hat'll buy you a lot of unusual. But you still haven't said what you want. You gotta use a condom, you know that?"

"That's not a problem. Listen, I've got a place. You let me tie you up, I'll pay you two hundred. Straight up."

Carol's mouth dried up. She pressed the button on her mike and croaked, "All units, stand by. The eagle is hovering. Repeat, all units, stand by."

Paula was still talking. "Two hundred? Up front? Now?"

Even through the intermediary of the camera, the action was unmistakable. He peeled off notes and offered them to her.

Carol's nose was practically up against the screen but she still couldn't distinguish any of the man's details. "Shit. We can't see his face."

"Sounds like the real thing," Jan said excitedly.

"All units, move to takedown positions. Move to takedown positions. Close off the area. Repeat, close off the area." Carol's pulse was racing, the beat of her blood loud in her ears. On the screen, Paula was rounding the corner, the man's hand on her elbow. On the street, other bodies were closing in on them. It was going to work. Thank Christ, it was going to work.

Adrenaline had Paula in its electric grasp. Her breathing was shallow, her heart pumping like a drum. As they rounded the corner, she felt herself being shunted into a narrow ginnel between buildings. "Where are we going?" she said.

In reply, he pulled her into an embrace, one hand roughly groping her breast, the other circling her back. Paula was so focused on the pain in her tweaked nipple that she never felt the sharpened electrician's snips slicing cleanly through the wire that ran from her mike to the power pack.

She pushed him away, saying, "Oy! I thought you said you had a place to go to?"

He swung her round by the arm. "It's just here." He leaned past her and opened a gate in the wall, so grubby it was almost invisible against the blackened brick. He steered her inside then slipped the snib on the lock, closing it fast behind them. He ushered Paula towards the back door of a building.

Nervous, but secure in the mistaken belief that she was still transmitting, Paula said sarcastically, "Mmm, very glamorous back yard. Who'd have thought such a nondescript gate in the wall would hide so lovely a place? We going into this building here then? This your place?"

"Yeah," the man said. "Come on, get a move on. We haven't got all night."

Carol was on her feet. "Paula's gone dead. There's nothing coming through." She turned to the two technical support staff. "Is it our end or hers?"

Thirty seconds of unbearable suspense. Breath held. Prayers offered. Fingers crossed. Then one of the technicians shook his head. "It's not our end. She's not transmitting."

At once, chaos broke out. Carol shouted, "Take down. Repeat, take down. The eagle has landed. All units, pursuit, pursuit."

"Fuck, shit, fuck, shit," Merrick kept repeating like a mantra as he wrenched open the side door of the van. He leapt out into the street as Carol ripped off her headset and tore after him, Jan in their wake. Stacey stared after them, open-mouthed, uncertain whether to stay put and hold the fort or follow. She settled for closing the van door and picking up Carol's discarded com ms equipment. Somebody had to keep track of what was happening. She didn't mind. She who controls the technology controls the world, she told herself. It was a far more interesting option than running around on the street. Nothing would happen without her knowledge here.

Carol pounded down the pavement, nightmare visions flooding her head. "No, no, no," she gasped on her out breaths as she covered the twenty yards to the corner where she'd last seen Paula. As she rounded the corner, she ran into the back of another officer, winding both of them. Carol staggered, then found her footing. She pushed past and found more officers milling around in the narrow ginnel where Paula had disappeared with the man. She shoved her way through, following the ginnel to its end. It led into another street intersected with lanes, alleys and back entries. It was a labyrinth.

"Fan out," Carol shouted. "Cover the area. They can't have gone far. Shit!"

"It's a rabbit warren round here, they could be anywhere," Merrick said, his face haggard, his voice cracking.

"So don't stand here talking, start looking. And somebody get this gate open," she added, pounding her fist against the door in the wall of the ginnel. "See where it takes us and go through it with a fine tooth comb Carol ran her hand through her hair. A sharp pain was rising from the base of her skull. How could this be happening?

Merrick was talking urgently into his radio. "All units. Begin search of immediate area. Officer missing. Repeat, officer missing." He glanced across at Carol. "You want us to start door-to-door?"

She nodded. "Jan, you take charge of that. And start with whatever's behind this gate." Carol turned away, choking on her anger. As the officers around her dispersed, Carol wondered what she could have done differently. The worst of it was, she couldn't think of a single thing.

This one's a keeper. He doesn't know why, he just knows that's the way it has to be. The Voice makes the decisions, the Voice knows best, the Voice doesn't ever let him down.

She looks like all the others, like a whore, but this one's a cop. Knowing that makes him scared, but he still manages to do what he's supposed to. He can't get over how simple it's been to capture her. Just like the Voice said it would be. The Voice said she would come along with him, meek as a lamb, good as gold, and she has.

He plucks her off the street, easy as could be. Easier than the others, in a way, because he doesn't know this one from before. It isn't hard to think of her as a dirty piece of meat because she's never done anything to make him think otherwise. He gets her into the ginnel, then he cuts her wire just like he'd been practising all afternoon. Snip, snap, just like that. She doesn't notice a thing.

Into the yard, through the door, up the stairs. She never pauses for a moment, just keeps wittering on, thinking there's somebody listening to her giving directions to the room that's been prepared for her. She doesn't even hesitate at the double door that looks just like a cupboard when you open the outer door on the landing. She comments on it, though, thinking she's passing the message on. When he tells her to lie down on the bed and spread her legs and arms, she does as she's told. He can smell the anxiety coming off her, but she isn't scared, not really scared, not nearly scared enough. The cuffs go on and still he can tell she's waiting for the cavalry to burst through the door and save her. She doesn't even kick when he fastens the ankle restraints.

But when the gag goes on, that's a different story. He can tell she doesn't like that, not one bit. Her eyes widen and a tide of colour sweeps up from her juicy round tits to her hairline. All at once it's dawning on her that maybe it isn't going to play out the way it's supposed to. That he is in control, not her and the pathetic plods on her side. He smiles at her then, the relaxed, triumphant smile of the winner.

"They're not coming," he says. "You're on your own." He leans over and reaches under her body. He pulls the transmitter out from under her skirt. Then he reaches into her cleavage and yanks out the mike and its cable. He waves the cut ends in front of her eyes. "You've been talking to yourself," he taunts her. "They don't have a fucking clue where you are. You could be anywhere in Temple Fields by now. You thought you could beat us, but you were wrong. You're fucked, plod."

He turns away, ignoring the mewling noises coming through the gag. He takes out the dildo he prepared earlier. The bright light gleams on the sharp edges of the razor blades. It's fucking wicked, this death machine. He swivels on the balls of his feet, spinning round to face her. When she sees the dildo, the colour drains from her face, leaving her chest blotchy and ugly. He steps forward, pushes up her skirt and rips her pants away. He waves the dildo in her face and grins.

That's when she pisses herself. Which annoys him, because it's going to make the room smell, and that's not very nice. Because this one's a keeper.

PART FOUR

It's a well-known fact that there exist books that change people's lives. If anyone were to ask me if such a book had ever swept through my life, I imagine they'd be profoundly surprised by the answer. But I can still remember the impact I felt when I first read John Buchan's The Three Hostages. We were on a family holiday on the Norfolk Broads. It was as if my parents were aware of the concept of holidays but didn't really understand how they should be done. Other people got to spend the week messing about on boats, exploring the waterways and experiencing a way of life utterly different from their normal routines locks, fens, waterfowl, the strange sensation of unreality when their feet hit solid ground after days on the water. But not us. My parents had rented a static caravan on a site where hundreds of the metal boxes sat in serried rows along a low bluff that looked out over the blue-grey waters of the North Sea. The van we'd ended up in didn't even have that view to commend it. All we could see from the windows was other caravans. It wasn't an improvement on home; even in a two-bed roomed council house, there was more space and privacy than in this thirty-two-foot tin can. I hated it, resented the other kids whose parents had taken them on a proper holiday, counted the hours till we'd be on the road home.

The weather didn't help either. A typically English summer week, grey drizzle alternating with days of watery sunlight when everybody from the caravan site trooped off to the shingle beach, stripped down to their bathing suits, hopping from one foot to the other over -the painful stones to the water's edge. Then they screamed at the temperature, turned round and hopped shivering back up the beach again to flasks of hot weak coffee and egg sandwiches.

One afternoon when the rain was particularly undeniable my parents decided to go and play bingo in the community-hall-cum-snack-bar that squatted in a low concrete block in the middle of the vans. I had to go too, because at twelve I wasn't legally old enough to be left on my own. And my parents were always nauseatingly law-abiding. Smarting at the indignity, I trailed behind them, grudging and resentful. I wanted to hang out with Amanda, the beautiful blonde girl from the van two rows down, not watch a bunch of old fogeys playing bingo.

Dad bought me a Coke and a bag of crisps, pointed me in the direction of the ping-pong table and told me to amuse myself for a couple of hours and not to wander off. Like I was a little kid. Fuming, I stomped off. The ping-pong room was noisy with kids who looked at me like I'd dropped in from another planet. I slouched off towards the furthest corner and that's when I spotted the shelf of tattered hardbacks. I took a couple down from the shelves, but they didn't grab me. Then I picked The Three Hostages and from the first page, with its images of a social milieu whose lives were utterly alien to mine, I was hooked.

Until that moment I'd never imagined it was possible to achieve total domination over another's conscious will. The Three Hostages spoke to me of two things I wanted above everything else: absolute superiority, and access to a world of power and success. I'd been deprived of the latter by birth,

but if I seized the former for myself, I could grasp at something almost as fine.

The Three Hostages was the first step on a long journey to the heart of other people's minds. That control was possible, I never doubted. That I could achieve it, I never doubted. That I could use it to change the world around me remained to be seen. But on balance, I thought I could probably manage it.

At first, my path was less than clear. I chose information as my highway, tracking down everything I could about hypnosis, altered states, brainwashing and mind control. And the more I learned, the more I tried to demonstrate my abilities to myself. I practised on school friends, I sneaked under the guard of lovers, I even tried it at work. I soon learned that my skills weren't all I had hoped for. Sometimes I achieved remarkable results. But, more often, I failed. Most minds remained resolutely beyond my grasp. And no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't break through.

Then I discovered that there was a category of weaker minds that had few de fences against my techniques. People the rest of the world dismissed as slow and stupid could be bent to my will. Not perhaps the world-shattering effect I had dreamed of, but something that offered distinct possibilities.

The question then became what I would do with the power I had prepared myself to wield. How could I magnify what was in my grasp?

The answer came out of nowhere. The power of two.

If knowledge was power, then the choice of how to disseminate it was power in action. So Sam Evans was always willing to trade a little to get a lot. It was surprising how much people would spill if they thought you were being candid with them. So it was with Kevin. In exchange for a couple of snippets he'd picked up about Stacey Chen's background, Evans had garnered a wealth of information about Don, Paula and Kevin himself. Just the sort of things that could come in useful as subtle little pressure points if he ever needed to push them off balance.

They were sitting in a country pub a few miles from Swindale, recharging their batteries with a well-earned pint after a long and frustrating day fighting petty turf wars and conducting painstaking interviews. They were supposed to be formulating a plan of action for the morning, but they'd tacitly acknowledged that they'd had enough of the grinding depression of dealing with the deaths of children. Station gossip was far more appealing.

Kevin broke off from the story he was telling when his mobile beeped, indicating the arrival of a text message. He looked incredulously at the screen. "Is she at the wind-up, or what?" he exclaimed, turning the phone so Evans could read the screen.

Under the heading STACEY MOBY, it read "Killr hs cap turd Paula. She's missng."

Evans shook his head. "Not Stacey. Not her style."

Kevin was already dialling. As soon as the line opened, he said, "What do you mean, the killer has captured Paula? Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"I wouldn't joke about something like that," Stacey said, clearly offended at the suggestion. "I meant just what I said. He's got Paula. He took her into an alley and she went off the air. By the time we got there, they'd vanished. That was about half an hour ago and we've not seen hide nor hair of either of them since."

"Shit," Kevin swore. "We're coming over. We'll be there inside the hour." He ended the call and turned to Evans. "She meant it. While we were sitting here enjoying a pint, our fucking colleagues sat on their hands and let the killer snatch Paula from under their noses." He jumped to his feet. "Come on, we're going back to Bradfield."

Evans abandoned his half-drunk pint and led the way to the door. "How the hell did that happen?" he said.

"I don't know," Kevin said. "Carol Jordan was so sure she had all the bases covered."

Evans raised his eyebrows as he followed Kevin to the car. If anything happened to Paula, it would be goodnight, Vienna for Carol Jordan. He was glad he was well clear of the night's debacle, working a case that had a better prospect of resolution. It was every man for himself out there. Anyone who thought otherwise was prey. And prey got eaten.

He had no intention of being anyone's next meal.

It was just after three in the morning when Carol made it home. Paula Mclntyre had been missing for a little over six hours. Every door in Temple Fields that would respond to a thunderous tattoo of knocking had opened, every respondent had been questioned. They'd shaken down massage parlours and brothels, accosted whores and rent boys, disrupted bars and clubs. Short of taking a battering ram to all the remaining doors of Temple Fields shops, offices, flats, bed sits and who knew what else they had done everything they could to find Paula. But it was as if she and her assailant had vanished into thin air. The maze of alleys, back yards and lanes had yielded nothing in the way of clues. Jan Shields had led a team through the gate in the wall and into the building behind it, which seemed mostly to serve as storage for a local print shop Their search had turned up nothing to indicate that anyone had passed that way for days.

Finally, Carol had called it a night. Several officers had protested, expressing their willingness to continue searching, but Carol had vetoed their requests. Nothing of use could be done before daybreak, she said firmly. The best service they could offer Paula now was to get some sleep. What none of them was prepared to voice was their conviction that they were already too late.

Carol had walked back to the surveillance van with Jan Shields and Don Merrick in a despondent silence. When they got there, Jan had shaken her head. "I'm not coming back yet. I've still got contacts out there. There are people I need to talk to. You'll be amazed who ends up on our side once they realize it's a cop on the missing list. They'll want this sorted nearly as badly as we do."

"Bad for business, is it?" Merrick said sourly.

"Yeah, you could say that." Jan pulled her soft leather jacket closer to her face. "I'll see you at the briefing."

Carol made no attempt to stop her. They watched till she was swallowed up by the mist. "I told her this morning she didn't need to go through with this," Merrick said.

Carol could feel the heat of his hostility but was too weary to get into it with him. "She knew that already, Don. It was her choice," she said heavily. She yanked open the door of the van and climbed inside. "I'm going home to get some sleep. I suggest you do the same rather than chase your tail round Temple Fields for the rest of the night." She didn't wait for his response. When he hadn't followed her after twenty seconds, she slammed the door shut and ordered the driver to take them back to the station.

She thanked Stacey for holding the fort, then asked one of the technicians to run the CCTV footage of Paula's last encounter again. They watched it half a dozen times on the journey, but none of them saw anything new. When they arrived back at base, she ordered the technicians to do everything they could to enhance both sound and vision. Then she walked to her car, feeling so old and tired she could hardly put one foot in front of the other.

By the time she got to her door, she was trembling with a mixture of despair and exhaustion. She was pathetically grateful to see a light burning in Tony's study. She leaned on his doorbell. He opened the door dressed in jogging pants and a T-shirt, a puzzled look on his face.

"He's got Paula," Carol said. Each word felt as if it had been dragged out of her. She closed her eyes tightly, tilting her head back. Tony stepped on to the freezing doorstep and put his arms round her. For a few seconds, her body remained rigid. Then her head was on his shoulder, tears coursing down her face. Tony said nothing. He supported her weight, letting her lean into him, feeling her body shudder as she let go her grief.

Eventually, the storm abated. Carol withdrew slightly, meeting his concerned look. "I'm OK," she said shakily.

"No, you're not." Tony led her indoors and helped her sit. "You want a drink?"

Carol nodded, wiping the tracks of her tears from her cheeks. "Please."

He nodded, heading for the kitchen. He reappeared a minute later with two glasses of white wine, handing one to Carol before sitting down next to her. "You want to talk about it?"

Carol took a mouthful of wine. It tasted alien, as if something had chemically altered her tastebuds. "Call it displacement activity if you want, but I can't talk about Paula until I know where we stand with each other."

"Then you need to tell me what I need to know."

Carol drank more wine. This time, it tasted closer to what she expected. "Since the rape, I've felt like I didn't own my body any more. It took me a while to realize that I needed a sexual experience that would show me I was still in control of my responses. I needed it to be about me and I needed it to be uncomplicated." She put the palm of her hand on his back, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt.

He snorted. "Which ruled me out on both counts."

Her half-smile signalled agreement. "And suddenly there was Jonathan. Understanding, generous, attractive and absolutely not somebody I could fall in love with. So I used him. I'm not particularly proud of that, but there's no reason for you to feel jealous. You get more of me every day than I let him have."

"But I am jealous. I'm jealous that it's so easy for him and so hard for me."

"I was trying to make it easier for both of us."

"I know. But that's not going to happen any time soon, is it? For you and me to be at ease with each other?"

His voice was sadder than she'd ever heard it. "I don't know," she said bleakly. "I just know that I .. ."

"Don't say it." He cut across her harshly. "I feel the same. But the timing's never right, is it? There's always something with a greater claim on us, something that pushes us apart. And right now, it's Paula. So tell me what happened tonight."

Carol outlined the evening's events. "She's dead. And I let it happen. Knowing what I know about how these things can go wrong, I still let it happen."

Tony jumped to his feet and started pacing. "I don't think she is dead. This killer wants his victims found, and found while they're still fresh. He sets it up so they will be found. Paula hasn't been found, so logic dictates she's probably still alive."

Carol shook her head. "But why would he change his MO?"

"That's a good question. Maybe because he realized Paula's a cop. If you remember, I said to you after the first night that he might have spotted that she was a decoy."

"Even so, why would that make a difference?"

"He likes power. It may be that he's keeping her alive because it gives him even more power to savour, having a cop under control. It gives him power over us as well as over her. He's the stage manager, the conductor of the orchestra. We have to dance to his tune if we want Paula back alive."

Carol frowned. "What do you mean, "dance to his tune"?"

Tony waved a hand impatiently. "I don't know yet. Either he'll make that clear to us or we'll have to figure it out for ourselves." He paced again then stopped abruptly and whirled round to face her. "Carol, how did he know she was wearing a wire?"

"You answered that yourself. He must have figured out she was a decoy and realized she would be wired. That's probably why he started pawing her as soon as he got her in the alley."

"This is way too sophisticated for Derek Tyler," he muttered.

"But it wasn't Derek Tyler last night. Derek Tyler's banged up in Bradfield Moor."

"I know, I know. But these are the same crimes, the same brain behind them. And it's not Derek Tyler's brain. He's not smart enough, not controlled enough." He fixed Carol with a freshly energized stare. "The person behind this isn't just pulling our strings. He's pulling the killer's strings too."

Carol shook her head stubbornly. "I don't buy it. People don't kill because somebody asks them to. Only contract killers do that. And if this is a contract killer, then he's doing it at the behest of someone who wants to send Derek Tyler a "Get out of jail free" card. We need to go back through his life again, find out who might want him out and why."

"You're wrong, Carol," Tony sighed. "But if you're determined to go down that path, then maybe you should be looking into the lives of his victims, not Tyler himself."

Carol drained her glass and stood up. "His victims?"

"If I loved someone who was murdered, and their killer didn't even get life, if he just got sent to a mental hospital that theoretically he could be released from at any time, I probably wouldn't feel that justice had been done. I'd want that killer in my grasp. Given the kind of circles his victims moved in, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that there's someone who loved one of his victims and who is now in a position to hire a contract killer to replicate those crimes, in the expectation that you'll have to let Tyler go as a result." He shrugged. "It has a kind of logic to it."

Carol stared at him, her mouth open. "Logic?" she stammered.

"No, Carol. It's bollocks. If there was anything in what I've just suggested, the person hiring the contract killer would also have sent a lawyer in to Tyler, pushing him towards an appeal. And that hasn't happened."

"There's time," she said. "Maybe he'll try to use Paula as a bargaining chip."

"Carol, if you get a demand from the killer offering you Paula in exchange for an admission that Derek Tyler was wrongly convicted, I will buy you dinner every night for a year."

"Deal," she said.

He swallowed the last of his wine. "And now I think it's time for sleep. We've both got important work to do .. ." He glanced at his watch and groaned. "Starting in a few hours."

"I didn't thank you for the profile in the Tim Golding case," Carol said, following him to the front door "It was very helpful."

"You're welcome. I didn't think you got your money's worth before."

"Will you go out and take a look at the scene?"

He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I was thinking about going out there tomorrow. But with Paula missing .. ."

"It can probably wait."

"Who have you got on it?" he asked.

"Kevin and Sam. And Stacey will do the liaison with the paedophile unit. Don wanted it back, but frankly I'm not convinced he's up to it. When all this shit is over, I think I'm going to ask Brandon to move him back to mainstream CID. Maybe by then Chris Devine will be able to move north. She'd make a good DL' Her face clouded over. "God, when I think how much I was looking forward to this assignment. I thought it was going to be my salvation. But right now, it feels like the last nail in the coffin."

Stacey Chen loved her job. Her parents had embraced computer technology with eagerness when it first became generally available in the late eighties. They owned a chain of Chinese supermarkets and the capacity of the machines to keep track of stock and transactions enchanted them. Stacey could hardly remember a time when there hadn't been computers in her life. An only child, she'd taken to silicon the way other children took to Barbie dolls or books. Frustrated by the limitations of those early home computers, she'd learned programming code so she could write her own games for machines that had only ever been meant to do word processing and simple accounts. By the time she starting studying computer science at UMIST, she'd already earned enough to buy a city-centre loft, thanks to a neat little piece of code she'd sold to a US software giant which secured their operating system against potential software conflicts. Her lecturers predicted a meteoric career for her in the dot com world. None of them could quite believe it when she'd announced that she planned to join the police.

It made absolute sense to Stacey, however. She loved the un picking of problems. Rooting around in other people's systems was meat and drink to her, and here was a way she could satisfy her urges without breaking any laws. And she had enough time off to pursue her own commercial interests without any of the potential clashes that might have arisen if she'd been working for a software company. So what if her police salary was peanuts compared to what she made in her own time? Her job gave her legitimate sanction to invade other people's secrets, and that was satisfaction enough.

She didn't even need to be in the office to creep through everyone else's data. She'd set up her own home computing systems to allow her network access to all the machines used by the Major Incident Team. And because she'd designated herself as a systems operator she didn't even have to go through the tiresome process of capturing their passwords. She could simply wander at will through their machines. And so she knew Kevin's taste for soft-porn sites where he could browse for free without handing over any personal details. She knew Don Merrick's penchant for American baseball, Paula's addiction to news websites and Jan's habit of ordering books from an online women's bookstore in York. She'd been intrigued by Carol Jordan's wariness to commit to the machine until she'd uncovered the information that her brother worked in software development. Carol was clearly only too aware of the footprints that any activity left on a computer.

She also knew about Sam Evans' late-night trawls. She'd sat in her flat noting his keystrokes, watching him trying to break into his colleagues' files and failing every time at the password hurdle. She should have felt that Sam was a kindred spirit, but instead she despised him for his incompetence. He should stick to hanging out on those gross post-mortem sites he liked so much. That was about his speed. God, but cops were weird.

Tonight she was alone on the system, however. Wherever Sam was, he wasn't skulking round the office, trying to steal a march on the rest of them. And there was nothing new on the hard drive to interest her. She wondered what was happening over in Temple Fields. A few keyboard commands and a couple of mouse clicks and she could see what the cameras were feeding back to the computer.

Stacey poured herself another cup of coffee from the Thermos on her desk and settled down for a long hard look.

Paula had no idea how long she had been lying in the stark, oppressive room with its bare bulb making everything brutally vivid. At first, all she'd felt was overwhelming relief and gratitude that she was still alive. She had no idea why that should be; she knew his previous victims must have been attacked almost as soon as he'd snatched them from the street. And when he had produced that vile, horrifying implement, she'd been sure she was going the same way. But no. He'd simply exposed her genitals to the camera, brandished the lethal dildo in front of her and giggled. Then he'd checked her bindings and stepped back, fingering his cock through the faded denim of his baggy trousers. She'd thought then he was going to rape her, but that fear wasn't realized either. He'd gazed hungrily at her for a few minutes, stroking his erection as if it were a pet rat. Then he'd checked the video camera and the webcam and left.

Since then, she'd been alone. She'd struggled to free herself, but soon gave up, understanding that the only thing she was achieving was the fruitless expenditure of energy she might need later. She'd tried shouting for help, but the gag pressing against her mouth was far too effective to allow anything other than a moan to escape. There was nothing to do but lie there, shivering with cold and fear. The puddle of piss beneath her had soaked into the thin mattress and spread out, making her even colder.

Paula tried to convince herself they'd be coming to get her soon. Carol Jordan would never abandon her. That he'd left her alive made her think he believed they were close on his heels. He'd gone because he didn't expect to have the time to sit and watch her die once he'd cut her. But as the time trickled by, she began to lose faith. At one point she'd thought she heard faint footfalls and muffled conversation. But even as she strained to hear, the sounds faded and she was left wondering if it had all been her imagination.

This was all her own fault. How could she have missed him cutting the wire? If she'd been paying attention to her mission instead of freaking out because he'd pinched her nipple so painfully, she'd have known she was on her own. Then, as soon as they reached the room and she'd seen confirmation in the tools of his trade arranged on the table, she could have taken him by surprise and nailed him. But she'd dropped the ball. She'd focused on her reactions rather than on the job and now she was paying the price.

But she was still alive. As long as she was still alive, she could believe in rescue. Carol Jordan would break down every door in Temple Fields if she had to. She knew what it was like to be hung out to dry by her bosses, and there was no way she would allow that to happen to Paula. Whatever it took, Carol would find her.

The minutes ground by inexorably. Exhausted, Paula was drifting in and out of an altered state that bordered sleep but never quite crossed over. When the door opened, she couldn't be sure initially whether she was dreaming it. Her heart leapt in her chest. They'd found her!

Hope perished in seconds when the cruelly familiar shape of her kidnapper came into view. He'd swapped the parka for a hooded top, presumably to avoid being recognized. But she knew who he was only too well. "Only me," he said. "Come to change the tape. The webcam's not very good, that's why we need the video too. So we can enjoy watching you suffer."

If she strained her neck, she could see him move behind the video camera and remove the tape. He put it in his pocket, then leaned over and did something to the webcam. He leered at her. "I'm not supposed to touch you. The Voice says I've to wait till the time is right. But the Voice doesn't see everything."

He came towards her, one hand rubbing himself. He climbed awkwardly on to the bed. Paula smelled stale cannabis smoke and the acid tang of half-digested beer as he moved on top of her. He was heavy and clumsy, the zip on his jacket scratching the soft skin of her belly. Suddenly, she felt the smoothness of latex between her labia, fumbling towards her vagina. She tensed herself against him and he grunted. "Don't make it harder on yourself, you silly cunt," he growled in her ear. She tried to twist away, but her bonds were too tight and he was too heavy.

Then he was inside her, fingers pounding and thrusting while he rode her thigh. She could feel his cock rigid through his clothes. Paula bit down on the gag, fighting tears. She didn't want him to see how much he'd got to her. She tried to dissociate herself from what was happening to her body, but it didn't work.

Mercifully, it was over quickly. He hammered his hand into her, his hips forcing her thigh deep into the mattress as he speeded up. His head arched back and he yelped like a kicked puppy. Then he collapsed on top of her, his fingers slithering out of her bruised vagina. He rolled over and grinned. "Tight bitch. I like that. It'll be more fun when I do you."

He clambered off the bed, adjusting his jacket to cover the damp patch on his trousers. He slotted a new tape into the video camera, set the webcam running again and headed for the door. "See you later, alligator," he said, waving as he went.

The door slammed shut. Only then did Paula begin to weep.

Carol was in her office making notes for the briefing when Kevin and Sam arrived. "Guv, can we have a word?" Kevin asked.

She waved them to take a seat with a resigned nod. She'd been half-expecting this. Just another messy conversation that would end up making her feel about as much use as a blind man in an archery contest. "Let me guess. You want to help find Paula?"

"She's one of us, guy. You said at the start we had to be a team. It doesn't feel right that you've pulled me and DC Evans off on something else when one of the team is on the line," Kevin said.

"I do understand how you feel," Carol said. "But I need to know I have the best possible officers running the Golding and Lefevre inquiry. You must have seen the papers this morning they know two bodies have been found. They're speculating. The anti-paedophile hysterics are building up a head of steam, and we're directly in their paths. We have to be seen to be devoting our resources to finding their killer."

"But they're dead, and Paula might still be alive," Evans protested.

"They may be dead, but they're still important. And whoever killed them is still out there, possibly planning his next crime."

"We're not saying they're not important, guy," Kevin argued. "What Sam means is that there's less urgency."

"Yeah, it wouldn't hurt if we put it on hold for a day or two, just while the hunt for Paula's going on," Evans interjected.

"We can't put it on hold, however much you might like to." Carol tapped her finger on a file on her desk. "Two positive IDs: Tim Golding and Guy Lefevre. Cause of death in both cases is most probably manual strangulation. We can't keep that from the press. You've already started stirring the pot with the park service and with other groups who may have visited Swindale. Unless our man is deaf and blind, he's going to know we're looking for him. I don't want to give him space to wriggle out from under. We need to keep up the pressure. I'm sorry, guys. You stay with Tim and Guy."

Both men still looked mutinous. "But, guy .. ." Kevin began.

"Kevin, the best thing you can do for Paula is to get an early result on this case. You know that'll boost morale, help everyone believe we can bring Paula home safe and catch whoever has taken her. There's no great skill in knocking on doors and chasing up official records, which is more or less all we have to go at this morning. Please, use your talents to give us something positive." Carol felt faintly surprised at herself. It was the kind of persuasion she would have used without a thought in previous times. That it came so easily to her now restored some of the confidence she'd lost overnight.

Kevin at least fell for the bait. He visibly puffed up, basking in the glow of Carol's flattery. "We'll do our best," he said, getting to his feet.

Evans looked at him, then back at Carol. He shook his head in disbelief then followed Kevin out of the door. As they went, she heard him say, "I can't believe you fell for that bollocks .. ."

Carol was on her feet and at the door. "Evans," she shouted. "Back here. Now." Startled, he turned back. "Kevin, I'm taking Evans off you. Don't let me down." She glared at Evans. "My office. Now."

Carol shut the door behind them. "We're all under strain here, but that's no excuse for insubordination. I do not want my officers working with anything less than a whole heart, and it's clear to me that you are not prepared to give a hundred per cent to easing the pain of two sets of parents whose sons have been murdered."

"That's not fair." Evans' expression was mutinous.

"Don't talk back to me, Constable," Carol said, each word enunciated with chill clarity. "If you want to stay on this squad, you had better understand that I do not care about your personal preferences when it comes to assignments. I thought I'd already made that clear to you? I choose people for particular tasks because I think they are fitted to them.

You're a talented detective, Evans, but that doesn't mean you have the right to question my decisions, especially not in my hearing. I'm reassigning you to the Temple Fields inquiry. But don't think you've won. As of now, you are number one on my shit list and it's going to take something very special indeed to get you out of that slot."

A flicker of arrogance crossed Evans' face. "You won't be waiting long," he said. "Ma'am."

Carol shook her head in exasperation. "It's time to grow up, Evans. Now get out of my sight before I have you reassigned to Traffic' She watched him leave and sighed. One step forward and two steps back. Time to change the dance, she thought bitterly. Time to pick up momentum and crack the case.