ery handy," Kevin said bitterly. "So what made you go up there?"

"Her time was well up, wasn't it? Normally, she's out of there in half an hour or so. Like I said, she'd settle up and I'd go and change the sheets. When the match finished at the back of eight, the key was sitting there on the hook. I was pissed off, I thought she'd done a runner on me. So I went up to see if she'd left the money in there. I went to twenty-four and let myself in .. ." For the first time, de Souza looked uncomfortable. "Christ, I'm not going to be able to let that room out again in a hurry."

Kevin looked at de Souza as if he'd like to hit him. "My heart bleeds for you." He reached over with his pen and snagged the key of room 24 off its hook. He slipped it into a paper evidence bag and tucked it away in his pocket. "We'll need to hang on to that for the time being," he said. "But, like you said, you're not going to be needing it any time soon."

His words roused de Souza's self-interest. "How long are you lot going to be keeping us out of business?"

Kevin smiled sweetly. "As long as it takes. This is a crime scene now, pal."

As he spoke, the street door opened again and Carol Jordan strode in. "Where am I going, Kevin?" she said.

"Second floor, guy. Room twenty-four. Don's up there with Jan and Paula. And the SO COs

"I'm on my way."

Tom Storey hadn't been lying when he'd said he had people skills. His work as a housing benefits officer had been fraught with the underlying threat of violence, both verbal and physical. Until his recent erratic behaviour had seen him sent home on sick leave, he'd always been known as the one the bosses could rely on to prevent an awkward client losing it in the worst way. That was why the task Tony Hill had given him seemed less a burden than a genuine challenge he thought he might be able to rise to.

Incarcerated in Bradfield Moor, burdened both with crushing guilt and the fear of the unknown invader eating away his brain, he'd tried to distract himself by watching his fellow inmates. It helped him stay in control of his mind if he had something outside himself to focus on. Of course, the ones who were allowed a certain freedom of movement were the ones who were regarded as safe in the sense that they weren't about to run amok with a sharpened fork; the obsessive compulsives who were mostly a danger to themselves; the schizophrenics meekly medicated; the manic depressives kept on a level by lithium. In a way, they were more interesting to him than the violent. Tom found it easier to understand how they'd slipped the cogs of normalcy. He didn't like to think of the personality-disordered ones; he'd seen enough sociopaths in the course of his previous professional life to last him the rest of his days.

When Tony had described Derek Tyler, Storey had known at once who he meant. He'd been aware of his silent stillness, mostly because there was so little of it around the place. Even those drugged up to their eyeballs tended towards the twitchy. But Tyler seemed to exist in a little oasis of quiet. Not that there was anything tranquil about him. He gave off an air of tension that made others wary.

He didn't join in, either. That was something else that marked him out. He displayed no interest in social activities, and his passive resistance to anything approaching communal treatment was impressive, all the more so because Storey reckoned he wasn't that bright.

All of this made him easily identifiable. But very hard to reach. This was no straightforward undertaking that Tony Hill had laid on his shoulders. Storey had spent most of the day covertly watching Tyler whenever he got the chance, trying to figure out a way to crack the carapace. Nothing suggested itself.

In the early evening, when most of those conscious and out of their rooms were watching the TV soaps, he saw Tyler sitting alone at a table in the corner of the day room. On the spur of the moment, Storey helped himself to one of the jigsaws stacked on the bookshelves and walked across to Tyler's table. He sat down without asking, struggled to open the box with one hand but managed it at last. He tipped out the pieces, finding a moment to wonder how many of the 550 would be present and correct.

No reaction. Tyler seemed to withdraw further into himself. But Storey could see his eyes drawn to the muddle of die-cut cardboard in spite of himself. Storey started sorting through the pieces awkwardly, looking for edges and sky. "The easiest bit and then the hardest bit," he said. "After you get the sky done, the rest feels possible."

Tyler said nothing. The silence endured while Storey constructed the border of the picture. It was an Alpine view, a funicular railway ascending a mountain that turned from meadow to icecap. He made a couple of deliberate mistakes, but Tyler didn't react. So he corrected himself and carried on.

"I'm feeling quite cheerful tonight," he said, carefully not looking at anything other than the jigsaw. "I've got to have an operation, but after that, I think I'm going to be out of here." He glanced up at Tyler. "You know what I did, right?" It was a fair bet. In spite of the best efforts of the clinical staff to prevent patients gossiping about the past transgressions of others, news travelled Bradfield Moor like rats mapping their nocturnal territory. "I killed my kids." He couldn't help it; tears welled up in Storey's eyes and he brushed them away impatiently. "I thought that was it. I'd never see the outside world again. To be honest, I wasn't about to argue with that. I mean, how could I be trusted? How could I trust myself? If I could take the lives of the people I loved most in the whole world, how could anybody be safe?"

Tyler showed no sign that he had heard a word. Storey persevered. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do. "And the way the staff treat me, I can see that, behind all their professionalism, they think I'm beyond redemption. They're used to dealing with sick people. But they make me feel like I'm special, like what I've done sets me even further apart than everybody else. That's the one thing nobody ever forgives, killing your children. Or so I thought, until I met this new doctor they've got." He smiled. "Dr. Hill. He's not like the rest of them. He's big on getting people out of here. He made me see that it's not impossible to be made better. To start again on the outside. I tell you, you want to get out of this dump, he's the one you need to see."

Tyler reached out a tentative finger and pushed a piece towards Storey. It was the next in a sequence of jagged grey that would eventually reveal itself as a glacier, hard up against the left-hand edge. Storey tried not to show his delight. "Thanks, mate," he said nonchalantly. He carried on in silence for a few minutes.

"I wish to Christ I'd met Dr. Hill months ago," Storey eventually said, this time speaking from the heart with genuine resentment. "He knew right away what was wrong with me. If my GP hadn't just fobbed me off with a bottle of pills, if he'd sent me to see somebody who knew what they were doing, I wouldn't even be here now. My kids would still be alive and I wouldn't be here."

Tyler shifted in his seat, turning away from the table. Storey sensed he had somehow lost momentum with the silent man. "But the thing about Dr. Hill.. . he's making me see that that's not the end of my life. That I can go back into the world and start again. And next time, I can do better. I can get it right, maybe. With help, I can get it right."

Storey wasn't sure what it was that he'd said, but something had worked. Tyler moved back towards the table. He studied the pieces, then picked one up and slotted it in. His eyes met Storey's and there was a flicker of some unidentifiable emotion. Tyler nodded slowly, then got to his feet. He walked past Storey, pausing to pat his shoulder. Then he was gone, a silent shadow slipping out of the room and into the hallway.

Storey leaned back in his chair, a faintly perplexed smile on his face. He wasn't sure if his tactics had worked, but he had a feeling he might have earned himself some Brownie points with the man who could set him free, both from Bradfield Moor and from the prison of his thoughts.

Carol had taken one look at the crime scene and called Tony. Now he stood by the bed, his head bowed, reverential. Carol could almost believe that he was blind to the tide of scarlet that had swept the dead woman's life away, so focused did he appear to be on her gagged face. She didn't have that luxury. The corpse on the bed felt like a personal affront, a calculated reminder that she and her team had failed the challenge of this killer's last outing. Intellectually, she knew it was nothing of the sort; men who did this sort of thing were far less interested in their audience than in the contents of their own sick heads. But emotionally, it felt like a slap in the face.

"There's no doubt about it, is there?" she said softly to Tony.

He looked up at her, his eyes unreadable in the weak light from the sixty-watt bulb inside its dusty paper shade. "None whatsoever. Whoever killed Sandie killed this one too."

Carol turned to Jan and Paula, standing on the threshold waiting for their orders. "Do we know who she is?"

Jan nodded. "Jackie Mayall. She's relatively new on the scene. A smackhead, but one of the more or less functioning ones."

"Did she have a pimp?"

"Not any more. When she started, she was working for Lee Myerson. But he's doing five for dealing smack. When we lifted him, we put the word out that his team was to leave the girls alone unless they wanted a taste of the same medicine. Since we started waving the Proceeds of Crime legislation around, a lot of shitty little ponces have had to trade in their fancy motors."

"OK. So Jackie worked solo. But she must have had mates. Jan, I want you and Paula to hit the bricks. Get out there and talk to the women. Find out who else uses this flophouse. Who was here tonight. Who saw Jackie earlier on. Whether she had any regulars. You know the drill."

The two women were already on the move. "Paula, where's Don?" Carol called after them.

Paula turned, her face startled. Her voice said, "I don't know, chief," but her expression was a wary version of Why are you asking me?

"He was here earlier," Jan said. "He told Kevin to interview the manager. He got me and Paula to check out the other rooms. Of course, nobody heard anything or saw anything, not even when we threatened to tell their wives. Then after the police surgeon did the preliminaries, I think Don went off with Sam to see what they could pick up on the street."

Carol hid her irritation. If Don Merrick wanted to be taken seriously as a DI, he had to start behaving like one. Canvassing the streets was a job for junior officers. He should have been here co-ordinating the rest of the team, at least until she arrived, not rushing off into the night. "I want him at the post mortem," she said. "Tell him to liaise with Dr. Vernon's team."

Tony had moved away from the bedside to allow the scenes of crime technicians room to practise their arcane mysteries. Carol crossed to his side, close but not quite touching. "It looks like she's bled every drop of blood from her body," she said. "He's out of control."

"It's not a lack of control. It's overkill, true, but it's overkill in a very specific way. It's about power. The abuse of power taken to the ninth degree."

"And he's going to do it again," she said heavily.

"No doubt about it. He enjoys it far too much to stop now. And I think he's getting more confident."

Carol's face wrinkled in distaste. "What do you mean?"

"Remember Vernon said Sandie must have taken at least an hour to die? And yet he set this one up in a room that rents by the hour. He was taking the chance that he would run over time. He must have felt assured enough to deal with that if he had to."

Carol shook her head. "That would be a hell of a risk. He'd multiply his chances of being seen, surely?"

"There's that," Tony agreed. "But he doesn't seem to be prone to risk-taking. Power Assertive, remember? Keep the dangers to a minimum. Maybe it's got more to do with his confidence levels. Maybe he feels assertive enough now to know that he could kill his way out of the problem."

Carol drew her breath in sharply. "I don't like the sound of that."

"No. But it's something you have to consider."

"Who am I looking for, Tony? What can you give me?" He frowned. "He's white, male, mid twenties to mid thirties. He's not good with authority he thinks he's underestimated by the world. If he has a job, his employment record will be spotty. But I think' he more likely to be self-employed, semi-skilled. Hires himself out casually to whoever has a job for him, but he never lasts long with the same employer because he thinks he knows best. Only he doesn't. Socially he gets by. He doesn't have close male friends, but he's got a circle of acquaintance. He's very unlikely to be in a relationship with a woman." Tony pulled a wry face. "And he'll be impotent except when he's doing this." He shrugged. "Not much to go on, I'm afraid."

"It's a start," Carol said, knowing how often unpromising beginnings led somewhere productive with Tony. "And God knows, right now any kind of start is something I'm not going to sniff at."

He feels good tonight. He's kept his promise to himself. This time it worked. He was strong and he was a man. Now, sitting in the bar sipping lager, acting like it was any other night and he was having a well-deserved pint, he hugs his secret to himself, knowing the activity on the street is all down to him.

They found this one quicker, just as the Voice planned. OK, the delay in finding Sandie worked to his advantage. Time had passed and any witnesses had scattered to the four winds, leaving only the regulars who wouldn't even notice him. But it had been nerve-wracking, waiting and wondering. None of that this time, though. He knew Jimmy de Souza would be up those stairs like a rat up a drain as soon as he realized the key was back on its hook and he hadn't been paid. Greedy little shit. Served him right, coming face to face with something that would put him right off his food for days. He remembers de Souza taking the piss once, years ago. It feels good to get payback. Two birds with one stone.

But it was scary, being in the hotel room with her bleeding to death. It seemed to take forever, and although that really got him excited, he felt exposed there in that room in a way he wasn't with Sandie. There were other people in the building. There was greedy Jimmy to consider. But the Voice had told him what to do if he was spotted. He hadn't relished the thought of unsheathing his knife and plunging it into someone's belly. It felt out of control, not part of their carefully staged cleansing. But the Voice had explained how it might one day be necessary, and he'd told himself he was ready for it, capable of it.

He looks out of the big picture window of the bar into the street. There they are, the plod, notebooks out, taking names and addresses that'd be bullshit half the time. Asking people what they'd seen, where they'd been. Looking for alibis, looking for witnesses, looking for a killer who was under their noses. But they can't smell him. He's out of their reach, safe and sound in the pub with his pint. He smiles and remembers a tag from childhood. "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man." That's him, all right. The gingerbread man.

Jan and Paula decided to start close to the hotel. There were a couple of bars in Bellwether Street close to the narrow entry that led to the Woolpack Hotel. As they walked down the street, Jan shivered in the foggy night air and pulled on her gloves. "It's bitter tonight," she said. "The girls who work out of doors won't be doing so well."

"Bloody awful life," Paula said with feeling, turning up her coat collar against the chill clinging hand of the mist.

"So what's it like, living with Don Merrick?" Jan said conversationally.

Paula flashed her a look of surprise. "News travels fast," she said.

"No secrets in a nick," Jan said.

"Then you'll know I'm not living with him in the Biblical sense," Paula said sharply. "He's sleeping in my spare room. Just till he gets himself sorted out."

Jan laughed. "He'll be there for a while, then. It's all right, Paula, I know you're not shacked up with Don."

There was something in her tone that made Paula uneasy. "Good. So you won't mind keeping everybody else straight on that one."

"Is that what you want? You really want me to tell everybody how I can be so sure you're not sharing your bed as well as your microwave with Don?" There was a playful, teasing edge in her voice now.

Paula stopped in mid-stride. "And what's that supposed to mean?" she asked, a hollow feeling in her stomach.

Jan wheeled round to face her, a smile turning her cherub's face into a picture of innocence. "Rainbow Flesh, Leeds. On the dance floor. I think it was the dance mix of Beth Orton's "Central Reservation". Your partner was very cute. Mixed race. Tat of a snake on her shoulder."

Paula tried not to show the shock that seemed physically to ripple through her muscles. "Not me," she said automatically, not even pausing to figure out that even by asking this, Jan was making her own confession. She started walking again. "You obviously have more time off than I do if you're out clubbing," she added, trying to make light of this moment when her worst fear had assumed the shape of reality. She felt sick.

"It's all right, Paula, I'm not going to tell," Jan said, falling into step beside her. "Think about it. I've got as much to lose as you do. We both know that, no matter what the brass say, the street cops aren't going to be our friends if we're out."

"There's nothing to tell," Paula said sharply. She wanted time to think about this, not fall into false comradeship with someone she didn't know well enough to trust. She headed across the street, not bothering to see if Jan was following her. "There's a woman over there, looks like she's working. Let's go and check her out."

Jan followed, the cherub smile still on her face.

Next morning, the fog had thickened to a dismal shroud, a pale grey tinged with sulphurous yellow. Traffic crawled through the city streets and the morning DJ on Bradfield Sound was beginning to betray his exasperation at the length of the traffic reports. Normally, it wouldn't have impinged on Tony, who would have used the time to escape inside his head. But this morning he was impatient to get to work.

He'd come home from the ugliness in room 24 of the Woolpack to a message on his answering machine from Aidan Hart. When he'd returned the call, his boss had sounded both bemused and faintly annoyed. "Derek Tyler wants to see you," he'd said.

"He asked?" Tony wondered what on earth Tom Storey had done to break the logjam of Tyler's silence.

"He didn't use his voice, if that's what you mean. He wrote a note, gave it to one of the nurses. "I want to see Dr. Hill." That's all it said. But the nurse thought it was enough of a breakthrough to call me on my mobile," he added petulantly.

"I'm sorry your evening's been disturbed," Tony said, not bothering to thread regret into his voice. "That's great news. Thanks for letting me know."

"I've booked you an appointment with him at nine tomorrow morning," Hart continued.

Sorry, Carol, he thought. "That's fine. I'll be there."

"In the interview room with the observation window," Hart added. "I want to see this for myself."

Tony cursed the weather and the traffic and wished he knew the back streets of Bradfield well enough to get off the main drag and cut through the back doubles to his destination. At this rate, he was going to be late, and he had a feeling that would bring altogether too much pleasure to Aidan Hart.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the cars in front of him started to move at something approximating the speed limit. Tony surged forward, saying a prayer of thanks to whatever god governed Bradfield's erratic traffic flow. Must be a malicious bastard, he thought irreverently.

He arrived at the hospital with seven minutes to spare. Tony didn't bother going to his office; he made straight for the observation booth behind the interview room. As he turned into the corridor, he bumped into one of the orderlies. "Sorry," he said, stumbling slightly.

The orderly put a hand on his elbow to steady him. "It's OK, Doc. You're here to see Tyler, right?"

"That's right. He's not changed his mind, has he?" he asked, seized by a sudden apprehension.

The orderly shrugged. "Who knows? Tyler's not saying. Your boss had a crack at him last night and got nowhere."

"Dr. Hart spoke to him last night?"

The orderly nodded. "Soon as he got the message, he was out here, telling Tyler that he might as well save everybody's time by talking to him instead of you."

Politics, Tony thought bitterly. He wants the glory of getting Tyler to talk. He spread his hands in a gesture of innocence and opened the door of the observation room. Hart was already there, lounging in a chair, one ankle balanced on the other knee. "Glad you could make it," he said.

"Traffic," Tony said. "Fog."

"Yes, I was glad I set off quarter of an hour earlier than usual," Hart said smugly. "Well, this is a bit of a turn-up for the books. I thought Tyler had put you in your place the last time you spoke. But it seems he wants to say more. How did you do it?" He straightened up and leaned forward. He really wanted to know. But now Tony knew about Hart's attempt to muscle in the night before, he was determined not to tell.

"Natural charm, Aidan. Natural charm." Tony smiled and walked out. He was waiting in the interview room when the door opened and Derek Tyler entered. He walked with a kind of cramped stoop that made him look older than his years. The knobbly skull gleamed in the lights as he sat down opposite Tony, who gave him an encouraging look. "Hello, Derek," he said. "Nice to see you again."

Nothing. But at least this time Tyler was staring at him, not acting as if there was nobody in the room other than himself. Tony stuck out his legs, crossed them at the ankle and put his hands behind his head. It was as open and relaxed a position as it was possible to adopt on a hard plastic chair. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

Nothing. "OK," Tony said. "I'll start. I think you're just about ready to give up. You've kept the faith. You've stayed true to the voice in your head. But now you're wondering if there was any point in that. Like I told you when we spoke before, somebody else has taken over your job. He's out there, doing what you were doing. And he's cleverer than you, because he's not been caught yet."

Tyler blinked several times, like a matinee idol fluttering his eyelashes. His lips parted and the tip of his tongue flickered from one side to the other. But he said nothing.

"I think the voice has given up on you."

Tyler's eyes narrowed and his thumbs rubbed against the tips of his index fingers.

"Because you can't give satisfaction any longer, can you, Derek? You can't take these bitches off the street any more."

Tyler shook his head. He seemed frustrated. Then his mouth opened and the words spilled out, dry and cracked. "I know what you're trying to do. You don't want to help me, you want me to help you. But you can't take the Voice away from me. It's mine. I only do what it tells me to. And until the Voice tells me I can talk to you, I can't." He pushed his chair back and abruptly stood up. He walked to the door and knocked, a demand for release.

He didn't look back. If he had, he would have seen a slow grin spreading across Tony's face.

Carol leaned against the wall of the mortuary, watching Dr. Vernon make his initial assessments of the remains of Jackie Mayall. The acrid traces of chemicals combined with the ripe aromas coming from the body to make her sinuses ache. At least, that was how she explained her headache to herself. Vernon was taking the scrapings from under the victim's fingernails when Don Merrick burst through the door, looking anxious and faintly dishevelled. "Sorry, ma'am," he said, his eyes hangdog. "The traffic was a nightmare. The fog .. ."

"Same fog for all of us, Don," Carol said.

"I know, but .. ." His voice tailed off. He couldn't explain that he'd miscalculated because he was unfamiliar with the traffic patterns where Paula lived. Not without explaining everything else.

"And last night," Carol said, keeping her voice low so the mortuary staff wouldn't hear her giving Merrick a bollocking. "What was that about? You were the senior officer on the scene and you left it to go and do a job that should be left to DCs and uniforms. When I arrived, Paula and Jan were standing around like a pair of spare parts, not knowing whether they were supposed to be working the streets or waiting for me."

"I told them to interview everybody else in the hotel," Merrick said defensively.

"Which didn't take them very long since only two other rooms were occupied, and by people who were more interested in their own activities than in anything else that was going on. Don, you're not a sergeant any more. I need to know you're on top of things when I'm not there. You can't just walk away from the scene of a murder and expect everybody else to do the right thing."

Merrick hung his head. "I'm sorry, ma'am. It won't happen again."

"It better not. I've got enough on my plate without having to worry about covering your back from above and below."

Merrick flinched at the sharpness in Carol's tone. He hoped the information he could provide might go some small way to redeeming himself in her eyes. "At least we got an address for the victim," he said. "It took a while, but we tracked her down to a bed sit in Comb Moss. We got the landlord out of bed at three this morning and turned the place over."

Carol's severe expression relaxed a little. "So what do we know?"

"Jackie Mayall moved to Bradfield about eighteen months ago. Originally she came from Hayfield. I spoke to one of the local lads on my way in. Usual sort of story. One of four kids, parents long-term unemployed. Left school at sixteen, not much work around. She did casual shifts in one of the factories, but never managed to land a full-time job. Timekeeping wasn't her strong point, apparently. She drifted into heroin and then into prostitution to pay for the stuff. Little place like Hayfield, it was hard to avoid getting nicked, so she moved up to the big city. The landlord says he knew she was on heroin, but he wasn't bothered because she was no trouble as a tenant. I tell you, her bed sit was the cleanest, tidiest place I've ever seen a smackhead living in." Merrick could see it now: a neatly made double bed, a couple of cheap armchairs with brightly printed throws covering their threadbare upholstery; a spotless cooking area with a combi oven scrubbed to a gleam; clothes hanging neatly on a rail; TV and video free from dust, and half a dozen chick-lit paperbacks on the mantelpiece. It had been pitiful, really. A

sad simulacrum of normal life lurking behind the chipped door in one of the poorest parts of town. "Not much of a life," he said.

Carol sighed. "Even so, it was still hers. And then some bastard comes along and takes it from her." She cleared her throat and stepped forward. "What do you think, doc? Same killer?"

Vernon glanced up at her. "She was killed in the same way. If anything, her injuries were more severe. I'd guess that her killer used a longer implement this time. The internal damage goes deeper. Chances are she didn't live as long as Sandie Foster. The pain must have been excruciating. She would have gone into shock fairly soon after the initial attack."

Carol shuddered. "What kind of person does this?"

"That's a question for Dr. Hill, not for me. All I can tell you is what he does, not why he does it. Except that he's definitely getting some sort of sexual thrill from it."

"That's hardly news," Merrick muttered.

Vernon gave him a sharp look. "I deal in the realms of fact, Inspector, not theory. I know he's getting some sort of sexual thrill because there are traces of semen on Jackie Mayall's stomach."

The steam on the inside of the windows of Stan's Cafe always made it look as if mist was hanging along the canal in Temple Fields. DS Kevin Matthews pushed the door open and went from cold fog to warm fug. He wasn't sure it was an improvement. He took a folded A4 sheet of paper from his pocket and sat down at the first table by the door. The vacant-looking young man in a hooded top who was already seated there looked surprised, as if Kevin had broken some unwritten rule. Kevin unfolded the paper, revealing a computer print-out taken from a snapshot of Jackie Mayall that Merrick had found in her flat. It showed Jackie raising a glass to the camera, her blonde hair bleached white by the flash. Merrick had tinkered with the photograph to get rid of the red-eye. Now it just looked as if her pupils were unnaturally dilated. "Probably not so far off normal," Sam had grunted as he'd picked up his copy and set off with Kevin to do the rounds. They'd split up, Sam taking the convenience store and the burger bar round the corner.

"All right, mate?" Kevin asked.

The young man nodded eagerly. "Yeah. I'm all right. I'm Jason."

And you're a few bricks short of a wall, Kevin thought, adjusting his attitude without condescending. "Hi, Jason, I'm Kevin. I'm a policeman."

He held out the picture of Jackie. Jason looked at it, then raised his eyes to Kevin. "Why have you got a picture of Jackie? Is she your girlfriend? Have you lost her?"

"You knew Jackie?"

"Jackie. I know Jackie. Jackie comes in here for cups of hot chocolate."

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that Jackie's dead. She was murdered last night."

Jason's mouth fell open. "No. Not Jackie, that can't be right. Jackie's a nice woman. You must have made a mistake."

Kevin shook his head. "No mistake, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make sense. Jackie was nice," Jason repeated.

"Did you ever talk to her?"

Jason looked embarrassed. "Not really. Not talk talk. Just "Hello, how're you doing?"

Before Kevin could ask more, a couple of youths unpeeled themselves from the fruit machine and dropped into the other two chairs at the table. "You a cop?" one asked.

Kevin nodded. "And you are?"

The stockier of the two youths squared his shoulders in a pathetic parody of manliness. "I'm Tyrone Donelan."

"And what do you do, Tyrone?" Kevin asked, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

"About thirty-five to the gallon." He guffawed at his own joke. "I'm a mechanic," he said. "Anything to do with cars, I'm your man."

Anything to do with nicking cars, Kevin thought cynically. "And who's your mate?"

Donelan jerked his head towards the other lad. "This is Carl. Carl Mackenzie. Say hello to the nice policeman, Carl."

Mackenzie grunted something and looked away, tracing lines in a scatter of spilled sugar on the tabletop. "And what do you do, Carl?" Kevin asked.

Mackenzie's mouth twitched as if he wasn't sure what was expected of him. "Nothing much," he said.

Kevin pushed the photograph of Jackie towards them. "Either of you know Jackie Mayall?" Before they could answer, the door opened and Dee Smart walked in. She looked around and, seeing Kevin, crossed straight to the table and stood glaring down at him. The lads all seemed to brighten at the sight of her. "This is Dee. This is Kevin," Jason recited like a child who's proud of recently acquired social skills.

"I know Kevin," Dee said sourly, fixing him with a hard stare. "I thought you said you lot cared about us? That we weren't just throwaways?" Her voice was loud enough to attract attention from the surrounding tables.

Kevin flushed an ugly red, his freckles seeming to darken. "You're not," he said quietly.

"So how come there's another one of us lying in the morgue? And how come you've got nothing better to do than harass an innocent kid? Why don't you get off your arse and find out who's killing my mates?" Dee turned on her heel and teetered off to the counter.

Jason gave a pained smile while Carl tittered. "I don't think Dee likes you, Kevin," Tyrone jeered.

Kevin looked around at the hostile stares pointed in his direction. "I don't think she's the only one, Tyrone." He stood up wearily, knowing there was nothing more to be gained in the cafe while Dee was in this mood.

It was impossible to miss the police presence in Temple Fields that morning. Tony saw several officers he recognized as he walked through the streets and lanes. The fog was slowly dissipating, leaving the odd swirling pocket that seemed to swallow people whole as they walked into it. It was hard not to feel the weather was responding to the atmosphere of foreboding in the city's dark heart.

Tony stopped outside his destination. The window was brightly lit, its contents mostly innocuous; sex, it implied, was always and only fun. He pushed open the door and walked in. He'd been in sex shops before, but not for a while. What surprised him was how matter-of-fact it all seemed. Upbeat techno music played in the background. There was nothing hidden or coy about the items on display; everything was laid out for the customers to choose from. The implied message was that whatever consenting adults wanted to do in private was fine and dandy.

He wandered round, taking it all in. There were things here whose purpose he could only guess at, which he found slightly disturbing, given his area of expertise. Tony stopped by a section of shelves dedicated to bondage restraints. Chains, cuffs, gags, nipple clamps and various arcane objects clustered together like varieties of baked beans in a supermarket. Tony picked up a set of leather ankle restraints that looked similar to those they'd found on Jackie. He looked at the price and raised his eyebrows. "Whatever you are, you're not cheap. Power has its price and you're willing to pay." He spoke softly, but not so softly that it didn't catch the attention of the man behind the counter. He emerged from his station and walked over to Tony.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked.

Tony looked up, seeing a tall, lean figure wearing a leather waistcoat over tanned and tattooed skin. The salesman had a line of twinkling diamond studs down the ridge of each ear. "Sell a lot of these, do you?" he said.

"More than you might think. People like to spice up their love lives." The look he gave Tony seemed to suggest he could well imagine his love life needed spicing up.

Tony fondled the cuffs absentmindedly. "Maybe that's where I've been going wrong. What sort of people buy them?"

"All sorts." The assistant looked wary.

Tony tried for the harmless look. "My interest is purely professional. I'm a clinical psychologist," he said apologetically.