ears crept out of the corners of her eyes and she beat her left fist against the wall. "I hate you," she cried, screaming at the wavering image of a thin-faced man who had adored his daughter. "I hate you, you bastard!"

At least the incoherent sobs tired her out, letting her consciousness slide mercifully from her again.

The brashness that characterized Leon's performance among his peers was gone. Instead, he was locked behind the blank insolent face he'd seen on too many young blacks, both in custody and on the street. His street. He might have the warrant card that said he was one of them, but he had enough smarts to know that the two Yorkshiremen sitting across the interview room table were still The Man.

"So, Leon," Wharton was saying in seemingly expansive mode, ' you're telling us squares with what we've already heard from DC Hallam. The pair of you met at four o'clock and went tenpin bowling. Then you went for a drink in the Cardigan Arms, after which you met Simon Mcneill for a curry." He smiled encouragingly.

"So neither of you two killed Shaz Bowman," Mccormick said. Leon had him figured for a racist, his pink slab of a face showing no rapport, his eyes hard and cold, his wet mouth permanently a mere twitch away from a sneer.

"None of us killed Shaz, man," Leon said, deliberately drawing out the last word. "She was one of us. Maybe we've not been a team for long, but we know how to stick together. You're wasting your time on us."

"We've got to go through the motions, lad, you know that," Wharton said.

"You're going to be a profiler, you know that over ninety per cent of murders are committed by families or lovers. Now, when Simon turned up, how did he seem?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"OK. Did he seem agitated, wound up, in a state?"

Leon shook his head. "None of that, no. He was a bit quiet, but zoo

I put that down to Shaz not being there. I reckoned he fancied her, and he was disappointed when she didn't show."

"What made you think he fancied her?"

Leon spread his hands. "Stuff. You know? The way he tried to impress her. The way he was always checking her out. The way he'd always be bringing her into the conversation. The way a man does when he's interested, know what I mean?"

"Did you think she was interested in him?"

"I don't reckon Shaz was too interested in anybody. Not in the shagging sense. She was too obsessed with the Job to be bothered with it, if you ask me. I don't think Simon was going to drop lucky and get his leg over. Not unless he had something she wanted bad, like the inside track on a serial killer."

"Did he say he'd been round her house?" Mccormick interjected.

"He never mentioned it, no. But you wouldn't, would you? I mean, if you thought a woman had just stood you up, you wouldn't be telling people about it. Not saying anything isn't strange behaviour. Saying something, setting yourself up for having the piss taken out of you all round the squad room, now that would be strange." Leon lit a cigarette and gave Mccormick the blank-eyed stare again.

"What was he wearing?" Wharton asked.

Leon frowned with the effort of recollection. "Leather jacket, bottle green polo shirt, black jeans, black Docs."

"Not a flannel shirt?"

Leon shook his head. "Not when we met him. Why? You found some flannel fibres on her clothes?"

"Not her clothes," Wharton said. "We think she was'

"I don't think we'll be going into details about the forensic evidence just now," Mccormick interrupted firmly. "Weren't you worried when DC Bowman didn't show up for this big night out?"

Leon shrugged and blew out a stream of smoke. "Not worried, no. Kay figured she'd got a better offer. Me, I thought she probably had her head in her computer, doing her homework."

"Bit of a teacher's pet, was she?" Wharton asked, sympathy to the fore again.

"Nah. She was just a grafter, that's all. Look, shouldn't you be out there catclvng the bastard who did this, instead of wasting your time with us? You're not going to find her killer in the task force. We signed up to solve shit like this, not commit it, man."

Wharton nodded. "So the sooner we get this over, the better. We need your help here, Leon. You're a trained detective, but you've also got trained instincts, or else you wouldn't be on this task force. Give us the benefit of your insights. What do you make of Tony Hill? I mean, you do know that he didn't want you on the task force, don't you?"

Tony stared at the dark blue screen. Mccormick and Wharton might have barred him from the task squad offices, but either they didn't know about the group's networked computer system or they had no idea how to exclude him from it. The set-up was straightforward. It had to be; the people using it were less computer literate than the average seven-year-old. All the PCs in the office were linked via a central processing and storage unit. A modem connection made it possible for any of the team who was working off site to plug straight into their personal data store as well as any of the general material that was available to everyone. For security reasons, they each had personal lo gins as well as individual passwords. The trainees had all been instructed to change their passwords weekly to avoid possible leaks.

Whether any of them bothered was a moot point.

What none of the squad knew was that Tony had a list of every individual login. In effect, he could dial up the office computer and pretend to be any of them, with the machine none the wiser. Of course, without the password, he wouldn't get very far with the private material, but he'd be in the system.

As soon as he'd returned home from his interview, he'd switched on his home computer. First, he'd called up Shaz's application form and test responses, all scanned in as soon as she'd been accepted for the squad.

He printed them out, along with the progress reports that both he and Paul Bishop had compiled.

Then he signed off as himself and signed in as Shaz. Now, the best part of two hours and a pot of coffee later, he was no further forward. He'd tried everything he could think of. SHAZ, SHARON, BOWMAN, ROBIN, HOOD, WILLIAM, TELL, ARCHER, AM BRIDGE ... He'd run through every character he could think of from the eponymous radio soap opera. He'd tried her parents' names, every town, city, institution and street name mentioned in her CV. He'd even attempted the obvious JACKO, VANCE and the less obvious MICKY, MORGAN.

And still he was staring at a screen

that said, "Welcome to the National Offender Profiling Task Force.

Please type in your password now: -'. The cursor had been flashing so long the only thing he could say with total certainty was that he had no epileptic tendencies.

He stood up and prowled round the room. He didn't have an idea to bless himself with. "Enough," he muttered in exasperation. He lifted his jacket from the chair where he'd thrown it and shrugged it on. A walk down to the shop for the evening paper, that might clear his head.

"Don't fool yourself," he muttered as he opened his front door. "You just want to see what those pillocks have told the latest press conference."

He walked down the path bisecting two flower beds where grimy rose bushes fought a rear guard action against urban enemies both human and industrial. As he turned into the street, he noticed a couple of men in a nondescript saloon car opposite. One was scrambling out of the passenger seat to the accompaniment of the engine being over-enthusiastically started. Shocked, Tony recognized all the hallmarks of an amateurish stakeout. Surely they couldn't be wasting their human resources keeping tabs on him?

At the corner, he stopped to look in the window of Bric'n'Brac, a junk shop with sad pretensions. Its proud owner kept the glass clean, which allowed Tony to take a look over his shoulder and across the street. The man who'd jumped out of the car was over there, loitering by the bus stop, pretending to read the timetable. It was an activity that marked him out as a stranger more than almost anything else could have done; the locals knew the anarchic practices of the rival bus companies too well to regard the timetable as anything other than a bad joke.

Tony walked on to the corner. Under the cloak of crossing the road, he threw a look over his shoulder. The car had turned round and was creeping down his street about fifty yards behind him. There was no doubt about it. If these were the best the local force had to offer, Shaz Bowman's killer didn't have much to worry about.

Despairing of his supposed colleagues, Tony bought an evening paper from the local news agent and walked slowly home, reading as he went. At least the police weren't publicly saying anything to attract ridicule.

In fact, they weren't saying anything much at all. Either they were playing things very close to their chest, or they had nothing to play with. He knew which he believed was the case.

Once inside, under the guise of drawing a curtain across to protect his computer screen from the bright sun, he checked for his watchers. They were both back in the car, parked in the same spot as before. What were they waiting for? What did they expect him to do?

If it wasn't so appalling in its potential consequences, it would be funny, he thought as he grabbed the phone and dialled Paul Bishop's mobile. When Bishop answered, Tony dived straight in. "Paul? You're not going to believe this. Mccormick and Wharton have got it into their heads that someone connected to the task force killed Shaz, since we're the only people up here she knew."

"I know," Bishop said, sounding depressed. "But what can I do? It's their inquiry. If it makes you feel any better, I do know they've been in touch with her old division, asking them to check out if there were any villains down there who might have had enough of a grudge against her to follow her up here. So far, no joy. But her old CID sergeant has apparently been in touch to say she acted as intermediary to set up a meeting between Jacko Vance and Bowman on Saturday morning. It looks as if she was determined to pursue that wild idea of hers about the teenage girls."

Tony let out a sigh of relief. "Well, thank God for that. Now maybe they'll begin to take us seriously. I mean, they have to be asking at the very least why Vance hasn't come forward and revealed this himself, given that Shaz's picture has been all over the papers."

"It's not quite that simple," Bishop said. "Vance's wife actually rang in within minutes of the other call to say Bowman had come to the house on Saturday morning. She said her husband hadn't seen the papers yet.

So no one's actually hiding anything."

"But they are at least going to talk to him?"

"I'm sure they will."

"So they'll have to treat him as a suspect."

Tony heard Bishop exhale. "Who knows? The trouble is, Tony, I can make gentle suggestions, but I've no authority to stop them running this their own sweet way."

"I was told that you'd agreed with them that the squad should effectively be suspended," Tony pointed out. "You didn't have to go along with that, surely."

"Come on, Tony, you know how difficult the politics of the task force are. The Home -Office is adamant that we don't cause problems on the ground. It was a small concession. The squad hasn't been disbanded.

Nobody's being reassigned to their old units. We're just out of the operational loop until this case is either resolved or out of the headlines. Try and treat it like a sabbatical."

Exasperated, Tony got to the initial point of his call. "It's a pretty strange sabbatical that includes a stakeout straight out of the Keystone Cops on my doorstep."

"You're joking?"

"I wish I was. I walked out of my interview with them this morning after they accused me of being their best bet because I'm already a killer. And now I've got Beavis and Butthead on my tail. This is intolerable, Paul."

He could hear Bishop take a deep breath. "I agree, but we're just going to have to roll with the punches until they get bored with us and start running a proper investigation."

"I don't think so, Paul," Tony said, his voice clipped and authoritative. "One of my team is dead and they won't let us help find out who killed her. They're quick enough to remind me that I'm not one of them, I'm an outsider. Well, that cuts both ways. If you can't persuade them to get out of my face, I will be holding a press conference of my own tomorrow. And I promise, you won't like it any more than Wharton and Mccormick will. It's time to pull some strings, Paul."

"I hear you, Tony," Bishop sighed. "Leave it with me."

Tony dropped the phone back into its cradle and pulled the curtain back.

He switched on his desk lamp and stood in front of the window staring mutinously out at his watchers. He reviewed the information Paul Bishop had given him and related it to what he had learned at the crime scene.

This killer was angry because Shaz had stuck her nose into his business.

That indicated that she had been right in her supposition that there was at large a serial killer of teenage girls. Something she had done had panicked the murderer into making her his next target. The only thing she had apparently done that was connected to her theory was to visit Jacko Vance within hours of her death.

He knew now that Shaz Bowman's killer could not be some crazed fan of Vance's. There was no way for even the most dedicated stalker to find out in the short interval before her murder who Shaz was or the reason for her visit to Vance's house.

He had to find out more about the encounter between Shaz and

Vance. If the killer was one of his entourage, it was possible he'd been present. But if Vance had been alone when Shaz confronted him, the finger pointed only at him. Even if he'd picked up the phone the minute she'd left and reported her suspicions to someone else, there was no way such a third party could have picked up Shaz's trail, discovered where she lived, or persuaded her to open her door to him in the time available.

As he reached this conclusion, his watchers departed. Tony threw his jacket down and dropped like a stone into the chair facing the screen.

It was a small victory, but it renewed his appetite for the struggle.

Now he had to find the proof to demonstrate that Shaz had been right and it had killed her. What would Shaz Bowman have used as a password? A fictional hero? Warshawski and Scar-petta were too long. KINSEY, MILL HONE MORSE, WEXFORD, DALZIEL, HOLMES, MARPLE, POi ROT all failed. A fictional villain? MORI ARTY HANNIBAL, LECTER. Still nothing.

Normally, the sound of a car pulling up outside wouldn't have penetrated his concentration. But after the day he'd had, the stilling of the engine sounded louder than an alarm buzzer. He looked out and his heart sank again. The last three people he wanted to see piled out of a familiar scarlet Ford. Mob-handed, Leon Jackson, Kay Hallam and Simon Mcneill crowded up the path, sheepishly acknowledging his scowl through the window. With a groan, he got up and unlocked the door, turning straight on his heel and walking back down the hall to his study.

They followed him, crowding into the small room and, without waiting to be asked, finding places to settle; Simon on the window sill, Leon leaning elegantly against a filing cupboard, Kay in the armchair in the opposite corner. Tony swivelled round in his chair and glared, trying not to acknowledge the resignation he felt. "Now I understand why people confess to crimes they haven't committed," he said, only half-joking. They were impressive in spite of their youth and their uncertainty.

"You wouldn't take me seriously, so I brought in reinforcements," Simon said. He looked too pale to be conscious, Tony registered, noticing for the first time a dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

"That Mccormick and Wharton, they've got it in for us," Leon burst out.

"I've been in there all afternoon, with them doing kissy faces, "Come on, Leon, you can tell us what you really think about

Tony Hill and Simon Mcneill." Man, they are two sick fuckers, let me tell you. "Mcneill fancied Bowman, but she was in love with Hill, so he killed her out of jealousy, what do you reckon? Or Hill wanted to get into Bowman's knickers but she was more interested in a date with Mcneill and he killed her in a fit of jealous rage." More bullshit than a farmyard, made me sick." He pulled his cigarettes out, then paused.

"Is this OK?"

Tony nodded, pointing to a lopsided Christmas cactus on a shelf. "Just use the saucer."

Kay leaned forward in her chair, elbows on knees. "It's like they can't see past the end of their noses. And while they're trying to find evidence against you, they're not looking anywhere else. Least of all at what Shaz was digging into. They think her theory about a serial killer preying on teenagers is the sort of stupid thing us girls come up with because we've got our hormones in a twist. Well, we figured that if they won't do what needs to be done, we better had."

"Do I get a word in edgeways?" Tony said.

"Be our guest," Leon said, with an expansive gesture.

"I appreciate how you feel. And it does you credit. But this isn't a classroom exercise. It's not, "Five Go Hunting a Psychopath." This is the most dangerous game, in both senses of the word. The last time I got involved with a serial killer, it nearly cost me my own life. And, with great respect to your talents as police officers, I knew a hell of a lot more than all three of you rolled into one. I'm not prepared to take the responsibility of having you working with me off the books." He ran a hand through his hair.

"We know it's the real thing, Tony," Kay protested. "And we know you're the best. That's why we've come to you. But we can do stuff you can't.

We've got warrant cards. You don't. Strange cops only trust other cops. They won't trust you."

"So if you won't help us, we'll just have to do the best we can without you," Simon said, his mouth set in a stubborn line.

The shrill insistence of the phone came as a relief. Tony's hand closed over the receiver. "Hello?" he said cautiously, eyeing the other three as if they were an unexploded bomb.

"It's me," Carol said. "I just called to see how you'd got on."

"I'd rather tell you face to face," he said briskly.

"You can't talk just now?"

"I'm in the middle of something. Can we meet later?"

"My cottage? Half past six?"

"Better make it seven," he said. "I've got a lot to do here before I can get away."

"I'll be there. Safe journey."

"Thanks." He gently replaced the phone. He closed his eyes momentarily. He hadn't realized how isolated he'd been feeling. It was the existence of police officers like Carol, and the stubborn belief that one day they'd be in the majority, that made his job bearable. He opened his eyes again to find the three junior members of his squad staring avidly at him. The ghost of an idea was taking shape at the back of his mind. "What about the other two?" he stalled. "Saw sense, did they?"

Leon breathed smoke. "Got no bottle. They're frightened to rock the boat in case their promotion prospects get drowned."

"Who gives a shit about promotion when someone like Shaz gets killed and nobody cares enough to catch the killer? Who'd want to be a copper on that kind of force?" Simon spat.

"I'm sorry," Tony said. "The answer's still no."

"Fine," Kay said. Her smile could have cut steak. "In that case, we'll move on to Plan B. The sit-in. We're staying on your case till you come on board. Where you go, we go. Twenty-four hours a day. Three of us, one of you."

"Not good odds." Leon lit a fresh cigarette while the embers of the previous stub still glowed.

Tony sighed. "OK. You won't listen to me. Maybe you'll listen to somebody who really knows the score."

The dashboard clock said it was just after seven; the radio played the theme from The Archers, revealing the clock was three minutes slow.

Tony's car bounced up the rough track from the road, his suspension giving its age away. He rounded the last bend and saw with satisfaction that the lights were on in Carol's cottage.

She was framed in the doorway as he closed the car door behind himself.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so glad to be walking into someone else's company, someone else's territory. The only sign that his companions were completely unexpected was the slight lift of her eyebrows.

"Kettle's on, beer's cold," she greeted them, offering Tony a gentle squeeze of the arm. "Is this your bodyguard?"

"Not as such. I am currently being held hostage," he said drily, following her indoors. His squad didn't wait for an invitation. They were right there on his heels. "You remember Kay, Leon and Simon?

They're going to hang round my neck like millstones until I agree to work with them on uncovering who killed Shaz." In the living room, he gestured with his thumb towards the sofa and chairs. The threesome sat.

"I was hoping you would help me talk them out of it."

Carol shook her head, acting bemused. "They want to work with you on a live case? God, the rumour mill must have deteriorated one hell of a lot recently."

"Coffee first," Tony said, lifting a hand and placing it lightly on her shoulder, steering her towards the kitchen.

"Coming up."

He closed the door behind them. "I'm sorry for landing you with this.

But they wouldn't listen to me. The problem is that West Yorkshire are acting like Simon's the prime suspect and I'm a close second. And this lot are not going to lie down and take that. But you know what it's like when you're working a serial killer case and it gets personal. They don't have the experience to handle this. Vance or someone close to him has already killed the best and brightest of them. I don't want any more deaths on my conscience."

Carol spooned coffee into the filter and switched it on as he spoke.

"You're absolutely right," she said. "However ... unless I misjudge them completely, they're going to pursue this anyway. The best way to make sure you don't lose another one is to take control. And the way to do that is to work with them. Set them all the drudge jobs, the runaround background inquiries that baby detectives cut their teeth on.

Anything dodgy, anything we think is dangerous or needs expert interrogation techniques, we'll sort out."

'"We?"

Carol clapped the palm of her hand to her forehead and grimaced. "Why do I feel like I've just been suckered?" She punched his arm. "Put some sugar and milk and mugs on a tray and take it through before I get seriously cross."

He did as he was told, feeling strangely gratified that he had moved from the Lone Ranger to team captain in the space of a few hours. By the time Carol brought the coffee through, he'd shared the new deal vdth a self-satisfied team.

He opened his laptop on the stripped pine dining table, jacked the modem into the phone line, and plugged the transformer into the nearest power point. As the others arranged themselves so they could see the screen, Carol asked Tony, "How bad was the interview?"

"I walked out in the end," he said succinctly as he watched the machine boot up. "It was what you might call hostile. When it comes to, "Hey, lads, hey," they don't really think I'm on the same side, you see. But they're saving the prime suspect slot for Simon. He had the bad luck to get Shaz to agree to a date on the very night she was killed. But I'm probably second favourite in the book that some smart-arse on the murder team will be running." He looked up and Carol could see the hurt behind the assumed self-possession.

"Stupid bastards," Carol said, putting his mug of coffee next to the computer. "But then, they are Yorkshiremen. I can't believe they're not using you lot."

Leon gave a bark of mirthless laughter. "Tell us about it. You let people smoke in here?"

Carol glanced at him, taking in the fingers beating a silent tattoo on his thigh. Better that the tobacco combusted than he did. "You'll find a saucer in the cupboard above the kettle," she said. "Only in this room, please." As he left, she took over his chair and settled down next to Tony, watching the screen change as his fingers hit the keys.

Tony worked his way into the task force computer system with Shaz's login. He pointed to the flashing cursor. This is what I've been racking my brains over all afternoon. I can get on to the system as Shaz, but I can't figure out her password." He ran through the attempts he'd made, ticking the categories off on his fingers. Leon, Kay and Simon started throwing out their own suggestions based on what they knew of their late colleague.

Carol listened carefully, left hand teasing the tendrils of blonde hair on the back of her neck. When Tony and the other three had run out of steam and ideas, she said, "Missed the obvious, didn't you? Who did Shaz look up to? What did she want to be?"

"Running Scotland Yard? You think I should try famous Met Commissioners

Carol reached over and pulled the laptop within touch-typing range.

"Famous profilers." She typed in RESSLER, DOUGLAS, LEYTON. Nothing happened. A rueful quirk of the lips, then she typed TONY HILL The screen went momentarily blank, then a menu appeared. "Fuck, I wish I'd taken a bet on it," she said wryly. Around

her, the trainee profilers applauded, Leon wolf-whistling and whooping.

Tony shook his head, astonished. "What do I have to do to get you on the national squad?" he asked. "You're wasted in ordinary CID work at your rank. All that admin when you should be harnessing that inspiration to catch pychopaths."

"Right," Carol said sarcastically, pushing the laptop back towards him.

"If I'm so good, how come I didn't work out that my arsonist was a crook, not a crazy?"

"Because you were working alone. That's never the best way to operate when you're dealing with psychological analysis. I think profilers should work in pairs, detective and psychologist, complementary skills."

He took the cursor down to the

"File directory' option and hit ENTER.

The quality of their meeting of minds was not a conversation Carol wanted to have, especially not in company as sharp as the present one.

Deftly, she moved the subject forward, bringing Leon, Kay and Simon up to speed with Tony's theory that the arsonist was a part-time fireman with a conventional criminal motive.

"But what is the motive?" Kay asked. "That's the important bit, isn't it?"

"If it's criminal, you always want to know who benefits," Leon pointed out. "And since there's no common ownership or insurance, maybe it's somebody high up in the fire service who doesn't want any more cutbacks."

Tony looked up from the file names he was scrolling through. "Nice idea," he said. "Devious, though. And as a proponent of Occam's Razor, I'm going to go for the most straightforward theory. Debt," he said and turned his eyes back to the screen.

"Debt?" Carol's voice was full of doubt.

"That's right." He swung round to face her. "Somebody who owes money all over the place, somebody with a credit rating that's fallen through the floor. His house has been repossessed or it's on the point of it, he's got a stack of county court judgements against him and he's robbing Peter to pay Paul."

"But a night call out is, what? Fifty, a hundred quid max, depending on how long they're out there? You surely don't think somebody would put his liberty, his mates' lives, at risk for that sort of cash!" Simon protested.

Tony shrugged. "If you're up against the wall, perpetually juggling zn creditors, an extra hundred quid a week can make all the difference to staying in one piece and having your legs broken, your car snatched, your electricity cut off, the bank putting you into bankruptcy. You pay twenty quid off one debt, fifty off another, a tenner here, a fiver there. You show willing. It keeps everybody off your back. The courts are reluctant to take drastic steps if you can show you're really trying. Any sensible person knows that it's only postponing the evil hour, but when you're in debt up to your eyeballs, you stop thinking straight. You get into this self-deluding fantasy that if you can just get over this hump, you'll be heading towards getting straight again.

Nobody cons themselves better than a bad debtor. I've seen pathetic idiots who owe the best part of twenty grand to a loan shark still employing a cleaning lady and a gardener because getting rid of them would be an admission that their lives were totally out of control. Look for somebody who's teetering on the brink of insolvency, Carol."

Already back in communion with the computer screen, he muttered, "Let me see ... MISPER. OOI. That'll be the report she did for the squad, wouldn't you think?"

"Seems likely. And MISPERJV. OOI could be her Jacko Vance inquiries."

"Let's take a look." Tony opened the file. Shaz's words spilled down the screen, giving him a strange sense of communing with the dead. It was as if those extraordinary blue eyes were hovering behind his head, fixing him with their inexorable stare. "My God," he whispered. "She wasn't playing games."

Leon peered over his shoulder. "Fuck," he breathed. "You fucking witch, Shazza." It summed up everyone's feelings perfectly as they stared at Shaz's briefing from beyond the grave.