'No aunts or uncles?'

'None that cared to know me.' It was said with real feeling and Fenwick suspected it was the truth.

'I'd like their names anyway, please.'

'Can't remember.'

'You must know them if they were your only living relatives.'

'No. We didn't exactly keep in touch.'

Fenwick tried other questions but nothing else shook Griffiths and he eventually left to meet with the prison psychiatrist.

Batchelor had a practice in the neighbouring town and was waiting for Fenwick with a look of antic.i.p.ation on his face. He talked non-stop about the prisoner, how fascinating he was, the intricacies of his mind, his increasing remorse. Fenwick found it sickening and struggled to suppress a growing dislike for the doctor.

'Do you think him capable of inciting violence whilst still in prison?'

Batchelor flushed with indignation.

'Certainly not, it would be quite out of character. Why?'

Fenwick described what had been happening to Nightingale. The psychiatrist started shaking his head in denial within half a sentence. By the time Fenwick had finished he was sitting with arms and legs crossed.

'Impossible. He would never encourage something like that.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course. In fact, the more I think about it, the more likely it is that this is some hysterical response on her part.'

'My sergeant saw the blood and offal. It was not imagined, I can a.s.sure you.'

A more sensitive man would have recognised the warning in Fenwick's tone.

'Even so. She's a nervy young woman. You never can tell with that type.'

'And what type is that, precisely?'

'So straight and correct, always in control.'

'You've met her?' It was an accusation.

'Spoken on the phone, just once. She agreed to help me.'

'Willingly?' Fenwick's mouth and the edges of his nostrils were white with self-control as he waited for this vainglorious man to justify himself.

'Well, er, yes.'

The pause betrayed his lie and Fenwick shook his head in disgust.

'You deserve to be reported.'

'Now, see here! It's none of your business. You come in here, throwing your weight around. He's behind bars, can't you leave him alone?'

'He deserves his sentence, for the sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d he is.' Fenwick stood up, reminding Batchelor of how tall he was. 'She doesn't and her punishment is just as real, believe me. If you try and have that psycho out on appeal or medical grounds, you will fail. There's me and a dozen other officers standing between you and success.'

'He's mentally disturbed, not a psycho.'

'Really? What makes you so sure? He might just be very good at manipulating you.' He muttered under his breath, 'It wouldn't be difficult.'

He saw himself out, angry with himself for losing his temper and depressed that a prisoner as obviously guilty as Griffiths could stimulate sympathy. On his way back to the station he called the prison governor and thanked her for her help. He asked that the next letter Griffiths sent be held for his personal examination. Whilst he couldn't prove a link to the attacks on Nightingale, his instinct told him that there was a connection, however unlikely, and he felt uneasy, as if he was driving away from something important.

At ten o'clock that evening, Superintendent Quinlan returned to Harlden police station after a dull dinner. He was surprised to see a light coming from an office on the second floor and went to investigate 'Anything I should be concerned about, Andrew?'

'No, just catching up on some reading.'

All ranks from inspector upwards were having to do increasing amounts of unpaid overtime but working past ten o'clock when there were no serious crimes to investigate was excessive.

'Looks like a closed file.' Quinlan took a step forward and Fenwick suppressed a sigh. He had been hoping to avoid this conversation.

'It's the Griffiths case. I went to see him in prison today, trying to establish whether he's connected with the attacks against Nightingale.'

'And, is he?'

'I don't know.' Fenwick leant back in his chair and rubbed his forehead wearily.

'He's locked up and has no known acquaintances or family to act on his behalf.'

Quinlan raised his eyebrows, as articulate as a spoken word. They had known each other for too long for him to be fobbed off with half a story.

'OK. For some reason he lied to me, and on the most trivial matter the name and address of someone who is writing to him in prison. Why would he do that?'

'To be awkward?' Quinlan sat down in one of the chairs facing Fenwick's desk and winced as the metal frame bit into his legs. 'Why don't you have these replaced, man? They're so old there's no padding left in them.'

'Really? I never sit there.' Fenwick dismissed the chairs from his mind and went over to a large corkboard attached to the wall opposite his desk. It was full of photos of Nightingale's flat and printouts of hate mail from her computer. To one side was a photograph of Griffiths. 'Are we sure that he doesn't have a friend or relative?'

'Never saw any sign of them.'

'No family at all?'

'None. You've read the file.'

'Yet he was socially well adjusted enough to hold down a decent job at a software company for two years and be regarded by his colleagues as, I quote, "a normal bloke, a bit quiet but all right". There should be someone.'

'Maybe they cleared off when he was arrested. Happens all the time.'

'True but why no mention at all on file? There's another odd thing about him. He never stayed put in one place.' Fenwick pointed to another piece of paper. 'His first job was in Telford, then Birmingham. Both software development companies and well paid. Seems he was highly skilled, so why move on?'

'You should ask Blite but be sensitive, it was a b.l.o.o.d.y awful investigation. The attacks against women went on for nearly a year and putting the case together was incredibly difficult, even after we caught him.'

Fenwick looked at him, intrigued.

'Of course, you weren't here, but you can imagine the flak when woman after woman was a.s.saulted and we appeared powerless to catch the man doing it. Using Nightingale to draw Griffiths out was a last ditch idea. If it hadn't worked we would have had to wait and hope that a friend turned him in. There was no trace evidence you see. And his method kept changing. One minute he was stalking them outside, the next he had charmed himself into their homes.'

'But you were certain that it was the work of one man?'

'Positive. We received anonymous letters from the perpetrator boasting of the crimes and giving us details that only he could know. And then there was the souvenir taking. In each incident the poor girl lost part of a finger. We missed it at first, thought the injuries were defensive, but when the b.a.s.t.a.r.d mentioned them in his b.l.o.o.d.y letters we realised they were a link.'

'But despite that CPS wouldn't let you take all the cases to trial.'

'No, our evidence was so thin. When we searched his flat it was spotless. No clothes to link him to the attacks; no PC, printer or paper to connect to the letters; and definitely no fingers!'

'What about DNA on the envelopes or stamps.'

'Letters were sent unstamped and the envelopes were sellotaped. Now you can see why Nightingale's testimony was so crucial. Without it he could have walked. Only the cases that were identical with the attack against her were tried. The others remain open on file and there they'll stay, including the murder a poor woman who died of her injuries. It's b.l.o.o.d.y for the relatives but at least when we caught him the attacks stopped.'

'Why wasn't there more about the souvenirs in the papers at the time.'

'It was in our interests to play it down because they were a link to the crimes we weren't able to bring to trial, and for some reason the defence didn't use it. We never released the information to the press. Check that confidential folder there and you'll find more information.' He turned to go. 'Goodnight. Don't work until the small hours, not when you don't need to.'

Fenwick opened the red-edged envelope and pulled out a bundle of photographs and medical examiners' notes. Victim one had the top of her little finger sliced off. She had been semi-conscious when it happened.

The second victim had the top of her ring finger taken. Another, the poor girl who later died, lost several fingers. The missing fingers intrigued Fenwick. He logged on to PACE and input his search criteria then waited impatiently while it checked hundreds of thousands of cases. There were ten matches, but eight were domestic incident injuries so he dismissed them and concentrated on reports of two women who had lost parts of their fingers during s.e.xual attacks. One woman had been raped and later died of her injuries making the case murder. She had lived in a village five miles from Birmingham and had invited her attacker into her own home. The other lived in Telford and had been raped at a nature reserve.

Given the problems that Blite had faced bringing his own investigation to trial Fenwick could see why he'd been unwilling to follow up unsolved crimes outside his own patch, but the detail of the missing finger joint was compellingly similar and Griffiths had lived close to where both attacks took place. He checked the file again and found notes of conversations that Blite had had with the Forces involved. At the bottom he had typed in capitals: NO OBVIOUS CONNECTIONS OTHER THAN FINGER AMPUTATION. LIKELIHOOD OF A LINK REMOTE. HAVE FAXED MATERIALS TO TELFORD AND BIRMINGHAM FOR THEM TO FOLLOW UP AT THEIR DISCRETION.

It was typical of Blite not to pursue tangential leads that he would have seen as a distraction. True, he hadn't had enough to suggest a firm connection but at the very least he had been faced with interesting coincidences that Fenwick would have found impossible to leave alone. He printed off the information and tacked it to his corkboard.

'There is no record of an Agnes teaching at any of the schools Griffiths says he attended.'

'So he was lying. Why?'

Cooper trotted out the same theories that Superintendent Quinlan had a few days earlier but Fenwick remained unconvinced. Something about the stalking of Nightingale and the whole Griffiths case disturbed him. He even spoke to Blite and asked for his ideas but the inspector didn't respond well to what he saw as Fenwick's dabbling in one of his cases.

'Your problem,' Blite had said, 'is that you're bored, Andrew. Your secondment to the Met has spoiled you for our more provincial way of life.'

At the time he had treated the remark as a joke and laughed it off but there was an element of truth on its barb. He was bored. His detection rate was impressive, the highest in the Division and good enough to warrant a call of congratulation from the ACC, but his brain remained unchallenged. The Nightingale case, with its potential link to Griffiths, intrigued as much as it concerned him. If the connection was real then there were elements of Griffiths' past that remained hidden.

He sent Cooper off to dig deeper and studied the printouts from PACE. On impulse, he called Birmingham City Centre Police and was eventually put through to an inspector involved in the original enquiry.

'We never found a trace of him. The girl's body had been thoroughly washed, there was no physical evidence and no one saw her leave the pub she was in. One minute she was there, the next gone.'

'Where was her body found?'

'That was the strange thing, on her own bed. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d hacked her about so the missing finger didn't seem significant at the time, though I wondered later whether it was linked to a couple of other cases we had up here, but it was so tenuous...'

'What other cases?' Fenwick sat up straight in his chair and reached for a pen to take notes.

'We had three other s.e.x attacks within eighteen months of each other. One was a s.e.xual a.s.sault where the bloke tried to cut the girl's finger off but failed. It received a lot of publicity at the time. The next was a rape out in the suburbs but the hand injuries looked incidental. It was my case and we never caught the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I didn't make a connection as the description of her attacker was different but I thought I should mention it all the same. The third one was a murder. The medical report described the injuries to her hands as defensive cuts. She lost two fingers and the tendons of the rest were damaged.'

'Could you send me the details? I know you're short-handed but it would be helpful. I think we may have your man in prison but proving the connection will be difficult.'

As he replaced the receiver, Fenwick wondered again how Blite could have ignored such a tantalising coincidence but he knew why. He would have concentrated on securing a prosecution on the local crimes. It would be the expedient thing to do and Blite was nothing if not expedient.

The fax from Birmingham arrived at six o'clock and Fenwick called his housekeeper to say he would be late. By seven o'clock he had summarised the facts and added to them details of the unsolved crimes from Harlden. He studied his notes, the frown line between his eyebrows deepening as he recognised significant consistencies yet baffling contradictions: VICTIM.

Locatio n s.e.x Age Height Build Other Crime B'ham 1 F 22 5'9" slender well educated Rape B2 F 18 5'6" pet.i.te student a.s.sault B3 F 23 5'7" slender graduate trainee Murder B4 F 19 5'6" thin p/t sudent Rape Harldn 1 F 24 5'8" slender junior mgt Rape H2 F 26 5'7" slim nurse Murder H3 F 20 5'10" slender student Attm'd murder Telford F 25 5'9" slim teacher Murder MO.

Location Evidence of planning/ stalking Am't of violence Weapon Prior dialogue/ social invitation Location THE GAME B'ham1 N Med Knife Y Flat N B2 Y Low N Outside park N B3 ? High Knife Ligature Y Home N B4 Y Low N Outside Yes Harldn1 Y Med Ligature ? Outside Yes H2 N High Knife Ligature Y Home N H3 N Med? Knife ?/Y Flat Yes Telford ? High Knife Y Friend's bedsit N DESCRIPTION OF ATTACKER.

Location Height Build Hair B'ham 1 6'2" Light Dark Brown B2 5'10" ? ?

B3 ? ? ?.

B4 ? ? ?.

Harldn 1 5'11" Stocky Fair H2 over 6' Big Black H3 5'10" Average Lt Brown Telford ? ? ?

He circled the attack in Telford, the first and third in Birmingham, and the second and third in Harlden where there had been extensive violence. The women involved had spent time with their attacker beforehand in a pub or club and were then taken home. That suggested a highly confident, socially well-adjusted individual. In the other Harlden and Birmingham crimes, the interaction had been limited.

He went home, ate a decent meal and looked in on his sleeping children, feeling guilty. By six the next morning he was awake, sweaty from a forgotten dream, and forced himself to wait until the children were up so that he could serve them a hurried breakfast before leaving. On his way to the station just before eight o'clock, he called Telford.

A bemused constable in CID heard him out, repeated back a faithful transcript of his message and said that he would pa.s.s it on. Telford rang him back at noon. A detective explained that they'd had a spate of s.e.xual a.s.saults that coincided with the dates Fenwick had given him but nothing that matched the crimes Harlden were interested in. Fenwick rang off feeling disappointed and tried to return his concentration to the rest of his caseload but his mind kept wandering to Nightingale's ransacked flat. Perhaps it had been an act of random violence and the stalker was a freak who had become obsessed with the trial. He could identify with obsession. By the end of the day he had almost persuaded himself that Quinlan was right and that he was just being fanciful. The thought brought him no comfort.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Driving was exhausting, or rather it would be fairer to say that driving down to the West Country through a three-day rainstorm had been one of Nightingale's less sensible ideas. She took her time, breaking her journey in remote yellow-stoned villages and avoiding the motorways. When she reached Dorset she sent Emails to her brother and Sergeant Cooper explaining that she had left on a long holiday far away.

She had pledged never to replay her final conversation with Fenwick again and concentrated on her driving. This flight from her previous life was about more than him, but the absence of his presence was the most significant aspect of her journey so far. Instead of experiencing renewed freedom, she was oppressed by a sense of emptiness. Some lines by Keats kept circling in her mind: Then on the sh.o.r.e / Of the wide world / I stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

They made her think that the only thing standing between existence and oblivion was her own force of will. If she once stopped moving she might cease to be, but she was exhausted with the effort. She was in need of R&R and where better to relax than in the depths of ancient Britain. Her father had insisted that his family came from Celtic stock, a romantic notion that Nightingale thought unlikely given their name. What she couldn't deny was that he came from an old Devonshire family. His sister had lived and died here, in the family farm built around their original mill.

Aunt Ruth had been Nightingale's favourite relative and she had cried for a whole day when she died suddenly in her forties. She left the farm to Nightingale's father. Inevitably, he had willed it to his son along with every other sc.r.a.p of property, save a small annual income for Nightingale. She would never starve, but she was hardly rich. The lack of a fortune did not matter to her, but the careful measuring out in monetary terms of her value to her mother and father hurt deeply. On their deaths they had confirmed what she had always suspected, that she counted for very little.

As she peered through the windscreen and rain, she started to look out for signposts. Mill Farm was in the woods, set back from the wild north Devon coast. No one would think to look for her here. Only Simon and Naomi knew of the farm and they thought it uninhabitable. She drove past Okehampton and expected to see familiar landmarks but the road layout had changed and she pa.s.sed through an unfamiliar landscape. On a side road deserted of traffic, she saw a small grey church, dripping disconsolately beside a cl.u.s.ter of giant yews. It looked familiar. An elderly man was walking along the road towards her, head down against the Devon rain. She drew alongside him and spotted a white flash of dog collar beneath his coat.

'Excuse me, could you give me directions to Mill Farm please?'

He turned round, head still bent and took a step closer to the car, a hand cupped around his ear. She repeated her question, feeling guilty for sitting in the dry whilst he waited in the rain. There was no doubt that he had heard her this time, but instead of answering, he stared at her intently. The rain matted the cashmere of her sleeve as she waited for a reply.

'It's a while since I was asked directions for Mill Farm. Are you family?'