tech markets, and now and then someone literally walks in off the street with a brilliant idea but no funds. We’ll help them obtain those funds.’

‘Well, that all sounds very noble,’ Donnelly chipped in.

‘We’re not part of the banking system,’ Gibran assured them. ‘There’s no need for animosity here.’

Sean looked him up and down. He had no more he wanted to say. ‘Goodbye, Mr Gibran. It was a pleasure meeting you.’

He could feel Gibran’s eyes watching them as they finally escaped into the lift, the streets below beckoning them. Sean needed to drag Hellier out of his natural comfort zone and into his world, away from protectors like Sebastian Gibran. Then and only then would they see the real James Hellier.

James Hellier stood by his office window looking down on the detectives in the street below. He was careful not to be seen. He paid special attention to Sean. He disliked him, sensed the danger in him, but he felt no anger towards him. In his own way he appreciated him – appreciated a worthy adversary who would make the game all the more fun to play. They thought they were clever, but they weren’t going to ruin things for him. He would make sure of it.

He cursed under his breath – somehow he’d been recognized at the damn nightclub and he wondered who by. He should have been more careful. It was unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. He needed to stay calm. They had nothing on him. Police talk and threats meant nothing. He would wait and see if anything developed. He wouldn’t panic and run. There was no need. Not yet.

But he would have to be careful of Gibran too. Trust him to come and stick his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. He thought he was so fucking clever, senior partner at Butler and Mason, the self-appointed sheriff of the company. If it came to it he would be long gone before Gibran found out. Gibran should remember who gave him a job at Butler and Mason in the first place. It was Gibran who personally checked his references, glowing reports from previous employers in the United States and Far East. Only thing was, not a single one of them was real. If Gibran had actually got on a plane to check Hellier’s background properly, he would have eventually discovered that Hellier’s previous employment history was a myth. But he knew Gibran would rely on telephone calls and emails, all of which were easily arranged, especially for someone like Hellier: he had friends in low places and dirt on some in high places. Gibran had been no more difficult to fool than any of the others. And while Hellier might never have been to university to study accounts or high finance, what he’d learnt on the streets, what he’d learnt in order to survive, had left him more than qualified to work anywhere he liked.

Hellier moved away from the window and sat back in his desk chair, his hands pyramided in front of his face. He liked his life, he liked all the privileges being James Hellier brought and the cover it provided for his other activities, past, present and future. He wasn’t going to let either Inspector Corrigan or, for that matter, Sebastian Gibran, spoil it for him now, not after all these years. He loved to play the game. He enjoyed the money, but it was the game he loved, and this one wasn’t lost yet.

Sean and Donnelly sat in their car outside Hellier’s office building. ‘Well?’ Donnelly asked. ‘What d’you think about Mr James Hellier? Did you get a feel for him?’

‘He’s a smooth bastard,’ Sean replied. ‘And so was his boss, for that matter. Like a couple of fucking clones. But Hellier, he’s trying to be something he’s not, whereas Gibran’s persona seemed genuine, effortless. We’ll have to watch out for him. He looks like the sort who’ll be wanting to stick his nose into our investigation. As for Hellier, behind the suit and haircut there’s an angry man.’ He didn’t tell Donnelly about the animalistic odour he’d smelled leaking through Hellier’s skin. A musky smell, almost chokingly strong. The same odour he’d smelled on others in the past. Other killers. ‘But why is he so pissed off with the world?’

‘Pissed off with the world?’ Donnelly questioned. ‘I thought he was just pissed off with us.’

Sean realized he was moving too fast for Donnelly. ‘You’re probably right.’ He needed to give Donnelly something more tangible, more logical. ‘But there are already two possible motives for him. Firstly, he was having an intimate relationship with Graydon, and somewhere along the line it went wrong.’

‘So we’re back to a lovers’ tiff?’

‘Or,’ Sean continued, ‘Graydon was blackmailing him and Hellier thought, probably correctly, the only way to make it stop would be to get rid of him. He’s a walking blackmail victim and Graydon liked nice things − remember his flat?’

‘And the seventy-seven stab wounds?’ Donnelly asked. Those needed explaining. ‘If he just wanted him out of the way, why not do it nice and neat − one shot, one well-placed knife wound, strangulation? Makes me favour a domestic bust-up.’

‘No,’ Sean reminded him. ‘Remember what Dr Canning told us − the wounds were placed around the body, almost ritually, as if the killer wanted us to think it was a rage attack to get us chasing our tails looking for a jealous ex-boyfriend. Or even a motiveless stranger attack. That and the lack of forensics at the scene leave me thinking it was premeditated, which means blackmail was his most likely motivation. Or something else we haven’t thought of yet. Everything else was staged.’

Donnelly looked less than completely convinced. ‘Well, in the absence of anything better than a missing barman and recently released homophobic homosexual, it’s worth running with, so long as you’re convinced Hellier has it in him to kill.’

‘Let’s just say I get a very bad feeling about him,’ Sean replied. ‘His attempted show of compassion made me feel sick. Everything about him seemed off, as if he were hiding behind the façade of being a happy family man.’

‘Why are you so sure he was faking it? I thought he registered some real surprise that Daniel had been killed.’

‘False sincerity. I’ve seen that too many times.’

Donnelly had worked with Sean long enough to know that sometimes it was best to simply accept his word and move on. ‘You’re a scary individual,’ he said. ‘Now all we need is the evidence to prove your theory.’

‘That’s the hard part, as always.’

‘Arrest him. Search his house, office, car. Get a look at his bank accounts. Compare his prints and samples to anything and everything from the scene.’

‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘I sensed no panic when we asked him about being in the flat. He knows he’s left it clean. Or maybe I’m wrong and he’s never been there. Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I need to know more before I draw any lasting conclusions. Let’s have him followed for a while.’

‘Round-the-clock surveillance?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Starting as soon as possible,’ Sean confirmed. ‘He may have missed something. Something that could betray him. If we’re lucky he’ll lead us to something that’ll hang him or at least give us grounds to dig further.’

‘If we’re very lucky,’ Donnelly pointed out.

‘Right now we don’t have much else, so let’s start digging into his past. A man like Hellier doesn’t just appear. Have criminal and intelligence records checked, see if Mr Hellier here hasn’t got some skeletons in his closet.’

‘What about Inland Revenue, employment records, general background information?’

‘Not yet. We haven’t got enough for Production Orders. Let’s stick to our own records first − see what we can turn up.’

‘It’ll be done,’ Donnelly told him. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah,’ Sean answered. ‘You take the car and get back to the nick. Concentrate on tracking down the rest of the victim’s clients and let me know as soon as you turn up someone or something interesting.’

‘Fine. And yourself?’

‘I’m going to have a little chat with his wife.’

Sean took the Tube from Knightsbridge to King’s Cross, noting all possible CCTV points that Hellier could have passed, including those covering the taxi rank outside the station, where Hellier probably hopped into a cab for the last leg of his journey home, although from here their journeys differed – Sean travelling the rest of the way by bus. Black cabs were an expensive luxury for him, not a realistic mode of transport. Not so for Hellier. Even so, it hadn’t taken him long to get to Hellier’s place: 10 Devonia Road, Islington, close to Upper Street and the Angel underground station.

Hellier’s house was another beautiful Georgian terrace and looked like a much smaller version of the Butler and Mason office building. Sean was beginning to feel undervalued and underpaid, but at least the time alone had settled his racing mind and allowed him space to clear his thoughts. He bounced up the steps and gently tapped the chrome knocker twice. After an acceptable wait the door was opened. ‘Hello,’ was all she said. Sean had expected her to say more. He showed her his warrant card and tried to look as unofficial as he could.

‘Sorry to bother you, I’m Detective Inspector Corrigan, Metropolitan Police.’

‘Oh,’ she replied, attempting to feign surprise. So Hellier had called and warned her. No matter. Sean had assumed he would − that wasn’t why he was here. He was here for a chance at a snapshot into Hellier’s life.

‘Mrs Hellier?’ Sean asked, smiling.

‘Yes. Elizabeth. Is there a problem?’

Sean was struck by how much she looked and sounded like a female version of James Hellier: tall, slim, attractive, well spoken, the product of finishing school and two skiing holidays a year; the best of everything her whole life, but unlike with Hellier he could sense her naivety. Was that why Hellier had married her?

‘Nothing to worry about,’ Sean lied. ‘I’m just looking into an identity fraud case. We think someone may be trying to pass himself off as your husband James.’

‘Really?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid so. They tried to make a substantial purchase in Harrods on Wednesday evening. I’ve already spoken to your husband and he says he was home all night with you. If you could confirm that, then I’ll know for sure the person we have in custody is lying to us.’

‘But if you’ve already spoken to my husband, why do you need me to confirm he was at home?’

Naive, but not stupid, Sean thought. ‘I like to be thorough. Maybe we should discuss this inside,’ he suggested, hoping to see Hellier’s things, to walk in the skin of James Hellier, even for a few minutes.

‘That’s not really convenient right now. My children will be home from their tennis lesson any second. I wouldn’t want them to start worrying. I’m sure you understand. But I can tell you that James was here on Wednesday, although I hardly saw him. He was working in his office most of the night.’

Sean couldn’t stop himself looking past her into the house and sensed her trying to grow large to prevent him. She wanted him to stay out of her family’s life.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I understand – and thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Well, I’ll leave you in peace.’ He turned to leave, then quickly turned back, speaking before the door closed on the opportunity. ‘One more thing …’ He registered the annoyance on her face, the slight flushing of the facial capillaries, only minutely visible behind her tanned skin. He waved his finger randomly at the front of the house and spoke casually. ‘I was wondering, which room is your husband’s office?’

She stumbled. Clearly her husband hadn’t warned her to expect this type of question. ‘Does it matter?’

‘No,’ Sean replied, smiling. ‘Not really.’ He waited, not moving, knowing she would give in to the silence.

‘This one here,’ she surrendered, pointing to one of the front ground-floor windows, keen to be rid of him.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘If I had a house like this, that’s where I’d have my office too.’ Satisfied, he knew it was time to leave. He had sown the seeds of doubt in her and she would sow the seeds of fear into Hellier. He imagined the panicked conversation she would have with her husband later that day, both questioning each other, doubting each other. ‘Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Goodbye, Mrs Hellier. Tell James I said hello.’ She didn’t answer. He heard the door slam before he reached the last step.

Sean made the long journey on public transport from Islington back to Peckham, jealously watching the vast majority of his fellow commuters wearily heading off for the weekend while he was heading back to work, all thoughts of home and rest still just a distant hope. He’d had little more than six hours’ sleep in the last two nights and knew the next few days would be no better. Reminding himself to buy some caffeine pills, he used the public entrance to the police station and climbed the stairs to the incident room without acknowledging anyone. As he crossed the room towards his office he casually observed who was there and who was missing. He assumed those not there would be running down whatever inquiries Donnelly had assigned them. He entered his office and sat heavily in his chair. Within seconds Donnelly was at his open door, a heavy bundle of witness statements and completed actions cradled in his arms. He didn’t seem to feel the weight.

‘How d’you get on with Hellier’s trouble and strife?’

‘She’s lying for him,’ Sean answered. ‘Said he was home all night. I got the feeling it wasn’t the first time she’s covered for him.’

‘Aye, but does she know what we’re investigating?’

‘Not unless Hellier’s told her, which I doubt.’

‘So technically he has an alibi.’

‘Yeah, but you could drive a bus through it. She said he was in his office all night, alone. It’s on the ground floor next to the front door. He could have slipped out and back easy as.’

‘But you don’t think he went home, do you?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Sean confirmed. ‘What have you turned up?’

‘Well, from a criminal records point of view, Hellier’s as clean as a whistle. Not even a parking ticket, as far as I can tell. He’s been working at Butler and Mason for a few years now; before that he was working for some American company in New York, and prior to that he worked in Hong Kong and Singapore.’

‘Where d’you get all that from?’ Sean asked, impressed.

‘I googled him,’ Donnelly answered with a wry smile. ‘Technology. Our greatest friend and our greatest enemy. Oh, and I called a pal of mine at Revenue and Customs − asked for a cheeky favour. As far as they’re concerned, he’s legit. Since being back in the UK he’s paid his tax on time and upfront, no problems.’

Sean looked disappointed, although he hadn’t really expected anything else. ‘With his taste in after-work pleasures you’d think he’d be a little bit shy about plastering his face all over the Internet,’ Sean suggested.

‘No photographs,’ Donnelly told him. ‘Lots of info, but no photographs.’

‘He’s a careful one,’ Sean said. ‘Just like whoever killed Graydon. Very careful.’

‘Plenty of people working in the financial sector have taken their mugshots off the Internet since the banking crisis.’

‘Yeah, but Hellier’s a financier, not a banker.’

‘Guv’nor,’ Donnelly reminded him, ‘we live in a country where seventy per cent of the population don’t know the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician.’

Sean sighed. ‘A good point well made.’ He rubbed his eyes hard enough to make them water, before rummaging in his desk drawers for painkillers. ‘What about the others who were with him on the night he was killed?’ he asked without looking at Donnelly.

‘Most have come forward now or been traced,’ Donnelly answered, ‘but nothing interesting. One or two are known to police, but all for minor stuff. We’ve gathered a small mountain of forensics and fingerprints for comparisons, so you never know.’

‘Maybe, but I’m not feeling particularly lucky right now,’ Sean sighed. ‘What about our two missing persons?’ he asked. ‘What were their names again?’

‘Steven Paramore and the barman, Jonnie Dempsey. We’ve checked at the home addresses of both. Paramore’s mum says he hasn’t been home for a few days now and Jonnie’s flat mates are saying the same about him.’

‘Untraceable suspects,’ Sean complained. ‘That’s all I need.’

‘Maybe this’ll cheer you up.’ Donnelly grinned as he dumped the heavy pile of papers he’d been holding on Sean’s desk.

Sean spread his arms in protest. ‘What’s this?’

‘Witness statements so far, completed actions and other assorted shit that you ought to read. Superintendent Featherstone wants a full briefing in the morning.’

Sean sank deep into his chair, all thoughts of home comforts slipping further and further away. It was going to be another long evening alone, with only the image of Daniel Graydon’s defiled body for company.

Hours later Sean eventually arrived home exhausted but wide awake, the worst possible combination. He was in need of a strong drink, something that would instantly slow his mind and body without filling his bladder. If sleep came he didn’t want it chased away by having to get up to urinate.

Kate had waited up for him. He wished she hadn’t. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted a drink, a sandwich and to watch some trash on TV. He passed the living room where his wife sat, speaking into the room as he headed for the kitchen. ‘It’s only me.’

After a few seconds Kate followed him into the kitchen. ‘You’re back late,’ she said, her tone neutral.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sean replied, conscious he seemed to be saying that more and more. ‘You know what it’s like when I get a new case − first few days are always a nightmare.’

‘A nightmare for who?’ Kate asked, her words more provocative than she had intended.

‘I don’t know,’ Sean answered. ‘For me? For you? For the guy who’s just had his skull smashed in, dead before his life’s even started? For his parents who have to come to terms with the fact their only child is gone and never coming back?’

An oppressive silence gripped the room. Kate took a breath. ‘Are you okay?’

Sean accepted the truce. ‘Yeah. Of course. I’m tired and grumpy, that’s all. Sorry. Are the kids asleep?’

‘It’s gone eleven. What sort of mother would I be if they weren’t?’ She moved towards him. He had his back to her while he looked around for a glass. She put her arms around his waist. He was in good shape for a man in his late thirties. He had the physique of a middleweight boxer, a legacy from his teenage years. The sport had been one of the things that had kept him out of trouble while too many of his childhood friends turned to a life of crime. ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ she said. He leaned back into her.

‘I’m glad too. Sorry. I should have called. Must have lost track of time. How’s Mandy? Will she forgive me?’

‘Well, she’s only three. You’ve plenty of time to make it up. But never mind little Miss Mandy. What about me? How are you going to make it up to me?’

Sean was smiling slightly. ‘I’ll buy you a bunch of flowers.’

‘Not good enough, Detective Inspector. I was thinking of something a bit more immediate and a lot more fun.’

Kate led him to the stairs and made for their bedroom. As Sean’s foot reached the top step he heard a voice coming from Mandy’s room.

‘Daddy.’

He looked apologetically at his wife. ‘I’d better stick my head in,’ he whispered.

Kate slipped her shirt off, her brown skin shining in the semi-dark. ‘Don’t be long,’ she said. ‘I might fall asleep.’

Sean quietly entered Mandy’s room, the night light illuminating a small pyjama-clad figure. She grinned uncontrollably when she saw him. ‘Daddy.’

‘Hey, hey, sweetie. You’re supposed to be asleep,’ Sean reminded her.

‘I was waiting for you to come home, Daddy.’

‘No, you mustn’t do that, because sometimes Daddy doesn’t get home until very late.’

‘Why don’t you get home till late, Daddy?’

‘Now is not the time to talk about it, honey. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

‘Mummy says you’re catching bad men.’

‘Does she?’ Sean said, not meaning it to be a question.

‘What have the bad men done, Daddy?’

‘Nothing that you should be worried about,’ he lied. ‘Go to sleep now. Daddy is here. Daddy is always here.’

Sean found himself stroking her hair. He watched her eyes flicker shut, but even when he knew she was asleep he couldn’t leave her. Kate would understand. He needed this – needed something to balance the horror of what he dealt with day in, day out. Needed something to suppress the darkness that always lurked just beneath the surface.

7

There were three others before the little queer. I’ve already told you about the solicitor-type I stabbed in the heart. That means there are two I’ve not mentioned.

The first was a young girl. Seventeen or eighteen. I’d parked forty metres from the entrance to an abortion clinic. I didn’t have to wait long. These places do a good trade.

This clinic was in Battersea. Quite far from where I live. It was a low-rise, modern, sandstone building. Very discreet. It was not far from Battersea Rise. Close to Clapham Common. Nice in the summer. Lots of traffic though, and too many mahogany-skinned migrants fleeing poverty, war and starvation.

I knew exactly what I was waiting for and then, there she was. It was a few weeks ago and wasn’t as warm as it is now. She hurried along the pavement. Collar turned up against the mild chill as well as to hide her face. She entered the clinic with her head bowed.

I waited for her. A couple of hours and there she came. Hurrying back along the pavement. I could smell her shame. Probably a Catholic. I hope so.

I caught up with her soon enough, keeping pace, about five metres back. She was too trapped in her own private hell to feel my presence. If she ever needed an awareness of what was around her, then she needed it now. It was the only thing that could save her.

I was close enough to see her properly now. She was slightly built. Good. And she was clearly crying. Good. She was also alone. What type of young girl would come here alone? Simple. One who hasn’t told anybody about her little problem. So Mummy and Daddy didn’t know yet. She was perfect. All she needed to do was keep walking in the direction we were heading. I’d already checked out several routes away from the clinic and most had possibilities. But there was a nice concealed railway line on this one, running under a bridge, hidden from the road above. Close to the scene of the Clapham railway disaster.

I was wearing a raincoat I’d bought for cash from Marks & Spencer in Oxford Street a few months ago and hadn’t worn it until then. It was a common enough coat. Nothing special. Deliberately so. I also wore brand-new plain leather-soled men’s shoes, and a pair of leather gloves nestled in the coat pocket. A large bin liner was stuffed into the other pocket.

I had to get the next bit exactly right, or this would be over before it began. We approached the break in the roadside wall that led down to the railway. I put the gloves on. I had to move fast now. Anyone around and this was off.

I ran the short distance between us and punched her as hard as I could in the centre of her back. I felt her spine give way to my fist. I heard the air rush from her lungs. She couldn’t make a sound. She dropped to her knees.

I grabbed her from behind and pulled her through the break in the wall. She was no match for me, but I couldn’t risk being caught by a flailing arm. If she had scratched me, I would have cut her fingers off and taken them with me rather than making a present of my skin, my DNA, for the police.

The way down to the railway lines was exactly what I’d been looking for. I discovered it a while ago when I was out scouting for good spots. The bank fell away steeply, but not so steep as to stop you walking down. But the best bit was that up against the arch of the bridge there was a concrete ledge, a metre wide, on the ground. Past that there was only soil and the dust. It meant I could make the girl walk on the soil, hence leaving her footprints, while I walked on the concrete in my plain shoes, leaving no footprints. It would appear as if she walked the last walk of her pitiful life alone.

About halfway down she began to recover her breath. Couldn’t have that, so I punched her in the stomach. I wonder if it hurt more because of her abortion. Anyway, that took the fight out of her.

I dragged her to the bottom of the bridge arch and pushed her against the side of it. I stared into her eyes hard. They were green and beautiful. She was terrified. The art I imagined was becoming reality. I decided she wouldn’t give me any trouble. I spoke gently.

‘If you make a sound or fight or try and run, I will hurt you. Do you understand?’ I was calm.

She frantically nodded her head. Then she squeaked out a few pathetic words. ‘Please. Don’t rape me. Please. I’ve just had an operation. Please. I won’t tell anyone. Please.’

‘I won’t hurt you,’ I promised. ‘I need you to stand there quietly for a few seconds.’ I could hear the train lines begin to whistle and knew a fast train was approaching. I peeked around the corner and saw the train flying towards me. I’d timed this already. Once it passed the hut on the siding I had five seconds before it hurtled past me.

I gripped the girl by her right arm with both my hands. Five. Four. Three. Two – and I swung her out from behind the bridge arch.

It was as if she jogged out on to the line. She even managed to avoid tripping over the first rail. She made it all the way to between the tracks.

The train that hit her must have looked huge. I saw her stiffen just before it wiped her from the face of the planet. I wonder what she thought, if anything.

I didn’t wait to see where her body landed. I quickly turned and ran up the railway bank. I was well protected from anyone looking out of the train window. I’d had my fun, but ultimately the poetry was lacking. The violence was too mechanical. I hadn’t been able to see her eyes or hear her last breath as the train ripped the life from her. The work lacked feeling. No texture. No colour. I would do better next time.

It’s a shame I didn’t get to her before the abortion. That would have been a marked improvement.

I wonder where the train was going?

As I drove away, I could hear the first sirens approaching. A few days later there was a sad little article in the Evening Standard about a girl who’d had an abortion then killed herself by jumping in front of a train. Apparently all parties had decided she couldn’t live with the guilt. The shame. She still had a receipt for the abortion in her pocket. The last line of the article read, ‘Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with her death.’

8
Saturday morning

Sean was in his car, on his way to the station, when his phone rang. The display showed no number. It made him cautious. He answered without giving his name. ‘Hello.’

‘I need to speak with Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan.’ He recognized the voice. It was Hellier.

‘This is DI Corrigan.’

‘We’ll do it your way, Inspector. I’ll meet you today. I’ll be at Belgravia police station at two p.m. I expect absolute discretion.’ Hellier hung up.

Fine, Sean thought. Pick any station you like, but come tomorrow I’ll have a set of your fingerprints, DNA and your statement. Once I have them, it’s only a matter of time before the web of lies begins to disintegrate.

Sean and Donnelly sat in their Mondeo in Ebury Bridge Road, Belgravia. They had a good view of the front of the police station, but were far enough away not to be seen. Sean wanted to watch Hellier as he approached, wanted to see how he looked ahead of their meeting.

At one forty Sean and Donnelly saw Hellier striding along Buckingham Palace Road. He fitted the affluent area perfectly. Sean focused the lens of the camera on Hellier’s face and pressed the button. ‘A little present for the surveillance boys,’ he told Donnelly.

‘When’s that starting, by the way?’

‘As soon as Featherstone authorizes it. I put in a request first thing this morning.’

‘Rather him than me,’ Donnelly said, thinking of the reams of paperwork Detective Superintendent Featherstone would have to complete before surveillance could begin.

Hellier looked confident. He was with another man who carried a briefcase.

‘I fucking knew he’d bring his brief,’ said Sean.

‘That’ll be one expensive mouthpiece,’ Donnelly replied as they watched Hellier and his solicitor enter the station.

‘We’ll give it a few minutes,’ Sean said. ‘Let them get a bit pissed off. Then we’ll go see them. See if we can’t rattle his cage.’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly agreed.

‘Any luck with criminal records?’

‘No. Nothing on criminal records or the intelligence system. He appears clean.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Maybe he’s had an identity change,’ Donnelly suggested.

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. A set of his prints will soon answer that.’

‘Shall we dance?’

‘Why not?’ They climbed from their car and headed after Hellier.

Sean and Donnelly sat across the table from Hellier and his solicitor, Jonathon Templeman, in the witness interview room.

Templeman spoke first. ‘Inspector, my client has a right to know why he has been asked to come here today.’

Sean smiled. ‘You make it sound as if Mr Hellier is a suspect.’

‘It feels as if he’s being treated like one. Asked to come to a police station. Of course my client wishes to cooperate, but his rights must be respected. If he is a suspect then he needs to be informed.’

‘Mr Hellier is not a suspect,’ Sean told him. ‘That’s why we’re in the witness room, not an interview room. If Mr Hellier was a suspect, he’d have been arrested by now.’

Sean knew the solicitor didn’t believe a word he was saying. He would have realized the police suspected his client was involved in the murder of Daniel Graydon and he would do all he could to protect Hellier, but he wouldn’t want to force Sean’s hand. Wouldn’t want to precipitate Hellier’s arrest.

‘I don’t know how much your client has told you, Mr …’ Sean looked at the business card the solicitor had handed him ‘… Mr Templeman, but from my initial conversation with Mr Hellier I know he had sexual relations with a young man who was found murdered some days later.’

‘My client’s sexual orientation is not an issue here,’ Templeman intervened. ‘It’s no longer illegal to be gay, Inspector.’ He was being deliberately provocative. He knew the best way to defend a client, whether they were guilty or not, was to be aggressive towards the investigating officers. Show no signs of cooperation. Never be civil. Always attack.

‘Mr Templeman,’ Sean said, ‘I have no interest in Mr Hellier’s sexuality. What I do care about is that a young man has been murdered. Mr Hellier is an important witness. Possibly the best I have. I need a full witness statement and full forensic samples for elimination purposes. And his fingerprints.’

‘A witness statement is out of the question.’ Templeman still spoke for Hellier. ‘The body samples we agree to. We understand the need to eliminate my client from the investigation as quickly as possible.’

Donnelly joined in. ‘This isn’t a shoplifting we’re investigating. This is a murder inquiry. Mr Hellier will give a full written statement and he’ll do it today.’ His voice was calm.

‘My client has not witnessed any offences in relation to the death of Mr Graydon. He can provide no useful information, therefore he will not be providing a witness statement. Such a statement would be of no use to the police, yet it could be both embarrassing and damaging to my client.’

‘Embarrassing?’ Donnelly said. ‘I don’t care how embarrassing it could be. Maybe you would like to meet the boy’s parents. You could explain to them how your client is more concerned about being embarrassed than he is about helping to find their son’s killer.’

‘No statement.’

Sean knew Templeman meant it. ‘I’ll have Mr Hellier summonsed to court to give evidence if necessary.’

‘Then that’s what you’ll have to do, Inspector.’

‘Fine,’ Sean said. There was more than one way to skin a cat, but why wouldn’t Hellier make a statement? Sean didn’t believe the bullshit about public embarrassment. Hellier didn’t want to say anything the police could prove was a lie. Best to keep his mouth shut. Hide behind his expensive solicitor.

‘So, no statement,’ Sean said. ‘Samples, you agree to?’ He was looking directly at Hellier, who remained dumb.

‘I’ve already said we agree to body samples,’ Templeman informed him.

‘And fingerprints. For elimination purposes.’ Sean waited for the answer, hoping he sounded casual enough.

‘Why do you need my client’s fingerprints?’ Templeman asked. ‘I thought Mr Hellier had made it quite clear that he’d never been in the victim’s flat. Unless you found prints on the body, which is most unlikely, I don’t see why you would want my client’s fingerprints for elimination.’

Sean spoke quickly. A delay would have alerted Templeman and probably, maybe more so, Hellier. ‘Not on his body. On some cash we found in his pocket,’ he lied. ‘Your client paid for sex. So unless he used a credit card, the cash could be Mr Hellier’s. It’s already been chemically treated and we’ve been able to recover a number of prints. If the prints aren’t your client’s, then they could be the killer’s.’

‘Very well,’ Templeman said. ‘My client is prepared to provide a set of elimination prints.’

Hellier nodded his agreement to provide his fingerprints.

‘Good.’ Sean called a young detective constable into the room. ‘This is DC Zukov. He’ll take you to the surgeon’s room where a doctor will take your body samples, then he’ll take your prints. Understand?’

Hellier didn’t reply.

‘I need a full set, Paulo,’ Sean told DC Zukov. ‘Palms and fingertips too. And the side of his hands.’

Zukov nodded and looked at Hellier. ‘If you’d like to come this way, sir.’

Templeman and Hellier followed DC Zukov from the room. Donnelly made sure they were out of earshot.

‘That was a bit of a porky-pie, boss. We don’t have any fingerprints on any cash that I know of. Could cause us problems if anyone discovers we tricked our suspect into giving his prints – like the CPS, for example.’

Sean wasn’t concerned. ‘Fuck ’em. I’ll cross that bridge when and if I come to it. Right now, I want his prints in case we get lucky at the scene.’

‘He seems pretty confident he’s never been inside Graydon’s flat,’ Donnelly reminded him.

‘Yeah, but we only need him to have made one mistake, just one mistake and we’ll be able to put him in the flat, and then I’ll have him.’

‘You’re sure it’s him, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know. The more I see him, the more I’m next to him, the more sure I am he’s hiding something. But it’s almost as if this is a game to him – as if he’s somehow enjoying it. I don’t know, but there’s something …’ Sean didn’t finish his thought.

‘Maybe you just really want it to be him?’ Donnelly argued. ‘Maybe you just don’t like the smug bastard with his expensive brief.’

‘No,’ Sean answered quietly without looking at Donnelly. ‘I can feel his guilt.’

‘Guilt, aye,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘But guilt for the death of Daniel Graydon?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sean admitted, ‘but I’ve got a very strong feeling James Hellier and I are going to cross swords again, and soon.’

9

James Hellier left Belgravia police station two hours later, only slightly annoyed at being kept longer than necessary. Feeling pleased with himself, he indulged in a little smile. He hoped his solicitor hadn’t noticed.

They walked along the road a short way. Hellier felt certain he was being followed by the police. No matter. No need to tell Templeman. No need to tell anyone.

So the police had samples from his body. The detective constable had made sure the doctor was thorough: blood, saliva, semen, hair of various types. All for elimination purposes. All taken voluntarily. The detective had had a strange name. Paulo Zukov. Hellier had been tempted to ask him if he was more wop than Slav, or the other way around. He had managed not to.

Hellier and Templeman shook hands and went their separate ways. Templeman clearly had no notion that Hellier might be anything other than an innocent man dragged into somebody else’s mess. God bless lawyers. They pump them full of some serious self-importance bullshit in law school. They all think they’re in a John Grisham novel, protecting the innocent from their oppressors.

They’d taken his fingerprints too. He’d known Corrigan was lying about finding prints on the victim’s money, even if his solicitor had not. It was unfortunate he had to give them, but he had foreseen it. It wouldn’t be a problem. It mustn’t be a problem. It wasn’t.

Sean and Donnelly watched Hellier leave the same way they’d watched him arrive. They watched him shake hands with Templeman and move off. Hellier looked over his shoulder back towards them and walked on.

Donnelly broke the silence. ‘He thinks we’re following him.’

‘Not yet, we’re not,’ Sean replied. ‘I just got a message from Featherstone – surveillance starts tomorrow. What about the other men the victim had sex with? Have we spoken to all of them now?’

‘We have. They came forward of their own accord. They’re not happy about admitting to paying for sex, but not exactly ashamed either.’

‘Not like Hellier,’ Sean stated rather than asked.

‘No. The others seem straightforward. They’ve provided statements, prints and samples, no problem. None of the lads who interviewed them get any sort of feeling. We’ll run them all through the system anyway, but no one looks interesting.’

‘Any sign of a boyfriend?’ Sean asked. ‘No matter what I think of Hellier, I still have to consider that possibility.’

‘According to his friends, there was no boyfriend, now or in the recent past, other than the possibility he was seeing our missing barman, Jonnie Dempsey.’

‘And further back? No jilted John with an axe to grind?’

‘Apparently not. It appears Daniel was more careful with his private life than he was with his business one.’

‘Anything else?’ Sean asked.

‘I took the liberty of sending out a national circular, asking if other forces have come across any murders similar to ours.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. Our little shop of horrors appears to be unique.’

‘So,’ Sean said, ‘Hellier’s still our main man. Until I say different.’ Donnelly opened the car door unexpectedly. ‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘I just want to check on Paulo. Make sure everything went okay.’

‘Don’t worry about Paulo. He knows what he’s doing.’ Sean trusted Paulo. He trusted all his team.

‘All the same. I’ll not sleep tonight if I don’t check.’

Sean wasn’t used to seeing Donnelly so concerned. ‘Okay, check. I’ll wait here. And ask him if he needs a lift.’

Donnelly was gone. Sean watched him running across the road, dodging the traffic. He moved pretty well for a big man.

DC Zukov waited for Donnelly in the basement toilet of Belgravia police station. He was relieved to finally see Donnelly’s considerable frame enter, shrinking the room. Donnelly stopped in front of the large mirror and began to comb his scruffy salt-and-pepper hair with his hands.

‘There’s no one else in here. We’re fine,’ Zukov assured him.

‘Then why you fucking whispering?’

Zukov spoke normally. ‘I don’t know. It’s just I’m not used to talking to strange men in public toilets.’

‘I hope not, young man.’ In an instant Donnelly’s tone became more serious. ‘Did you get what I asked?’

Zukov smiled. He put his hand in his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic evidence bag containing two hairs that only minutes earlier had been plucked from Hellier’s scalp. He handed it to Donnelly, who snatched it away. ‘I take it the official samples have been sealed accordingly?’ he asked.

‘As you requested,’ Zukov told him. ‘Everything’s been bagged and tagged properly. These are the little extras you wanted kept off the books.’

‘Good.’ Donnelly opened an empty metal cigarette case and folded the bag carefully, making sure he didn’t bend the contents. He put the bag in the case and snapped it shut. He tucked it into his blazer pocket and patted it. ‘Just to be on the safe side. You never know when you’re gonna need a helping hand.’

‘You gonna leave them in Graydon’s place to be found by the forensic boys or you got some other idea how to use them?’ Zukov asked.

‘I’m not going to do anything with them,’ said Donnelly. ‘Not yet anyway.’

‘Why? What you waiting for?’

Donnelly puffed out his chest and raised himself to his full height. ‘Listen up, son. These are the three rules of life according to Dave Donnelly: Number one – never accept a bribe, no matter how skint you are. Number two – never fit up an innocent member of the public. Villains, fine, but never Joe Public. Number three – never, absolutely never, fit anyone up for murder unless you’re absolutely positive they did it and it’s absolutely necessary to get them off the streets. Understand?’

‘So you’re not positive Hellier’s our man?’

‘No. Not yet. He’s not our only suspect either, remember? Now drop this lot off at the lab before it closes, then run his fingerprints up to the Yard. The guv’nor wants them compared to marks from the scene tout suite, so don’t take no for an answer. Understand?’

‘Not a problem,’ Zukov replied. ‘And what will you be up to?’

Donnelly looked him up and down before answering. ‘Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but I thought I’d head back to the nick with the guv’nor, see if I can’t find out what’s going on in that head of his.’

‘Problems?’ Zukov asked.

‘I’m not sure yet. Let’s just say I get the feeling the man’s not telling me everything he knows.’

At about 5 p.m. Sean was back at his desk ploughing through emails and paperwork, oblivious to the chatter and ringing phones in the incident room. A detective constable whom everyone called Bruce knocked on his door frame, somewhat startling him.

‘Fingerprints returning your call, guv’nor,’ he said without enthusiasm, but Sean felt his heart jump and his stomach sink. He crossed the office and took the phone.

‘DI Corrigan speaking. You can give the results to me.’

‘I don’t have the results yet,’ the anonymous voice replied. ‘The marks from the scene are still being worked up. Identification Officer Collins is working that case. He’ll run comparisons to your scene as soon as he can, starting with the various elimination prints you’ve sent us. If you’re lucky, they’ll be ready by Monday or Tuesday.’

‘This is a murder investigation,’ Sean reminded him. ‘I need them yesterday.’

‘Sorry,’ said the voice. ‘Monday or Tuesday is the absolute earliest they’ll be ready. Listen, we’re snowed under here. Anti-Terrorist Unit just landed a rush job on us. We’ve been told to make it a priority, no exceptions. Sorry.’

Sean understood. It was an unavoidable sign of the times. ‘Okay. Thanks. You can get him to call me direct with the results. One more thing,’ Sean quickly added before the line went dead. ‘Can you check for a set of conviction fingerprints for someone for me?’

‘Sure,’ came the answer. ‘What’s the name?’

Sean was unaware that Donnelly had moved within earshot. ‘James Hellier. Do you need a date of birth?’

‘No. The name’s probably unusual enough. Give me a minute.’ Sean waited, the two or three minutes that passed feeling so much longer, before finally the voice spoke. ‘No. No prints for that name here.’

Sean felt the emptiness of disappointment. ‘No problem,’ he managed to say, and hung up.

Donnelly cut through his state of melancholy. ‘Interesting line of inquiry.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Asking Fingerprints if Hellier had a set of conviction prints on file, given that we already know he doesn’t have any convictions. Remember, I checked.’

‘I thought I’d double check,’ Sean said. ‘I thought maybe his conviction never got sent from the court, or someone forgot to put it on the PNC. Worth a try.’

‘I see, belt and braces, eh. Any luck?’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘Hellier’s clean.’

Hellier sat in his study watching for movements in the American money markets on his computer. His wife popped her head around the door without warning, but she wouldn’t enter fully before asking. Elizabeth knew when to leave him alone; it was part of her role as the perfect wife and she was paid well. She liked her life.

‘Are you okay in here, darling?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine, sweetheart. Just catching up on a bit of work. I won’t be long. Promise.’ He threw her a charming smile.

‘You work too hard. It’s almost ten o’clock.’

‘Go to bed. I’m fine.’

‘Don’t stay up too late, darling.’

‘I won’t.’

His wife blew him a kiss and left. Time to make a phone call.

Hellier slid his hand under the desk and peeled a piece of tape from the underside. He examined the two keys stuck to the tape, then pulled one free and carried it across the office to the built-in walnut cabinets. He listened for sounds outside the office before opening the cabinet door and kneeling on the floor. He pulled the carpet back to reveal a floor safe sealed into the concrete foundation of the house. He unlocked the safe with one of the keys and took out a small address book. He locked the safe, closed the cabinet and went back to his desk. He found the number he was looking for and dialled. After a few ringing tones the phone was answered by a sleepy voice. ‘Hello? Hello? Christ.’

Hellier spoke. ‘It’s me.’

Hellier was met by silence. Then the voice spoke with urgency. ‘Please tell me you’re calling from a public phone.’

Hellier could hear the fear. ‘Don’t worry about that. We’ve more important things to discuss.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like are you sure you took care of things? You wouldn’t have been lying to me, would you?’

‘Jesus Christ. Why are you asking me this? I took care of it. I told you. Why the panic? Have you fucked up?’ The voice sounded calmer.

‘No, but your flat-footed friends are making trouble for me. It’s important I know you did what you were paid to do.’

The voice was silent. Hellier gave the person time to think. After a few seconds the voice returned, almost whispering now, nervous. ‘Christ! They haven’t connected you to Korsakov, have they?’ The mention of that name made Hellier lean back into his comfortable chair and smile, as if he was recalling a happy childhood memory. Stefan Korsakov. A name he hadn’t heard in ages. ‘Have the police connected you to Korsakov?’ the voice demanded impatiently.

‘No,’ Hellier answered, still calm and smiling, ‘and they never will. Korsakov’s never coming back. I made sure of that a long time ago. Don’t you remember? You should do. After all, you helped me bury him.’

The voice snapped back. ‘If you’ve fucked up, you’re on your own. I won’t help you again.’

Hellier needed to remind him. ‘If they take me down, I’ll make sure you come with me. Keep that in mind.’ He hung up before the voice could answer.

The voice had sounded genuine enough. Time would tell if he was speaking the truth. For both their sakes, Hellier hoped he was.

10
Sunday morning

Shortly before 8 a.m. Sean arrived at work and Sally pounced on him immediately. ‘Guv’nor.’

‘What is it, Sally?’

She spoke in a whisper. ‘Superintendent Featherstone’s been floating around asking for you.’

Sean rolled his eyes. ‘Thanks for the warning.’ No sooner had he entered his office than he heard a knock on the side of the open door. He walked to his chair and sat down before looking around. ‘Morning, boss. Aren’t you supposed to be at church?’ He pointed at a chair.

Featherstone accepted the invitation, sinking into the visitor’s chair with a slight groan. He was a tall man, over six foot two, heavily built, with red hair. ‘I haven’t been to church since my second wife left me.’ He spoke with no more than a trace of London in his accent. ‘How’s the Graydon investigation going? Any progress for me?’

Featherstone had hardly any detective experience, rising instead through the ranks as an accelerated promotion candidate, but he had hit a ceiling at superintendent after failing or refusing to become one of the new generic breed of senior officers in the Met. He was a little too rough around the edges; a little too outspoken and far too prepared to get his hands dirty. Realizing he could go no higher, he transferred into the CID.

Sean could do business with the man. He knew Featherstone was shrewd enough not to interfere too much with the way he conducted his investigations and that he would watch Sean’s back more than most.

‘We’re still waiting on forensics and fingerprints.’

‘How about other lines of inquiry? Any witnesses?’

‘We’ve spoken with a number of witnesses from the club. Some have supplied statements and elimination samples. Nothing of interest so far. The killer went to a lot of trouble to avoid leaving forensic evidence at the scene. It looks premeditated. Our best chance for now seems to be James Hellier, the potential blackmail target.’

‘Any solid proof yet that the victim was blackmailing him?’

‘No. Hellier’s clever. He’s covered his tracks well. That’s why I requested authorization for round-the-clock surveillance – it could be our only hope of catching him out.’

‘What about the victim?’ Featherstone asked. ‘If you can turn up some blackmail letters, prove he was trying to screw Hellier, then you’d be halfway there.’

‘Nothing on paper from the victim’s flat. The bods have his computer, but it’ll take time to recover his emails.’

‘Any other credible suspects?’

‘Well, one of the barmen from the club’s gone missing. Apparently he knew the victim and possibly could have been romantically linked to him. Other than that we’re trying to find a recently released nutter who did eight years for the attempted murder of a young gay man. He lives close enough to the scene to be a cause for concern. He also appears to have gone missing.’

‘At the very least they need to be found and eliminated.’

‘They will be.’

‘We need to be careful with this one, Sean. You can bet, with a gay victim, someone, somewhere will be watching the investigation’s progress, waiting for a chance to accuse us of being homophobic. Let’s not hand the media a stick to beat us with.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Sean.

‘Speaking of the media,’ Featherstone asked, ‘what about an appeal? Crimewatch? Save some shoe leather and let the television do the donkey work.’

‘It’s a bit too soon for that. I’d rather no one knew what we’re up to just yet.’

‘You still camera shy?’ Featherstone smiled. ‘If it comes to it, I can take care of that side of things. I know you’re not exactly a fan, but I’ve got some people in the media I can trust. We can do a piece for the papers and try to get a slot on Crimewatch. I’ll have my secretary make a few calls.’

‘No need. I’ll get it arranged and let you know when the telly people want you. Should be able to sort it out in a day or so.’ Sean hoped he’d bought some time.

Featherstone got to his feet. ‘Fine. Let my secretary know the time and place and I’ll be there. You can give me a full briefing beforehand.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘I’d better get myself up the Yard. Commissioner’s called an emergency meeting. On a Sunday − can you believe that?’

‘Sounds like trouble.’

‘Bloody Territorial Support Group, kicked the shit out of some student on the last anti-capitalist march. Turns out the kid’s parents are connected, so now we’re all going to be issued with foam truncheons. Wankers.’ Featherstone looked to the heavens and walked from the office heading for the exit.

Sally appeared at Sean’s door. ‘Problems?’

‘No,’ Sean told her. ‘Not yet.’

Donnelly ate his sausage sandwich. It was the best Sunday-morning breakfast he could hope for under the circumstances. He stood close to the small wooden hut in the middle of Blackheath where he’d bought his sandwich. It was a well-known spot, used mainly by hungry taxi drivers and police looking for a place to talk without being overheard.

He enjoyed the gentle cooling breeze that whipped off the flat, wide heath. In winter, it was the coldest place in London. He spotted the dark blue Mondeo pull up opposite. Detective Sergeants Jimmy Dawson and Raj Samra stepped from the car. They could only have been police.

The detective sergeants worked on the other two murder teams in South London. They carried out the same roles on their teams as Donnelly did on his. Meeting regularly helped maintain the strong bond between detective sergeants and engendered a feeling that they were the ones really running the police.

Donnelly smiled to himself and stuffed the remains of the sandwich into his mouth. He waited for the men to cross the road. ‘For Christ’s sake, Raj. You’re the only Indian in the Met who looks more like a copper than Jimmy here.’

‘I like looking like a copper. You should try it some time. Instead of looking like a bag of shit,’ Raj replied.

The trading of insults was routine. Jimmy joined the conversation. ‘What you doing in the middle of Blackheath on a Sunday morning, Dave? Exposing yourself to students again? If it isn’t that, then I’ll assume you want a favour.’

‘Jimmy, Jimmy.’ Donnelly sounded insulted. ‘Are the best sausage sandwiches in London not a good enough reason for you?’ Dawson didn’t reply. ‘And you, Raj. Thinking I would ask for favours. Me. Dave Donnelly.’

‘Well, I don’t eat pork, so it better be something other than the sandwich.’

‘I didn’t know you were a Muslim,’ Donnelly said.

‘I’m not. I’m a Sikh.’

‘You should wear a turban − you’d be a commander by now.’

‘I’m not interested in playing that game,’ said Samra.

Donnelly gave a short stunted laugh, before his face turned serious. ‘Okay, gentlemen, I’ll assume you know what sort of case my team’s working on. I want to know if anything similar comes up. If one of your teams gets it first, I want to be called to the scene immediately. Understand?’

‘If it looks linked, it’ll be passed to your team anyway. What’s the rush?’ Dawson asked.

‘No,’ Donnelly snapped. ‘I didn’t say I want my team informed immediately. I said I wanted to be informed immediately, before anyone else. Including DI Corrigan.’

Donnelly watched them exchange glances. He knew they would be happy to help, but not if it meant being dragged into a dangerous situation. Dangerous for their careers. He understood their concerns.

‘Don’t look so worried, boys.’ He tried to sound less serious. ‘I just want first crack at any new scenes. I’m getting a taste for this case. I need a wee glance at an uncorrupted scene. You know, before the circus arrives and takes the feel out the place. That’s all.’ His fellow detective sergeants stared at him blankly, their way of letting him know they didn’t believe a word he was saying. ‘Okay, for fuck’s sake. You boys drive a hard bargain. Listen, our prime suspect is a clever, slippery bastard. Any forensic evidence we find at the next scene may require a little helping hand, if you catch my drift. But it has to appear genuine. The forensic boys have to find it, not one of my team, so I’ll need to be in and out of there before anyone’s the wiser. Clear?’

‘Well why didn’t you just say so?’ Samra mocked. ‘We’d be happy to help,’ he added, and meant it, knowing that one day he or Dawson might require a similar favour from Donnelly.

‘I thought your job was shaping up to be a blackmail?’ Dawson asked.

‘I know Corrigan better than he thinks,’ Donnelly told them. ‘He thinks there’s more to our prime suspect than he’s saying. Forget the blackmail element. You get anything a bit nastier than usual, then I want to know.’

‘Okay,’ Samra said with a shrug. ‘I’ll make sure you’re called straight off.’

‘Good, but keep it quiet. Tell your teams to call you, then you call me. Keep it nicely between the three of us.’

‘If you want to take jobs off my hands, that’s fine and dandy with me,’ Dawson said. ‘But if anyone asks, we never had this conversation.’

Donnelly spread his arms to show his good intentions. ‘Boys, please,’ he pleaded. ‘I promise. Nothing dodgy. Trying to solve a murder here, that’s all.’

The two detectives were already crossing the road. Samra called back to Donnelly: ‘Drag me into anything naughty and you’ll be solving your own fucking murder.’

You just do as you’re told, Raj my boy, Donnelly thought to himself. Just do as you’re told.

It was mid-morning by the time Sean walked from his office into the briefing room where his team were assembled. He wasn’t in the mood to let the room settle naturally. Time to push along. ‘All right, all right. Listen up. I haven’t got all day. The quicker you listen, the quicker we can get on with it.’ The room settled into silence. ‘So far we have three possible suspects: Steven Paramore, Jonnie Dempsey the missing barman and James Hellier. The reasons why Paramore and Dempsey are suspects are obvious, so they need to be found and spoken to. Hellier’s more complicated,’ Sean told them. ‘My best guess is still that our victim was attempting to blackmail him. No other motives have come to light and we’ve pretty much spoken to all his friends and family. Any last lingering possibility that this could be a domestic hangs on whether the victim was having a relationship with Jonnie Dempsey, and so far no one’s been able to confirm whether he was or wasn’t. Dempsey is only a suspect in so far as he worked at Utopia, knew the victim and now he’s missing and can’t be found, so all other suggestions are welcome.’

‘Maybe we should consider a stranger attack,’ Donnelly spoke up. ‘A random killer.’

‘No forced entry, remember?’ Sean reminded him.

‘Maybe the killer posed as a client?’ Donnelly suggested. ‘Talked his way into the flat.’

Sean was beginning to suspect Donnelly knew his blackmail theory was little more than a smokescreen. A screen that allowed Sean time to think. Time to walk in the killer’s shoes – to feel him. To understand him. ‘From what we’re being told of our victim, he was too careful for that.’ Sean tried to steer Donnelly away from the possibility for a while longer, until he had things straight in his own mind.

‘But it has to be a possibility?’ Donnelly insisted.

He had to give Donnelly something. ‘Possibly,’ Sean answered. There was a ripple of noise around the room.

‘If it’s a possibility, then what are we doing about it?’ Sally asked.

‘We’ve released a national memorandum, police eyes only, checking for recent similar cases,’ Sean reminded them.

‘Maybe we should go further back?’ Sally suggested.

‘As it happens, I’ve already asked General Registry to send me a number of old files.’ He sensed Donnelly’s discontent. ‘I’ve asked them for anything involving vulnerable victims where an excessive use of violence was involved, going back over the last five years. But don’t get too excited, we’re doing these checks as a matter of protocol, not because I think we have a madman on our hands.’

‘That’ll be a lot of files,’ said Donnelly. ‘You’ll need some help going over them.’

‘No,’ Sean snapped. ‘I’ll read them myself.’

‘What about Method Index?’ Sally asked. ‘They may have data the General Registry doesn’t. Something older or something that never made it to court.’

‘Good,’ Sean said. ‘Look into it, Sally. Take some help if you think you’ll need it.’

‘And Hellier?’ Donnelly asked. ‘What about Hellier?’

‘Surveillance started on him this morning,’ Sean told them. ‘Link up with them as soon as you can and keep them on the right track.’ Donnelly nodded without speaking. He didn’t seem too happy. Sean raised his voice slightly. ‘Don’t lose focus, people. Hellier is still our prime suspect and blackmail our prime motive. We’ll look into other possibilities because we have to, but I don’t want anyone going off on a wild-goose chase when we have an obvious suspect right in front of us. As for Paramore and Dempsey, let’s get hold of Customs and Immigration – see if either have left or tried to leave the country. Paulo.’ DC Zukov raised his head. ‘You take care of it, okay?’ Zukov nodded once. ‘We’ve all got work to do, so let’s get on with it.’ The meeting broke up.

Sean reached his office just as Donnelly caught up with him. He knew Donnelly would want an explanation.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s really going through your mind?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Let’s not make a drama out of it, Dave.’

‘How long have you known this wasn’t about Hellier being blackmailed?’

Sean closed the door to his office. ‘I don’t.’

‘Come on, guv’nor. Protocol, my arse. If you’ve requested old files from General Registry then you’re looking for something else.’

Sean sighed. He could see no sense in keeping anything from Donnelly any more. ‘All right. Hellier wasn’t being blackmailed, but I still think he could be our man. The second time I met him I really began to believe it could be him.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘Graydon wouldn’t have tried to blackmail him. From what we’ve learned about him, he was too passive to attempt blackmail. Especially someone like Hellier. He’s too intimidating. Too threatening.’

‘Then why have you got the team chasing the blackmail theory, not to mention Paramore and Dempsey?’

‘I need to make things appear straightforward, just for a while longer. It’ll buy me time to think the way I need to think. Once I show my hand, things will get a lot more complicated around here. I can’t see clearly when I’m crowded, and besides, Paramore and Dempsey must be found and spoken to. I could turn out to be wrong about Hellier.’

‘So you don’t think Hellier was being blackmailed, but you do think he could have killed Graydon.’

‘I do.’

‘Care to share?’

‘Because I don’t believe in coincidences. Hellier’s bad to the core. It’s simply in his nature. You know the type of animal I’m talking about. We’ve both dealt with them before. And now someone Hellier was connected to is dead.

‘If I’m right about him, then his motive for killing is the killing itself. He’s a very rare breed; the chances that Graydon crossed two such people are extremely remote, although not impossible.’

Donnelly slumped in a chair, exasperated. ‘Bloody hell, guv, this is all a bit loose. You wouldn’t want to take it to court.’

‘Agreed, but there’s another way to go after Hellier. He has no anxiety about this case. When I speak to him about it I can’t feel anything. No panic, concerns, doubt, nothing. He’s absolutely sure he’s got away with it.’

‘If he did it,’ Donnelly reminded him. Sean ignored the warning.

‘He was at his most confident when we were talking about the Graydon case. So long as we stuck to that, he was totally in his comfort zone. That tells me he’s left us very little, if anything.’

‘But?’

‘But at other times I’ve sensed his anxiousness.’

‘About what?’

‘About something else. Something that could betray him.’ Sean sat and faced Donnelly. ‘Something in his past. Maybe he’s—’

‘You think he’s killed before?’ Donnelly interrupted.

‘If he’s the type of animal I think he is, then there is a very real possibility he has. When I read the old case files from General Registry, hopefully some detail will stand out.’

‘You are aware of what you’re saying?’

‘Of course I am.’ Sean looked him in the eye. ‘That’s why this has to stay between the two of us for now. I’ll fill Sally in when I get a chance.’

‘God forbid the powers that be find out you reckon you’re on to a serial killer. This place will go fucking crazy with senior officers trying to get their faces on the telly.’

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