ou're wrong. She was talking to me about a confidential police assignment, that's the only reason I took the call in the car.'

Frances snorted. 'Do you think my head buttons up the back? You took the call in the car because you Vaiew I'd spot the obvious.'

Tony took a couple of steps towards her. 'I haven't a clue what you're talking about, Frances.'

'Don't play games with me. You're in love with her. Christ, I only had to be in your company for five minutes to work that one out.'

'No,' he said. 'You're wrong.'

Tm right. And I've got far too much self-respect to put up with having my nose rubbed in it.'

'Look, Carol is a former colleague, a friend. How can you be jealous of someone I've never even slept with?'

'Well, more fool you. You should have tried the little blue pills a bit sooner, shouldn't you? Because she's obviously gagging for it.'

Her words hit like a slap to the cheek. 'Leave Carol out of this. Whatever you've got into your head, it's between you and me.'

'That's the trouble, Tony. It's not between you and me. It's always been between you and Carol, only you never let me see that before. You kept it hidden away, pretending you wanted to be with me when the truth is she's the one you want.'

'You're so wrong, Frances. There's no future for me and Carol. All there is between us is a very difficult past. I'm with you because I want to be.'

Suddenly Frances picked up a small crystal vase from the window sill and hurled it at him. 'You lying bastard,' she shouted as he dodged to one side. It crashed into the wall with an incongruous tinkle of smashed glass. Tm not a masochist, Tony,' she panted, anger stealing her breath. 'Life is too damn short to fritter away my emotions on a man who's desperate for somebody else. So get the hell out.'

There was nothing he could think of to say. It surprised him how little he cared that it was clearly over. He turned and headed for the door.

'Leave your keys on the hall table on the way out,' Frances shouted at his retreating back.

Tony carried on walking. To his surprise, the prevailing emotion he felt was relief. Relief and a sudden surge of hope. He hadn't felt this optimistic in years.

Sometimes, Petra wished Marijke van Hasselt didn't live so far away. Tonight, it would have been good to settle down with a bottle of wine and discuss the day's events with someone who didn't have anything at stake but who understood the intricacies of police work. At least tonight Marijke was on-line too, she saw with a lightening of her spirits. They moved into a private chat room and Petra went straight to the question that interested her most. Anything to take her mind off the dead ends of the Kamal/Marlene inquiry.

P: so, how's the murder going?

M: A lot of work and not much progress. I spent today at the university interviewing his colleagues and students, but we didn't get a single lead worth pursuing.

P: what, you finally found a victim everybody loves?

M: Plenty of people didn't like de Groot, but nobody with anything that looks remotely like a motive. You don't kill somebody just because he failed your thesis or blocked your promotion.

P: god, you dutch are so civilized...

M: What's even more annoying is that we didn't find an appointments diary. Apparently he had one of those Palm Pilots that he always carried. But no sign of it.

P: the killer probably took it with him to cover his tracks.

*M: So, did you manage to track down what it was I that jogged your memory when I told you about de I Groot?

P: i've narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities, but i haven't heard back from either of them, you I know what these provincials are like, no sense of urgency.

i M: FWIW, there's nothing in our records anywhere

in Holland that corresponds to the de Groot murder.

&

P: so, you're running round in the dark? nothing from ; forensics?

M: Not so far. It's all been very frustrating, going through the motions without any sense of what we should be looking for.

P: there's nothing harder to work than this kind of killing.

M: I know. Take my mind off it. Tell me about your day.

P: frustrating, i'm trying to prove a negative - a woman who claims she was the lover of a man who is now dead, but i don't think they even knew each other, i think there's a chance we could use this as a lever to lift the lid on a major figure in organized crime, this guy has always kept his hands clean, kept his distance from the sharp end. we've never laid a finger on him, and i want to be the one who nails him. the only trouble is, she's got a kid, and i suspect that our man has spirited her away somewhere to use as a pressure point over her. so i need to find the kid as well.

M: Any joy?

P: not so far. if she doesn't turn up in school tomorrow, i'm going to tell plesch we should put out a national appeal for her as missing, act like she might be the victim of a paedo. it'll drive the mother nuts and it'll make whoever is taking care of her very, very nervous.

M: As long as you don't make them so nervous they do something stupid.

P: i don't think these guys would use anyone who'd panic for something this sensitive, if anything happens to the kid, they've lost their pressure point on the mother, more than that, they're going to turn her into a vengeful fury who will be out to get their blood.

M: But how safe will the mother be if you get your hands on the kid?

P: her life won't be worth a pocketful of euros, which means, as soon as we get the kid, we take the mother out of the general prison population and put her somewhere very, very safe.

M: Sounds like you're pushing really hard on this one.

P: i want to get this guy so bad i can taste it. but the other thing is that i heard a rumour there's some kind of major operation being planned against him that would take the ball out of our court, so i feel like time isn't on my side.

M: Be careful. It's hard to do your best work when you're looking over your shoulder. That's when we make mistakes, no? J

P: i know, part of me realizes it doesn't matter who gets him, as long as we take him down, but i'm greedy.

M: As if I didn't know that.

P: so, you want to satisfy my greed?

M: I thought you'd never ask ... '

Petra smiled. Sometimes, distance really didn't matter so I much after all.

Morgan's office was exactly what Carol would have conjured up if she'd been asked to imagine it. It was a large cubicle partitioned off from an open plan office space. The frosted glass panels that were supposed to provide an illusion of privacy had been turned into memo boards. Maps, photographs and sheets of paper with single words or phrases written in sprawling capitals in thick magic marker were sello taped to the glass, completely obscuring its inhabitant and his activities from anyone outside the room.

The filing cabinets and cupboards that lined the walls were piled high with files and reference books. The computer on the desk was an island of straight lines marooned in a zigzag sea of paper. It all looked chaotic, but Carol suspected that Morgan would be able to lay his hands on any single document in a matter of moments. There was nothing personal in the room; no photographs of family or of Morgan shaking hands with the powerful or famous. The only thing that marked the space out as his was the jacket hanging on a peg on the back of the door. Not on a hanger, just dangling limp from the hook.

He'd met her at the lift, hustled her through the outer office so fast she'd had the chance for nothing more than the most superficial impression of an array of mostly empty desks. The occupants of the remainder barely raised their heads as they passed, then returned indifferent to their monitors or their phone calls. He'd thrown open his office door and stood back, saying, 'Give me five minutes. There's something I've got to sort out. Tea or coffee?'

She'd been sitting in the visitor's chair for fifteen minutes when Morgan pushed the door open with his hip, a mug in each hand. 'There you go,' he said, putting one down on the pile of papers nearest Carol. 'Sorry I kept you.'

He moved round behind his desk, pushing the chair sideways so the computer didn't obscure her view of him. His cramped office only served to emphasize how big he was. He topped six feet easily, and he had the breadth to go with it. But even though he was in his mid-forties, he hadn't lost definition. She could see the swell of his shoulder muscles under his shirt, and there was no depressing splay of material and straining buttons across his stomach. He had a square, blunt face with eyes set wide enough apart to give him a look of guilelessness that Carol knew was entirely misleading. Now, he was smiling at her, the skin round his eyes crinkling into deep lines. 'Cracking job yesterday,' he said. 'The Drugs Squad were spitting feathers, of course, but it's their own fault it all went down the Swanee. I had their guv'nor on to me last night, giving me earache, but like I said to him, it doesn't do to underestimate the opposition, especially when the opposition's got one of my team playing for them.'

'You don't mind that there's a bag of coke out on the streets that shouldn't be there?' Carol asked, partly because she didn't want to appear complacent, but mostly because she wanted to remind Morgan that she was still a copper.

'Sometimes you have to accept a bit of collateral damage. I'm looking at a much bigger picture.' Morgan picked up his coffee and took a sip. He flashed a quick glance of assessment at her over the rim, then relented. 'Besides, they picked the bugger up last night. They knew he wouldn't have had time to shift the gear, so they kicked his door in about half an hour after I sent them packing. Caught him in the middle of stepping on it so he could shop it out for twice the price. So your ~

'H conscience can rest easy, DCI Jordan.' He gave her a knowing j

grin. 'Nice to see that going undercover hasn't blunted your J copper's instincts.'

Carol said nothing. She reached for her mug and took a I tentative taste. It was almost as good as she would have made herself, which made it about three hundred per cent better than anything she'd ever tasted in a police establishment. Her respect for Morgan rose even higher.

He leaned across the desk and pulled a folder out from under a pile of scribbled notes. He flicked it open, checking the contents, then slid it over to Carol. 'Go on,' he said as she stared at the blank cover. 'Take a look.'

Carol flipped the file open. She found herself staring down at a 10x8 black-and-white photograph of a remarkably handsome man. It wasn't a posed studio-shot, but had the graininess of something snatched while its subject wasn't looking. He was in three-quarters profile, looking off at something to the right of the photographer, a slight frown provoking a line between his eyebrows. His glossy dark collar-length hair was swept back from a high forehead, falling over delicate ears in a slight wave. The eyes were deep-set above wide Slavic cheekbones. His nose had the curve of a hawk's bill, and his full lips were slightly parted, giving a faint glimpse of white teeth. He looked as sharp and polished as a diamond.

'Tadeusz Radecki. Tadzio to his friends,' Morgan said. 'He's genetically Polish, though he was born in Paris and educated in England and Germany. Currently lives in a palatial apartment in Berlin. His grandmother was some sort of countess. Plenty of blue blood, but his old man had a gambling habit and there wasn't much dosh left by the time Tadeusz finished with university. So he decided to become an entrepreneur. On paper, he owns a very successful chain of video-rental outlets in Germany. He moved in big time after the wall came down and cashed in on all those Ossies who'd been starved of Hollywood culture.'

Carol waited. She knew there was more, much more. But she'd never seen the point in asking questions simply for the satisfaction of hearing her own voice. Morgan leaned back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head. 'Of course, that's not the whole story. Our man Tadzio realized early on that there was more money to be made on the wrong side of the law than on the right side. Through his family contacts, he started doing a bit of gunrunning for the warlords in the former Yugoslavia after that all fell to bits. He had the contacts in the old Soviet Union to supply the materiel, and he set himself up as a middle man. Clean hands again. It worked out very nicely for him. He made a packet and he also acquired his right-hand man, a lethal little Serb called Darko Krasic.

'With the profits from the gunrunning, Tadzio and Darko invested in some serious protection and started shifting large amounts of drugs. They always took care to stay far enough away from the street-level stuff to keep their hands out of the muck while making sure their noses stayed right in the trough. In the last few years, they've taken the lion's share of the hard drugs market in central Germany, as well as financing some major international deals, including shipping heroin into the UK. They've stayed on top mostly because Darko has a reputation for being a totally ruthless bastard. You double-cross him, you die. And not in a nice way.'

Morgan sat up straight again and indicated to Carol she should move forward in the file. The next photograph showed a railway marshalling yard. The doors of a freight container stood open, revealing half a dozen bodies sprawled in a heap. 'Remember that?' he asked.

Carol nodded. 'Eight Iraqi Kurds found dead in a container at Felixstowe. Last summer, was it?'

'That's right. There had been a hold-up loading the ferry on the other side of the Channel, and the poor sods had basically fried alive as their air supply gave out. They were the victims of Tadeusz Radecki's latest business venture. It's questionable what adds more to the total of human misery, his drug running or his people smuggling. But we're not interested in how many addicts he's created for our German colleagues to deal with; what matters to us is putting a stop to his involvement in bringing illegals into this country in numbers we can only guess at.'

Carol started to turn to the next picture in the file. 'Hang on,' Morgan said. It wasn't a tone to argue with. She dropped her hand. 'He's a big player, then?' she asked.

'One of the biggest. He had the capital to get in on the ground floor. And he already had the infrastructure set up. If you're bribing bureaucrats to move your drugs around with impunity, it doesn't take a lot more to get them to turn a blind eye to truckloads of human flotsam. He's bringing them in from China, from the Middle East, from the Balkans, from Afghanistan. As long as they've got the cash or the drugs to pay their way, he'll take them where they want to go. And where most of them want to go is here.'

'What happens to them when they get here? Does he link in to some organized network? Or are they just dumped and left to get on with it?'

Morgan smiled. 'Good question. We think it depends on how much money they can come up with. For a price, they get papers and some even get a job. But if they don't have enough money to pay for that, they get dumped somewhere that's already overloaded with asylum seekers and they just join the rest of the crowd.'

'I suppose it would be naive to ask why the German police haven't arrested Radecki?'

'The usual reason. Lack of evidence. Like I said, he keeps his distance. There are firewalls between him and the business at street level. And the video shops make a great money laundry for a sizeable chunk of the proceeds. So he's got an apparently legitimate source for living very high on the hog. The German organized crime squad have been trying to get a line on Krasic and Radecki for. a long time, but they've never been able to make anything stick. There's probably only a handful of people who could actually tie Radecki to any of this, and they're too scared to talk. Take a look at the next shot.'

Carol turned over to the next picture. It showed the corpse of a man lying on a short flight of stone steps. Most of his head was missing. It wasn't a pretty sight.

'That was one of the people the Germans thought might be able to put Radecki in the frame. They arrested him two days ago on the grounds that he was the supplier of a dodgy batch of smack that killed off half a dozen addicts. He got a bullet through the brain right on the steps of the police I station. That's how fearless these guys are.' f

Carol felt the strange mixture of apprehension and excitement that always came with the prospect of the chase. She had no idea what Morgan had in store for her, but whatever it was, it was clearly going to take her into the big time. 'So where do I come in?' H

...* Morgan suddenly found the contents of his cup deeply I interesting. 'Radecki had a lover. Katerina Easier. They'd been together four years. If he had a chink in his armour, it was Katerina.' He met Carol's eyes. 'By all accounts, he was i besotted with her.' Brf.

'Was?'

'Katerina died two months ago in a car crash. Radecki was ; devastated. Still is, we hear. After she died, he went to pieces. Shut himself away in his fancy apartment, let Krasic deal with the day-to-day running of the operation. But now he's back. And that's where you come in. Take a look at the next photograph.

Carol obediently turned the page. The skin on her arms, turned to gooseflesh as she stared down at her mirror image. ; The woman in the photograph had long hair, but, that apart, on first impressions she could have been looking at her twin. Coming face to face with her doppelganger in a police file was one of the most unsettling things that had ever happened to her. Her hands felt clammy and she realized she was holding her breath. Discreetly she exhaled, as if the release of spent air might blow the illusion away. 'Jesus,' she said, her tone a protest against this apparent violation of her uniqueness.

'It's uncanny, isn't it?'

Carol studied the picture more intently. Now, she could see differences. Katerina's eyes were a couple of shades darker. Their mouths were distinct in shape. Her chin was stronger than Katerina's. Side by side, you could have told them apart without any difficulty. Yet that first impression of identity lingered on for Carol. 'It's weird to think there's someone else out there with the same face. What a bizarre coincidence.'

'They do sometimes happen,' Morgan said. 'You can imagine how gobsmacked I was when I saw your face looking up at me from an application form. That's when we had the idea for this operation.'

Carol shook her head in wonder. 'She could be my sister.' Morgan's smile reminded Carol of a lion's yawn. 'Let's hope Tadzio thinks so.'

The Wilhelmina Rosen was under way, carving a passage through the murky waters. It was a stretch without locks or complex navigation, so Gunther was at the helm, leaving him free to settle down in the cabin with a stack of paperwork. Bills of lading, receipts for fuel, payroll accounts all sat waiting for his attention. But his mind kept slipping away from the task.

Heinrich Holtz's story had opened up so many questions. His fellow crewmen might think him simple and straightforward, but there had always been much more going on behind his eyes than he'd revealed. He'd always had to live in his head, starved as he had been of the company of his contemporaries. The only thing that had kept the inner darkness at bay had been reading, though his grandfather had tried to deny him even that. As a teenager, he'd become adept at smuggling books on board, battered paperbacks bought from charity shops and market stalls. He'd read late at night in the privacy of his tiny berth in the bows, devouring violent adventure novels, biographies and true crime, dropping them overboard once he'd finished with them, lest the old man catch him in something that would at the very least be scorned as a waste of time. It had taught him to look beyond the surface to what lay beneath.

So the revelation of the secret of Schloss Hochenstein was the key that had unlocked the closed mansion of his past. He still had to wander down the corridors and explore the rooms before he could have any understanding of what really lay within. Some of those rooms remained obstinately dark, with no possibility of illumination. His grandmother, for example. She had been dead before he was born. He had no idea if she had borne the brunt of his grandfather's sadism or if her love had been enough to calm his rage while she lived. There was no way of telling.

He knew almost nothing of his mother. His grandfather had only ever referred to her as a whore, or a bitch who had fouled her own doorstep. There wasn't even a photograph of her among the old man's personal effects. He might have passed her a hundred times on the street and he would never have known. He liked to think that the electric current of his hatred would alert him to the bitch's presence, but he knew that was wishful thinking.

From his birth certificate, he had gleaned a few facts. She was called Inge. She had been nineteen at the time of his birth, her occupation listed as a secretary. Where his father's name should have been, there was a blank. Either she hadn't known who he was, or she had had her own reasons for keeping silent. Perhaps he was a married man. Perhaps he was a callow fool she didn't want to be tied to for the rest of her life. Perhaps she was trying to protect him from the wrath of her own father. All these options were equally possible, given that he knew nothing of the kind of person she had been, or whether she had been as brutally oppressed by the old man as he had. It didn't stop him despising her for leaving him to face the fate she had escaped.

After the old man's funeral, he had asked the crew what they knew of his mother. They'd never have dared open their mouths while the old man was alive, but with him safely despatched, Gunther had told what little he knew.

Inge had been brought up very strictly. Her mother had kept her close, forcing her into the mould of proper German womanhood. But when she had died, Inge had seized her chance. Whenever the old man came home, she was demure as ever, putting his meals on the table, making sure the apartment was clean and neat, dressing modestly and speaking only when she was spoken to. While the Wilhelmina Rosen was out of port, however, it was a different story.

Gunther had heard from other boatmen that Inge was regularly seen in the dockside bars, drinking with sailors until the early hours. Naturally, there were boyfriends, enough to earn her the reputation of a good-time girl, if not quite a slut.

She must have known she was dancing with the devil, he thought. Watermen have a strong sense of community and a confined world; word of her indiscretions was bound to make its way back to her father's ears. But before that could happen, she'd fallen pregnant. What surprised him, now he came to think about it, was that she hadn't got rid of him. It wasn't that hard to come by an abortion in Hamburg in the mid19708. She must have wanted to keep him very badly if she was prepared to withstand the wrath of her father.

According to Gunther, she managed to hide the pregnancy for the first five or six months, swaddled in baggy sweaters. When her father had found out, he had been enraged almost beyond speech. Life on board had been hell for a few weeks, the old man in the foulest of tempers and the crew unable to do right for doing wrong. He could imagine only too well what it must have been like, and felt grateful to have missed it.

There followed an ominous silence for a couple of months. Then one morning, after a three-day lie-over in Hamburg, the old man had arrived at the quayside in a laden car. The crew had watched open-mouthed as he had calmly unloaded a crib with two full sets of bedding, several carrier bags of baby clothes and a box containing bottles, formula and sterilizing tablets. Finally, the old man had wheeled a pram up the gangplank. It contained a baby. f ^ j n

No one had the nerve to ask the old man what had become of Inge, and they'd sailed before rumours could reach them. But when they'd next hit their home port, Gunther had made a beeline for the bars to garner what gossip he could. As he'd suspected, the old man had come home to find Inge ensconced with the baby. He'd thrown her bodily out of the apartment, tossing her clothes down the stairs after her. He'd changed the locks and set about bringing up baby himself.

Inge, it was reported, had left town. One of her ex boyfriends worked on a cruise ship and he'd found her a job on board, waitressing. When the ship came back to Hamburg, Inge was gone. She'd handed in her notice in Bergen and walked off into the Norwegian night without a forwarding address. That was the last anyone in Hamburg had heard of her, as far as he could tell.

He wondered what had become of her, but in a remote, unemotional way. Even as a child, he had never entertained fantasies of rescue. It had never occurred to him to dream that his mother would sweep on board, wrapped in mink and dripping with diamonds, to take him away from his personal hell and envelop him in the lap of luxury.

These days, when he thought of her, he imagined she had probably ended up selling herself in one way or another, either formally as a prostitute or informally as the wife of someone she could see as a protector. It was, he thought, a damn sight more than she deserved.

But Heinrich Holtz's story had made him realize there was no point in blaming his mother or his grandfather. Might as well blame the bullet or the gun for killing. The finger that had pulled the trigger on his own particular fate hadn't been the old man. It had been the psychologists who thought that people were a legitimate resource for their experiments.

Everybody acted as if all that had ended with the Nazi era. He knew better. He'd done his research. He'd learned from his experience at the hands of his grandfather that there was no point in rushing to vengeance. It was necessary to know the enemy, to study their strengths as well as their weaknesses. After the funeral, he'd made it his business to read everything he could find about the theory and practice of psychology. At first, it had been like reading a foreign language. He'd had to read and reread till the words blurred and his head ached, but he'd struggled on. Now, he could use their own weapons against them. Now, he knew their truths almost as well as he knew his own. He could wrap up his ideas in their secret jargon. Which of them would have believed that a mere boatman could infiltrate their world?

He knew they were still using people as their guinea pigs. They were still fucking with the heads of their victims, still hiding behind the guise of professional scientific curiosity to wreak damage. Even when they were supposed to be helping, they just made things worse. While they were still out there, his would not be a unique fate. Other poor sods would be as crippled as he had been. His task was clear. He had to send out a message that could not be ignored.

There was no point in making an example of one or two. He had to cut a swathe through their ranks. He'd chosen his victims meticulously, plodding through reams of published papers in the journals of experimental psychology. He was only interested in those who might be regarded as the legitimate professional descendants of his persecutors - the Germans, of course, and their treacherous collaborators, the French, the Belgians, the Austrians and the Dutch. He'd ignored anyone who experimented on animals, looking instead for those evil bastards who not q^ly used humans as the stepping stones for their own advancement, but who boasted of it in print. It was sickening, the way they detailed how they manipulated their subjects, twisting their minds and their behaviour. He'd been surprised that there weren't more of them, but he supposed that not all of them were stupid enough to expose their own cruelties. It took a while, but finally he had a list of twenty names. He'd chosen to start with the ones who were based nearest the waterways, but if the need arose he could travel further afield later in his campaign.

Now, he had to be very, very careful. He had to plan every move with the precision of a military operation. And, so far, it had paid off handsomely.

He looked out of the porthole at the brown water surging past. Bremen would be next. The jar was ready and waiting.

Petra Becker was as cross as a cat whose mouse has been taken from it by a squeamish human. She'd had another frustrating day trying to prove a negative. They'd tracked down the man that Marlene Krebs was sleeping with, but he'd given them nothing useful. Marlene was a free agent, he'd shrugged. Yes, he'd heard she'd been seeing Danni, but he didn't care so long as she practised safe sex, which she always did with him. You didn't want to take chances with junkies, he'd added self righteously.

Danni's girlfriend had denied any knowledge of his supposed affair with Marlene, but they hadn't lived together and she couldn't say for sure where he'd been on the nights he hadn't been with her.

Between them, Petra and the Shark had found three people who claimed to have known about the affair. The KriPo detectives were satisfied with that, but Petra wasn't. One of the three had convictions for minor dealing, another worked in one of Radecki's video stores. And the third owed so much to the local loan sharks that he'd have admitted to sleeping with the Chancellor if the price had been right. She didn't believe any of them. But that was a long way from being able to disprove the story that Marlene still stuck so doggedly to.

She'd come back to the office determined to get the next phase of her strategy off the ground. None of her usual sources had been able to give her any leads on Marlene's I daughter's whereabouts. All she'd been able to establish was I that Tanja had been picked up from school on the day of the shooting in a big black Mercedes. Nobody had noticed who was driving the car, or anything useful like the number plate. She could be anywhere by now. Given Radecki's network, she might not even be in Germany.

But they had to try. So she'd marched into Hanna Plesch's office and laid out her idea. Plesch had heard her out, frowning. Then she'd shaken her auburn head. 'It's too risky,' she said.

'It's the only way. If we run it big as a missing child, we're bound to get a response. Wherever she's being held, someone must have seen her. Or, at the very least, noticed something a bit suspicious. We need to find the girl so we can make it safe for Marlene to tell us what she knows.'

'And what if they decide to cut their losses and kill the m^ kid? What do we say to the media then? Do you really think Krebs will give you the time of day if she thinks you're the one who got her daughter killed?' Plesch stared her down. She was clearly as determined as Petra was.

'We don't have any other choice,' Petra said obstinately.

'Petra, we're getting nowhere with this. We might have to accept it's another dead end. We'll keep working the case, but I won't put a child's life at risk.'

'The child's already at risk.'

'Krebs knows that. And she knows what she has to do to keep her child alive. You're not going to change that. Petra, you might have to let this one go. There'll be other chances.'

Petra glared at her boss. 'Not from what I hear.'

'Meaning?'

'The word is that there's going to be a big operation mounted against Radecki. And it's not going to be ours. Boss, I've worked my arse off for years trying to build a case against that bastard, and if this is going to be our last chance to put him away, I don't want to leave any stone unturned.'

Plesch looked away. 'This job is not personal, Petra. You don't have some sort of divine right to be the one who finally cracks Radecki's organization. It doesn't matter who closes him down, as long as somebody does.'

'You're confirming there is something going down? Something that takes it away from us?' Now her blood was up and she didn't care that she was overstepping the mark. Her eyes were narrowed and there were patches of colour on her cheeks and neck.

'Don't push me,' Plesch said, getting to her feet. 'Just go out there and do your job. We need to talk about this some more, but not now. Listen to me, Petra. We've worked together long enough for you to understand that there are times when you have to trust me. This is not a good time for you to rock the boat. Don't go down the high-risk road. It's not necessary and it's not desirable.' She forced a smile. "That's an order, by the way. You don't expose the child.'

Petra had walked out fuming, her hands clenched into fists at her side. Only later, when her initial anger had subsided, had she analysed what Plesch had said to her. She had verified, albeit indirectly, that something major was going to change in the Radecki investigation. But she seemed to be suggesting that there would be a role for Petra if she kept her nose clean. It was a long way from a promise, but it made her feel slightly less raw about Plesch's dismissal of her plan.

She slouched in her chair and logged on to her internal e-mail. She wasn't expecting anything interesting, but it was _ better than staring at the wall. She scanned the short list of ? new mail. The only thing that piqued her attention was a reply to her request for information from the police in Heidelberg. Given the way things had been panning out for her over the past couple of days, she refused to allow herself to feel eager, but she opened the e-mail anyway. Her eyes flicked down the screen, taking in the key details: Walter Neumann, 47. Lecturer in psychology at the Ruperto Carola University of Heidelberg.

Petra felt a blip on her mental radar. Another academic, another psychologist. This was promising. She scrolled on down. Three weeks previously, he'd been found by a student in his apartment near the Altstadt campus. His computer had been smashed to the floor and he'd been spread-eagled on his back across his desk. The details were identical to the information Marijke had given her about de Groot's murder in Leiden, right down to the cause of death - drowning - i and the cutting away of the pubic hair and the skin attaching 1 it to the body. ^

'Bingo,' she said softly. OK, the rules said it took three to ; make a series when it came to murder, but two killings with such an off-the-wall MO couldn't be coincidence. What puzzled her was why this had ever crossed the desk of the organized crime unit. She carried on reading, and found the tenuous explanation at the very end of the document.

Initial investigations have produced no personal motive for this murder. However, according to our intelligence, Neumann was involved in the drugs scene. He had allegedly been a long-time user ofcannabis and amphetamines, and the narcotics squad responsible for dealing with the university had heard rumours that Neumann dealt drugs to his students. Although we have no firm evidence of his involvement in drug dealing, it seems possible that so bizarre a murder may have come about as a result of his involvement with the organized crime that exists in the drug culture. In short, that this may be an execution designed to send a message we cannot read to others who might be tempted to transgress the unwritten codes of such people.

'Pompous bullshit,' Petra muttered as she read the final paragraph. 'Translation: we can't make head nor tail of this, I so let's offload it to someone else.' Nevertheless, she was for once glad of the buck-passing of her colleagues in the provinces. Without their laziness and incompetence, she'd never have been able to make the connection between this murder and Marijke's case in Leiden.

The question was, what should she do now? There was no effective operational co-operation between the police forces of separate countries in the European Union. Interpol had no role to play here. Europol was for intelligence-sharing and the development of policing strategies, not cross-border operations. If she made this official, it would get bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and departmental politics.

But if she and Marijke worked the two cases together, sharing information and pooling leads... Since the Radecki investigation looked set to be snatched from under her, she needed to find another path to glory. This might just be it.

Petra hit the reply button. Please send full pathology and forensic reports re Walter Neumann. We would prefer hard copies if possible. This matter is both urgent and highly confidential.

She sent the message then sat back in her chair, a small smile of satisfaction on her face. If Plesch was right and there was a place for her in whatever was planned against Radecki all well and good. But if she was only humouring her, this' would be her insurance policy.

Three days really wasn't enough. Carol stared into her wardrobe, frowning. Some of her clothes would work, but most of them wouldn't. Morgan had given her a budget for new outfits that had made her eyebrows climb, but shopping to spend it was going to take her the best part of the day. Then she'd have to pack for her new identity, making sure she didn't include anything that would give a hint of her reality.

Her brother Michael had already agreed to take care of Nelson; he planned to drive down that evening from his home in Bradfield and take the cat back to the stylish loft apartment they'd once shared there. At least Michael hadn't asked awkward questions, like why he was being asked to cat-sit indefinitely while his sister went off to some unspecified destination; as soon as she'd said she couldn't explain for operational reasons, he'd dropped the subject.

The one thing she wished was that she'd had the chance to confide in Tony. She knew his insights would be helpful, and, more than that, his support would give her confidence. But an assignment this sensitive wasn't something she could trust either to the phone lines or to electronic communication. She had called him after her briefing session with Morgan, and had hated having to hold out on him. She'd made it clear that her reluctance was based purely on her misgivings about the security of their means of communication and, like Michael, he hadn't pressed her.

Carol flicked through the hangers, selecting possible garments and throwing them on the bed behind her. She was grateful that she would have to abandon most of what she had chosen to reflect her own personality. The thought that Carol Jordan might have much in common with this new creation, Caroline Jackson, even on the most superficial level, was not something she felt comfortable with. It bothered her slightly that the names were so similar, even though Morgan had explained the operational reasons for it. 'We like to keep the first name as close to your own as possible, so you don't get those horrible moments where someone says your name and you don't connect at all. And we've found it helps if the initials are the same too. Those who know about these things say it makes it all psychologically easier and less likely that you'll trip yourself up.'

Carol reached the end of the possible choices from her wardrobe and closed the double doors. She walked around her bedroom, stroking the familiar objects on her dressing table and bookshelves as if the action of her fingers would imprint them on her memory, accessible whenever she needed to touch base with who she really was. She paused in front of three photograph frames that faced her bed. Michael, his arm around the woman he'd been living with for the past two years, his expression open and delighted. Her parents at their silver wedding party, her mother's head on her father's shoulder, a look of indulgent affection on her face; her father, looking directly into the camera, his familiar quirky smile lifting the corners of his eyes. And finally, a snatched snapshot of her with Tony and John Brandon, her former boss, taken at the police party that had celebrated the resolution of the first case they'd worked together. They all had the slightly bleary look of people who were heading towards drunk but hadn't quite got there yet.

Her reverie was interrupted by the rude blurt of the entry phone buzzer. Carol frowned. She wasn't expecting anyone. She walked through to the living room and grabbed the handset. 'Hello?' she said. \ t,,

Through the crackle of static she heard a tinny voice say, 'Carol? It's me. Tony.' She held the phone away from her ear, staring at it as if it were an unfamiliar artefact. Her free hand automatically moved to the door release button while she tried to get her head round what she'd just heard. Like a sleepwalker, she replaced the handset and crossed to open her front door. Outside the excellent soundproofing of her flat, she could hear the whine of the lift machinery.

The lift door slid open and she tensed herself for the familiar jolt that came with the sight of him. The harsh lighting bleached his skin tones to wood ash, turning him monochrome. Then Tony stepped forward and recovered his humanity. His hair had been cut since she'd seen him last, she noted as he walked towards her, looking unusually pleased with himself. 'I hope this isn't a bad time,' he said.

Carol stepped back and waved him in. 'What are you doing here?' she said, unable to suppress the laugh bubbling under her voice.

Tony walked in, touching her gently on the elbow and leaning forward to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek. 'Forgive me if I seem presumptuous, but you sounded on the phone like a woman who could use a little moral support. And from what I know of you, I didn't imagine you would be opening yourself up enough to be getting it anywhere else.' He spread his hands out in a gesture of munificence. 'So, here I am.'

'But... shouldn't you be at work? How did you get here? When did you get here?'

Before he could answer, Nelson appeared, alerted by a familiar voice. The cat wound himself round Tony's legs, sinuously shedding black hairs all over his blue jeans. Tony immediately dropped into a crouch to scratch the cat between the ears. 'Hello, Nelson. You're looking handsome as ever.' Nelson purred, narrowing his eyes and watching Carol as if to say he could teach her a thing or two. Tony looked up. 'I flew down on the shuttle from Edinburgh this morning. I don't have any teaching commitments today, so I thought I'd take a chance on catching you at home.'

'An expensive chance/ Carol said. 'You could just have phoned, made sure I'd be home.'

Tony stood up. 'Sometimes I get fed up with being prosaic.'

Before she could stop herself, Carol said, 'And what does Frances think about that?' As soon as her words landed, they altered the landscape of his face. It was as if a physical shutter had closed down behind his eyes.

'What I do is no longer any concern of Frances,' he said. His tone of voice deflected discussion as effectively as armour plating.

Carol couldn't help a squirm of delight in her stomach. It couldn't be coincidence that Frances had been consigned to history so soon after her visit. Which meant... all sorts of things she couldn't begin to permit herself to consider. It should be enough that he was here now, with her; his choice, not her request. 'Come and sit down,' she said. 'Coffee, yes?'

'Oh, please. They can map the human genome, but they still can't make a decent cup of coffee on a plane.'