hen I interviewed him, I got the feeling that there was something not quite on the square about Hart. And I was right," he added. "He's addicted to whores. Two or three times a week, he's buying sex from street girls."

Carol stared at him in astonishment. She didn't know where to begin. She was furious that he'd taken matters into his own hands. But the gnawing bite of doubt had taken hold too. Had she been rash in discounting Hart? Was she losing her touch? Impatiently, she put such considerations to one side. "And where does Mr. Brandon come into this?"

Evans shrugged. "He caught me entering the details on my computer. He wondered why I was following Dr. Hart. So I had to explain."

Carol felt a cold pit open inside her. "You told the Chief Constable that you were pursuing a line of inquiry I had dismissed?" she said, her words clipped and tense.

He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't put it like that. Not exactly."

You bastard. She could barely trust herself to speak. The echo of betrayal rang in her head. "I want a full report on your activities," she said. "I want it on my desk within the hour. And I don't ever want to hear anything like this from you again. This is not the OK Corral. We're a team or we're nothing. You expressed no hint of your doubts about Hart to me. If you had, I might have been more reluctant to let him off the hook. I won't have this sort of underhand behaviour on my team. It undermines all of us. Consider this a warning, DC Evans. Now get out of my sight."

He stood up and walked out, back straight, head erect. Carol saw nothing of the smile that lifted the corners of his mouth.

A watery sun had broken through the grey haze, giving a pale gleam to the streets of Temple Fields. The rest of the city was bustling, but at ten on a weekday morning, there was an air of deserted sleepiness about the district. Those who lived there had already left for work; those who worked there were mostly still trying to recover from the night before. A man in a business suit, his raincoat flapping with the speed of his passage, briskly walked a bull terrier along the canal towpath. A couple of women in jeans and leather jackets swung along the street arm in arm, cocooned in a bubble of smug self-satisfaction. And Tony Hill stood on a street corner, fumbling with the index of a Bradfield A-Z and a sheet of paper.

Should have done this before I came out, he thought as he tried to work out a logical order in which to visit the six addresses he'd jotted down when the spectre of a copycat killer had first reared its head. He flicked through the pages of the gazetteer, trying to find the locations of the crime scenes and fix them on his own mental map of the area. That way, he could start to get a feel for the killer's own view of his world. He hadn't chosen his victims at random so the chances were good that the area he'd culled from was one he knew well, one he held in his mind as a shape. Everyone had their own topography of the patch they called their own, traced by their personal routes, limited by their own needs. They could be blissfully unaware of whole chunks of territory entirely bounded by their own activities. The killer's Temple Fields would be uniquely his, and discovering what that consisted of might help Tony to understand more of who he was. Or at least who he wasn't.

He'd needed activity that morning. Although he knew Carol would be briefing her officers about the proposed undercover operation, he wasn't ready to see her yet. All night, he'd kept drifting up from sleep, the images of her and the motorbike man morphing in his mind's eye into new shapes and patterns. He despised himself for the violence of his reaction, and he didn't want that to taint his next encounter with Carol.

Eventually, he had his route clear in his mind. He set off, heading into the warren of ginnels and lanes that threaded through the hinterland of Temple Fields. He turned into an alleyway and stopped outside a doorway. He looked up at the grimy redbrick building, wondering which window had opened on to the bed where Derek Tyler's first victim had bled to death. According to the notes, Lauren McCafferty had often taken punters back to the bed sit where she lived. She'd thought it was safer than their cars; she'd thought it meant she was in control, surrounded as she was by other bed sits whose occupants might hear if things got out of hand and she had to call for help. She hadn't bargained on an encounter with a killer who had forgotten more about control than she had ever known.

Tony stood for a few moments, letting his mind free wheel then set off for the next place on his list. Half an hour and another four locations later, he was outside the Woolpack Hotel. "What do they have in common, these places of yours?" he said softly. "They're, part of a network that's invisible to most of the people who visit Temple Fields to drink or find a sexual partner. But you're comfortable with them. So maybe you live or work there? Maybe you make deliveries? A courier? A postman? All the sites are near the busy streets but not on them. You like to be private, but you want your victims to be discovered before too much time has gone by. You stay with them till they're dead and then you leave, knowing they won't be alone for long. Can you not bear them to be lonely?"

He walked slowly down the alley towards Bellwether Street, thronged at this time of day with shoppers and those members of the underclass for whom the prospect of covered shopping areas was an improvement on the alternative. "No, that's not it," he mumbled. "You don't care enough about them. They're not women to you, they're disposables. You want us to see your kills when they're fresh so we can admire your art. It was just bad luck that Dee had a night off and it took us so long to find Sandie." He looked up, a radiant smile on his face. "You're showing off, that's what it is. You can't bear to hide your light under a bushel. You're rubbing our noses in your power. You want the credit, the gratification, and you don't want to wait for it."

Tony made his way down Bellwether Street to the Woolmarket, where he sat down on one of the benches that looked across the busy square. Unpacking the underlying message of the killer's actions was only the first step, but it was a necessary one. He had to move backwards into the unravelling before he could extrapolate how those deep motivations might shape the public behaviour of the man who was perpetrating these vicious actions. Until he could do that, he wouldn't be much use to Carol. Or to the killer's future victims. "You've always looked for praise." He spoke quietly, his lips hardly moving. "But they never gave you enough of it, did they? They never valued you for what you wanted to be valued for. You wanted the power that people's admiration would bring you, and it never happened. So what do you do for a living? You'll have chosen something that offered you the prospect of lording it over the rest of us. You'd have liked the armed forces or the police or the prison service, but I'd guess you're not disciplined enough to handle that. So maybe a security guard? A nightclub bouncer? Temple Fields has plenty of those. Something where you can throw your weight around anyway." He raised his eyes and let his gaze drift over the assortment of humanity going about its business. On the far side of the square, a woman in a dark blue uniform was tapping a stylus against a handheld computer. "Or a traffic warden," Tony muttered. "They know the streets."

He got to his feet impatiently. He didn't feel as if he was getting anywhere. For some reason, this killer's mind felt as slippery as saturated autumn leaves that would fall apart in his hands before he could examine them. He couldn't grasp those central threads that would lead him through the labyrinth. He'd never had this experience before, and he couldn't understand why it was happening now, with this case. Was it that he was too focused on his own guilt and his need to keep Carol safe? Or was there something about this killer that set him apart from the other twisted minds Tony had encountered?

He'd spent too many years working with serial offenders -rapists, killers, arsonists and paedophiles to see them as one homogeneous group. Some were highly intelligent. Others, like Derek Tyler, seemed scarcely bright enough to have pulled off their crimes. Some had superficial social skills. Others would trip any normal person's weirdo detector at a hundred paces. Some were almost grateful to be caught, to be relieved of the burden of their compulsion. Others gloried in the celebrity a perverse media culture persisted in granting them. One thing was certain: their actions carried the unique stamp of their particular mindset, and that had always been the route Tony had been able to travel with them.

But this time, it was different. This time, it felt impossible.

Peccadilloes was tucked away on a side street in Manchester's Northern Quarter, a revamped part of the city centre where the rag trade had slowly been squeezed out by the economics of labour and replaced by craft workshops, inner city housing and boutique shopping for the hip. An uneasy mixture of redbrick streets, remodelled Victorian monoliths and modern vernacular architecture struggling to look as if it fitted in hugged the narrow pavements. Jan Shields navigated the oneway system like a native, pointing out their destination as they drove past.

"You know your way around," Paula commented as she negotiated a tricky junction in line with Jan's instructions.

"I've been doing my Christmas shopping in the Craft Village for years," Jan said. "It's nice to get people something a bit individual, something they won't have seen in Bradfield. And there are a couple of decent restaurants where you can relax afterwards." She directed Paula into a small pay-and-display car park where they found a slot.

It had been a quiet drive over the Pennines. Jan had spent most of the journey engaged in a text message conversation that seemed to afford her considerable amusement. She hadn't shared the joke with Paula. Almost the only conversation they'd had centred round whether or not Carol Jordan was up to the job. Paula had defended her boss, in spite of her own doubts. It was one thing to question Carol's judgement with Don, but Jan Shields wasn't really one of their team, so loyalty demanded that Paula support Carol to the hilt. Seeing she was getting nowhere, Jan had given up and turned to her mobile.

As they approached Peccadilloes, Jan became more animated. "This is going to be fun," she announced. "Nothing like a bit of game-playing to put a spring in the step."

"That's easy for you to say," Paula muttered. "You're not the one who's going to have to stand on a street corner freezing her arse off and dealing with grubby little fucked-up punters."

Jan chuckled. "No, I get to appreciate the view." She pushed open the door. The interior of Peccadilloes was less glossy than its counterpart in Bradfield. The lighting was dimmer, the wares less exuberantly displayed. Behind the counter, a woman glanced up at them. She looked to be in her late thirties, multi-coloured hair gelled and twisted into curlicues and spikes. Bizarrely, she was wearing a fawn cardigan that would have looked more at home on the proprietrix of a wool shop. Paula suspected the outre hairdo was an attempt to draw attention from the strawberry birthmark that slid down one side of her face, looking as if someone had drawn a paintbrush loaded with blackberry sorbet down her cheek.

Jan glanced around, then led Paula to a rack of clothes at the rear of the shop. Jan flicked through the garments hanging on a rail and pulled out a skimpy black latex dress. "Hey, girl, you'd knock them dead at Rainbow Flesh in this."

"I wouldn't know," Paula lied, trying to cling to her privacy in the teeth of Jan Shields' certainty. "Anyway, it's not practical for tonight. I couldn't wear a wire under that."

Jan grinned, her cherub's face looking incongruously wicked. "Constable, you couldn't wear anything under that."

She replaced the dress and raked along the rack. Her next pick was a scarlet PVC miniskirt. "Now that is the business. Perfect for Temple Fields. You'll have Don Merrick slobbering into his tea in this."

Paula giggled. "That's meant to be a selling point?" But nevertheless, she took the skirt, setting it against her hips to gauge the fit.

Jan pointed to the skirt. "You'll need to try it on," she said. "And you'll need a second opinion."

Paula turned a frigid stare on the sergeant. "I don't think that will be necessary," she said, reacting to what felt like knee-jerk innuendo. She reached past Jan and pulled out a tight silver lurex top cut low in the neck. "This should fit the bill."

Jan raised her eyebrows. "I swear you're starting to enjoy this altogether too much, DC Mclntyre."

This time, Jan's flirtatious tone made Paula feel flustered. There seemed to be a note of genuine appreciation in her voice that made Paula wonder fleetingly what it would be like to spend time with Jan outside work. "I like to do my job properly," she said, smacking down the idea. Relationships with colleagues were always a seriously bad idea. And besides, Jan Shields wasn't her type. Now, if Carol Jordan were to make a pass at her .. . Paula turned away, mentally rebuking herself for losing sight of why they were here.

"Of course you do. But maybe when all of this is over, you could give me a little fashion show all for myself?" Jan's voice was soft, her breath warm against Paula's neck.

"I swear, Jan, you're as bad as the guys," she said wearily.

"Trust me, Paula, I'm better than any of them." Jan put a hand on her shoulder, smiling when Paula flinched. "The changing rooms are over there," she said, pointing to a curtained-off cubicle behind the clothes rails. She stepped back, allowing Paula to pass without crowding her.

Five minutes later, Paula surveyed herself in the changing cubicle mirror. Even without make-up and the right shoes, she knew her best friends would be hard pressed to recognize her. She barely knew herself. It was disconcerting how so superficial an alteration rendered her undeniably other. A shiver of apprehension gave her gooseflesh and she hastily stripped off and gratefully assumed her own personality along with her black jeans and white shirt. She yanked back the curtain, holding the clothes at arms' length. "These'll do," she said.

Jan held out a PVC bomber jacket that almost matched the skirt. "What about this to finish it off?" she said. "It'll be fucking freezing out there tonight."

Paula shook her head. "Jackie and Sandie weren't wearing jackets. I'm supposed to look as much like them as possible. But I do need some fuck-me shoes."

"You need the jacket," Jan insisted. "You've got to have something to hide the wire going down your back and the bulge of the transmitter."

"I hadn't thought of that. You're right." Paula took her purchases to the counter and handed over her credit card. Thank goodness nobody she cared about would see the monthly statement.

"God, there's some weird stuff here," Jan said, peering curiously into a cabinet containing bondage equipment.

"Takes all sorts," the woman behind the counter said huffily.

Jan gave her a cool look. "So it would seem." She turned away. "See you outside, Paula."

When Paula joined her, Jan was leaning against the wall, rolling a cigarette. "I didn't know you smoked," Paula said.

"Only when I need to take the taste out of my mouth," Jan said.

"I thought you were having a laugh in there."

Jan licked the paper and efficiently finished the job. "Did you? Whistling in the dark, Paula. That's what that was." Her expression was unreadable, but her voice was softer than Paula had ever heard it. "You're putting yourself on the line tonight. That's probably the scariest thing a cop can ever do."

Paula sighed. "Thanks, skip. And there was me trying to convince myself you lot would take care of me."

Jan's smile looked forced. "We will. Don't doubt it. But there are times, Paula, when it's sensible to be scared. And tonight is one of them."

The day ticked relentlessly on. There was a ziggurat of paperwork in the incident room that Carol could have skimmed, but there were other officers to do that. Teams reading statements and reports, filling in slips for actions that needed to be pursued, detectives working their way through the actions in their in-trays, officers producing more paperwork for the statement readers to plough through. And Don Merrick to pull out the crucial stuff she needed to know about. The overwhelming volume of material in a case like this was terrifying, all the more so because it seemed to be taking them nowhere.

The undercover operation preyed on her like a fox on chickens. Every tiny intimation of what might go wrong multiplied in her mind, stirring up the silted memories of her own botched operation. Then there was Sam Evans. She couldn't figure out whether he was simply a glory-hunter or whether he was deliberately trying to undermine her. Either way, he must have planted doubts in Brandon's head at a time when she could least afford that. She didn't want him wondering if her own experience was going to affect Paula's undercover. Carol tried to force the poisonous thoughts away, but they wouldn't be ignored. Eventually, she gave in. If she couldn't evade the past, perhaps she should try confronting it. She took the book Jonathan had given her from the desk and gingerly opened it. She'd never been much of a reader outside her own very specific areas of interest, and since the rape she'd deliberately shied away from anything that smacked of self-help. But this seemed to be different. In spite of her reservations, Carol found herself drawn into a narrative that, while it had few parallels with her own experience, nevertheless seemed to speak to her at a level nothing and no one had touched before.

After forty pages, she had to put the book down. Her hands were trembling and she felt on the verge of tears. Her body craved a drink, but she was determined not to give in. For the first time in months, she understood that she had travelled so far down the route of survival that there was no longer any question but that she was going to make it. The Carol Jordan who emerged on the far side of what had happened to her would be very different, but she would be herself again. Damaged but not destroyed. Cracked but not broken. She wished Tony was there, not because she wanted to talk about it, but because she knew he would see the change in her and perhaps feel the beginnings of release.

As if in response to her wish, a knock sounded at her door. "Come in," she said, hastily shoving the book out of sight under some papers. But it wasn't Tony who appeared. Jonathan France was back again, clutching a folder under one arm. "Twice in one day," Carol said. "People will talk." She was idiotically pleased to see him, far more so than she expected to be.

He sat down, leaning back in the chair and stretching his long legs out. "Much as I enjoy your company, this is a purely professional visit," he said. "I have some news for you." He looked pleased with himself, a retriever carrying the soggy newspaper he knows will make somebody's day.

Carol's interest quickened. However much she might want to see Jonathan for personal reasons, that desire was always going to be trumped by her professional objectives. "You've identified the location?"

He nodded. "As soon as I saw the photograph, I thought I knew where it was. Not specifically, not down to pinpoint. But when I blew up the details on my computer, I realized I recognized it." He opened the folder and drew out a couple of printed enlargements of sections of rock, passing them over to Carol.

She stared blankly at the photographs. To her, they looked like a couple of slabs of rock, grey with a faint reddish tinge, traced with what looked like dribbles and blobs of pale grey. "What am I looking at?" she asked, almost immediately regretting the question. She knew only too well the perils of inviting experts to hold forth on their areas of specialism.

"It's called stromatactis," Jonathan said eagerly. "One of the persistent enigmas of the Devonian period. In lay terms, what you've got there is a flat-bottomed cavity with an irregular top filled with fibrous calcite. In geological terms, it's an autochthonous formation caused by the partial winnowing of unlithified sediment. Opinions differ as to how it was formed and what it represents. You see how it mimics the fabric of a coral reef? Some geologists say what you're looking at is the result of reef organisms, stromatoporoids, being piled up. Water filled the interstices and, under pressure, stromatactis was formed. Others believe they're essentially the fossils of soft-bodied organisms such as sponges. Yet others think they're the product of marine algae or cyanobacteria." He grinned. "And the creationists think they were thrown up from the deep ocean during Noah's flood."

"All of which is fascinating, but .. ." Carol tried for an amused but quizzical expression.

"I know, I know cut to the chase, that's what you want, right?" Jonathan said ruefully. "OK. You get these formations in limestone. The Peak District has some remarkable examples. They tend to show up in clusters. And there are a few places in the White Peak that sad rockies like me positively salivate over. When I saw the blow-ups, I thought I could narrow it down to one place in particular. But I wanted to check it out first. So after I left here this morning, I went out there. And I was right. This is a piece of limestone reef in a spur off Chee Dale."

Carol couldn't hide her excitement. "You've identified it? Positively?"

Jonathan nodded. "It's quite distinctive .. ."

Whatever he'd intended to say next was cut off by the opening of the door. Tony started speaking as he walked in, initially oblivious to the fact that Carol had company. "Carol, I think he works in Temple Fields. Maybe a security guard or a bouncer in one of the bars or clubs."

"Tony," Carol said, her voice a warning, her head indicating Jonathan, half-hidden behind the open door.

Tony craned his head round. His voice was friendly enough but his face seemed to lose all animation. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize .. . I'll come back later."

She knew from his reaction that he'd seen something the night before. And she knew him well enough to understand he wasn't going to make allusion to it. Not here, not now. Probably not ever, knowing Tony's capacity for avoidance of the life emotional. "It's all right," she said. "Come on in. This is Dr. Jonathan France. He's a geologist. Jonathan, this is Dr. Tony Hill." Jonathan eased out of his chair and shook hands, towering over Tony. "Tony's a clinical psychologist. We do a lot of work together."

"A geologist," Tony said, moving quickly away from Jonathan. He perched on the corner of Carol's desk. She suspected his move was completely deliberate, putting himself alongside her, demonstrating their allegiance, making Jonathan the outsider. "It must be relaxing to work with something that moves as slowly as a tectonic plate."

Jonathan lowered himself back into his chair. "It gets me out of the house."

Tony smiled. "That's what some of my patients say about their psychiatric conditions."

Jonathan looked faintly puzzled, as if unsure whether he was being disparaged. "Not the agoraphobics, though," he said.

Tony conceded the point. Before he could throw down the next verbal challenge, Carol intervened. "Jonathan has identified the site where Tim Golding was photographed."

Tony's professional instincts leapt to life. "Really?" he said. "Tell me more."

"As I was just explaining when you came in, the geological features in the background of the picture are quite distinctive. I've visited the site on field trips more than once. It's a particularly striking example of stromatactis."

"What kind of a place is it?" Tony asked. "Isolated? Somewhere walkers go?"

Jonathan pulled another sheet from his folder. "I photocopied the relevant section of the map." He laid it on the desk and leaned forward to illustrate his comments. "This is Chee Dale. Carved out of the limestone by the River Wye." He traced the winding ribbon- on the map. "As you can see, there's a public footpath goes down the dale. It's a popular walk. So much so that the National Park has built stepping stones where the river breaks its banks and covers the path." He stabbed the map with a long finger. "And this little spur up here is called Swindale. The entrance is very narrow it's easy to miss it. But the dale opens out once you're through that narrow neck and climbs up for about quarter of a mile. There's no footpath as such, and I'd bet that ninety-nine people out of a hundred wouldn't even notice the way in."

"And that's where this stroma-what sit is?" Tony asked, gazing intently at the map.

"Yes. About halfway up on the left," Jonathan said.

"So it's pretty secluded? Not somewhere people would go for a picnic?"

Jonathan shook his head. "Not unless you like mud and brambles and no view. That's the thing about the Peak District, there's a lot of hidden space. You get quarter of a million people there on a Bank Holiday and still you can lose yourself."

"So who would go there?" Carol asked.

"Geologists, professional and amateur. I did once see three guys climbing there, but it's not a great pitch, and there are a lot better rock routes nearby. But that's about it. Like I said, it's not got much to commend it in terms of scenery."

"So whoever took Tim Golding there could be pretty sure they weren't going to be disturbed," Tony mused. "Which means they knew the terrain." He glanced up. "How near can you get a car to here?"

"There's a car park about a mile away at the old Miller's Dale station."

"That's a tall order with an unwilling victim," Tony said softly. "I don't suppose there's any way of telling what time of day this picture was taken?"

Jonathan took the original print from his folder. "That depends on the time of year. When did the boy go missing?"

"The second week of August," Carol said without having to check.

Jonathan studied the photograph. "That part of the dale is east-facing. It takes a while for the sun to climb high enough to clear the opposite cliff. I'd guess around nine or ten in the morning."

Tony stood up abruptly and turned away, pressing his hands to the side of his head as if suffering a headache. "Take a full team of SO COs with you when you go, Carol. You're looking for a grave. Maybe even two."

"You think Guy might be there too?"

Tony dropped his hands. "Balance of probabilities? Yes. The overwhelming odds are that both Tim and Guy were taken by the same man. We both know that. If he's confident enough to put that picture out there, I'd say it's because he's already used that as his killing ground at least once."

Carol caught Jonathan's dismayed expression. It was all too easy to forget how the horrors cops took in their stride could rip into the hearts of outsiders. Confronted with the uninflected reality that she and Tony had dealt with more times than they could count, the non-combatants in the war against chaos had no de fences "It's too early to say," she said, knowing in her heart Tony was right.

Tony whirled round, his face pale and drawn. Oblivious to Jonathan, he leaned his fists on Carol's desk and gazed into her eyes. "He'll have got to the car park soon after first light. Tim was almost certainly lightly sedated. Enough to make him spaced out, docile, so he wouldn't put up a struggle. In that state, it will have taken a while to get him to Swindale. Then he'll have done his thing. Taken his time over it too. And taken his trophy pictures. So what does he do then? He's not going to risk walking back on a popular footpath with a messed-up kid on his hands. He's killed him, Carol. He's killed him there and disposed of the body in situ. A shallow grave under Jonathan's brambles." He closed his eyes and muttered something she didn't catch.

"What?"

"I said, at least you can bring him home now."

A long silence. Jonathan's face had sunk in on itself, his eyes slitted as if he was trying to block out the image Tony's words had conjured up. Too much information for him, Carol thought. She cleared her throat. "We don't know that till we get there." She pushed her chair back and stood up.

"Jonathan, there's nothing we can do today. The light is already going. But we need to get moving on your information as soon as we can. I know we're imposing a great deal on your time, but is there any possibility that you can take some of my officers to Swindale tomorrow and show them where this photograph was taken?"

His eyes widened, the implications of what he'd heard still reverberating in his head. "I ... I don't know," he said.

"You wouldn't have to stick around," Carol said gently. She moved to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. "It would simply be a matter of leading us there, showing us the geological formation that corresponds to the picture. Then you'd be free to go. I promise you."

"Will you be there?" His voice was neutral, but she sensed his need. It wasn't such a big thing to ask, not after what he had already done for her.

"I can't promise," she said. "I'm in the middle of another major inquiry. It depends on what happens tonight. If we make an arrest, I'll be needed here. But otherwise .. . yes, I'll be there. If you can be back here at eight tomorrow morning, we'll sort it out then."

He nodded, reading the dismissal in her voice. "Thanks, Carol." He stood up.

"It's us who should be grateful, Jonathan. This is the first real break we've had since Tim went missing. If we do bring him home to his family, it'll be you they have to thank." She patted his arm. "See you tomorrow."

Jonathan paused in the doorway and found a faint smile. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Hill."

Tony nodded acknowledgement. As the door closed behind Jonathan, he said, "I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that lie."

Carol shook her head in affectionate exasperation. "You really have to learn not to frighten the horses," she said.

"I've always enjoyed a good stampede," he said.

"If we find what you think we will, can you come out and take a look at the scene?" Carol asked.

"If you feel it will help."

"Thanks." She hesitated for a moment, wondering if and how she could raise the subject of Aidan Hart with him.

"So how are you doing?" he asked, returning to his perch on the end of Carol's desk. As he settled, he knocked into the pile of papers on her desk, revealing the Alice Sebold memoir. He frowned, picking it up. "You reading this?" he said.

"No, I'm using it as a paperweight," she snapped. "What do you think?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I think you might find it helpful."

"You've read it?"

"Carol, I think I've read almost every serious work written about rape." As she opened her mouth to speak he lifted a finger to stop her. "And no, not because of you. Because of what I do."

"So if you thought Lucky might be helpful, why didn't you suggest I read it?" Carol knew she sounded aggressive, but she didn't care.

"You would have listened?" Tony said mildly. "You wouldn't have told me to butt out and let you deal with it in your own way?"

"Jonathan gave it to me," she said baldly. "He wasn't scared of being told to keep out."

Tony's head moved back, as if avoiding a blow in slow motion. "You told Jonathan."

Straight to the wrong point, Carol thought bitterly. "Yes, I told Jonathan."

Tony nodded. "Probably easier. Him being a stranger. No baggage. I'm sorry, Carol. If I'd thought you would have welcomed it, I would have suggested it. I read it wrong." Suddenly he stood up. "Right. Well, I'll be off."

"You're not coming to the briefing?" He shook his head. "And you're not going to run through the operation with Paula?"

"What would be the point?" he said. "This isn't what I do. It's what you do."

"You can give us insight," Carol said.

"You've had my insight for the day. I think the killer works in Temple Fields. I think he's a security guard or a bouncer or maybe even a traffic warden. Other than that, I've got nothing to offer you right now." He reached out and put the palm of his hand against the front of her shoulder.

She felt panic in her chest, a tight fist squeezing the air out of her lungs. "You could help Paula."

"I don't think so, Carol. You don't need me for this. This is cop business, not head business. There's nothing more convincing than experience. And nobody has more rigorous experience of undercover than you. You really don't need me."

Paula found Don Merrick in the station canteen nursing a mug of tea. She slid into the seat opposite him, checking out his glum expression. "You look like you could give Eeyore a run for his money," she said.

"I got a letter delivered here from Lindy's solicitor. She wants a divorce."

"Christ, she's not wasting any time, is she?"

Merrick sighed. "She's right though, isn't she? We both know in our hearts that it's over. It's supposed to be blokes that are the tough ones, but when it comes to severing the ties and moving on, you women are bloody ruthless."

"Not all of us," Paula said, thinking back over her own calamitous past. Two relationships in the past six years, both of which she'd hung on to long past the sell-by date. They reminded her of a poem she'd once read about love being a kite you couldn't let go of till somebody gave you something better to do. Although she didn't like to see the effect Lindy's hard-headedness had on Merrick, she envied his wife her ability to cut herself free so readily.

But Merrick was too wrapped up in his own miseries to register Paula's regretful tone. "At least if we get things formalized, I'll know where I am when it comes to seeing the lads," he said. "If I ever get any time off in this lifetime."

"If we get lucky tonight, we'll be able to ease up a bit," Paula said, trying not to think what getting lucky would mean for her.

That got through. Merrick looked up, his mournful eyes showing a spark of interest. "You all right about tonight?" he asked.

Paula twirled a short strand of hair round her finger. "I'm a bit nervous," she admitted.

"Nothing bad's going to happen to you," Merrick reassured her.

"What? Like nothing bad happened to you when you were chasing the Queer Killer?" Paula said sarcastically. She'd only been aCID aide on the fringes of the investigation, but she vividly remembered the turban of bandages that had swathed Merrick's head after his own undercover operation had gone out of control.

Merrick looked embarrassed. "That was my own fault," he said. "I put myself in harm's way. I thought I could handle the situation and I was wrong. So learn from my mistakes: don't take risks, don't leave anything to chance. If in doubt, abort. It's better we lose a chance at the killer than anything happens to you."

Slightly uncomfortable'in the face of his earnest concern, Paula said, "I'm not really worried about something happening to me. I feel confident in the back-up. Face it, after what Jordan went through, she's not going to leave my back uncovered. If anything, she's going to go for overkill and scare him off."

"So what is it that's eating you? Because I can see something's bothering you."

"This is going to sound daft," Paula said. "But I don't know if I can carry it off. I don't know if I can play the part. I don't think I've got the right kind of imagination."

Merrick frowned. "I'm not sure I understand you."

"I'm a cop through and through, Don. I see the world in black and white. I don't get that empathy shit that Tony Hill's always banging on about. I don't catch villains by thinking the way they do. I catch them because they're stupid and I'm smart. Because I'm on the right side of the law and they're not. So how does somebody like me stand on a street corner and make some fucking psychopath believe I'm a hooker?" Paula said savagely.

Merrick struggled for an answer. "Well, you've got the gear, right?"

"Yes, I've got the gear," she said wearily. "Shields knows all about picking the right trashy clothes. But I feel like a kid playing make-believe. You know how sometimes you dress up to go out, and you put something on that's a bit out of the usual run of what you wear and you think, "Yeah, wow, that's who I can be tonight"?"

Merrick looked at her as if she was talking Greek. "I can't say I do."

"Trust me, it goes that way. But when I put that stuff on, all I think is, "I so don't want to be this person." I'm not scared you guys are going to let me down. I'm scared I'm going to let you down."

Carol tracked down John Brandon to the press briefing room, deep in discussion with one of the liaison staff. He looked up when she entered, and gave her a nod of acknowledgement. "Carol, we're just talking about Tim Golding and Guy Lefevre. Shaheed's had one of the Sunday broad sheets on. They're apparently planning to revisit the cases this weekend." He sighed. "The way they go on, you'd think we'd been sitting on our hands for the past four months."