'Did you get any indication of who this person was?'

'No. Nothing. She wouldn't tell me any more because she thought it might influence the way I behaved towards him. I said, "Do you mean it's one of the team?" and she clammed up completely, saying she was probably imagining things.'

Tom waited, wondering if Louisa would have anything to add.

'If we hadn't been chatting in the corridor I would have asked for more details, but it didn't seem appropriate with other people walking past all the time. I should have pushed her, shouldn't I? If she was wearing that top I bet she was on a date, and I might at least have been able to tell you who with.'

Tom couldn't deny it because whoever Hayley had been planning to meet he or she hadn't come forward. And that wasn't a good sign.

Louisa Knight had seemed like the perfect person to ask to give a preliminary confirmation that the dead girl was Hayley Walker. A formal identification would also be necessary, but for now Louisa's word would be enough to use as the basis of their investigation, and as a doctor she wasn't going to be fazed by seeing a body. The faster they had some focus, the better their chances of catching the killer, and after the debacle with Leo it was important they got this right. Tom asked Louisa to take as long as she needed.

'Yes, it's her,' she said to Tom, her voice quiet and even. 'That's definitely Hayley Walker.' She held her hand against the pane of gla.s.s, as if wishing her friend goodbye. Her eyes looked huge, swimming as they were with unshed tears, but she was composed. 'What can I do to help you catch the person who killed her?'

Tom looked down at her slight figure and felt an urge to reach out to her. Having been through a similar experience that morning, he knew how she must feel, and seeing the body again had reminded him of Leo. He wished to G.o.d he knew where she was so that he could stop worrying about her on top of searching for this killer.

'It would be helpful if you could try to remember everything Hayley said to you about the person who suddenly seemed interested in her. Was there anybody she was especially close to? Did she have a particular friend who might know more about this man?'

'Not that I know of. As I said, we're a friendly bunch and socialise quite a bit. But not in a best-friend sort of way, if that makes sense.'

It made perfect sense to Tom. Work colleagues were great to spend time with, but perhaps not always the people you chose to share your happiness or fears with.

'Could you give me any suggestions as to who it might be, do you think? It doesn't matter if you're wrong. I'll get my team to interview everybody at the hospital to see if she mentioned who she was meeting or where she was going.'

'As far as I can tell, they're a harmless bunch, and I've honestly no idea who she was talking about. I'll go home and make a list of everybody that Hayley came into contact with, if you like. What shall I do when I've finished?'

Tom fished in his pocket for his wallet and drew out a card. 'Give me a call. We'll get a list from the hospital too, but it would be great to look at the two side by side to see who she's most likely to have had some sort of relationship with.'

Tom's phone rang. It was Becky.

'Excuse me,' he said and walked a few feet away so that Becky's voice couldn't be heard.

'Tom, we've been through everything here at the hospital and nothing is standing out at the moment. We've been to Hayley's flat it's only about ten minutes away. We've found nothing to indicate where she went on Wednesday afternoon or evening. We know she left work early. She said she had a blinding headache and thought she was getting a migraine. It was nearly the end of the shift, so they said she could go.'

'Did anybody speak to her later, to check how she was?'

'We haven't been able to find her mobile. It's probably at the bottom of the ca.n.a.l, so we're waiting to find out which phone company she was with to get her call records. But we checked her home phone, and only one call was received between her leaving the hospital and the time we a.s.sume she met her killer. It was from the cardiology ward.'

'I a.s.sume you've asked everybody if they spoke to her?'

'Of course, and n.o.body's admitting to it.'

Tom ended the call with Becky and turned back to Louisa, explaining that Hayley had left early but had received a call from the ward.

'Who would have been around on the ward? We need to concentrate on those who had the opportunity to phone her.'

Louisa frowned and shook her head.

'I'm sorry, but if the call came at around the hand-over time between the early and late shifts, everybody except the night staff would have been there. The phone's in use a lot, so even if we made a list of people who were seen making a call, it probably wouldn't help.'

'And of course,' Tom said, 'the call from the ward may have had nothing to do with it at all.'

23.

Josh had been a complete pain that morning, and Maggie could have done without him playing up. He wouldn't get out of bed, and then he got dressed so slowly she thought they were going to be late for school.

'Josh, come here,' she said as she sat on his bed watching him laboriously put his socks on. He shuffled across the floor and leaned against her legs. 'I know you're worried about Daddy. We all are. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't know why he had to go when he did, but there will be a good reason. I promise you.'

Maggie stroked his hair gently.

'Why do you have to go to work? Why can't you stay with us?'

The last thing she wanted to do was leave her children. But yesterday she had used the weather as a barely plausible excuse and if she called in sick today she knew the partners would start to think she was a skiver. She was on a three-month probationary period and right now the last thing she needed was to lose her job.

'I'm going to take you to school and book you into the after-school club. I will be coming for you, I promise just a bit later than Daddy picks you up. Okay?'

She couldn't see her son's face, but his head nodded.

'Come on then, and perhaps we can grab a pizza for tea tonight. How does that sound?'

This time the nod was marginally more enthusiastic.

The drive into work had pa.s.sed without Maggie noticing it all she could think of was Duncan: where he was; who he was. Even the thought of the interview she had to conduct with Alf Horton that morning didn't succeed in pushing her thoughts away from her own problems. The colleague who had taken over from her yesterday had already called to say he was only too glad to hand her client back to her. Now she was at Manchester's divisional police HQ waiting to see Horton, and every muscle in her body was taut. She had to will herself to enter the room.

The new custody suite was better than most, but an interview room was an interview room. The smell of fear hadn't yet permeated the walls, but if anybody was frightened right now, it was Maggie, not her client. Her job was to find a way to get this dreadful man off to have him found innocent of crimes she was certain he had committed. Before facing him, though, she had asked Frank Denman to attend for the final time to a.s.sess whether Horton might be considered mentally disordered, bringing into question his fitness to plead.

'How have you been, Maggie?' Frank asked as he walked into the featureless room, removing his overcoat. For a man who she guessed was in his mid-fifties, Frank's clothes had always struck her as belonging to somebody older. Maybe it was the shades of beige that he favoured and the chunky knitted sweaters, which seemed to accentuate, rather than disguise, his slender form.

'Fine, thanks. Let's make a start, shall we?'

'Fine? Really? Why don't I believe that?' he asked, his eyebrows raised. 'You don't look fine. Do you want to talk about it?'

Maggie took a breath and let it out slowly. 'Thanks for asking, but honestly I'm okay. Just stressed by b.l.o.o.d.y Alf Horton. I'm sorry I was snowed-in yesterday, but I'm here now so let's get on with it, shall we?'

'Okay. You know where I am if you need me. Any time.' Frank pulled some papers out of his briefcase and stuck a pair of frameless gla.s.ses onto his slightly beakish nose. 'What do you know about personality disorders?'

'Not much. Why? Do you think that's what Horton has?'

Frank shrugged. 'At one time psychopathic disorder was cla.s.sified as a mental disorder. But not all psychopaths are violent, and not all violent people are psychopaths. Whether we can still play that card or not, I don't know. I suggest you look at the most up-to-date thinking on personality disorders. You might find it useful. I'll email you some links.'

'Thanks.'

Frank made his way into the adjoining room so that he could listen to the interview, and Maggie put on a headpiece so he could prompt her with any specific questions. Frank had opted to be absent from the interviews, convinced that Horton would respond better to a one-on-one situation, particularly if that one was female, but she was relieved that he was close by.

She looked up and saw the custody sergeant at the gla.s.s window in the door. He nodded to her the signal that he had brought her client.

She shuddered at the thought of having to talk to this man. But the police were right outside the door, and Frank in the next room. Nothing could happen to her.

By the time her interview with Horton concluded, it was almost lunchtime. Maggie normally grabbed a sandwich at her desk, but today she was going to take her full hour and drive into town to visit the newly refurbished Central Library, the home of the more recent Manchester Evening News archive. She wasn't holding out much hope that the sc.r.a.p of newspaper would prove significant, but she would try anything at this point. She was desperate.

The impressive Central Library building made little impact on Maggie as she entered, although she was struck by how the atmosphere of libraries had changed. There was no sense of a hush and whispered voices; people were talking at their normal volume. The smell of fresh paint mingled with a whiff of burnt toast coming from the cafe on the right, and she felt her stomach rumble. She had barely eaten for the last two days, and had no idea what would happen if she tried. Her throat felt permanently closed with fear and stress.

She looked around at the banks of computers and microfilm machines, unsure where to go until a helpful volunteer pointed Maggie in the direction of a small, insignificant-looking desk at the back of the room. It was unmanned. Maggie looked at her watch and scanned the room right and left, unable to sit or stand still.

'Come with me. We need to go to the microfilm section,' the librarian said when she finally turned up. 'Can you give me the year, dear?'

Maggie gave her the full date and the woman selected a drawer and pulled out a white cardboard box marked 'November 10th-16th, 2003'. She took Maggie over to a microfilm machine and threaded up the reel.

'There are fast and slow b.u.t.tons in both directions it's really easy to use,' she said with a smile.

Maggie knew she should respond positively, but said nothing. Her hands had gone damp. She didn't know if she should look or not. Would it be worse to find something that related to Duncan, or to find nothing and discover her only lead if that's what it was was worthless? She didn't know.

Finally she leaned forward and stared at the screen. She pressed a b.u.t.ton and heard the machine whirr into life. It was easy to find the date she wanted. One story dominated the front page.

It was a report of a hit-and-run accident in central Manchester. A boy, Stephen Latimer, had been on his way home from a club in town at two in the morning. He had stepped out into the road to avoid some people walking in the opposite direction. A car had hit him from behind, but the driver hadn't stopped. He was now critically injured in hospital. There was a description of the car a dark blue Renault but no registration number. Stephen had been with two other people, Carl Boardman and Adya Kamala. The driver of the car was described as young no more than early twenties with dark hair.

Maggie leaned back in her chair and looked up hoping for inspiration.

The librarian walked across. 'Are you okay?'

Maggie sat up straight. 'Yes, I'm sorry. Is it possible to get a printout of this page?'

Five minutes later Maggie was handed the page, paid and put it into her bag. A glance at her watch told her she still had about fifteen minutes before she needed to get back to the office. She had noticed the signs advertising free Wi-Fi so pulled her laptop out of her bag and found a desk. She started to work her way through the names she had found in the newspaper article and found plenty on Stephen Latimer and his accident but nothing on either of his friends. It appeared that the driver of the car had never been traced or at least if he had, it was never reported.

She was running out of time, and at the last minute thought about Frank Denman's suggestion that she look up personality disorders. If she could find something that would get Alf Horton off her hands, that would be one less thing to worry about.

She loaded up the first of the reference pages he had suggested.

The psychopaths around you Given the estimate that as many as 1 per cent of the population could be psychopathic, it follows that we must all know somebody who fits that category. But can we recognise him or her?

Psychopaths learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people.

The mother of famous serial killer Ted Bundy said he was 'the best son any mother could have' and many psychopaths hold down important jobs. Key characteristics of psychopathy include pathological lying, a lack of remorse and a high degree of superficial charm, and it is these traits that enable a psychopath to hide in plain sight. He (or she) might adopt a persona and play the role so well that those a.s.sociated with him (or her) have no concept of the true lack of emotion that exists beneath the well-thought-out personality that has been adopted.

Maggie read on about how psychopaths were meticulous planners and how this distinguished them from sociopaths. She wasn't sure how this related to Alf Horton. Had people around him thought of him as an average bloke? What did his mother, with whom apparently he had always lived, think of him? Was he, in fact, a psychopath at all, or was he a sociopath?

She didn't have the energy to worry about Alf Horton's mental state right now. She was far more concerned about what was going on in her husband's mind.

24.

12 years ago May 31st Serial killers were nowhere near as common as television and film would have you believe, and definitions varied. But most authorities agreed that two or more murders committed by one or more offenders const.i.tuted serial murder. Tom knew that if this was what was happening here, it was unlikely that the perpetrator would stop at two.

Another myth was that serial killers are all dysfunctional loners. Most appear to be normal members of the community. But without any link between the girls, where were they supposed to look?

Two dead girls, and not a single tangible lead they could follow up with any degree of enthusiasm. Other than the fact that they were both students, there didn't appear to be any connection between the two victims at all, although they were a similar age with the same body type and hair colour and in death they had looked practically identical. But in life they appeared very different their makeup, their smiles, their clothes, their att.i.tudes.

It hadn't taken long to identify the girl found at Mayfield station as Tamsin Grainger a party girl, by all accounts. In photographs provided by family and friends she was clearly posing for each picture, head tilted slightly back showing a full set of teeth. Sonia's pictures, on the other hand, showed a girl smiling shyly, as if caught unawares. Although their features were similar, in every other way they were chalk and cheese. They moved in different circles or in Sonia's case no circle at all to speak of and they were studying different subjects with lectures at opposite ends of the campus.

The truth was, Victor Elliott's crack team of detectives couldn't find one point of contact between the two girls, and it was getting Tom down. He knew he wasn't the only one who was frustrated, but the dispirited air in the incident room was preventing him from thinking straight.

He moved away from his desk, mentally shutting out the background noise of the room the ringing phones, the quiet voices of detectives engaged in endless telephone interviews with anybody and everybody who might know something and looked out of the window at the darkening skies, brooding and threatening. It had been hot for May, and the pressure had been building to its current oppressive state for days. A storm was needed, but until it broke the muggy atmosphere settled around everybody like a heavy overcoat.

Something had been nagging at the back of Tom's mind but he couldn't grasp the thought; it kept slipping away. He had to escape the stifling atmosphere and get some air.

Almost without a conscious decision, Tom found himself back at the scene of Sonia's murder, absorbing the tranquillity of Pomona Island. It felt like a place apart, removed from the real world. While the rest of Manchester carried on its day-to-day business with trains, cars and trams buzzing noisily around the city streets, here there was a sense of being cut off from reality. Manchester was reduced to no more than a background noise and by focusing on the sounds in close proximity the lapping of the water, the birdsong and the hum of insects it was possible to believe the city was miles away. Tom sought the same peace in his mind, thrusting his myriad confusing thoughts into the background to focus solely on what had happened here.

He struggled to suppress an irrational sense of guilt about these murders: he had been desperate for an interesting case, anything to take his mind off his own worries. It hadn't worked, though. He managed to focus on the case for most of the time, but his concern about his marriage kept sneaking up on him. Throughout the second half of last year Tom had been sure he was heading for a divorce. Kate had seemed to be permanently irritated by him and by his choice of career. Then suddenly she had changed smiling more, singing around the house. A couple of months later she announced she was pregnant. Excited as he was about the baby, Tom still didn't know what had changed, and he didn't want to think about it too much. That was why he had silently prayed for a case that would occupy his mind to make sure it had no time to wander into uncharted territory.

Now, as he walked along the overgrown path that ran through the middle of Pomona Island and back towards the crime scene, it felt as if his desire for something more intriguing had been granted and in spades. He had not one but two cases, and they were going to need all of his brainpower.

It was over three weeks since Sonia had died and now the only thing marking the spot was a piece of crime scene tape that had caught on a woody shrub and was fluttering in the warm, humid breeze. He pictured Sonia Beecham as she would have looked before the tent was erected around her the way she would have been found by the dog walker. She had been sitting up.

That was another reason Tamsin's body at Mayfield station had spooked him. Not only did she have similar colouring and hair to Sonia Beecham, she too had been sitting up, propped against the wall. Why was sitting up important? Or was it? Maybe it was convenient to leave the bodies like that, but it seemed like something more. The similarity between them and the way in which they seemed to have been positioned suggested that they were on display. But to whom? And why?

The dark skies were suddenly split apart by a bright shard of sunlight, illuminating the exact spot where Sonia had been found, which reminded Tom of an idea he'd had, an idea his boss seemed to think was irrelevant. Sonia wasn't a big girl, but she wasn't a size zero either. She looked to Tom's untutored eye to be a healthy size twelve. Transporting her here would have been no easy matter, as the SOCO team had said.

He looked about him. The general view was that she had been brought by car to the Pomona Strand entrance to the island because it was the most accessible by vehicle. But it wasn't the only possibility. There were other ways onto the island that were less accessible by car, but what if she had been killed somewhere nearby, and a car hadn't been necessary at all?

There was still the issue of having to carry a deadweight for some distance, and Tom couldn't help wondering if this was the work of more than one person. But his boss wouldn't have it. 'This isn't b.l.o.o.d.y America, Douglas. Our serial killers come in singles.' And that was the end of it - no further discussion allowed but it didn't stop Tom thinking, and he fought the temptation to mention Brady and Hindley or Fred and Rosemary West to Victor Elliott. It would only have made him more entrenched in his opinion.

Mayfield station presented even more difficulties for transporting a body. They had considered the use of a wheelbarrow at Pomona, but at Mayfield that would have been impossible. Tamsin Grainger must have been carried upstairs from the level of the road to the level of the platform, and she was a similar size. There were a lot of stairs, and it wasn't something Tom would have liked to attempt on his own.

As his mind spun through the options, a call came through on his radio. It was his young DC, Philippa Stanley.

'Sir, I think you'd better get back here sharpish. The boss is ranting and raving that you're never here when you're needed, and some girl has come in to say she's been attacked.'

s.h.i.t. He knew he shouldn't have risked coming here when the DCI was in the office. It was sod's law that something would come up.

Tom jogged back along the gravel path, his calm and fresh perspective shot to pieces.

By the time Tom got back to the office, Victor Elliott had wound himself up into a ball of red-hot anger. His already florid face was almost purple with totally unnecessary rage. Tom was aware that behind his back Victor always referred to him as 'smart-a.r.s.e Douglas' simply because Tom had a degree, and his dismissal of every word that Philippa Stanley uttered simply because of her fast-track status and the fact that she was a woman was embarra.s.sing.

Tom listened to Elliott's rant without showing the slightest expression something else guaranteed to rile his boss.

'And that stupid cow you've got working for you at the moment should have known where you were. I thought she was supposed to be clever.'

'Clever, sir, not psychic,' Tom answered.