ou really think somebody's trying to get Derek Tyler off the hook?" Jan asked.

Carol looked up. "I don't know. But, frankly, it's a more comfortable notion than any of the alternatives."

Tony knocked on the open door and waited. Silence. Worth a try, he thought, unsurprised that the tactic hadn't worked. He stuck his head round the door. Derek Tyler was sitting on his bed, knees bent, arms wrapped round his legs. "Can I come in?" Tony asked.

Tyler didn't move. "I'll take that as a yes, then." Tony walked into the small room, keeping his eyes on Tyler. There would be plenty of time to take in the room without making the man feel his environment was under scrutiny. "I'll sit down, shall I?" Tony continued, making for the single wooden chair that was tucked into a bare table.

He pulled the chair out and turned it so he was sitting at an angle to Tyler. He deliberately chose a relaxed posture, body open and unthreatening. Tyler moved his head so Tony was out of his line of vision. Tony glimpsed a raw-boned face with deep-set pale eyes. He had the sense that Tyler was perfectly capable of connection but that he chose to avoid it. "My name is Tony Hill," he said. "I work here at the hospital. But I also work with the police. And that's why I wanted to talk to you." He waited, taking in the bareness of the room. It was like a monastic cell. No books, no family photographs tacked to the walls, no Page Three girls. The only personal item in the room was a large framed black-and-white photograph of Temple Fields, looking down the pedestrianized street with the canal off to one side.

After a few long minutes, Tony decided it was time to get to work. His strategy was, he knew, basic. But it was the best he could come up with on short notice with a patient he'd no previous clinical engagement with. "I understand why you might not want to talk about it. Who could possibly comprehend what it was like to do the things you did?"

Tyler shifted slightly, but his bony face remained resolutely turned away. Tony lowered his voice, making it warm and sympathetic. "But that's not the main problem, is it? The trouble is, when you start to talk, everybody just wants to talk back at you. And that way you can't hear the voice, can you, Derek?"

Tyler jerked his head round momentarily, a flash of surprise on his face. It was over so quickly that Tony could almost have believed he'd imagined the response. "It's still there, isn't it?" he said. Then he waited a good two minutes before speaking again. "You can hear it when I shut up, can't you?"

Nothing from Tyler. But that single glance had told Tony he was moving in the right direction. "But the voice can only tell you stuff from before. It can't tell you what's happening now, outside here. You have to rely on me for that. You know why that is? You know why it's all gone quiet? It's because your voice is talking to somebody else now."

Tyler's whole body swivelled round till he was facing Tony. He was all attention now, his grey-blue eyes shrouded under his heavy brows. Tony spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I'm sorry, Derek, but that's the way it is. You're shut up in here, you're no use any more. I told you I work with the police. The reason I'm here is that somebody else is doing exactly what you did, Derek. And that has to be because the voice isn't talking to you any more. It's talking to him."

Anger flared in Tyler's eyes. His hands tightened their grip on each other, the veins on his thin arms standing out like cords. Tony wondered if anyone on Aidan Hart's team had ever provoked this tightly coiled violence in Tyler. He doubted it. If they'd seen what he was looking at now, he didn't think Tyler would be allowed into the general population. "I'm not making this up, Derek," Tony said reasonably. "The voice has left you for somebody else. All you've got is memories."

Abruptly, Tyler jumped up and walked past Tony to the doorway. He rang the call button on the wall and banged on the door with his fist for good measure.

Tony continued speaking as if nothing had happened. "I'm right, aren't I? The voice isn't yours any more. So you might as well talk."

A nurse in white scrubs appeared in the corridor. Tony could see Aidan Hart hovering behind him. Tyler stood meekly by the door.

"What's happened?" the nurse asked.

Tony smiled. "I think Derek wants to go away and think about what I've been saying to him, don't you, Derek?"

"You're OK, are you, Doc?"

"I'm fine. In good fettle and in good voice."

The nurse looked from Tony to Tyler and back again, unable to fathom what was going on. "Come on then, Derek, we'll take you down to the day room." The nurse reached out for Tyler's arm.

In the doorway, Tyler turned and growled in a voice rusty from disuse, "You're not the voice. You could never be the voice."

Aidan Hart's mouth fell open. He watched speechless as Tyler walked down the hall, head high, narrow shoulders thrown back. Tony stood up and replaced the chair. "Well, that's a start," he said cheerfully, walking past his new boss at a brisk pace.

Stan's Cafe featured in none of the tourist guides to Bradfield. Even the in die internet websites that prided themselves on offering their readers the echt experience normally only available to natives shuddered away from a greasy spoon frequented principally by hookers, rent boys, homeless people and drug dealers. Unlike some low-life dives that made it into alternative guides, nobody went to Stan's for the food. The clientele frequented Stan's because it was somewhere to go out of the cold and rain. When Temple Fields glamorized itself into the Gay Village in the nineties, the bar owners had started to become more picky about who they allowed across their thresholds, especially if they were the sort of customers who could make a half of bitter last hours. The only beneficiary of this more stringent approach was Stan's. Fat Bobby, who owned Stan's, didn't care who occupied the split and sticky vinyl seats as long as they bought food and drink and fags from him.

That morning, half a dozen tables were taken. Two young Asian men were hunched over eggs on toast, a velvet jeweller's roll of knock-off watches half-exposed between them. They were clearly brothers, sharing the same tight, sharp features, the same slack-lipped mouths stained with tomato sauce. In between mouthfuls, they argued prices and pitches. A gangling youth lounged against the fruit machine, frowning at the reels as they spun and settled in response to the coins a chunky lad with classic Black Irish looks was feeding into the machine. "Why d'you keep doing it when you don't win?" the spectator asked.

"If I don't do it, I won't win, will I?" the player grunted. "Fuck off, you're bringing me bad luck."

Dee Smart sat at a corner table near the toilets, back to the door, huddled over a cigarette. Her eyelids were puffy and heavy, her mouth downturned and tight. She stared into a grey cup of coffee, looking miserable. A gawky, slack-jawed youth emerged from the toilets and caught sight of her. He slid into the seat opposite. "You sad about Sandie, Dee?" he said. He had some sort of problem with his speech which turned everything he said into a long drawl.

Dee took a drag on her cigarette and sighed. Jason Duffy was not what she needed right then. "Yeah, Jason, I'm sad about Sandie."

He patted her hand awkwardly. "You need something to take the edge off? I got some nice skunk."

"Not a good idea just now, Jason. I'm waiting for the dibble," Dee said wearily. "Besides, you know I don't buy from you."

Jason's face twitched with nervous anxiety and he edged quickly out of the seat, almost falling over his feet in his haste. "Be seeing you, then." He headed for the door without a backward glance.

The youth by the slot machine abandoned his post and moseyed over to the counter to order a tea. The door to the outside swung open and Jason Duffy nearly ran head first into Carol Jordan in his haste to be gone. Carol sidestepped him and walked in, her stomach rebelling at the steamy, smoke-filled atmosphere. Stale bacon fat and vinegar conspired in a foul miasma that made her regret her excesses of the previous night once more. Jan followed her, eyes dredging the room for Dee Smart. "Over there," she said, indicating Dee with her head. "You want a coffee?"

Carol wrinkled her nose. "You're kidding, right?"

"They don't do mineral water," Jan said acidly. "A Coke might settle your stomach."

Carol tried to hide her surprise. "Sorry?"

"You've been looking off colour all morning. The morgue will do that to you." Jan weaved through the tables to the counter. Carol followed, checking out the room. She might as well have been invisible for the amount of eye contact she could garner. Every time she looked at someone, their eyes slid off her like water off wax. "Who's who?" she asked.

Jan's eyes swept the room. "The lad playing the fruit machine is Tyrone Donelan. He nicks cars." As if he'd heard her, Tyrone Donelan took one glance over his shoulder and made straight for the door to the toilets.

"The two Asians, that's Tariq and Samir Iqbal. Schneid watches, pirate DVDs that kind of thing. Their old man's a serious player in the counterfeit game. I think he got a tug a year or so back, did three months." The Iqbals suddenly lost interest in their eggs on toast, grabbed their stash of watches and hurriedly left.

"What about the kid who nearly knocked me over when we came in?"

"Jason Duffy. Low-level dealer. Smack and whiz mostly. He's not the full shilling, Jason. His claim to fame is that his mother was the first person in Bradfield to be arrested for dealing crack." She indicated the gangling youth with a sideways jerk of the head. "That's another one from the same mould: Carl Mackenzie. He mostly deals to the street girls. More of a range than Jason, but not much smarter. As far as what we're looking for goes, there's not one of them that would be as much use as a chocolate chip pan."

Carol nodded. "Thanks." She moved at a leisurely pace towards Dee and sat down opposite her. Dee raised her head and gave her a calculated stare. Carol took in the lank hennaed hair and the weary, suspicious eyes.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Hi, Dee," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to meet you yesterday. I'm Detective Chief Inspector Jordan. Carol Jordan." Carol smiled and extended a hand.

Obviously taken aback, Dee shifted her cigarette from one hand to the other and accepted the shake. "Right," she said. "So you obviously know who I am."

"I'm sorry about Sandie," Carol said.

"Not half as sorry as I am."

"Naturally. She wasn't my friend. But I want you to know that I'll pursue whoever killed her just as hard as if she had been."

The sincerity in Carol's voice seemed to penetrate Dee's carapace of toughness. "That's what the other bloke said. That you'd take it seriously." She sounded surprised.

Jan reached the table, a can of Coke in each hand. She dumped the drinks on the table and plonked herself down in a chair at right angles to the other two women. "Dee, this is .. ." Carol began.

"I know who this is," Dee said. Her manner had shifted back to her earlier truculence.

"Hi, Dee. How are you doing?" Jan asked.

"How do you think?" She angled herself away from Jan.

Carol popped the top of her Coke and took a mouthful. Sugar and caffeine and bubbles hit her, giving her an instant lift. "I know this is a hard time for you, but we do need your help."

Dee sighed. "Look, like I said when you phoned. I told everything I know to that bloke last night."

Jan shook her head. "There's always more, Dee. We all know that. Stuff you think isn't important, stuff you think is too important. Who did she score from?"

Dee looked panicked. Her eyes swivelled towards the counter, where Carl Mackenzie was leaning, mug in hand, talking to the girl behind the counter. "I dunno," she mumbled.

"Course you do." Jan followed Dee's glance in time to see Carl heading for the door, throwing a nervous glance in her direction.

"Was that Carl Mackenzie going out just now?" Jan asked.

"I don't have eyes in the back of my head. And if it was, what of it? It's still a free country, isn't it? People can have a cup of coffee wherever they want, can't they?" Dee was talking too much, Carol thought.

Jan clearly agreed. "Sandie scored off Carl, didn't she?"

Dee snorted scornfully. "Sandie wasn't a low-life. I don't know who she used, but it wasn't Carl, OK? You stay off his back, he's harmless."

"That would be because he's dealing to you, would it?" Jan drawled wearily.

"Fuck off. Look, she might have got some stuff off Jason Duffy now and again, but that's all I know."

"Did she have a pimp?" Carol asked.

Dee shook her head. "There's less poncing round Temple Fields than you'd think. Her lot saw to that," she said, gesturing towards Jan with her thumb.

"We cleared out a lot of the pimps a while back," Jan said to Carol. "We made it clear we were going to nail their earnings under the Proceeds of Crime legislation." She turned to Dee. "I'd have thought you lot would be grateful to us for getting them off your backs."

"We'd have been a fuck of a sight more grateful if you hadn't tried to get the punters off the streets at the same time," Dee said bitterly. "You're the ones who pushed us off the main drags and into the side streets. And now it's all happening again."

Carol felt the rapport she'd started to build with Dee slithering away out of her reach. "We want to stop it happening," she insisted.

"Yeah, well, I've told you all I can." Dee pushed her chair back.

Carol tried a last desperate appeal. "If you remember anything at all, however insignificant it seems, it could be important for our investigation, Dee. We're here to help."

Dee snorted. "Yeah, well, it's not helping me earning a living, sitting in Stan's being clocked talking to the dibble. I'm out of here."

She grabbed her skimpy denim jacket from the back of her chair and stalked off. Carol looked after her, fed up and puzzled. "She was a lot more co-operative with Kevin last night," she said.

Jan shrugged. "Maybe she prefers men."

"She seemed edgy about Carl Mackenzie."

Jan looked bored. "She scores from him. She doesn't want us taking him off the streets. He's harmless. Mental age of about ten. The girls treat him like a pet."

"You think Dee was telling the truth? About Sandie not using him?"

Jan considered, rolling her drink between her palms. "Probably. If Sandie bought off Jason, she wouldn't have been using Carl as well. They're both street dealers for the same middleman. Plus, what's Dee got to gain by lying about it?"

"Like you said, it keeps her source on the street, where she needs it," Carol pointed out.

Jan pulled a dubious face, making her look like a pouting cherub past its sell-by date. "I can't see it. I'll check the over nights see if he's been spoken to, if you like."

"That'd be good. And if he hasn't, maybe you could have a word." She'd skimmed the reports herself that morning, but she couldn't remember the detail. "Same goes for Jason Duffy."

Carol knew she was clutching at straws, always tempting when an investigation didn't throw up solid early leads. She was beginning to have a bad feeling about Sandie Foster's murder. It was showing all the hallmarks of a case that was going nowhere fast. If they didn't get a break soon, Carol's squad would be transformed from great white hopes to scapegoats. And that wasn't something she thought she could handle right now.

He's big news. Front page of the evening paper. He can't read well, but be can manage big headlines. He wasn't expecting it to be like that, not with Sandie being just a whore. The cops must be pissed off, he thinks. Big headlines about murder make them look bad.

He can tell by the way the streets are full of them, talking to anybody they can get their hands on, that they don't know where to look. They're desperate to find what he knows isn't there. He knows it's not there because he did it exactly as he was told.

He's proud of himself. He can't remember ever feeling like this before. There must have been a time when he did something right, something he could hold his head up about. But when he searches his fucked-up memories, nothing surfaces.

The Voice understands that. The Voice is proud of him too. He knows because when he got back to his place last night, there was a reward. A small parcel was sitting on top of his TV video combo, wrapped in nice shiny holographic paper with a big gold ribbon round it. It was so beautiful that he almost didn't want to open it. He wanted to swagger round with it so people would realize he was the kind of person who got special presents. He didn't, though. He knew that would be stupid. And he's trying very hard not to be stupid these days.

Instead he sat on the bed for ages, turning it over in his hands. Eventually, he decided to unwrap it and see what was inside. He had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to be sure. First, he untied the ribbon, forcing his clumsy fingers to go slow over the knot rather than ripping it apart with his teeth or cutting it with his Swiss Army knife. Then he folded up the paper and ribbon carefully, before putting it away in a drawer.

Inside was the reward he expected. A video cassette. With sweating hands, he slid it into the slot in the video, reaching for the remote to turn on the TV. And there it was, in all its glory. His first mission, his first cleansing.

This time, he didn't lose his erection.

PART THREE

Three weeks later

He used to have nightmares when he was a kid. He hasn't thought about them in years; they stopped once he started spliffing. He can't recall the last time he went to bed without at least one joint humming in his veins, so likewise he can't recollect the last time a bad dream woke him screaming and quivering between the sheets. But he does remember how there was always someone towering over him, mouth opening and closing, spewing violent words. He seemed to shrink under the attack, while the shouting figure swelled like a monster in a man ga comic. He could never make out the words, but they seemed to strip the very skin from him till he felt raw and bleeding.

What made it worse was that he had nothing to make it better when he woke. There was no comforting memory of gentleness or kindness to set against the sound and fury of his nightmare.

It's hard to believe how much things have changed. Now he falls asleep lulled by the rockabye rhythms of the Voice. He wouldn't mind betting that if he gave up the weed, he'd sleep like a baby these days. Not that he's about to give it a try. He likes life without nightmares too much to take a chance.

Tonight, he's making plans. The Voice is in his head, telling him it's time to move again. Time for the next chapter of the lesson, according to the Voice. Time for another cleansing.

Tomorrow night, he'll come home to find his supplies neatly laid out on his bed. Tomorrow night, he'll get set, just like the last time. He tries not to think of the target as a human being. That way, his head won't get tangled up like it did with Sandie right at the end, when he started to feel like he maybe shouldn't be taking her life away, when it all went muddled and only the memory of the Voice kept him going.

This time, he won't think of her as someone with a name. He'll just think of her as rubbish that has to be got rid of before it poisons the world he has to live in. Then he'll ride the dragon all the way to glory. He'll be a hero, just like in the movies. Blood and glory. Blood and glory and the Voice.

Once upon a time the only way respectable people could buy sex toys was to send off for what catalogues described with bizarre coyness as a 'cordless neck massager'. But by the first decade of the twenty-first century, almost every fair-sized town in the United Kingdom had at least one emporium dedicated to the fulfilment of most imaginable sexual desires. They'd started as seedy shop fronts with blacked-out windows regularly picketed by protesters ranging from evangelical Christians to women reclaiming the night. But they'd rapidly progressed to well-lit, inviting retail palaces, shelves stacked with everything from whimsical fake-fur handcuffs to implements whose functions mercifully eluded most of the customers who were intent only on having a good night in.

There was about most of these stores a relentless cheerfulness. The Pink Flaming-O was typical of the breed. It occupied a double-fronted shop that had once been, ironically, a toyshop, at the less fashionable end of the main shopping street in Firnham, one of the half-dozen satellite towns that circled Bradfield. The windows were painted opaque shocking pink to avoid offending those citizens of Firnham who steadfastly maintained their lack of interest in its contents. Given that most businesses at that end of Deansgate had a life expectancy of somewhere between six and eighteen months, and given that the Pink Flaming-O

had been thriving for four years, the assumption had to be that the town boasted enough people with a lively interest in the wilder shores of sex to outweigh the censorious.

Certainly there was no lack of custom towards the end of a late autumnal Sunday afternoon. A pair of teenage girls were giggling incredulously at a display of outsize dildos, but the other half-dozen customers were giving far more serious attention to items as various as cock rings, anal-sex kits, bondage equipment, inflatable love dolls and penis pumps.

As the teenagers moved on to wonder at the range of clitoral stimulators, their place by the display of dildos was taken by a customer who had been browsing a rack of videos. A hand gloved in black leather reached out for one of the display models, a lurid scarlet latex imitation penis. Strong fingers tested its pliability and, satisfied, replaced it on the shelf. The hand picked up a boxed example of the dildo and carried it across to the counter, picking up a couple of pairs of handcuffs and ankle restraints along the way.

There was nothing sinister in the cash transaction, nothing to rouse a moment's suspicion in the mind of the shop assistant, who was frankly more interested in Bradfield Victoria's prospects in that evening's premiership match than in the putative sex life of his customers. It was probably as well for his peace of mind that he had no idea that within forty-eight hours, his merchandise would have been transformed into the accoutrements of murder.

The customer walked out of the shop and turned down a side street that led to a busy supermarket. Fifteen minutes later, a blank-eyed checkout assistant rang up a basket of purchases without thought. A loaf of sliced whole meal bread. Half a dozen premier pork sausages. Four toilet rolls. A bottle of vodka. And three packets of razor blades.

The Voice was ready.

Carol surveyed the stack of cardboard cartons, her good spirits evaporating. It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer. But now she was faced with a couple of dozen flat-packs, and she knew that what lay ahead of her was a long evening of splintered fingernails and muttered oaths. Still, she told herself, it would be worth the effort. The builder had made a good job of turning the basement into an attractive flat. The acrid pungency of fresh paint still hung in the air, but that was a small price to pay for having her own space again.

Carol pulled the cork on a bottle of viognier, sloshed it into a glass and savoured the cold freshness of the wine as it slid down. It had become a familiar ritual at the end of the working day. After Michael and Lucy were in bed, she had taken to sitting by the window, Nelson wrapping himself round her legs. With her bottle and her glass for company, she would process the fruitless activities of the day and try to avoid thinking about what lurked in her personal shadows. She knew she was growing too reliant on the comfort that came from the wine, but the only alternative that suggested itself was the talking cure, and she had little confidence that she could find a therapist she would respect enough to trust. She could talk to Tony, of course. But she needed his friendship too much to want to turn him into a therapist.

She drained the glass and refreshed it, then set to work. Bed first. Then at least she'd have somewhere to collapse when the frustration of always having three screws and a piece of wood left over grew too much.

Carol was wrestling the slats of the bed base into place when the unfamiliar sound of her doorbell pealed out. She grinned. Nothing like setting the ground rules early on. She walked through to the living room and opened her door to the outside world. Tony stood at the foot of the flight of steps, a bottle of champagne dangling from his hand. "I would have brought flowers," he said, 'but I didn't know if you had a vase."

She stepped back and waved him in. "Two, actually. They're in the kitchen, stuffed with enough lilies to take the edge off the paint."

He handed over the bottle. "Welcome to your new home."

Carol put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. It was the closest they'd come in months, and the familiar smell of his skin tripped a chain reaction of confused feelings. "Thank you," she said softly. "You've no idea how much this means to me."

Tony patted her back awkwardly. "You're doing me a favour. Having you on the doorstep might just save me from becoming an eccentric recluse."

Carol laughed, stepping away from him as the closeness grew too much. "I wouldn't bet on it."

He looked around at the cartons leaning against the wall. "Let's make a start, then," he said, rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. "I warn you, I am to DIY what George Bush is to the philosophy of language."

"That good, eh? Tony, I know it runs counter to your instincts, but all you have to do is follow the instructions."

Two hours later, they'd assembled all the bedroom furniture, two bookcases and three of the dining chairs. They sat slumped in exhausted stupor, each clutching a glass of champagne in stiff and bruised fingers. "God, I'm aching in muscles I'd forgotten about," Carol moaned. "I keep telling myself it'll be worth it to have a place of my own again. Michael's been very sweet, but it's so wearing, coming home from work and having to make small talk."

Tony winced. "You had to make small talk? That definitely comes under the heading of cruel and unusual."

"It was that or listen to Lucy laying down the law about the incompetence, stupidity or bloody-mindedness of the police."

"Not what you need," Tony agreed.

"Especially not when it feels like she might be right. My supposed crack squad has two cases to work, and we're going nowhere fast with both of them. We've come to a full stop on Tim Golding. Stacey managed to extract the serial number of the camera that took the photo, but whoever bought it paid cash in a super store in Birmingham and never filled in the guarantee registration. There's nothing fresh on Guy Lefevre either. The Operation Ore techies are trawling all they've got to see if they can come up with any more images of either boy, but according to them, that's like looking for a needle in a field full of haystacks. I've got the three-week review of Sandie Foster's murder tomorrow morning, and it's going to be a nightmare. What have we got to show for all that slog and a huge spend? Bugger all. A handful of dead ends and not a single new idea to bless ourselves with. Canvassing Temple Fields took us nowhere. Chasing up Derek Tyler's known associates took us nowhere. Forensics took us nowhere." Carol crossed her legs and wrapped her arms across her chest. "We questioned Jason Duffy, the kid she bought her drugs from. He claims he hadn't seen her for a couple of days, and there's nothing to put him with her that night. So that's another dead end. We had a make on a four-wheel drive that Sandie got into earlier in the evening, but the punter is alibied solid from nine onwards." Carol longed to tell him that the punter in question was his new boss, Aidan Hart, the squeaky clean poster boy for psychiatric care. Given that he was one of the handful of people with full access to the details of Derek Tyler's crimes, there had been a heart stopping moment when Carol had thought she had the killer in her sights. But his alibi had checked out. While Sandie Foster had been enduring the hellish attack that had killed her, Aidan Hart had been sharing a late dinner in an expensive restaurant with a senior civil servant and an MR According to Sam Evans, who had interviewed him, Bradfield Moor's clinical director had nearly crapped himself when he'd realized the woman he'd paid for a blow-job was the victim whose killer Tony Hill was profiling. But that was one confidence she knew she couldn't share.

"I'm sorry I couldn't provide much of a profile," Tony said, breaking eerily across her thoughts.

"Not your fault. It's the nature of what you do, I know that. You need data to work with, and one case doesn't provide enough."

Tony got to his feet and paced the room. "No, it doesn't. It's one of the worst things about this job. The more times an offender walks out on the high wire and struts his stuff, the easier it becomes to figure out what the important elements of the crimes are. With a single episode, you can't separate the background noise from the message. But the more he does it, the more I can draw out of his actions. Which leaves me in the outcast zone I'm the only one who benefits when he strikes again. It's no wonder some of your colleagues treat me like a leper."

"Maybe he won't strike again," Carol said, her voice lacking all conviction.

"Carol, he already has. Even though I profiled it as a singleton, this is really number five."

She shook her head. "I've been through the original case, Tony. There's no question about Derek Tyler's guilt. And there's no indication that he was working with anyone. You've told me yourself: in all the cases where killers work as a pair, there's a high level of co dependency and intimacy. They're inseparable. There was nobody like that in Derek Tyler's life. Sam Evans went through it with a fine tooth-comb. Tyler grew up in care. He lived alone. He didn't have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, come to that. He didn't even have close friends. Which also means there's nobody out there who cares enough to replicate his crimes in a bid to get him out on appeal."

Tony leaned against the wall. "I hear what you're saying, Carol. And I've no comfort to offer. I don't understand what's going on here. There isn't a workable theory that doesn't fly in the face of everything I know about the psychology of sexual homicide."

"You've not had any fresh thoughts?"

He shook his head. "My best shot is what I said to you right at the start. Your killer gets off on the idea of rape. But he wants to take rape way beyond the act itself. He's the ultimate rapist, the benchmark everyone who comes after him will have to measure up to. That's how he sees himself. This is about power and anger, not straightforward sexual gratification."

Carol snorted. "Like sexual homicide is ever straightforward."

Tony waved his arms expansively, tipping champagne down his arm. Startled, he rubbed the dribble of liquid away impatiently. "It is straightforward, Carol. It all comes down to the acting out of fantasy. Unravel the fantasy and you've got the mainspring of the crime. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fantasy is primarily about getting your rocks off. But this is about more than that. This is about the assertion of absolute power. And part of that is about manipulating us. Controlling our reactions and masterminding the whole production." He stopped, suddenly lost in thought. Carol knew better than to interrupt, sipping her champagne while she waited him out.

"There's something that's been bothering me about this profile," he said eventually, pushing himself off the wall and returning to his pacing. "The typology of rape was established way back in the seventies by Nicholas Groth and, although it's been refined, it's still basically the same. Now, if Sandie Foster's attacker hadn't killed her, he'd be a classic Power Assertive type. He's a planner. He uses bondage because it increases the foolproof quality of his attack. He wants his victim submissive from the start. Rather than take a victim off the street, our guy has used a prostitute that he's paying to tie up. With this kind of rapist, there's no fondling, no kissing, no foreplay which I'm betting was the case here. He cut away enough of her clothing to let him do what he wanted; that's his idea of foreplay. There's no sign of him taking souvenirs, though I suspect he probably videoed his actions. So far, so classic. But then he kills her. And that's totally off the scale for Power Assertive rapists. All we know about this type tells us that they only use enough force to achieve their ends. They're not sadists, by and large. That's the first problem.

"The second problem is much more significant for us." He paused in his restless movement to top up his glass. "The Power Assertive rapist has a high ego. He's assured in his masculinity. He operates in his comfort zone and he is confident that he can con his victim into a position where he can assert his power. That's beyond probability. That's a virtual certainty." He fixed Carol with the full force of his magnetic blue stare. "Does that sound like Derek Tyler to you?"

Carol pushed her short blonde hair back from her forehead. "You know it doesn't. But that's not an argument that trumps the forensics. Do you think there's any point in you having another go at Derek Tyler?"

Tony dropped back into his chair. "I've tried. But apart from what he said the first time, he hasn't uttered a word. It's like he's learned to tune me out. If you want me to try again, I will. But don't expect anything."

"At this point, Tony, you're all I've got."

DC Paula Mclntyre drove slowly down the unfamiliar street, looking for the Penny Whistle pub. Rows of cramped sixties houses and maisonettes huddled together, showing the unmistakable signs that came with private ownership of former council housing ugly jerry-built porches, nasty cheap doors, incongruous diamond-paned windows. A couple of years previously, the only reason Paula would have been in Kenton would have been in response to another drive-by shooting in the drugs war that had ravaged the inner city suburb. These days, Kenton had emerged from its no-go status thanks not to proactive policing but to its location, close to Bradfield Cross hospital and to the university, which had led to its being colonized apparently overnight by young health professionals and anxious parents who wanted to make sure their privileged offspring didn't have to do anything as tasking as search for decent rental property.

Even so, it wasn't a district that Paula had had non-professional reasons for visiting. She knew a couple of women who had bought round here, but not well enough to have been to their homes. It wasn't Don Merrick's usual stamping ground either, which was why she'd been even more surprised by his choice of venue than by his phone call asking her to meet him for a drink.

Although a friendship had grown between the two that transcended rank out of working hours, they seldom made special arrangements to meet, nor did they tend towards the sharing of intimacy about their personal lives. They'd often go for a drink after work, but they both had other concerns that ate up most of their off-duty time. When he'd called to invite her for a drink, her first instinct had been to refuse. She'd been planning to join some friends in a country pub. But there had been something in Merrick's voice that had snagged her attention, so she'd agreed. Now, as she pulled up outside an ugly 1960s barn of a pub, she was regretting it.

When she opened the door, a blast of smoky air, stale beer and male sweat hit her. The only other women in the place occupied a booth on their own. They looked ground down by poverty and children in spite of their best efforts at denial. Several of the men at the bar turned to look at her, nudged in the ribs by their friends. "Over here, darling," one of them shouted.

"In your dreams, sad do Paula muttered. She spotted

Merrick in a corner booth, staring gloomily into a half-drunk pint. His shoulders were slumped, his head drooped. The country music playing in the background and the electronic cacophony of the fruit machine might as well not have existed. Paula walked over to the "bar, ignoring the pathetic attempts of the drinkers to catch her attention, and bought a couple of drinks.

Merrick didn't even look up when her shadow fell across the table. She placed a fresh bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale beside his glass. "There you go," Paula said, sliding into the booth beside him.

"Thanks," he sighed.

Paula sipped her Smirnoff Ice, wondering what the hell was going on. "So, here we are. What's up, Don?"

Merrick folded his arms across his chest. He looked like a man who didn't know how to begin. "Why should something be up? Can't we just meet up for a drink on our night off?"

"Course we can. But this is far from our usual watering hole in every sense. And you're sitting there with a face like a wet weekend in Widnes. And because I'm a detective, those two facts tell me something's up. You can either tell me what it is, or we can sit here in this charming hostelry like a pair of bookends. Your call." She leaned forward, reaching for his cigarettes. The light caught her bleached blonde hair, making it luminous against the dark wood of the booth.

"Lindy's thrown me out," he said without preamble.

Paula froze, the cigarette halfway to her mouth. Oh shit, she thought. Here comes trouble. "What?"

"I took the kids swimming this afternoon, and when I came back, she'd packed two suitcases. Said she wanted me out."

"Jesus, Don," Paula protested. "That's cold."