Diane Campbell glared at him. 'Not very helpful, Constable.'

Delaney stopped himself from smiling as he held his hand up to quell the beginnings of laughter in the room. 'Nothing's discounted. Most likely scenario is that she was taken there, though. s.e.x attackers don't usually hang around in rainstorms looking for victims.'

Sally Cartwright held up her hand. She looked like she should still be in school, Delaney thought, but was glad she wasn't. She may look like a Girl Guide, but he knew beneath that pretty exterior was what his North American colleagues would have called a tough cookie. He'd had to depend on her more than once and she hadn't let him down. 'Yes, Constable?'

'Is there anything in the database matching the MO?'

'Good question. We're running it through at the moment. Until we get the detailed post it's all rather general. No immediate hits.'

Diane Campbell stepped forward. 'What leads are you pursuing, Jack?'

'A flasher was operating early this morning, near the scene of the crime.'

'You think he was involved?'

'Unlikely. But he may have seen something.'

'You have a good ID on him?'

'Pretty good. This isn't a run-of-the-mill flasher.'

'Go on.'

Delaney produced a couple of A3 sheets of paper. He pinned the first on the wall. It showed an artist's rendition of a wild-haired man in his late twenties, early thirties. 'This is the man we're looking for, and this . . .' He hesitated before putting up the second picture. 'This is his p.e.n.i.s.'

There was some wincing, some groaning and some laughter at the second picture that Delaney pinned on the board. An artist's rendition, blown up, from the nurse's description, of the man's scarred p.e.n.i.s.

'Is that life-size?' Bob Wilkinson couldn't resist it, and now the laughter rippled round the room like a rumbling sea at high tide.

'All right, children, that's enough.' Diane Campbell's voice barked and the room fell silent. 'Have a look at the picture over there.' She pointed at the dead woman's mutilated body. 'Any one of you find anything funny in that?' She looked pointedly at Bob Wilkinson.

'No, ma'am.'

Delaney's phone chose that moment to ring. He looked at the caller and shrugged apologetically at his boss. 'I've got to take this. I'll be right back.'

Delaney strode quickly from the briefing room before Diane Campbell could stop him and answered the call in the corridor outside. 'What have you got for me, Jimmy?'

On the other end of the phone, DI Jimmy Skinner's voice sounded thin and echoing, the sound of men in the background telling Delaney he was calling from the prison. 'Hi, Jack. I'm at Bayfield.'

'I gathered. Go on.'

'n.o.body's talking. I put the hard word on Neil Riley, Norrell's old oppo, and according to him Kevin Norrell was taken down because of the kiddie p.o.r.n.'

'You believe him?'

'I don't know, Jack. Something feels hinky.'

'You reckon it has anything to do with my wife?'

'Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you can trust Norrell as far as you could throw him one-handed. Which is ruddy nowhere. The guy's a timeserving p.r.i.c.k of the first order.'

'Why lie about it?'

There was a pause and Delaney could picture Skinner shrugging at the other end of the line. 'The guy was desperate. That much seems clear. Whether it was because he knew there was a hit out on him, or about the trial coming up, who knows? His mate reckons that he had something on Chief Superintendent Walker, perhaps. He was looking to deal. Maybe talking about your wife was the best way to get you in to see him.'

'Maybe . . .' But Delaney wasn't convinced. Kevin Norrell had the brainpower of a fermented melon, but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to jerk Delaney's chain over his dead wife. Delaney glanced down at the stairs at the end of the corridor as the sound of high heels clicking rhythmically on the wooden steps grew louder. 'Keep on it, Jimmy.'

Delaney snapped his phone shut and looked across as Kate came up the stairs and headed towards the briefing room, unwrapping her scarf from her neck and taking off her gloves. If she was a little taken aback to see Delaney waiting outside the door, she didn't betray it in her body language. Delaney watched her confident stride, the determined set to her jaw, but in her eyes he saw something that disturbed him. Something that went against her usual, poised exterior. Something that reached out to him in a primal sense. Something very much like fear.

'Kate.'

'Not now, Jack.' She sailed past him.

Delaney hurried after her and took her arm. He was shocked to see the way she flinched away. 'I'm sorry.'

She looked at him, anger flaring behind the fear that was still liquid in her deep, brown eyes. 'Sorry for what exactly?'

Delaney hesitated. 'I didn't mean to startle you.'

Kate nodded, as if his answer had confirmed her thoughts, lessened him once again in her eyes, and he felt the shame of it like a creeping feeling on his skin. 'I need to get to the meeting,' she said.

She opened the door and walked into the briefing room before Delaney had a chance to say anything more.

Jimmy Skinner was heading down the iron staircase to be taken back through to the reception area when Derek Watters, the guard who had been posted outside Neil Riley's cell, fell into step behind him. He spoke quietly.

'You want to know what was going down with Kevin Norrell?'

Skinner turned back to look at him but the guard gestured him on.

'Just keep walking. I'll talk to you about it, but not here and not for gratis.'

'What are you after?'

'A drink. A serious drink. I reckon Delaney's good for it.'

'When and where?'

They reached the bottom of the stairs.

'Six o'clock. The Pillars of Hercules. Soho.'

Skinner nodded, imperceptibly, as another guard approached.

'All right, Derek. I'll take him from here.'

Derek Watters slapped Skinner on the arm as the other guard led him away and back towards the entrance.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, it doesn't matter what time of year, Soho is a busy place. But the White Horse pub, just down the road from Walker's Court, was relatively quiet today; as quiet as it was most days during the week, after lunch and before the workers came off shift. Later on it would be bustling with the regulars who preferred the scruffy traditionalism of a proper London boozer to the trendy bars that had recently sprung up around Soho like mushrooms in an autumn wood. Soho took its name, most believed, from the old hunting cry Soho, much like the Tally ho that still sounds from blue-blooded lips up and down the shires, hunting ban or no. Less fanciful, perhaps, was that the name just came from a shortening of South Holborn.

The dark-haired man sitting on his own in the pub preferred the first version. As far as he was concerned, Soho was still a hunting ground. The best kind.

The White Horse was a pub he liked to drink in and watch people. A spit-and-sawdust bar with a dirty, wooden planked floor and a look about it as faded as an old man's shirt. The man liked it because he could look at the wh.o.r.es as they worked the street outside, and watch them closer when they came in for a nip of cheap vodka against the elements. Their skinny legs sometimes encased in fishnet stockings and knee-length boots, sometimes bare and cold in red leather shoes, their painted smiles cracking in the sudden warmth like old varnish as they took a brief respite from the cold outdoors.

At the moment, however, there were just a few tourists sheltering from the persistent rain and a couple of old men, seated separately and so far gone on strong beer that time meant nothing them. When they got up in the morning the pub was open and when they went home and collapsed the pub was open, and all that filled the hours in between waking and sleeping was the slow annihilation of thought, feeling and memory. Annihilation by the pint and shot gla.s.s.

The man seated at the round table by the entrance door watched the old men with contempt undisguised in his eyes. His right hand caressed his left wrist.

He looked up at the television set above the corner of the bar. He'd been watching the news now for over an hour. No mention of his own artistry that day on the heath. No mention at all. And that made him angry.

The woman reading the news was young, blonde and very pretty. The man took a sip of his drink and watched her lips moving, not listening to the words she was saying. It was all irrelevant. Her lips were full, coloured with a soft, strawberry-pink lipstick. He licked his own lips, as if he could taste hers.

He ran his finger around the circle of moisture on the cracked surface of the wooden table and something sparked in his eyes. Not anger, or self-pity, but desire. He looked up at the television screen again. At the face of Melanie Jones, the news reporter from Sky News, as she smiled at the camera and wittered on about the change in the weather and coastal erosion in some Norfolk village n.o.body had ever heard of.

It was clear they had no knowledge of what he had done. And it was equally clear that the police had failed to grasp the significance of it. He needed to go to work again. Sometimes it took two pieces of the puzzle for someone to see the connection. Sometimes it took more. Well, if they needed another piece, he'd give it to them. Can you see what it is yet? Art is nothing without an audience after all. He smiled to himself taking another sip of his drink and looked at the elderly man at the bar who was watching him with a curious look in his eye, after a moment or two the man looked away and turned his attention back to his pint of Guinness. Some things you didn't want to look at too closely.

Especially in London.

Kate Walker looked at the photographs on the wall. Pictures of a young woman, once vital, now lying on a cold shelf in the morgue. Anatomy of a murder. She looked at the cold savagery of the slashes on the woman's body and felt sick for her race.

Kate could feel the restlessness in the room behind her as she continued to look at the photos. But she needed a moment or two to collect herself. Her heart was racing, as it had been since morning, and her skin was clammy. She'd never felt like this before in one of these meetings. Some people were terrified talking to a large number of people, it was the top fear in the country, bigger even than spiders or snakes, but that had never been one of her phobias. She knew more than most people she ever met and didn't mind demonstrating it. It was a measure of just how rattled she was that she was nervous now. She took a breath or two and turned round and nodded to the a.s.sembled policemen and women. 'As you already know we're putting her age at mid-twenties. Time of death between one o'clock and two o'clock last night.'

The young constable who had been guarding the body from the prurient gaze of the public earlier in the morning raised his hand.

'Can I ask a question?'

'Of course,' Kate said. 'What is it, Constable?'

'How can you be so sure about the time of death? What are the signs?' Danny Vine asked, his notebook open and his pen ready.

Amus.e.m.e.nt rippled round the room. Kate glared at them. 'All right. Some of you know as much about forensic pathology as I do a in your own opinion. But for the benefit of those who don't, there are a number of ways of determining time of death. It's a science but it's not an exact science. Rigor mortis usually sets in about three or four hours after death with full rigor about twelve hours later. Our victim hadn't reached that stage yet. So that's one thing. Ambient temperature plays a part though. Three to four hours is the norm with mild temperatures.'

'It was bra.s.s monkeys last night, ma'am.'

'Yes, thank you, Constable Wilkinson. You're right, it was b.l.o.o.d.y cold last night so that skews our calculations. But there are other factors we can use.' She looked across to see Danny Vine was taking copious notes. Keen to be a detective, she reckoned. She took a sip of water to allow him to catch up.

'Other conditions factor in. The age of the body, how active the person was prior to death. If they were very active then rigor mortis can set in quicker. We don't know what this woman was doing prior to her murder but at that time of night we can a.s.sume she hadn't been jogging on the heath. So we look at other indicators.' She pointed to the photos mounted on the display panels.

'The heart, as you all know, is a muscle that pumps blood around the body. Once that pump stops working, at the time of death, blood collects in the most dependent parts of the body. That is livor mortis. Then the body stiffens, which is rigor mortis, and then with no heat being generated post mortem, the body begins to cool and this is the algor mortis stage.'

She pointed at the blue staining on the body of the dead woman. 'Blood will collect in those parts of the body that are in contact with the ground. Most commonly the back and the b.u.t.tocks when the person is lying face up. The skin is pale because all the blood that keeps it pink drains into the larger veins. It can take minutes or hours after death, but livor mortis will manifest itself on the skin.'

She pointed to a close-up photograph of the discoloration on the woman's face. 'These purplish blemishes are what embalmers call post-mortem stain. It takes a few hours but after that the blood becomes what we call fixed. That is, it won't move to other parts of the body if the corpse is moved. So we can use that to also determine where the murder took place. And, in this instance, together with the other factors such as the arterial spray in the immediate area, we can say pretty definitely that the woman was killed in the place where she was discovered.'

Kate walked back to the desk and took another sip of water. She was aware that Delaney was watching her but determined to keep professional.

'There is a condition, at the time of death, known as primary flaccidity.'

'Bob Wilkinson knows all about that,' a female officer called out from the back of the room, and laughter erupted. Kate smiled, the grim photos on the wall behind were testament to the seriousness of the situation but the laughter didn't mean anyone in the room wasn't focused on the dead woman, and finding justice for her. Black humour was just a coping mechanism, after all.

She held up a hand. 'All right, settle down. Constable Wilkinson is already no doubt well aware that there are medications available on prescription for his particular ailment, so there is no need for embarra.s.sment nowadays.'

Bob Wilkinson scowled, taking the ribbing in good heart.

Kate waited for the laughter to subside and then continued. 'A dead body will usually stay in full rigor mortis for anything between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. After that the muscles start to relax again and secondary laxity,' she smiled apologetically at Bob Wilkinson, 'or flaccidity occurs. And it will usually follow the same pattern as it began.' She gestured behind her. 'Not applicable in this case of course. Another way of gauging how long a person has been dead is by taking the core temperature. And again we have to factor in the ambient temperature. The unseasonably cold weather last night meant that the woman's body will have cooled a lot faster than if she had been murdered at home for example. Wherever her home is.'

Kate glanced back at the mottled face of the ravaged woman and wondered if anyone was waiting for her at that home. A distraught parent or worried boyfriend. She a.s.sumed she wasn't married as she had no wedding ring, or indications that she had ever worn one.

At the back of the room, meanwhile, Delaney was watching Kate as she pinned different photographs of the murdered young woman to the display board, and talked about the forensic a.n.a.lytical techniques. But those details washed over him, hardly taking in what she was saying. She was discussing putrefaction as another method of establishing time of death. But again it wasn't strictly relevant as putrefaction didn't take place until the second or third day after death and Delaney had seen enough corpses in his time to know about the telltale signs of green discoloration, and the putrid odour that accompanied it. An odour that told him they were already far too late for the victim and had given the murderer a good few days' head start on them. The first twenty-four hours were often critical in a murder case and if the body was putrefying before it was discovered it wasn't a good omen.

Kate turned to the room. 'We know the victim is a young female, we know she was murdered sometime in the early hours of last night and we know we are dealing with an extremely sick individual.'

A murmur went round the room again, sensing that Kate had finished but she held her hand up for quiet once again.

'One more thing.' She walked over to the display panels again and pointed at a blown-up photo of the young woman's neck. 'There is an unusual puncture mark on her neck.'

'Vampire you think, Doctor?'

A laugh went around the room again. But a nervous one. After all, the woman had been murdered in the dead of night, under a full moon, was dressed like someone out of Bram Stoker and had a couple of pagan symbols on her belt.

Kate let the laughter subside. 'I have no idea what to think.'

The previously recorded news highlights were playing on monitors throughout the building. Melanie Jones smiling at the camera. It was a practised smile, full of hope, innocence and genuine wonder at the world. A smile that belied the news that she had just been reporting. A third teenager stabbed to death in south London that week. An eighty-three-year-old woman raped and murdered in Nottingham. The foreclosure of a car works in the Midlands that was putting five thousand people out of work. At Sky News the policy was that the viewer should want to kiss the messenger not kill her. And a lot of people wanted to kiss Melanie Jones. The news is a bitter pill, after all, and Melanie Jones provided the sweet, sweet sugar that helped the medicine go down.

At the moment it was her line producer, Ronald Bliss, that was going down. His head nestled between her thighs as she sat legs akimbo on the toilet in the ensuite in his office. She wasn't smiling now. She was looking at her nails. There was a slight chip on her left index finger. She looked across at her handbag which was propped up against Ronald's knees. She'd have loved to get her polish out of it and fix the nail, but thought it might not go down too well. She looked at her watch. He'd been at it for five minutes, breathing heavily through his nostrils and sounding like a St Bernard in labour. Bliss was five foot six and several stones overweight and Melanie hoped the heavy breathing wasn't a prelude to a heart attack. She looked down at the top of his head; he was only thirty-eight but already his hair was thinning badly. She could see the pink of his scalp through the strands of his ginger hair, and frowned slightly. Someone should tell him about dandruff shampoo, but that was his wife's job, not hers. She looked at her watch again, she'd give him a couple more minutes for form's sake then make a few whimpering noises and give him a quick w.a.n.k, which should keep him happy for a week or so and her own promotion prospects on line.

A buzzing in her jacket pocket and then her phone rang. She took it out and was about to click it off when the man below mumbled, 'Answer it, I like to hear your voice.'

Melanie curled her lip at him and answered the phone, suppressing a yawn.

'Melanie Jones.'

She listened for a while and then went very still. 'Call me back in fifteen minutes. I can't talk now.' She closed her phone and patted her producer on his head, just once and wiped her palm on the sleeve of her jacket.

'Sorry, Ronald, I think I just came on.'

The man looked up, a shifty tremor in his gla.s.sine eyes. 'I don't mind.'

'Next week, eh.' She shifted her thighs, squeezing him backward and leaned over to pick her thong. Silk, diamante-studded, eighty-five pounds from Agent Provacateur. She stood up and the man looked at her hopefully.

'Could you at least leave me the knickers?'

The call she had just received could very well turn out to be the best break of her career and so she was suddenly feeling very generous. She tossed them into his eager hand.

'I want them replaced.'

She closed the door behind her. The look of grat.i.tude in her boss's eyes was proof, if she needed it, of just how weak men can be.

Kate walked down the corridor, wrapping the long scarf around her neck and heading for the stairs. She was happy to have put the briefing behind her, her mind wasn't on it. Much as she felt for the murdered woman, she had her own problems today. She headed down the broad staircase and walked to the police surgeon's room. She dreaded what she was about to hear. When she had worked as a police surgeon Kate had had to deal with many cases of rape. She knew that the cases reported were just the tip of the iceberg too. She'd been giving a lecture not many weeks past addressing the issue. She'd been horrified to look at the women against rape website and seen that if anything the situation was getting worse year by year. Ninety-eight per cent of domestic violence goes unreported. Two women a week murdered by their partner or ex-partner. One in six women in the country has been raped and yet only six per cent of reported rapes result in a conviction. And now, most likely, she was one of the statistics. She had no evidence that the man in her bed had a.s.saulted her last night; it was a gut feeling, and the news that he had done it before just made her all the more certain that she had been violated. The thought of it made her feel nauseous again, her stomach lurching as though she were on a particularly choppy Channel crossing. She paused at the water cooler outside the police surgeon's office to take a drink and try and stop herself from hurling her lunch on the smooth tiles of the corridor.