ell, I noticed going through the over nights that there seemed to be a positive spate of unexplained fires and query arsons. All at night, all in unoccupied premises like schools, factories, cafes, warehouses. None of them very big in itself, but taken together, you're looking at a lot of damage. I put a team together to re-interview the previous victims, see if we could find any connection financially or insurance-wise.

Zilch. But I went myself to talk to the local fire chief, and he produced a series of incidents going back about four months. None of the fires could be absolutely, positively put down as arson, but circumstantially, he reckons there have been something between six and a dozen possible deliberate fires per month on his patch," Carol said.

"A serial arsonist?" Brandon said softly.

"It's hard to imagine another interpretation," Carol agreed.

"And you want to do what, exactly?"

"I want to catch him," she said with a grin.

"Well, what else?" Brandon smiled. "Did you have something specific in mind?" he continued mildly.

"I want to carry on working with the team I've already got on it, and I want to do a profile."

Brandon frowned. "Bring someone in?"

"No," Carol said sharply. "There's not really enough evidence to justify the expense. I think I can take a pretty good stab at it myself."

Brandon looked impassively at Carol. "You're not a psychologist."

"No, but I learned a lot last year, working with Tony Hill. And since then, I've read everything about profiling I could find."

"You should have applied for the National Task Force," Brandon said, keeping his eyes fixed on her.

Carol felt her skin burn. She hoped the wine and the coffee would account for her heightened colour. "I don't think they were looking for officers of my rank," she said. "Apart from Commander Bishop, there's no one above the rank of sergeant. Besides, I prefer to work a patch, get to know the people and the ground."

"They're due to be up and running a full case-load in a few weeks," Brandon continued implacably. "Maybe they'd welcome something like this to cut their teeth on before then."

"Maybe they would," Carol said. "But it's my case. And I'm not ready to let it go."

"Fine," Brandon said, interested that Carol had already developed such fierce possessiveness about the work of the East Yorkshire force. "But keep me posted, yes?"

"Of course," Carol said. Her sense of relief, she told herself, was entirely because she would now have the chance to cover herself and her team in glory when they cracked the case. Deep down, though, she knew she was lying.

Sleeping in what the estate agent had referred to as the guest bedroom of Shaz's flat would have been beyond most people, particularly if they were the sort who needed to read a few pages before they could nod off.

While the bookcase in the living room contained an innocuous mix of middlebrow middle-of-the-road modern fiction, the shelves in the room Shaz thought of as her study held only hard-core horror, most of it masquerading as textbooks. There were a few novels by pathologists of psychopathy and anatomists of agony like Barbara Vine and Thomas Harris, but most of Shaz's working library was both stranger and more brutal than fiction ever dared to be. If there had been a vocational course for serial killers, her library would have comprised the set books.

The lowest shelves held those items which mildly embarrassed her pulp true-crime biographies of notorious serial killers with lurid nicknames, sensational accounts of careers that had robbed hundreds of people of their trust and their lives. Arranged above these were the more respectable versions of those same lives, portentous renderings that provided thoughtful revelations and insights sociological, psychological and sometimes illogical.

Next, at eye-level for anyone sitting at the table that held Shaz's notepads and laptop, were the battle stories of the veterans of the war against serial offenders. Since it was the best part of twenty years since the infancy of offender profiling, the pioneers had been trickling into retirement for a few years now, each determined to augment his pension with graphic accounts of his contribution to the latest soft science with the case histories of his notable successes and a passing gloss over his failures. They were, thus far, all men.

Above these autobiographies was the serious stuff; books with titles like The Psychopathology of Sexual Homicide, Crime Scene Analysis and Serial Rape: A Clinical Study. The top shelf gave the only indications that she aspired to be hunter rather than hunted, with its selection of legal texts, including a couple of guides to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It was a comprehensive collection and Shaz hadn't amassed it in the mere couple of months since she'd won her place on the task force; it had been years in the building, helping her prepare for the day she'd always been convinced would come, when she'd be called upon to bring her very own notorious killer to book. If textual familiarity alone caught criminals, Shaz would have had the best arrest record in the country.

She had begged off the nightclub run following the curry in spite of the blandishments of the other three. It wasn't just that she had never been a great one for clubbing. Tonight, her spare room was infinitely more tempting than anything a DJ or a barman had to offer. The truth was, she'd been in a ferment all evening, eager to get back to her computer and to finish the comparisons she'd begun to run through her database that afternoon. In the three days since Tony had set their assignment, Shaz had spent every spare moment working her way through the thirty sketchy sets of case notes. At last, the opportunity had come to put into practice all the theories and tricks of the trade she'd picked up in her reading. She'd read the papers from start to finish, not once, but three times. Not until she was fairly sure she had them well differentiated in her head did she approach her computer.

The database Shaz used hadn't represented the leading edge of software development way back when she'd copied it from a fellow student, and now it was practically a candidate for display in a computing museum. But while it might not have all the latest bells and whistles, it was more than capable of performing what she needed. It displayed the material clearly, it allowed her to create her own categories and criteria for sorting the information, and she found its procedures in tune with her instincts and logic and thus easy to use. She'd been inputting data since early that morning, so focused on her work that she hadn't even left the screen to cook lunch, settling instead for a banana and half a packet of digestive biscuits, upending her laptop afterwards to remove the crumbs from the keyboard.

Now, back in front of her screen, stripped of her glad rags and scrubbed clean of her make-up, Shaz was happy. The mouse pointer flickered as fingers clicked on buttons, summoning up menus that interested her far more than anything on offer at the restaurant. She sorted the so-called runaways by age and printed out the results. She followed the same steps for geographical area, physical type, previous police contact, various permutations on their domestic situation, drink and drugs experience, known sexual contacts and interests. Not that the investigating officers had been much concerned with their hobbies.

Shaz pored over the print-outs, reading them individually then spreading them over the desktop so she could more readily compare notes. As she gazed at the printed lists, the slow burn of excitement began in the pit of her stomach. She scrutinized them one more time, double-checking against the photographs in the files to make sure she wasn't willing something into existence that wasn't there. "Oh, you beauty," Shaz exclaimed softly, letting out a long sigh.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she looked again, it was still there. A cluster of seven girls. First, the positive similarities. They all had bobbed dark hair and blue eyes. They were all fourteen or fifteen years old, between 5'2" and 5"4" tall. They had all lived at home with one or both parents. In each case, their friends and family had told the police they were baffled at the girl's disappearance, convinced that she had no real reason to run away. In every instance, the girls had taken almost nothing with them, though in each case, at least one change of clothes appeared to have gone missing with them, which was the main reason why the police hadn't seriously considered them as possible victims of abduction or murder. Reinforcing that view were the times of the disappearances. In each case, the girl concerned had set off for school as usual but had never arrived. She'd also given a false explanation of where she'd be spending the evening.

And, although this couldn't be quantified in a way the computer could digest, they were all of a similar type. There was a flirtatious sensuality in their looks, a knowing quality in the way they embraced the camera that indicated they had left childhood innocence behind. They were sexy, whether they knew it or not.

Next, the negative similarities. None of the seven had ever been in care. None had ever been in trouble with the police. Friends admitted to a bit of recreational drinking, maybe even the occasional joint or even a dab of speed. But no significant drug usage. In none of the seven cases was there any hint that the girls might have been engaged in prostitution or the victims of sexual abuse.

There were problems with the cluster, of course. Three had current boyfriends, four did not. The geographical locations were unconnected Sunderland was the furthest north, Exmouth the most southerly point. In between were Swindon, Grantham, Tarn-worth, Wigan and Halifax. The reports also spanned six years. The intervals between the disappearances were not constant, nor did they seem to diminish as time went by, which Shaz would have expected if she were really dealing with the victims of a serial killer.

On the other hand, there might be girls she didn't know about yet.

When Shaz woke early that Sunday morning, she tried to will herself back to sleep. She knew there was only one thing she could do that would advance her search for connections among her theoretical victim cluster and that single task wasn't one that could be hurried. When she'd gone to bed around midnight, she'd promised herself she would achieve it with a lunchtime phone call. But lying wide awake with a racing brain at quarter to seven, she knew she couldn't hold out that long.

Irritated by her inability to make progress except at someone else's hands, she threw back the covers. Half an hour later, she was accelerating up the long incline where the M1 began.

Showering, dressing and swallowing a coffee with the radio news in the background had kept thought at arm's length. Now that the empty black three-lane strip stretched out before her, she couldn't hide behind distraction. The radio presenter's voice wasn't enough on its own. Not even Tony Hill's words of wisdom could hold her today. Impatiently, Shaz pushed a cassette of operatic arias into the stereo and gave up the pretence of concentration. For the next two and a half hours, she had nothing to do but run memories through her mind like old movies on a rainy Sunday.

It was almost ten when she drove down the ramp to the Barbican complex's underground car park. She was pleased to see the car park attendant clearly remembered her, as she'd hoped, though he looked startled to see her face smiling uncertainly round the door of his office. "Hello, stranger," he said cheerfully. "We've not seen you around for a long time."

"I've moved up to Leeds," she said, carefully avoiding any hint of how recent her move had been. It had been more than eighteen months since she'd last been here, but the reasons for that were nobody's business but hers.

"Chris didn't say to expect you," the car park attendant said, getting up from his seat and walking towards her. Shaz backed out of the booth and down the steps as he followed her.

"It was all a bit last-minute," she said noncommittally, opening her car door.

That seemed to satisfy the attendant. "Are you here overnight?" he asked, frowning as he scanned the car park for an appropriate space.

"No, I'm not planning on staying long," Shaz said firmly, starting her engine and crawling down the aisles of cars, following the attendant and slotting the car into the space he indicated.

"I'll let you into the block," he said as she joined him. "What's it like up in the frozen north, then?"

Shaz smiled. "The football's better," was all she said as he pulled back the massive glass and metal door and waved her inside. Just as well I'm not a terrorist sleeper, she thought as she waited for the lift.

On the third floor, she stopped halfway along the carpeted corridor.

Taking a deep breath, she pressed the doorbell. In the silence that followed, she breathed out through her nostrils in a slow steady stream, trying to contain the nervousness that was turning her stomach into a Jacuzzi. When she'd almost given up hope, she heard the faint whisper of footfalls. Then the heavy door inched open.

Tousled chestnut hair, bleary brown eyes with dark smudges under them and frown lines between, a snub nose and a yawn half-stifled behind a square hand with blunt, well-manicured fingers appeared in the gap.

For once, Shaz's narrow smile made it as far as her eyes. The blaze of warmth melted Chris Devine, and not for the first time. The hand dropped away from the mouth, but the lips remained parted. Astonishment came first, then delight, then consternation. "Any chance of a cup of coffee?" Shaz asked.

Chris stepped back uncertainly, pulling the door wide. "You'd better come in," she said.

Nothing worth having had ever come easy. He told himself that at regular intervals through two days of torment, though it was not a lesson he was ever likely to forget. His childhood had been scarred with oppressive discipline, any rebelliousness or frivolity stifled by force. He had learned not to show the currents that moved under the surface, to present a bland and acceptable face to whatever adversity people threw in his teeth. Other men might have revealed some traces of the seething excitement that swirled inside whenever he thought of Donna Doyle, but not him. He was too practised at dissemblement. No one ever noticed his mind was ranging through entirely different territory, detached from his surroundings, entirely elsewhere. It was a trait that in the past had saved him pain; now it kept him safe.

In his head he was with her, wondering if she was keeping her promise, imagining the excitement burning in her veins. He thought of her as a changed being, charged with the secret weapon of knowledge, convinced she had the edge on every tabloid astrologer because she knew for sure what her future held.

Of course, hers could not be the same vision as his, he realized that.

It would have been hard to imagine two more disparate fantasies, so far apart on the continuum that there could exist no single uniting factor.

Apart from orgasm.

Imagining her imagining a false future had its own fris son of delight that cohabited and alternated with the sliver of fear that she would not keep her word, that even as he played computer games with the stricken inhabitants of a children's cancer ward, Donna was huddled in a corner of the school cloakroom revealing her secret to her best friend. That was the gamble he took every time. And every time, he'd judged the roll of the dice perfectly. Not once had anyone come looking for him. Well, not in the investigative sense. There had been one time when the distraught parents of a missing teenage girl asked for a TV appeal because, wherever she'd run off to, their daughter would never miss her weekly fix of Vance's Visits. Sweet irony, so delicious he'd grown hard for months afterwards just thinking about it. He could hardly have told them that the only way they were ever going to talk to their daughter again was via a medium, could he?

For two nights running, he went to sleep in the early hours and woke at dawn tangled in damp sheets, his pulse racing and his eyes wide open.

Whatever the evaporated dream, it robbed him of further sleep, leaving him to prowl the confined spaces of his hotel room, alternately exulting and fretting.

But nothing lasted forever. Thursday evening found him in his Northumberland retreat. Only fifteen minutes' drive from the centre of the city, it was nevertheless as isolated as a Highland croft. Formerly a tiny Methodist chapel that could never have held more than a couple of dozen, it had been bought when it was reduced to four bulging walls and a sagging roof. A team of local builders happy to have the cash in hand renovated it to very particular specifications, never doubting the reasons they were given for the desired features.

He savoured the preparations for his visitor. The sheets were clean, the clothes laid out. The phone was switched off, the answering machine turned down low, the fax shut away inside a drawer. The fibre optics might sing all night with calls for him, but he wouldn't be hearing them till morning. The table was covered with linen so white it seemed to glow in the dark. On it, crystal, silver and porcelain were arranged in traditional patterns. Red rosebuds in an engraved crystal vase, candles splendid in simple Georgian silver. Donna would be captivated. Of course, she wouldn't realize that it would be the last time she'd ever use cutlery.

He looked around, checking everything was as it should be. The chains and leather straps were all out of sight, the silken gag tucked away, the carpentry bench innocent of tools except for the permanently mounted vice. He had designed the workbench himself, all the tools arrayed on a solid piece of wood like the drop leaf of a table attached to the far end of the bench at ninety degrees to the work surface.

One last glance at his watch. Time to drive the Land Rover across the rutted field track to the empty B-road that would take him to Five Walls Halt with its isolated railway station. He lit the candles and smiled with sheer pleasure, confident now that she would have kept faith and silence alike. Won't you come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly?

Tim Coughlan had finally had his prayers answered. He'd found the perfect spot. The loading bay was slightly less wide than the factory proper, leaving a recess about seven feet square at one end. At first glance, it looked as if the alcove was blocked off by flattened cardboard cartons stacked on their ends. If anyone had bothered to look more closely, they would have noticed that the cartons weren't tightly packed and that, with a little effort, it wouldn't be too hard to squeeze between them. Anyone inclined to investigate further would have found Tim Coughlan's bed sit containing a stained and greasy sleeping bag and two carrier bags. The first bag contained one clean T-shirt, one clean pair of socks and one clean pair of underpants. The other held one dirty T-shirt, one dirty pair of socks, one dirty pair of boxer shorts and a pair of shapeless cords that might once have been dark brown but were now the colour of seabirds after the oil slick has trapped them.

Tim slouched in a corner of his space, the sleeping bag scrunched into a cushion beneath his bony buttocks. He was eating chips and curry sauce from a polystyrene container. He had the best part of a litre of cider left to wash it down and send him to sleep. He needed something on the cold nights to carry him forward into oblivion.

It had taken long months living rough on the streets before he'd emerged on the other side of the heroin haze that had robbed him of his life.

He'd dropped so low that even drugs were above his reach. That, ironically, was what had saved him. Shivering through cold turkey in a Christmas charity shelter, he'd finally turned the corner. He'd started selling the Big Issue on street corners. He'd managed to put together enough cash to buy clothes from charity shops that looked like poverty rather than hopeless homelessness.

And he'd managed to find work on the docks. It was casual, poorly paid, cash in hand, the black economy at its gloomiest. But it was a start.

And that was when he'd found his spot in the loading bay of an assembly plant too strapped for cash to afford a night watchman.

Since then, he'd managed to save nearly three hundred pounds, stashed in the building society account that was probably his only extant connection to his past. Soon, he'd have enough for the deposit and a month's rent on a proper place to live and enough to spare to feed himself while the dole dragged their feet over his claim.

Tim had hit bottom and nearly drowned. Soon, he was convinced, he'd be ready to swim back up to the daylight. He screwed up the chip container and tossed it into the corner. Then he opened the cider bottle and tipped the contents down his throat in a long series of quick gulps. The notion of savouring it never occurred to him. There was no reason why it should.

Opportunity had seldom knocked at Jacko Vance's door. Mostly, he'd gripped it by the throat and dragged it kicking and screaming to centre stage. He'd realized while he was still a child that the only way he was ever going to come by some luck was if he managed to make it himself. His mother, plagued by a kind of post-natal depression that had made him repugnant to her, had ignored him as far as possible. She hadn't actually been cruel, simply absent in any meaningful sense. His father had been the one who paid attention, most often of a negative sort.

He hadn't long been at school when the handsome child with the floppy blond hair, the hollow cheeks and the huge baffled eyes had realized that there was a point in having dreams, that things could be made to happen. His little-boy-lost appearance worked on some teachers like a blowtorch on an icicle. It didn't take him long to work out that he could manipulate them into playing accessories in his own particular power game. It didn't erase what happened at home, but it gave him an arena where he began to understand the pleasure of power.

Although he traded on his looks, Jacko never relied solely on the power of his charm. It was as if he had a built-in understanding that there would be those who needed different weaponry if they were to succumb.

Since he'd had the work ethic instilled into him from the moment he had begun to comprehend the messages of speech, it was never a hardship to him to work for his effect. The sports field was the obvious place for him to focus, since he had a certain natural talent and it offered a wider arena to shine in than the narrow stage of the classroom. It was also an area where effort paid off visibly and spectacularly.

Inevitably, the elements of his behaviour that endeared him to those who had power alienated his contemporaries. Nobody ever loved a teacher's pet. He fought the obligatory fights, winning some and losing a few.

When he did lose, he never forgot. Sometimes it took years, but he found ways to exact some sort of satisfactory revenge. Often, the victim of his vengeance never knew Jacko was behind his ultimate humiliation, but sometimes he did.

Everyone on the council estate where he'd grown up remembered how he'd got his own back on Danny Boy Ferguson. Danny Boy had been the bane of Jacko's life between the ages of ten and twelve, picking on him mercilessly. Finally, when Jacko had flown at him in a rage, Danny Boy had smashed him to the ground with one hand held ostentatiously above his head. Jacko's broken nose had healed without trace, but his black rage burned behind the charm that the adults saw.

When Jacko won his first junior British championship, he became an overnight hero on the estate. No one from there had ever had their picture in the national papers before, not even Liam Gascoigne when he dropped that concrete slab on Gladstone Sanders from the tenth floor. It wasn't hard to persuade Danny Boy's girlfriend Kimberley to come up west with him for a night on the town.

He'd wined and dined her for a week, then dumped her. That Sunday night in the local, just as Danny Boy was working up to his fifth pint, Jacko slipped the landlord fifty quid to broadcast over the pub's PA system the tape he'd secretly recorded of Kimberley telling him in graphic detail what a lousy fuck Danny Boy was.

When Micky Morgan had started visiting him in hospital, he'd recognized a kindred spirit. He wasn't sure what she wanted, but he had a strong feeling she wanted something. The day Jillie dumped him and Micky offered to help him out, he becarn, e certain.

Five minutes after she walked out of the ward, he hired the private eye.

The man was good; the answers came even faster than he'd expected. By the time he read her handiwork in the headlines that screamed across all the tabloids, he understood Micky's motives and knew how best he could use her.

JACK THE LAD LETS LOVE GO! HEARTBREAK HERO! LOVE

TORMENT OF TRAGIC JACK! He smiled and read on.

Britain's bravest man has revealed he's making the greatest sacrifice of all.

Days after he lost his Olympic dream saving the lives of two toddlers, Jacko Vance has broken his engagement to his childhood sweetheart Jillie Woodrow.

Heartbroken Jacko, speaking from the hospital bed where he is recovering from the amputation of his javelin-throwing arm, said, "I'm setting her free. I'm no longer the man she agreed to marry. It's not fair to expect her to carry on as before. I can't offer her the life we'd expected to have, and the most important thing to me is her happiness.

"I know she's upset now, but in the long run, she'll come to see I'm doing the right thing."

Now Jillie could never deny his version of events without making herself look a complete bitch.

Jacko bided his time, playing along with Micky's proffered friendship.

Then, when he deemed the moment was right, he struck like a rattler.

"OK, so when's payback day?" he asked, his eyes holding hers.

"Payback day?" she echoed, puzzled.

"The story of my love sacrifice," he said, larding his words with heavy irony. "Don't they call tales like that a nine-day wonder?"

"They do," Micky said, continuing to arrange the flowers she'd brought in the tall vase she'd charmed from the nurse.

"Well, it's ten days now since the media broke the news. Jacko and Jillie are officially no longer headline material. I was wondering when I'd get the account for payment due." His voice was mild, but looking into his eyes was like staring into a frozen puddle on high moorland.

Micky shook her head and perched on the edge of the bed, her face composed. But he knew her mind was racing, calculating how best to handle him. "I'm not sure what you mean," she stalled.

Jacko's smile was laced with condescension. "Come on, Micky. I wasn't born yesterday. The world you work in, you've got to be a piranha.

Favours don't get done in your circles without the full understanding that payback day is lurking somewhere in the background."

He watched her consider lying and reject it; he waited while she considered the truth and rejected that, too. "I'll settle for having one in the bank," she tried.

"That's the way you want to play it, OK," he said nonchalantly. His left hand suddenly snaked out and seized her wrist. "But I'd have thought you and your girlfriend were in pretty dire need as of now."

His large hand encircled her wrist. The sculpted muscles of his forearm stood out in strong relief, a shocking reminder of what he'd lost. The grip wasn't tight against her flesh, but she sensed it was unbreakable as the bracelet of a handcuff. Micky looked up from her wrist to his implacable face and he saw a momentary clutch of fear as she wondered what lay behind his impenetrable eyes. He made his face relax into a ghost of a smile and the instant passed. He saw himself reflected in her eyes, not a trace of sinister showing now. "What a strange thing to say," she said.

"It's not just journalists who have contacts," Jacko said contemptuously. "When you started taking an interest in me, I returned the compliment. Her name's Betsy Thorne, you've been together more than a year. She acts as your PA but she is also your lover. For Christmas you bought her a Bulova watch from a Bond Street jeweller's. Two weekends ago you shared a twin room overnight at a country house hotel near Oxford. You send her flowers on the twenty-third of each month. I could go on."

"Circumstantial," Micky said. Her voice was cool; the skin under his grip felt like a burning ring of flesh. "And none of your business."

"It's not the tabloids' business either, is it? But they're digging, Micky. It's only a matter of time. You know that."

"They can't find what isn't there to be found," she said, slipping into obstinacy as if it were a tailored blazer.

"They'll find it," Jacko promised her. "Which is where I might be able to help."

"Supposing I did need help ... what form would your help take?"

He released her wrist. Rather than pull her arm to her and rub it, Micky let it lie where he dropped it. "Economists ay good money drives out bad. It's like that with journalists. You should know. Give them a better story and they'll abandon their sordid little fishing expedition."

"I won't argue with that. What did you have in mind?"

"What about, "Hospital romance for hero Jacko and TV jour no He raised one eyebrow. Micky wondered if he'd practised the gesture before the mirror in adolescence.

"What's in it for you?" she asked, after a moment when they'd each stared appraisingly at the other, as if measuring for romantic congruence.

"Peace and quiet," Jacko said. "You have no idea how many women there are out there who want to save me."

"Maybe one of them would be the right one."

Jacko laughed, a dry, bitter sound. "It's the Groucho Marx principle, isn't it? Not wanting to be a member of any club that would let me in.

A woman who's demented enough to think that, a) I need saving and b) that she's the person for the job is by definition the world's worst woman for me. No, Micky, what I need is camouflage. So that when I get out of here which should be quite soon I can go about my life without every brain-dead bimbo in Britain thinking I'm her chance at the big time. I don't want someone who feels sorry for me. Until somebody I choose comes along, I could use the erogenous equivalent of a bulletproof vest. Fancy the job?"

Now it was his turn to guess what was really happening behind her eyes.

Micky was back in control of herself, maintaining the air of bland interest that would later stand her in good stead as the housebound nation's favourite interviewer. "I don't do ironing," was all she said.

"I've always wondered what a PA did," Jacko said, his smile as wry as his tone.

"You better not let Betsy hear you say that."

"Deal?"

Jacko covered her hand with his. "Deal," she said, turning her hand over and clasping his fingers in hers.

The stench hit Carol as soon as she opened her car door. There was nothing quite as disgusting as barbecued human flesh, and once smelled, it could never be erased from the memory. Trying not to gag too obviously, she walked the short distance to where Jim Pendlebury appeared to be conducting an impromptu press conference under the fire brigade's portable arc lights. She'd spotted the journalists as soon as her driver had turned into the car park, and she'd asked to be dropped nearby, well away from the phalanx of scarlet engines where fire officers were still spraying a smouldering warehouse with water. High above his colleagues, one man on a cherry picker sent a soaring arc of water above their heads on to the flaking remains of the roof. Milling around behind the fire brigade were half a dozen uniformed police officers. One or two watched Carol's arrival with vague interest, but soon turned back to the more absorbing vista of the fag end of the fire.

Carol hung back as Pendlebury gave brief and noncommittal answers for the benefit of local radio and press. Once they realized they would get nothing much out of the fire chief at that stage, they dispersed. If any of them paid attention to the blonde in the trench coat, they probably assumed she was another reporter. Only the crime reporters had met Carol so far, and it was too early for this to have graduated from a news headline into a crime story. As soon as the night-shift news reporters called in that the factory fire was not only fatal but also suspected arson, the jackals on the crime beat would have their morning assignments on a plate. One or two of them might even be turfed out of bed as unceremoniously as she had been.

Pendlebury greeted Carol with a grim smile. "The smell of hell," he said.

"Unmistakably."

"Thanks for turning out."

"Thanks for tipping me off. Otherwise I'd have known nothing about it till I got into the office and read the over nights And then I'd have missed the joys of a fresh crime scene," she said wryly.

"Well, after our little chat the other day, I knew this one would be right up your street."

"You think it's our serial arsonist?"

"I wouldn't have phoned you at home at half past three in the morning if I hadn't been pretty sure," he said.

"So what have we got?"

"Want to have a look?"

"In a minute. First, I'd appreciate a verbal briefing while I'm in a position to concentrate on what you're saying rather than on what my stomach's doing."

Pendlebury looked slightly surprised, as if he expected her to take such horrors in her stride. "Right," he said, sounding disconcerted. "We got the call just after two, from one of your patrol cars, actually. They'd been cruising and saw the flames. We had two units here within seven minutes, but the place was well ablaze. Another three tenders were here inside the half-hour, but there was no way we were going to save the building."

"And the body?"

"As soon as they had the fire damped down at this end of the warehouse which took about half an hour the officers became aware of the smell.

That was when they called me out. I'm on permanent stand-by for all fatal fires. Your lads called in CID, and I called you."

"So where is the body?"

Pendlebury pointed to one side of the building. "As far as we can tell, it was in the corner of the loading bay. There seems to have been a kind of alcove at one end. Looking at the ash, there was probably a load of cardboard stashed at the front of it. We've not been able to get in yet, it's still too hot and too chancy in terms of walls coming down, but from what we can see and what we can smell, I'd say the body's behind or underneath all that wet ash down the back of that recess."

There's no doubt in your mind that there's definitely a body in there?"

Carol was grasping at straws, and she knew it.

"There's only one thing that smells like roast human, and that's roast human," Pendlebury said bluntly. "Besides, I think you can just about see the outline of the body. Come on, I'll show you."

A couple of minutes later, Carol stood by Pendlebury's side at what he claimed was a safe distance from the smoking ruin. It felt uncomfortably warm to her, but she had learned when to trust the expertise of others during her years in the force. To have hung back would have been insulting. As Pendlebury pointed out the contours of the blackened forms the fire and water had left at the end of the loading bay, she found herself irresistibly forming the same conclusion as the fire chief.

"When can the scene-of-crime people start work?" she asked dully.

Pendlebury pulled a face. "Later this morning?"

She nodded. "I'll make sure the team's on stand-by." She turned away.

This is exactly what I didn't want to happen," she said, half to herself.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. Law of averages," Pendlebury said lightly, falling into step with her as she walked back towards her car.

"We should have been all over this arsonist ages ago," Carol said, angrily searching through her pockets for a tissue to wipe the wet ash from her trainers. "It's sloppy policing. He should have been nabbed by now. It's our fault that he's still on the loose to kill people."

"You're not being fair on yourself," Pendlebury protested. "You've only been here five minutes, and you picked up on it right away. You mustn't blame yourself."

Carol looked up from her attempts at cleaning her shoes and scowled.