The newly qualified constable shrugged. 'They're on their way. Hard to tell.'

'Well, it's not good enough. I'm due back on shift in a few hours and I've hardly had time to catch forty winks, let alone have a proper sleep.'

'You could always call in. You have had a traumatic day.'

The nurse shook her head angrily. 'You see, that's what's wrong with this generation. The slightest thing and people can just call in. Where would we be if the RAF had just called in in 1940?'

'I don't know, ma'am.'

'Well, I tell you where we'd be. We'd be right here,' she said, realising that wasn't quite what she meant. 'Only we wouldn't be speaking English, would we? We'd be speaking German.'

'I've got an A level in German.'

Valerie glared at him. 'Is that supposed to be funny?'

'No. I was just saying.'

'And that's another wrong. People are always "just saying". In my day, young man, people did. They didn't say. They got on with it. They got the job done.'

Danny Vine sighed inwardly with relief as the handle on the door turned and DI Jack Delaney and DC Sally Cartwright came into the room.

'Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms Manners.'

Valerie smiled sweetly at Delaney. 'That's quite all right, Detective Inspector. As I was just explaining to the young officer . . .' she gestured unimpressed at Danny Vine, 'I am only too happy to do my civic duty. Only too happy.'

'We're very grateful.'

The nurse held her hand up. 'No grat.i.tude necessary. I am from a generation that steps up to the line when the call comes.'

Delaney pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. He opened a folder and put the photographs of the men they had pulled from the security footage from South Hampstead Tube station.

'I'd like you to look at these photos, Ms Manners. See if you recognise any of the men as the gentleman you encountered this morning.'

'The pervert, you mean. He was certainly no gentleman.'

She pulled out a pair of gla.s.ses from her handbag and perched them on the end of her nose as she looked at the photographs Delaney had handed her across the table. She studied each one for a long time before looking up and taking her gla.s.ses off. 'They all look possible.'

'But you can't be sure.'

The nurse shrugged apologetically. 'Well, if I'm honest my eyes weren't exactly drawn to his face, if you see what I mean.'

Sally Cartwright stepped forward. 'Could you look again, Ms Manners?'

Valerie Manners picked up the photos and looked at them again, then shook her head and handed the photos back to Sally. 'Sorry, but any one of them could be him. Is it possible to see photos of the area of exposure, as it were?'

Sally blinked, not quite sure she had heard correctly. 'I beg your pardon?'

'I am a nurse after all. And it might help.'

Danny Vine couldn't hold back a short laugh and Delaney glared at him. 'Wait outside, Constable.'

'Sir.' Danny hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Delaney turned back to Valerie Manners. 'I'm sorry, ma'am. But that won't be possible. It would be a procedural irregularity, I'm afraid.'

'It's just the injury. Very unlikely two people would have the same.'

Delaney took the photos off Sally and flicked through them quickly. 'What do you mean, the injury?'

'To his p.e.n.i.s. Quite extensive scarring, and some deformation I would say.'

'What?' Delaney couldn't believe what he was hearing.

'It was quite noticeable.' She looked up at Delaney's surprised expression. 'I'm sorry. Didn't I mention that?'

'No, ma'am. You didn't.'

'Do you think it might be important?'

DI Jimmy Skinner was well aware that the chatter beneath him had stopped as soon as the clang of his hard leather shoes on the metal walkway echoed around the large building. He looked over the railing, down at the many prisoners who were scattered about the recreation area, their faces turned up to his momentarily and then back to what they had been doing. Noise filled the building again. The sound of caged men resigned to their fate. The truth was Jimmy Skinner felt a lot of empathy for them. They were all gamblers in the main, much like him. Jimmy recognised that, just like he had been in the past many, many times, these men had been f.u.c.ked on the river. Deliverance they called it. The odds had been in his favour, it was science after all, but the cards had turned up and defied the odds and he had taken a bad beat. He himself had taken a lot of bad beats over the years, just like the men below. Someone had lost their nerve or a car had failed to start, or a family that should have been on holiday had cancelled at the last minute and were at home when they shouldn't have been. Bad beats all. Or the baddest beat of the lot: being born in the wrong part of London in the wrong kind of family. The kind of family that had no hope outside of crime. No hope because the system had f.u.c.ked them on the river before they'd even been born, and now the only way out was by the gun or knife, or with a flame and a spike and a packet of temporary oblivion to trade. So he felt a kind of sympathy for them. Not for the rapists, mind, or the child abusers or the soulless killers. For them he'd have a rope waiting, see how the cards fell on the ultimate gamble of all.

The prison guard coughed and Jimmy Skinner turned back to him and carried on walking towards the open cell doors and put the men below out of his mind. One thing you learned playing poker was that you put the past behind you and moved on to your next game. Chasing losses was a sure way to destruction and Jimmy Skinner wasn't that kind of gambler. He didn't play to lose, he played to stay even, so he could play again.

The officer, a wide-set man in his forties with steel-grey hair and eyes as bereft of humour as a warehouse guard dog, stood by the open door of one of the cells and jerked with his thumb to show Jimmy the man inside.

Neil Riley was a scrawny, long-haired man in his early thirties, with skin the colour of church candles and tattoos covering both his arms. Tattoos that hadn't been modelled on any works of the great Renaissance artists as far as Jimmy Skinner could see. He was sat on his bed rolling a cigarette and looked up dispa.s.sionately as the policeman entered the cell.

Jimmy fished a new packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and threw it on the bed besides him. The man looked at it, a sneer quirking the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. 'You better do better than f.u.c.king that.'

Jimmy nodded then picked up the packet of cigarettes from the bed, put them in his pocket and slapped the man back-handed, hard across his face.

'The f.u.c.k you think you're doing? I got rights, you know.'

A snort of laugher came from the guard outside and Jimmy clicked his fingers to get the man's attention. 'First rule. You don't swear in my presence.'

'f.u.c.k that.'

Jimmy hit him hard again, the other side of his face this time, open-palmed.

'Jesus Christ!'

Skinner hit him back-handed again. 'Or blaspheme.'

Neil Riley scrambled up on the bed, putting his back to the wall and held his hand up at Skinner. 'All right, you made your f-' He caught himself. 'You made your point.'

Skinner nodded. 'Good.'

'And I don't know what you want to see me for. I don't know anything about anything.'

'You know Kevin Norrell, don't you?'

'I knew him.'

Skinner leaned in pointedly. 'He isn't dead yet, Riley.'

The sallow-faced man looked surprised. 'I thought-'

'What did you think?'

'I heard he was dead, that's all.'

'And where did you hear that from?'

Riley shrugged. 'Word gets round. What do you think, this place is a Carmelite nunnery? You think n.o.body talks?'

Skinner was a little surprised, and ignoring his own rules, said, 'What do you know about the f.u.c.king Carmelites?'

'I went to a convent primary school.'

'I thought that was just for girls?'

'No. Some are mixed up to a certain age.'

Skinner caught himself. 'Can we get back to the f.u.c.king point here?'

'I was just saying.'

'Never mind all that b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, just tell me who told you Norrell was dead.'

'I don't know, what does it matter who told me?'

'Someone took five inches of sharpened steel and tried to make a shish kebab out of his organs with it. Maybe that was the guy who told you, that's what matters.'

Riley shook his head. 'Get real, Detective. Whoever did it is going to keep his mouth shut, isn't he?'

Skinner glared at him for a moment or two, resisting the urge to slap him hard around the head again just for the fun of it. 'Let's get back to the point, shall we?'

'Which is?'

'Which is: you were a friend of Kevin Norrell.'

'Says who?'

Skinner looked around the cell. 'You see anyone else standing in this f.u.c.king room?'

Riley shrugged again. 'I knew him a little.'

'Come off it, Riley. You think we don't read files? You grew up on the same estate as him. You've been busted together more than once. You knew the man.'

Riley hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up his options. Finally he said, 'Yeah, I knew him.'

'He's on remand. He gets to speak to people. And the information is that you and he were buddy-buddy in here.'

'Someone has to watch your back.'

'You did a good job of watching his.'

Riley held his skinny arms up. 'What good would I be? You know Norrell, he didn't need me riding on his wing.'

'So what did you do for him?'

'I've been here a while. I know who's who and what's what. I filled him in.'

'What was he going to tell Delaney?'

Riley pulled a face, so Skinner slapped him hard again. Sometimes he loved being a policeman. Riley yelped and the guard from outside looked in again. He grinned and nodded to Skinner with approval.

'For Christ's sake, what was that for?'

He flinched and pressed back against the wall as Skinner leaned in, but he didn't hit him this time. 'I'll ask the question again. What was he going to tell Delaney?'

Riley shook his head, agitated now. 'I honestly don't know. His court case was coming up soon. Preliminary hearings. He told me he had stuff on Chief Superintendent Walker. Maybe he was looking to make a deal.'

'He said it was about Delaney's wife.'

'He never said anything to me about it. But if he wanted to see Delaney that was a sure-fire way of getting him in.'

'What else would he want to see him for?'

Riley shook his head. 'f.u.c.k knows, you're the detective.'

Some people just couldn't help themselves.

Paul Archer strode angrily down the steps, shrugging into his overcoat. The woman behind the reception desk smiled at him but he ignored her. She wasn't his type and he had taken the afternoon off for more particular distractions than the kind offered in idle badinage with insipid blondes. Paul Archer had the kind of itch that could only be scratched by a certain type of woman. And he knew just where to find her.

Delaney stood in front of the briefing room. On the board behind him were pinned the photographs taken of the dead woman they had found in the woods. Hampstead's very own Black Dahlia, he couldn't help thinking.

'All right, listen up.' Delaney raised his voice above the chatter that filled the room and conversations died as they focused their attention on the detective inspector. 'Now, as yet we don't have any ID on the woman. We think she was murdered sometime during last night. We're placing her age, give or take a few years, in her mid-twenties.'

'Was she killed in the woods, or dumped there?' Audrey Hobson, a uniformed inspector in her fifties, called out.

'Best we can tell, she was killed where we found her.'

'An opportunist killing, or was she taken there?'

'We don't know, Audrey. It was lousy weather. It was cold, windy, raining. It's unlikely she'd be in the woods alone at that time of night.'

PC Bob Wilkinson spoke out. 'It's possible. Like Sally said earlier. Maybe it's some witchcraft thing. She's dressed up as a goth. You know how some of them fruitcakes are. Lesbians and pagans, give them a full moon and they start believing all kind of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. '