e wove his way against the tide to her side. "Yes, ma'am?" he said smartly.

"I want you to pull the files on the cases from two years back."

"The Derek Tyler murders?"

"That's right. Once we'd arrested Tyler, everything else came to a halt. You and I are going to have a very boring morning going over those files and identifying any actions that were slated but never followed up."

Evans tried to look enthusiastic. It wasn't convincing. Before Carol could say anything, she saw John Brandon's familiar figure moving through the press of bodies. He was plotting a course straight for her. "Off you go, Sam," she said firmly.

Brandon reached her and steered her to one side. "Carol, is Tony fully abreast of the investigation?"

"Yes, sir."

"I think we need a formal profile from him. I've got a press conference at noon and I'd like to give them something that makes it look as if we're making a degree of forward movement. Especially since we've lost Nick Sanders," he added acerbically.

She tried not to smart under the implied criticism. "Can we give them some of the video footage? To see if anyone recognizes the man?"

"I don't see why not. Whether they'll use it is another matter. The media care a lot less about a police officer at risk than we do. They're more excited about having a serial killer in their midst than they are about saving DC Mclntyre." Brandon moved away, taking the time to dole out some words of encouragement as he headed back to the relative peace of his office.

Carol looked around to see which of her officers was nearest. "Jan?" she called.

Jan looked up from the sheaf of papers she was reading, caught Carol's eye and came over. "Something for me?"

"Can you track down Dr. Hill and get him to come over?"

"Sure. Have you got his mobile number?"

Carol reached for a piece of paper and scribbled it down. As she wrote, she said, "He'll either have it turned off or he'll ignore it, though. I'm giving you his home address as well. I think he said he'd be there this morning."

"And if he's not there?"

Carol shrugged. "Try Bradfield Moor."

Jan smiled. "Like calling to like, eh?"

Carol bridled. It was precisely the sort of thing she would have said to Tony herself. But that was the prerogative of a friend, not the kind of sly remark she wanted to hear from her junior officers. "We need him more than he needs us, Sergeant. Let's not forget that, eh?"

Jan shrugged an apology and left. Merrick approached Carol and ran a hand over hair greasy from lack of washing. Hollow-eyed, he stared at her bleakly over the rim of his mug, one leg jittering with nervous energy. "I keep feeling there must be something else we should be doing," he said, his voice gravelly with exhaustion.

"I know. But it's hard to imagine what that could be. And it's not going to help anyone if you drive yourself into the ground over this, Don," she said gently.

She saw anger spurt into his eyes. "Paula's not just one of my officers," he said tightly. "She's my friend. I know that might seem odd. I know most people can't get their heads round the idea of a woman and a man being mates. But that's how it is with us."

And yet you didn't know she was gay, Carol thought. That probably said as much about Paula's instinctive caution as it did about Merrick's lack of insight. "I believe you, Don," she said. "And I do understand how that makes it harder on you."

"Do you?" He shook his head. "She was like a dog with two tails when she got the posting to the squad, you know? She was excited about working with you. Ever since the Thorpe case, you've been her hero. That's why she agreed to the undercover even though it freaked her out. She wanted you to think well of her. She was determined that anything you could do, she could do too."

His words cut Carol to the quick, even though she understood he was lashing out to ease his own guilty sense of failure. "I think she was doing it for herself, Don. Not to impress me, but to keep faith with her own idea of what a cop should be," she said. "But whatever Paula's motives, there's no point in chucking blame around. We've got to concentrate on finding her."

"You think I don't know that? But what's to concentrate on? There's hundreds of bits of paper there, and they all say the same shit. It's like she vanished into thin air."

"We're getting there. We're narrowing down the possibilities all the time. We've covered a huge amount of ground in Temple Fields. According to your own figures, we've physically been inside more than seventy-five per cent of all the properties in the area. It comes down to time and method."

He sighed. "I know. I'm not thinking straight. Look, ma'am,

if you don't mind, I'm going to take off and get some sleep. I'll check into a motel, get my head down for a few hours." "Good idea, Don. It won't look so bleak once you've slept." He turned away without a word and shambled off. It was only half past nine, but Carol felt she'd already done a day's work. When she'd taken on the challenge of a specialist squad, she hadn't considered quite how tiring it would be to spend her days trying to corral a bunch of cops whose natural abilities made them as difficult and bolshie as she'd been herself in her younger days. Sometimes, she found herself almost longing for Traffic.

The grounds at Bradfield Moor had not been designed for anything other than easy maintenance. But on a wintry morning, with the leaves off the trees, they offered a long vista across the moors to the north through the tall chain link fence. It was possible to lose sight of the city below, to cut one's connections to the life of the streets. To walk there with a patient wasn't generally an option that staff were encouraged to take, but Tony had decided Tom Storey would only benefit from a short respite away from the oppressive surroundings of the hospital. They'd been out in the open for the best part of an hour, taking stock of Tom's most pressing current concerns.

They had come to a halt among a stand of birch trees, close to the fence, looking across the valley at the sparkle of a reservoir on the moors. Tony checked his watch. "We should probably head back. I've got another appointment in quarter of an hour."

With one last look at the landscape, they turned back towards the ugly Victorian Gothic pile. "I'm glad you came today," Storey said.

"We had an appointment. Where else would I be?"

"I thought your police business might keep you away."

"My patients come first with me. I work with the police, but that doesn't give them the power to dictate my movements."

Storey gave him an odd look. "That's a funny way to put it."

"It is, isn't it? I suppose it's because I've been thinking a lot about power this morning."

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, then Tony said, "What's your line on power, Tom?"

Twin lines formed between Storey's eyebrows as he tried to find a way to express what he felt. He was finding it less easy to communicate his thoughts now. "You take it where you find it," he said. "It's always circumstantial. One man's power means another man's pathos."

Tony stopped in his tracks. He wasn't quite sure how, but something in Tom Storey's words had triggered an idea in his head. He spoke so softly his patient had to strain to hear him. "You look at the overpowered, there's a direct line back to the oppressor .. ." Tony raised his face to the sky. "Find the thread, you find the killer." He turned to Storey and smiled beatifically. "Thank you, Tom. Thank you for that beautiful thought. I do believe I'm starting to see the light."

But the light had to wait. As he'd said, Tony had another patient to see, a patient whose psychosis required the full focus of his attention. An hour later, he finally emerged from his office, head down, paying no attention to his surroundings. He was vaguely aware of shapes passing him, but he was almost at the end of the corridor when something penetrated his consciousness. He stopped and frowned, looking round impatiently as a voice repeated its Bugs Bunny impersonation.

Jan Shields was leaning against the wall outside his office, grinning. "I said, "Nya .. . What's up, Doc?"

He felt a quick surge of apprehension then dismissed it. If something bad had happened, she wouldn't be clowning with him. "Don't give up the day job," he said, walking back towards her.

"I wouldn't dream of it. I like it far too much."

He drew abreast. "Something happened?"

She pushed off from the wall. "No. That's the trouble. Mr. Brandon wants a profile. That way he'll have something to feed the reptiles. I'm here to drive you back. Shall we?" She gestured towards the main corridor and fell into step beside him.

"How did you know where I was? And that I didn't have my own car?"

She winked at him. "I'm a detective."

"What I do with my life isn't exactly a secret. You asked Carol."

Jan smiled. "When your car was at the house and you weren't, I called Carol. She said you'd probably have left the lights on. Or run out of petrol. So I called here."

When they emerged in the car park, Tony was surprised to see they were heading not for a nondescript saloon car but a low-slung Japanese sports two-seater. "Nice to see Bradfield CID taking care of their officers," he said, bending to fold himself into the passenger seat.

"You really do have a weird sense of humour, Dr. Hill," Jan said.

"Tony, please." He gasped as she floored the accelerator and sped out into the narrow lane.

"So, what's in it for you?" Jan asked as she rattled through the gears.

"In what?" he said, confused.

"The nutters in Bradfield Moor. Why bother? You could spend your life profiling and teaching. Why earn a pittance dealing with the dregs?"

He thought for a moment. "Hope," he said finally.

"That's it? Hope?"

"Don't underestimate the power of hope. And besides," he added, "I'm good at it. There's a satisfaction in doing something you know you do better than most people in the field. Don't you find?"

She drove fast into a tight bend, throwing him against the door. "Thanks for the implied compliment," she said. "And do they help you with your current profiling cases, your nutters?"

He grinned. "Oddly enough, I place more trust in my own judgement. Which is not to say they don't occasionally offer an accidental insight."

"Any insights today, then?"

Tony shook his head. "Just a timely reminder that I really should have been looking more closely at victims. And what links them."

"That's easy. They were all whores."

"Apart from Paula."

Jan pulled up at the junction with the main road and took the opportunity to give him a puzzled stare. "But she looked like a whore."

"If looks could kill, they probably will." He smiled at her bafflement. "There's something else they have in common."

"What's that?"

"If your mission as a killer was cleaning up the streets, you might think getting rid of cops was as socially useful as getting rid of prostitutes. But of course that would only make sense if Paula was a bent cop .. ."

"There's more than one way of being bent."

"Ah, yes, I'd heard you produced that revelation. Don Merrick seemed a bit put out at the notion."

This time, there was no warmth in Jan's smile. "It's so predictable, isn't it? Pretty girl like that, how could she be a dyke?"

"Still, you picked up on it," Tony said. "But then, I suppose you would."

"Meaning what?" she said.

"Takes one to know one. Isn't that what they say?"

She flashed a quick glance at him. "What makes you think I'm gay?"

"Is it supposed to be a secret?"

Jan blew a raspberry. "Shrink's trick. Answer the question: what makes you think I'm gay?"

Because of the way you are with Carol, he thought, but was not prepared to say it because of what it would reveal about himself. He paused for a moment, finding another way of saying the same thing. "Because of the way you are with men."

"You think I hate men? What a cliche."

"That's not what I said. You treat all of us with exactly the same mixture of amusement and charm and disdain. It doesn't matter if we're attractive or ugly, bright or dim, you don't differentiate. You're not interested in us beyond our professional interactions. It could be that you're one of those people who's just not interested in sex with either gender, but I don't think so. I sense a certain sexual charisma there. Does that answer your question?"

She slowed down and looked across at him. "Thank you for taking it seriously. You're right, as it happens. And I'm right about Paula."

"And you thought it was fair to out her?" Tony asked, curious rather than combative.

"Hey, you're the one saying we should be looking at every aspect of the victims. You think it matters? That she's gay?"

"I never gave it a moment's thought. It never seemed relevant," he said indifferently.

"It can make you vulnerable on the street. Unless you take steps to turn it to your advantage. You can't rely on anybody else to do it for you. Of course, it's not the only thing that makes you vulnerable. Any sort of difference can have the same effect: race, being disabled .. . They're all things people have to compensate for."

In every exploration he had made into the criminal mind, Tony had arrived at a moment where something crucial fell into place and made sense of everything. It wouldn't have registered if he hadn't been thinking so hard about power and vulnerability that morning, but because his mind was already running on those lines, it assumed the correct significance. At last he thought he understood. And he also knew he hadn't a hope in hell of convincing Carol or anyone else. Not wanting Jan to see his reaction, he looked out of the passenger window. "I suppose. Must be just as hard for Evans and Chen," he said nonchalantly.

"I wouldn't know, I've never asked them."

"What? No solidarity among minorities?" Tony asked.

"I've got nothing against them. But I've got nothing in common with them either. Why should I expect them to fight my battles?"

"Fair enough. So I suppose Brandon wants this profile yesterday? That would be why they took the trouble to send someone to fetch me?"

"I guess so. Nothing else is going anywhere. Carol's even going over the old Derek Tyler cases with Sam to see if there were any loose ends they can chase up now." She reached out and turned on the CD player. Bonnie Raitt sang that love had no pride.

"You think you're going to bring Paula home alive?" Tony asked.

"Honest answer?"

"Honest answer."

"I think she's already dead. I think he's playing with us."

More than anything else he'd heard that day, the words thrust a chill spear of fear into Tony's heart.

Evans marked his place with a finger and looked up. "DCI Jordan? I can't seem to find any mention of Paula on the original inquiry list."

Carol thought for a moment. "She probably wasn't on it, Sam. She was aCID aide on the Thorpe case, but that was only a six-month posting. She'd probably have gone back to uniform by then. You think there's any significance in that?"

"If there is, I don't know what it could be," he said. "Just clutching at straws." They went back to work, heads bent, minds on full alert, mining the mountain of paper.

Half an hour of silence later, they were disturbed by a SOCO. "Are you DCI Jordan?" he said.

"Yes." Carol tried to squash the quickening of interest. She couldn't bear any more false hope.

"We've been going through the bins in the search area and we've found the radio mike and transmitter that DC Mclntyre was wearing," he said, sounding pleased with himself.

Carol snapped to full attention. "And?" She was half-aware of the arrival of Jan and Tony, but all her focus was on the SOCO.

"The wire from the mike to the transmitter had been snipped. There are two partial prints on the transmitter. We're working on them right now. We should know soon if they match anything on AFIS."

Tony stayed discreetly in the background, but Jan dumped her coat and bag by her desk and moved closer to the action.

"Why has it taken this long to find?" Carol demanded. "What have you people been doing for the past two days?"

He looked wounded. "It turned up a couple of hundred yards away from where she was last seen. That's a lot of rubbish to get through."

"It is when you work nine to five. Jan, see who you can rustle up to get back on the streets with you. Then widen the search area out from where they found the mike. Sam, you go too."

Jan didn't pause to discuss the order, heading straight out the door towards the murder room. Evans capped his Cross fountain pen, slipped it into his inside pocket and followed her. Meanwhile, Tony casually sat down at Jan's desk, apparently waiting for Carol's attention.

"How long will it be before you get a result from AFIS?" she asked.

Unnoticed by anyone, Tony leaned down and flipped open Jan's handbag. He slid his fingers inside, probing till her found her bunch of keys. He closed his hand round them then silently lifted them clear and slipped them in his pocket.

"Hard to say," the SOCO replied. "It depends how much traffic there is on the system."

Tony stood up. "I'm just going for a coffee."

Carol barely registered his words. "Can't we put a priority status on it?"

"I already did," Tony heard the SOCO say as he walked out of the office. He hurried downstairs and out into the front reception of the police station. He paused at the counter.

"Do you know where the nearest heel bar is?" he asked.

The civilian behind the counter thought for a moment. "If you go into the mini-mall round the corner, there's one up the back in the basement."

Tony left at a trot. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the heel bar. The smell of solvents and glue caught his throat and made his eyes water. Luckily there was no one waiting to be served ahead of him. He deposited the bunch of keys on the counter. As well as the car keys, there was a Chubb mortice, a couple of Yales and two small keys. "I need copies of all of these, except for the car keys," he said. "And I'm in a hurry, I'm afraid."

The youth behind the counter gave the keys a swift appraisal. "No problem. Ten minutes do you?"

"Brilliant. I'll be right back." He hurried out of the shop and ran through the arcade of stalls to the coffee shop by the escalators. Again, he was spared the tension of waiting in a queue. "Large macchiato to go, please." He drummed his fingers on the counter while he waited for the pitifully slow barista to get to grips with his technology and assemble the drink. He grabbed the carton then walked briskly back to the heel bar.

Five minutes later, he walked nonchalantly up to Jan's sports car. He put his coffee on the ground, unlocked the car and put the keys in the ignition. Then, trying to look like a man with nothing more demanding on his mind than coffee and a serial killer profile, he made his way back up to the squad room

He walked in just as Jan was upending the contents of her bag on to her desk. She looked up, frustration on her face. "You didn't see what I did with my keys, did you?"

Tony scratched his head, frowning in recollection. "You know, I don't remember you actually locking the car," he said.

"Fuck." Jan shovelled everything back into her bag, grabbed her jacket and ran from the room. Evans raised his eyebrows at Tony as he followed her at a more leisurely pace.

Tony shrugged. "What can I say? I have that effect on women."

Honey whose real name was Emma Thwaite had started to think of herself as streetwise. It had only been a matter of months since she'd left the shitty council flat in Blackburn to escape the responsibilities of raising three younger brothers while her mother spent her time in the pub, cadging drinks from men she would bring back and fuck on the living-room settee. But it felt like a lifetime. She could hardly remember who she'd been back then.

She knew she'd been lucky to end up under Jackie's wing, and she'd been naive enough to believe she'd learned enough from that position of relative safety to manage on her own. But the past few days had thrust upon her the realization that she was a lot less capable of dealing with the world than she had thought. She wanted someone to take Jackie's place, someone to help take the edge off the fear and the loneliness.

So when she walked into Stan's Cafe that afternoon, she gravitated straight to the table where Dee Smart sat alone, smoking and staring out of the window. "Hiya, Dee," she said. "Fancy another cup pa

Dee looked her up and down, as if calculating what the price might be. "Yeah, go on," she said with a shallow sigh.

Honey clattered off on her high heels, returning with two mugs and two chocolate biscuits. "There you go," she said, settling in opposite Dee and stripping the wrapper off her biscuit.

Dee carried on staring into the street. "Bastard cops everywhere. They're scaring the punters away."

"Sooner they catch whoever's doing this, the better for us," Honey said.

Dee gave her a contemptuous look. "That's not going to happen any time soon."

"You think?" Honey tried not to let her apprehension show.

"I know. You think the Creeper isn't pulling the strings?"

The name took Honey by surprise. It had never occurred to her to connect it with the crimes that had turned her world difficult and sour. "This has got something to do with the Creeper?" she asked.

"Of course it has," Dee said impatiently. "I've had them all over me, asking their questions. Do I know the Creeper? Do I know anybody who had it in for Sandie? Blah blah blah."

"And you haven't told them?" Honey couldn't figure out why Dee would have kept silent about something so important.

Dee's eyes narrowed. "You crazy? You think I want to be next on the hit list?"

Honey frowned. She knew she wasn't exactly Brain of Britain, but she didn't think what Dee was saying made sense. "There won't be no hit list if the Creeper's locked up," she pointed out.

Dee flicked the ash from her cigarette in a gesture of exasperation. "Grow up, Honey. They're never going to lay a finger on the Creeper."

"All the same

Dee shook her head vigorously. "Don't even think about it.

It'd be your funeral, girl." She pushed her tea away from her, as if deciding that drinking it would place her under too much of an obligation. "I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson from what happened to Jackie. If you don't want to end up like her, keep your nose out of the Creeper's business." Honey watched Dee walk out. It hurt that her overture had been rejected, but she was more disconcerted by the reason than the fact itself. Maybe Dee was right, the best thing was to keep her head down and make sure she didn't rock the boat. But what if Dee was wrong?

Don Merrick decided he didn't like the Scottish Highlands. He'd never been anywhere so empty in his whole life. He remembered a trip he and Lindy had taken before the kids came along, a four-wheel-drive safari into the Sahara. Compared to this louring emptiness, the desert had felt positively thronged. It hadn't been so bad for a few miles after he'd left Inverness airport in the hire car, but when he'd turned off the main arterial road to strike out west, he had rapidly found himself in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere. According to the map, this was supposed to be an A-road, but it was more like one of the narrow back roads of the Peak District.

You could go mad out here, he thought. Nothing but grey rock and greeny-brown vegetation. Correction. Nothing but grey rock and greeny-brown vegetation and the occasional grey-brown pond. Sometimes the grey rock manifested itself as the crumbling gable end of what might once have been a house or a barn. But signs of human life were few and far between. The only living things he could see were sheep. In an hour's driving he'd passed two vehicles, both travelling in the opposite direction: a Land Rover and a red minibus with Post Bus emblazoned along the side. Don supposed some people might like the grandeur and the isolation, but he found himself longing for the bustle and sc rum of the city.

When he'd looked at the map, he'd thought he could check out Nick Sanders' putative foxhole in a matter of hours. Before anyone would even notice he'd been gone. He'd capture the fugitive and restore his self-respect in one. Then the glory of success would bring forgiveness for his insubordination. Carol would be forced to respect his abilities if he brought Nick Sanders in before nightfall.

But the light faded faster up here too. It was only mid-afternoon, and already he felt twilight closing in. He'd be lucky if he made it to Achmelvich by nightfall, never mind back to Bradfield. He wished he'd brought a torch with him. He had a feeling that Achmelvich wasn't going to be well endowed with streetlights. If he ever found anything approximating civilization again, he'd stop and stock up on some essentials.