im, do you employ any part-time firemen?"

Pendlebury looked horrified. Then he took in the half-smile twitching the corner of Tony's mouth and misread it completely. The fire chief visibly relaxed and grinned. "You're at the wind-up," he said, wagging a finger at Tony.

"If you say so," Tony said. "But do you? Just as a matter of curiosity?"

The fireman's eyes showed uncertainty and suspicion. "We do, yes."

"Maybe tomorrow you could let me have their names?" Carol asked.

Pendlebury's head thrust forward and he stared intently into Carol's closed face. His broad shoulders seemed to expand as he clenched his fists. "My God," he said wonderingly. "You really mean it, don't you, Carol?"

"We can't afford to ignore any possibilities," she said calmly. "This is not personal, Jim. But Tony has opened up a valid line of inquiry.

I'd be derelict in my duty if I didn't follow it through."

"Derelict in your duty?" Pendlebury got to his feet. "If my fire crews were derelict in their duty, there wouldn't be a building in this city left standing. My people put their lives on the line every time this nutter has a night on the town. And you sit there and suggest one of them might be behind it?"

Carol stood up and faced him. "I'd feel just the same if it was a question of a bent copper. No one's accusing anyone at this stage. I've worked with Tony before, and I'd stake my career that he doesn't make mischievous or ill-considered suggestions. Why don't you sit down and have another glass of wine?" She put a hand on his arm and smiled.

"Come on, there's no need for us to fall out."

Slowly Pendlebury relaxed and gingerly lowered himself back into his chair. He allowed Carol to top up his glass and even managed a half-smile at Tony. "I'm very protective of my officers," he said.

Tony, impressed at Carol's smooth handling of a potentially explosive situation, had shrugged. "They're lucky to have you," was all he said.

Somehow, the three of them managed to shift the conversation on to the more neutral territory of how Carol was settling in at East Yorkshire.

The fire chief slipped into professional York-shire man mode, keeping everyone happy with a series of anecdotes. For Tony, it was a blessed rescue from thoughts of Shaz Bowman's last hours.

Later, in the small hours and the loneliness of Carol's spare room, there was no distraction to damp down the flames of imagination. As he pushed away the nightmare vision of her distorted and devastated face, he promised Shaz Bowman that he would expose the man who had done this to her. No matter what the price.

And Tony Hill was a man who knew all about paying the ferryman.

Jacko Vance sat in his soundproofed and electronically shielded projection room at the top of the house, behind locked doors.

Obsessively, he replayed the tape he'd spliced together from his recordings of the late evening news bulletins on a variety of channels, terrestrial and satellite. What they all had in common was the news of Shaz Bowman's death. Her blue eyes blazed at him again from the screen time after time, an exciting contrast to his last memory of her.

They wouldn't be showing pictures of her like that. Not even after the watershed. Not even with an X-certificate.

He wondered how Donna Doyle was feeling. There had been nothing on TV about her. They all thought they had star quality, but the truth was none of them raised the faintest flicker of interest in anyone except him. For him, they were perfect, the ultimate representation of his ideal woman. He loved their pliancy, their willingness to believe exactly what he wanted them to believe. And the perfection of the moment when they realized this encounter was not about sex and fame but pain and death. He loved that look in their eyes.

When he saw that translation from adoration to alarm, their faces seemed to lose all individuality. They no longer merely resembled Jillie, they became her. It made the punishment so easy and so perfectly right.

What also made it appropriate was the unfairness. Almost all of his girls spoke about their families with affection. It might be shrouded behind a veil of adolescent frustration and exasperation, but it was obvious as he listened to them that their mothers or fathers or siblings cared abo-'t them even though their sluttish readiness to do whatever he wanted demonstrated they didn't merit that concern. He'd deserved their lives, and what had he got?

Anger surged through him, but like a thermostat, self-control cut in and tamped the fires down. This was not an appropriate time or place for that energy, he reminded himself. His anger could be channelled in a variety of useful directions; ranting pointlessly about what he had been deprived of wasn't one of them.

He took a series of deep breaths and forced his emotions into another mould. Satisfaction. That's what he ought to be feeling. Satisfaction at a job well done, a danger neutralized.

Little Jack Horner

Sat in the corner

Eating his pudding and pie.

He put in his thumb

And pulled out a plum

And said, "What a good boy am I!"

Vance giggled softly. He'd put in his thumbs and pulled out the glistening plum of Shaz Bowman's eyes and felt the silent scream vibrating in his very core. It had been easier than he'd expected. It took surprisingly little force to pop an eye free from its roots.

The only pity of it was that you couldn't then see her expression when you poured the acid in or sliced the ears off. He didn't anticipate any need for there to be a next time, but if there were, he'd have to think carefully about the order of the ceremony.

Sighing with satisfaction, he rewound the tape.

If Micky hadn't been such a purist about her morning routine, they might have heard about Shaz's death on the radio news or seen it on satellite TV. But Micky insisted on no exposure to the day's news until she was behind the closed door of her office at the studios. So they breakfasted to Mozart and drove in to Wagner. No one from the programme was ever foolish enough to thrust a tabloid at Micky as she strode from car parking slot to her desk. Not twice, anyway.

So, because their early morning start forced them to bed before the late bulletins that had alerted Jacko, it was Betsy who had the first shock of recognition at Shaz's picture. Even dulled by newsprint, her blue eyes were still the first thing that demanded notice. "My God," Betsy breathed, moving round behind Micky's desk the better to examine the front pages.

"What is it?" Micky said without pausing in the habitual process of removing her jacket, placing it on a hanger and checking it critically for creases.

"Look, Micky." Betsy thrust the Daily Mail towards her. "Isn't that the policewoman who came to the house on Saturday? Just as we were leaving?"

Micky registered the thick black type before she took in the photograph.

SLAUGHTERED, it read. Her eyes moved to Shaz Bowman's smiling face underneath the peak of a Metropolitan Police cap. There can't be two of them," she said. She sat down heavily on one of the visitors' armchairs that faced her desk and read the melodramatic copy that provided Shaz's epitaph. Words like '', '', '-soaked', '' and 'gruesome' leapt out to ambush her. She felt strangely queasy.

In a television career that had spanned war zones, massacres and individual tragedy, no one in Micky's life had ever been touched personally by any of the catastrophes she had reported. Even a connection as tangential as hers to Shaz Bowman was all the more shocking because it had no precedent. "Jesus," she said, stretching the syllables. She looked up at Betsy, who read the shock in her face. "She was in our house on Saturday morning. According to this, they think she was murdered late Saturday or early Sunday. We spoke to her. And within hours, she was dead. What are we going to do, Bets?"

Betsy moved round the desk and crouched beside Micky, hands flat on her thighs, staring up into her face. "We're going to do nothing," she said. "It's not up to us to do anything. She came to see Jacko, not us. She's nothing to do with us."

Micky looked appalled. "We can't do nothing," she protested. "Whoever killed her, they must have hooked up with her after she left our house.

At the very least, it lets the police know she was alive and well and walking around of her own free will in London on Saturday morning. We can't ignore it, Bets."

"Sweetheart, take a deep breath and think about what you're saying. This isn't any old murder victim. She was a police officer. That means her colleagues are not going to be satisfied with a one-page statement saying she came to the house and we left. They're going to be stripping our lives down to the bone, on the off chance that there's something there they should know about. You know and I know that we just won't stand up to that kind of scrutiny. I say, leave it to Jacko. I'll give him a call and tell him to say we'd gone before she arrived. It's simplest that way."

Micky pushed herself back violently. The chair slid along the carpet and Betsy almost toppled forward. Micky jumped to her feet and started pacing agitatedly. "And what happens if they start questioning the neighbours and there's some nosy old biddy who remembers DC Bowman arriving and then us leaving? Anyway, I was the one who spoke to her in the first place. I made the appointment. What if she jotted that down in her notebook? What if she even taped the call, for God's sake? I can't believe you think we should just shut up about it."

Betsy struggled to her feet, her chin tipped back to reveal a stubborn set to her firm jaw. "If you'd stop being such a bloody drama queen, you'd see I'm talking sense," she said in a low, angry voice. She'd spent too long providing the advice that Micky routinely acted upon to abandon the role now it had become so crucial. "No good will come of it," she added ominously.

Micky stopped by the desk and picked up the phone. "I'm ringing Jacko," she said, glancing at her watch. "He won't be up yet. At least I can break the news more gently than the tabloids."

"Good. Maybe he'll talk some sense into you," Betsy said caustically.

"I'm not calling for permission, Betsy. I'm calling to tell him I'm about to phone the police." As she punched in her husband's private number, Micky looked sadly at her lover. "God, I can't believe you're running so scared that you'd kid yourself you can walk away from doing the right thing."

"It's called love," Betsy said bitterly, turning away to hide the tears of anger and humiliation that had sprung without warning.

"No, Betsy. It's called fear ... Hello, Jacko? It's me. Listen, I've got some terrible news for you ... "

Betsy turned her head and watched Micky's mobile face with its frame of silky blonde hair. It was a sight that had given her pleasure beyond dreams of avarice over the years. All she felt now was an unreasonable, unfathomable sense of impending disaster.

Jacko leaned back on his pillows and considered what he'd just heard.

He'd been in two minds whether to call the police himself. On the one hand, it argued for his innocence, since, for all he knew, nobody outside his household knew DC Bowman had been anywhere near him. On the other hand, it made him look a little too eager to be involved in a high-profile murder inquiry. And one of the things everyone who had read a book on psychopathic killers knew was that the murderer often tried to insert himself into the investigation.

Leaving it to Micky was somehow much safer. It demonstrated his innocence at second hand; she was his devoted wife, crammed with public probity and therefore to be trusted in her account of events. He knew it was safe to assume she'd go straight to the police as soon as she saw Shaz's picture, which would be well before his normal rising time, so there would be no question of him having known and said nothing.

Because, of course, officer, he'd been too busy to watch the evening news the previous day. Why, sometimes he barely had time to watch his own show, never mind his wife's!

What he had to do now was to work out his strategy. There would be no question of him having to schlepp up to Leeds to talk to the investigating plods; the police would come to him, he felt sure. If he was proved wrong, he wouldn't call in any favours just yet. He'd play along, the magnanimous man with nothing to hide. Of course you can have an autograph for your wife, officer.

The important thing now was to plan. Imagine every contingency and work out in advance how best to deal with it. Planning was the secret of his success. It was a lesson he'd almost had to learn the hard way. The first time, he'd not really worked out the eventualities ahead of time.

He'd been intoxicated by the possibilities he saw opening in front of him, and he'd not realized how necessary it was to project all the conceivable outcomes and work out how to deal with them. He'd not had the Northumberland cottage then, relying foolishly on a tumbledown walkers' hut that he remembered from hill-walking expeditions in his youth.

He'd thought no one would be using the place in the dead of winter and knew he could drive right up to it on an old drovers' track. Because he dared not leave her alive, he'd had to finish her off the night he'd taken her there. But it had been almost dawn by the time she'd taken her last breath. Shaken and exhausted by the effort of confining her, carrying the heavy vice that would crush her arm to a bloody pulp, then killing her with a wicked ligature made from a guitar string (symbolic, if he'd but considered it, of another of the accomplishments he'd lost), the planned burial had been beyond him. He decided to leave her where she was and come back the following night to deal with the carcass.

Jacko sucked his breath in at the memory. He'd been on the main road, only a couple of miles from the turn-off to the track, when the local news bulletin announced that the body of a young woman had been discovered by a group of ramblers within the past hour. The shock had nearly sent the Land Rover off the road.

Somehow, he'd controlled himself and driven home in a lather of clammy sweat. Amazingly, he hadn't left sufficient forensic traces for there to be any trail leading back to him. He was never questioned. As far as he knew, he was never even considered. The previous connection was so minimal as to be insignificant.

He'd learned three crucial things from that experience. Firstly, he needed to find a way to make it last so he could savour her suffering as she went through what he'd endured.

Secondly, he didn't actually enjoy the act of killing. He liked what led up to it, the agony and the terror, and he loved the sense of control that having been responsible for taking a life gave him, but despatching a strong, healthy young woman was no fun. Far too much like hard work, he had decided. He didn't much mind whether they died of septicaemia or despair, he preferred it when he didn't have to do it himself.

And thirdly, he needed a place of safety, both metaphorically and literally. Micky, Northumberland and the voluntary work with the terminally ill had been the tripartite answer. For the six months it had taken to put that answer together, he'd simply had to be patient. It hadn't been easy, but it had made the next one all the more sweet.

He wasn't about to give up on that sweet and secret pleasure just because Shaz Bowman had thought she was smarter than him. All it would take was a little bit of planning.

Jacko closed his eyes and considered.

Carol took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A familiar voice told her to come in and she walked into Jim Pendlebury's office as if there had never been a moment's tension between them. "Morning, Jim," she said briskly.

"Carol," he said. "Come with some news for me?"

She sat down opposite him, shaking her head. "I've come for the list of part-time firemen we spoke about last night."

His eyes widened. "You're not still entertaining that daft idea in the cold light of morning?" he said scornfully. "I thought you must just be humouring your guest."

"When it comes to criminal investigation, I'd back Tony Hill's ideas over yours any time."

"You expect me to sit back and help you turn my men into scapegoats?" he said, his voice low. "When they're the ones who stand at risk every time we get a call-out?"

Carol sighed in vexation. "I'm trying to put an end to that risk. Not just for your firefighters, but for the poor sods like Tim Coughlan who don't even know they're taking a chance. Don't you understand that?

This isn't a witch-hunt. I'm not out to frame the innocent. If you think that's what I'm about, then you certainly don't know enough about me to have the right to turn up at my home unannounced and uninvited and expect to cross the threshold ever again," Long seconds dragged past while they stared each other down. Finally, Pendlebury shook his head in resignation, his mouth a thin line. "I'll give you the list," he said, loathing every word. "But you won't find your arsonist on it."

"I hope not," she said calmly. "I know you don't believe me, but I don't want this to be one of yours, any more than I enjoy the prospect of uncovering police corruption. It undermines all of us. But I can't ignore the possibility now it's been pointed out to me so convincingly."

He turned away and walked his chair over to a filing cabinet. He pulled out the bottom drawer and took out a sheet of paper. With a flick of the wrist, he floated it across the desk to her. All it contained were the names, addresses and telephone numbers of Seaford's twelve part-time fire officers.

"Thank you," Carol said. "I appreciate this." She half-turned to go, then looked back as if struck by an afterthought. "One thing, Jim.

These fires. Do they all come under one division or are they more spread out?"

He pursed his lips. "They're all on Seaford Central's patch. If they hadn't been, you wouldn't be walking out the door with that bit of paper."

It confirmed what she'd already thought. "I figured it might be something like that," she said, her voice offering armistice. "Believe me, Jim, there'd be nobody happier than me if all your lads check out."

He looked away. "They will do. I know those lads. I've trusted my life to them. Your psychologist he knows nothing about it."

Carol walked to the door. As she opened it, she looked back. He was staring intensely at her. "We'll see, Jim."

The steel-capped heels of her brown boots clattered on the stairs as she ran down to the anonymous security of her car. The pain of Jim Pendlebury's conviction that she would scapegoat a fellow member of the emergency services cut deep. "Damn it," Carol said, slamming the door closed behind her and jabbing the key angrily at the ignition. "Damn it all to hell."

Working on the principle that any psychologist worth his salt would see straight through any attempts at manipulation, they'd clearly decided to dispense with finesse. They had, however, paid Tony the compliment of rank. Detective Chief Superintendent Mccormick and Detective Inspector Colin Wharton rubbed shoulders at the narrow table in the interview room. The tape was running. They hadn't even bothered with the spurious reassurance that it was for his benefit.

They'd run through the discovery of the body first, their questions clearly directed at tripping him up in his assertion that he'd never been to Shaz's flat before and had no idea which windows were hers. Now they were moving into areas for which there was less obvious justification. Tony was not unprepared. He'd fully expected to be given a hard time. For one thing, he wasn't actually a cop, so if they were looking for a scapegoat, he'd be a preferable choice

to one of his team. Add to that the local force's resentment at having to hand over space and resources to a bunch of outsiders led by a Home Office boffin they regarded as one step away from a leader of Satanic rituals, and he was inevitably on a hiding to nothing. With this in mind, he'd been running alternative scenarios on the projection screen inside his head almost before his eyes had opened. Concern about the interview had preoccupied him through breakfast, in spite of Carol's best efforts to reassure him that it would be no more than routine.

On the train back to Leeds he had stared out of the window without registering anything except that he had to find a way to convince his interrogators that they should be looking outside Shaz's circle of friends and colleagues for whoever had done this to her. Now he was faced with the reality, he wished he'd caught a train to London instead.

Already the muscles in his shoulders were cramped into tight knots. He could actually feel the creeping rigidity climbing up the back of his neck and into his scalp. He was going to have one hell of a headache.

"Take us right back to the beginning," Mccormick said brusquely.

"When did you first meet DC Bowman?" Wharton demanded. At least they weren't playing ' cop, nasty cop'. They were both comfortably displaying their true colours as oppressive aggressors.

"Commander Bishop and I interviewed her in London about eight weeks ago.

The exact date is in our office diary." His voice was blank and even, kept so by willpower alone. Only a Voice Stress Analyser could have detected the micro-tremors skittering beneath the surface. Luckily for Tony, the technology hadn't penetrated that far.

"You interviewed her together?" Mccormick with the question this time.

"Yes. Following the interview, Commander Bishop withdrew and I administered some psychological tests. Then DC Bowman left and I did not see her again until the start of the task force's training period."

"How long were you alone with Bowman?" Mccormick again. Wharton was leaning back in his seat, fixing Tony with a professional blend of speculation, contempt and suspicion.

"It takes about an hour to carry out the tests."

"Long enough to get to know somebody, then."

Tony shook his head. "There's no time for casual conversation. In fact, that would be counter-productive. We were aiming to keep the selection process as objective as possible."

"And the decision to take Bowman on the squad was unanimous?"

Tony hesitated for a moment. If they hadn't already talked to Paul Bishop, they would. There was no point in any diversion from the truth.

"Paul had some reservations. He thought she was too intense. I argued that we needed some diversity on the team. So he agreed to Shaz and I conceded on one of his choices that I was less enthusiastic about."

"Which one was that?" Mccormick asked.

Tony was too smart to walk into that one. "You'd better ask Paul about that."

Wharton suddenly leaned forward, thrusting his heavy blunt features towards Tony. "Find her attractive, did you?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"About as straightforward as you can get. Yes or no. Did you find the lass attractive? Did you fancy her?"

Tony paused momentarily, assembling his careful response. "I registered that her looks would have made her appealing to a lot of men, yes. I was not myself sexually attracted to her."

Wharton sneered. "How could you tell? From what I've heard, you don't respond like most red-blooded blokes, do you?"

Tony flinched as if he'd been struck. A tremor ran through his taut muscles and his stomach grew turbulent. The inquiry that had inevitably followed the case he'd worked with Carol Jordan the year before had had to be told of his sexual problems. He had been promised absolute confidentiality, and if the reactions of the police officers he had encountered since were anything to go by, he had been granted that. Now, overnight, Shaz Bowman's death seemed to have stripped him of that right. He wondered momentarily where they'd gained their information, hoping this didn't mean his impotence would now be common gossip. "My relationship with Shaz Bowman was purely professional," he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. "My personal life has nothing to do with this inquiry whatsoever."

"That's for us to decide," Mccormick stated baldly.

Without pausing, Wharton continued. "You say your relationship was purely professional. But we have statements that indicate you `=190' spent more time with Bowman than you did with other members of the squad.

Officers would arrive of a morning to find the two of you deep in conversation. She would stay behind at the end of group sessions for a word in private. A very close relationship seems to have sprung up between you."

"There was nothing untoward between Shaz and me. I've always been an early starter in the morning. Check it out with anyone who's ever worked with me. Shaz was having some problems mastering the computer software we're using so she came in beforehand to put in some extra time. And yes, she did stay behind after group sessions with questions, but that was because she was fascinated with the work, not for any seedy ulterior motive. If your murder inquiry had taught you anything at all about Shaz Bowman, you'd know the only thing she was in love with was the Job." He took a deep breath.

There was a long moment's silence. Then Mccormick said, "Where were you on Saturday?"

Tony shook his head, mystified. "You're wasting your time with this.

You should be using us to catch the killer, not trying to make it look like one of us is guilty. We should be talking about the meaning of what this killer did to Shaz, why he left the picture of the three wise monkeys on the body, why there was no sexual interference with the body nor any forensic traces."

Mccormick's eyes narrowed. "I'm interested that you're so definite about the absence of forensic traces. Now how would you happen to know that?"

Tony groaned. "I don't know it. But I did see the body and the scene of crime. From my experience of psychopathic killers, I reckoned it was the most likely scenario."

"A police officer or someone who works closely with the police would recognize the significance of forensic evidence," Mccormick said cannily.

"Everybody who has a TV set or who can read recognizes the significance of forensic evidence," Tony countered.

"But they don't all know how to erase all traces of their presence like people who are accustomed to watching SO COs avoiding the contamination of evidence at a crime scene, do they?"

"So you're saying there was no forensic evidence?" Tony challenged, latching on to the one piece of information that seemed significant.

"I didn't say that, no," Mccormick retorted triumphantly.

"Whoever killed Sharon Bowman probably thinks they didn't leave a trace.

But they'd be wrong."

Tony's mind raced. It couldn't be finger or shoe prints; that would be completely at odds with the organized precision of this killer. It might be hairs or fibres. Hair would only be useful if they had a serious suspect to match it against. Fibres, on the other hand, could be tracked down by a forensic expert. He hoped West Yorkshire used the best. "Good," was all he said. Mccormick scowled.

Wharton opened a folder and placed a sheet of paper in front of Tony.

"For the tape, I am showing Dr. Hill a photostat of DC Bowman's diary for the week of her death. There are two entries for the day she was murdered. JV, nine thirty. And the letter T. I put it to you, Dr. Hill, that you had arranged to meet Shaz Bowman on Saturday. That you did in fact meet her on Saturday."

Tony ran a hand through his hair. The confirmation of Carol's idea that Shaz would have confronted Vance with what she knew gave him no satisfaction. "Inspector, I made no such arrangement. The last time I saw Shaz alive was at the end of the working day on Friday. What I was doing on Saturday could not be less relevant to this inquiry."

Mccormick leaned forward and spoke softly. ''m not so sure about that.

"I for Tony. She could have been meeting you. She could have met you out of office hours away from the squad room, and the boyfriend could have found out about it and let it wind him up. Maybe he confronted her with it and she admitted she fancied you more than she fancied him?"

Tony's lip twitched in contempt. "Is that the best you can come up with? That's pathetic, Mccormick. I've had patients who came up with more credible fantasies. Surely you must recognize that the crucial thing here is the diary entry that says JV, nine thirty? Shaz may have intended talking to me after that interview, but she never made it. If you're interested in what the killer was doing on Saturday, you really should be checking out Jacko Vance and his entourage." As soon as the name was out of his mouth, Tony knew he'd blown it. Mccormick shook his head pityingly and Wharton jumped to his feet, his chair shrieking on the cheap vinyl flooring.

"Jacko Vance tries to save lives, not take them. You're the one with the track record here," Wharton shouted. "You've already killed somebody, haven't you, Dr. Hill? And as you psychologists are always telling us, once the taboo's breached, it's gone for good.

Once a killer ... Fill in the blanks, Doctor. Fill in the fucking blanks."

Tony closed his eyes. His chest hurt, as if a punch to the diaphragm had robbed him of air. All the progress he'd made over the past year was stripped away and again he smelled sweat and blood, felt them slick on his hands, heard the screams ripped from his own throat, tasted the Judas kiss. His eyes snapped open and he looked at Wharton and Mccormick with a hatred he'd forgotten he was capable of. That's it," he said, standing up. "Next time you want to talk to me, you'll have to arrest me. And you'd better make sure my lawyer's on the premises when you do."

Only his desire not to give them the satisfaction held him together as he marched out of the interview room, through the police station and out into the fresh air. No one made any move to stop him. He set off across the car park, desperate to make it to the street before his stomach lost its battle with breakfast. Just as he reached the kerb, a car pulled up beside him and the passenger window descended. Simon Mcneill's dark head loomed towards him. "Want a lift?"

Tony recoiled as if from a blow. "No ... I ... No thanks."

"Come on," Simon urged. "I've been waiting for you. They kept me in half the night. They'll try and pin this on me given half a chance. We need to find out who killed Shaz before they decide it's time to make an arrest."

Tony leaned into the car. "Simon, listen very carefully to me. You're right that they want it to be one of us. I'm not sure they'd go so far as to manufacture evidence against anybody. But I don't intend to sit back and wait and see if that happens. I intend to find out who's behind this, and I can't have you along. It's dangerous enough going up against a man who's capable of what this guy did to Shaz. It'll be hard enough for me to watch my own back without having to watch yours as well. You might be a great detective, but when it comes to going head to head with psychopaths like this, you're an absolute beginner. So do us both a favour. Please. Go home. Deal with your loss. Don't try to be a hero, Simon. I don't want to bury another one of you."

Simon looked as if he wanted to burst into tears and thump Tony. "I'm no: a child. I'm a trained detective. I've worked on murder squads. I cared about her. You can't shut me out. You can't stop me nailing this bastard."

A long sigh. "No, I can't. But Shaz was a trained detective. She'd worked on murders. She knew she was rattling a killer's cage. And she still got demolished. Not just killed, but annihilated. It's not conventional police methods that are going to sort this out, Simon. I've done this once before. Believe me, I know what it's like and I wouldn't wish it on another living soul. Go home, Simon."

With a screech of rubber on asphalt, Simon's car streaked away from the kerb. Tony watched it take the next left far too fast, the rear spoiler fishtailing out of sight. He hoped it would be the biggest risk Simon had to take until Shaz's killer was dealt with. He knew a traffic accident would be the least of his own worries.

There was something to be said for delirium. When feverish sweat ran down her face and added another layer to the sour staleness that covered her sticky skin, it meant she could escape into hallucinations that were infinitely preferable to reality.

Donna Doyle lay huddled against the wall, holding on to the chimeras of childhood memory as if they could somehow save her. One year, her mum and dad had taken her to the Valentine Fair at Leeds. Candyfloss, hot dogs and onions, the blurry kaleidoscope of lights on the waltzer, the sparkling jeweller's window of the city spread beneath her from the top of the Ferris wheel as they swung gently in the cold night air, the neon glow of the fair like a carpet at their feet.

Her dad had won her a big teddy bear, electric pink fun fur with a goofy grin stitched across its white face. It had been the last present he'd given her before he died. It was all his fault, Donna thought, snivelling. If he hadn't gone and died, none of this would have happened. They wouldn't have been poor and she wouldn't have had to think about being a telly star, she could have listened to her mum and stuck in at school and gone to university.