e wondered if they had chocolate up here.

Tony had chosen to sit at the desk Kevin Matthews normally occupied for the good reason that, from her office, Carol couldn't see what he was doing. She was still busy on the phone, which gave him the freedom to flick through the pages of the phone book. With one ear cocked, he ran his finger down a column of names. God, it was getting harder to read the small print, he thought. Time to have his eyes tested.

It sounded as if Carol was winding up her call. "Yes, I do know that everybody thinks their request is a priority. But I've got an officer who's been abducted by a killer .. ." A pause. "OK. I appreciate it."

Just in time, he found what he was looking for. He jotted it on a piece of scrap paper and shoved it into his pocket as Carol emerged from her office and headed towards him. "Did Jan fill you in?" she asked.

"Jan? Fill me in?" he echoed.

"Brandon wants a profile. He already told the noon press conference he was calling on the services of a psychological profiler. Which of course the local media will assume is you."

"Oh, that. Right. Yes, she did say something," he said, aware he was sounding flustered and hoping Carol would put it down to his customary "vagueness. "I take it you don't want me to refer to what we discussed last night?" he asked, hoping that might divert her from noticing anything unusual in his behaviour.

Carol raised her eyebrows. "Not if you want Brandon to take anything else you say seriously."

"And you? Have you thought about it?"

Carol pushed a hand through her hair. She looked frazzled and unhappy. "Yeah, but it doesn't seem to take me any further forward. I'm sorry, Tony, but unless you've got something concrete, I haven't got time for this now."

He stood up. "That's OK. I understand. I'm going home. I'll work better there."

"Fine, we'll talk later," she said absently. Her mind was already on the next thing, the phone to her ear, her fingers on the buttons.

Out on the street, Tony hailed a taxi. He pulled the paper from his pocket and gave the driver the address. He sagged back into the seat and stared into the middle distance. So deep in his thoughts was he that he wasn't even aware of it when he started to speak out loud. Nor was he conscious of the apprehensive eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. All that interested him was the process of a killer's mind.

"You didn't get what you wanted," he muttered. "The bad fairy at the christening gave you a shit deal, and the brains to see how shit it was. So you learn how to take the power, hide the vulnerability. Get your retaliation in first. Hide your weakness behind a show of force. But sooner or later, the cracks start to show. You stop believing in your own publicity. You have to find a way to reassure yourself. A way to take more power to yourself. You become the voice." He nodded in satisfaction. It made sense. It had the structure of a logical argument. Pretzel logic, but logic all the same.

"At first, you take your power from the weak. You find your listener in Derek. You make him do your bidding. You make him take your prey and you control every move of the puppet show. But Derek fucks up and you're back where you started. And it takes time to carve another will into the shape of your own.

"But, eventually, you get there. You find another mind you can dominate, another head you can perch inside. And it begins again. And then you get the chance to take on someone your own size. And you can't resist, can you?"

His reverie was broken by the anxious voice of the taxi driver. "You all right, mate?" he asked.

Tony leaned forward. "Not really," he said. "But I will be soon, I hope."

One of the reasons for my success is my ability to think on my feet, to adapt my plans to accommodate changing circumstances. After the time it took to train him, I'd hoped to get more use out of this monkey, but it's become clear that sooner rather than later he's going to be fingered and that presents a risk I'm not prepared to take. I was sure of Tyler, sure he would keep the faith because he had such a personal stake in the work I set him. But this one is weaker. He'll give me up without even knowing he's doing it.

I pull up round the corner from the shithole where he lives. It's getting dark now, and everyone's in too much of a hurry to get somewhere warm to pay attention to anybody else. I check the mirrors, just in case anybody's watching, then remove the gun from the glove compartment, enjoying the heft of it in my hand.

When the coast is clear, I get out, head down, and walk briskly to my destination. I have a key to the street door and

I run up the stairs to the first landing. Two grubby green doors open off it. I reach up with a gloved hand and knock on the door with the number four painted on it.

I can feel my heart rate speeding up. I've never done this face to face before, and" I'm curious to see how it will feel. Seconds pass, then the door inches open. Carl is peering out through the gap, dressed only in grey sagging jockey shorts and a crumpled T-shirt. He looks as if he's just woken up. His expression is suspicious, but when he sees it's me, his face clears.

"Hiya," he says, a goofy grin on his greasy face. "I wasn't expecting you."

He steps back to allow me to enter. It's a dank, untidy room. Unmade bed, clothes in piles, Britney poster on the wall. It smells of masturbation and sweat. Every time I've been here, it's depressed me to think this was the best I could do.

Carl is gibbering something, but this afternoon I've no time for small talk. I'm supposed to be somewhere else. I pull out the gun and take pleasure in the panic that spreads across his face. He's not very bright, but even he knows what a gun means when it's at his head. I back him towards the bed.

"I did what you said. I never told anybody," he whimpers. His legs hit the edge of the bed and he tumbles backwards. He scrambles towards the head of the bed. He's crying now. "I promise, I won't give you up."

I find the voice within myself. The one I know he is conditioned to obey. "Lie down, Carl. Lie down and everything will be all right. I am the Voice. I am your Voice. Whatever I tell you to do is for the best. I am the Voice, Carl. Lie down." And it works. His subconscious mind overrides his panic enough for him to do as he is told. He's shivering and sweating, but he's doing what he's told.

I reach for the pillow and put it to the side of his head. I press the gun barrel into the pillow. His eyes are wide with trust. "I am the Voice," I remind him. "I am your Voice." And I pull the trigger.

Carol looked up from the file she was reading and recognized the man who'd just entered the squad room as one of the fingerprint technicians. "We've got a result from AFIS," he said.

"Who is it?" she demanded, getting to her feet and reaching for the sheet of paper in the technician's hand. "Carl Mackenzie. Twenty-six. Possession of cannabis, possession of ecstasy, indecent exposure .. ."

"I know him, he's a small-time street dealer," Kevin said. "He hangs out in Stan's Cafe."

"Last-known address, Flat 4, 7 Grove Terrace, Bradfield," Carol said. "Come on, Kevin, let's hit it." She pushed past the fingerprint officer, shouting for Merrick.

"He went off to get some sleep," Kevin reminded her. "I could call his mobile."

Carol shook her head. "Never mind. Stacey, get your coat," she called across the room.

The technician stood in the doorway of Carol's office watching them go. "Thanks for all your hard work, lads," he mimicked sarcastically.

Carol, Kevin and Stacey pounded pell-mell down the corridor. "We'll take my car," Kevin shouted. "I've got a noddy light."

Carol nodded agreement as they hurtled down the stairs and into the car park. They piled into Kevin's car, Carol yanking open the glove box and pulling out the blue flashing light. Fumbling with the connector, she finally managed to plug it into the cigarette lighter slot, then opened the window and slammed it on the roof.

They were already out in the traffic, the rush hour jamming the streets with cars. Kevin leaned on the horn, the light flashed and it gradually dawned on other drivers that they needed to pull over. But it still felt like painfully slow progress. Carol chewed on the skin by her thumbnail. Please, God, let us find Carl Mackenzie. And please, God, let him lead us to Paula.

Tony paid off the taxi and stood for a long moment, taking in the house in front of him. It was a modern detached brick building, part of a depressingly uninspired development on the outskirts of the city centre. It occupied the central plot at the head of a cul-de-sac with an unimpeded view of any car coming up the street. He wasn't in the least surprised. The Creeper would need to be in control of every possible aspect of her environment.

Jan Shields' house was even more lacking in personality than its neighbours, if that were possible. White paintwork, white front door, white garage door. Boring block paving on the drive and pathway. A tidy lawn with evenly spaced shrubs and conifers round the edge, all trimmed with obsessive neatness. Nothing that surprised Tony one whit.

He walked up the path and tried the mortice key in the lock. It was reluctant to turn at first, but Tony jiggled it a little and the tongue slipped back into its bed. The first Yale wouldn't fit, but the second slipped home easily. As the door opened, he heard the insistent beep of a burglar alarm's warning tone. He looked around for the control box, eventually spotting it behind him. His luck was still running; it was a key-operated system rather than one controlled by an electronic combination. He fumbled with the two small keys, his hands sweating as he jammed the first of them into the lock and turned.

Silence fell. Tony wiped the sweat from his face with both hands and turned to examine the house he believed to be the Creeper's lair. His evidence for that conviction was not the sort that would cut any ice with a cop. He could imagine

Carol's face. "It was the way she spoke about power and vulnerability. Her contempt for the weak," he'd say. And then he'd see the struggle on Carol's face between her desire to believe him and her copper's dependence on tangible evidence. Actually, there was something else too, but that was equally intangible. From the very beginning the cutting of the wire had troubled him. If Paula had noticed it happening, she'd have kicked off there and then. For her not to have noticed, it must have been done without fumbling. And for it to have been done without fumbling, whoever abducted her couldn't have relied on a lucky guess. He had to have known. And that narrowed it down to Carol and her team.

At first, he'd been more interested in Chen and Evans. They were the most obvious outsiders because of their racial backgrounds. It wasn't hard to imagine the resentments building up over the years as they perceived themselves powerless in the face of an organization that was implacably geared towards handing control to others. Chen had seemed particularly appealing because of her obsession with machines. Interacting with people was something that didn't come easily to her, which, if she was the killer, might tempt her to use the agency of another. There was a coldness in Evans too, a distance that suggested he might enjoy exploiting others for his own ends.

And then he'd realized Jan was not only another outsider but one with a unique connection to Paula. So he'd driven that morning's conversation in a direction that he hoped would tell him more about her. Which it had done. And then he'd remembered Carol mentioning that Jan had been with Paula when she'd chosen her outfit. Nobody was better placed to make sure the wire was where it was supposed to be. And so he was here, staking everything on his gut instinct.

He flicked on the light switches in the hall. It was a risk, but there wasn't any point in being here in the dark. The floor was covered in thick cream carpet as far as the eye could see.

It extended into the living room and up the stairs and it was spotless. No children or animals here. He looked down at his feet and saw a pair of slippers by the front door. Nothing from the outside world was going to be allowed to soil this place.

He moved through to the living room, standing on the threshold and drinking it all in, moving from first impression to a fuller scrutiny. The room was big, an archway leading from the seating area to a dining space. Two big cream sofas dominated the first part of the room, each replete with four precisely placed burgundy velvet cushions. In front of one there was a glass-and-wood coffee table. On it sat a Radio Times and that morning's paper, each perfectly aligned. The walls were painted a deeper shade of cream than the carpet. Above the fake coal fire hung a reproduction of a geometric Mondrian painting. A flat-screen TV dominated one corner of the room, DVD and video players underneath it.

On the other side of the chimney breast bookshelves had been built into the wall. Tony crossed to look at them, but he was distracted by the sight of a laptop on the dining table. He ducked through the arch, opened it and pressed the button to turn it on. While he waited for it to boot up, he went back to the bookshelves. "There's got to be a record," he murmured.

The lower shelves contained videos, the upper ones books. Most of the books were lesbian fiction, from pulp romance to more serious literature by writers such as Sarah Waters, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson. Incongruously, half a dozen tattered hardbacks of John Buchan thrillers. On the top shelf, legal textbooks, police manuals. He bent over to study the videos. American cop shows like CSI, NYPD Blue, Law & Order dominated, though there were also a few lesbian classics such as Bound and Show Me Love. He took out a couple of cases at random, but the contents matched the covers.

"Gotta be a record," he repeated. He went back to the computer and gazed at it. The trouble was, he wasn't much of a techie. He knew enough to run the programs he wanted to run and that was about it. He needed Stacey Chen. But that was about as likely as a moonwalk right now. "It's not going to be here. You're too clever for that. You know what people like Stacey can do. No, you're going to want something tangible, something you can access without leaving footprints." He looked around the room. There was nowhere to hide anything down here. Wherever the puppetmaster kept the records of her exercises in power, they weren't here.

Purposefully, Tony headed for the stairs. He wasn't worried about being disturbed; all Carol's officers were working flat out round the clock. Jan wouldn't be back for hours yet. Plenty of time to have a good look round.

The three cops thundered up the dimly lit stairs of 7 Grove Terrace, ignoring the open-mouthed student who had let them in and who was now shouting, "Hey, what the fuck .. ."

They stumbled into one another on the landing outside the door of flat 4. Carol banged the door with the side of her fist. "Police, open up," she shouted, venting all the anger, fear and frustration of the past few days.

No reply. Kevin pushed his way to the door and hammered so hard the wooden panel cracked. "Open up, Carl. The party's over."

"Kick it in," Carol said.

Kevin stepped back and threw himself at the door. It vibrated, but didn't break open. As he backed up for another attempt, Stacey intervened. "Gimme a chance," she said.

Kevin almost burst out laughing. "You what?"

But Stacey was already somewhere else. She stood side-on to the door, breathing deeply. She seemed to coil into herself then she erupted in a blur of movement, one leg shooting out and hitting the door right next to the lock. There was a splintering of wood and the door sagged open.

"Fucking hell," Kevin said.

Carol gave Stacey a perplexed glance. "You're full of surprises," she said, pushing the door open. What faced them stripped away any sense of wonder or levity. Carl Mackenzie lay sprawled on the bed, blood and brains on the covers and the wall behind him. The air was thick with the salt metallic taste of blood. In his right hand, a gun lay, his fingers curled loosely around the grip.

"Gunshot wound to the right temple. Gun in his hand," Carol said automatically.

"Oh Jesus, no," Kevin shouted. "Fucking bastard, why couldn't you give us Paula first? Fucking selfish bastard."

"Looks like suicide to me," Stacey said.

Carol bent forward to peer closely at the body on the bed. "Except I can't see any powder burns round the wound." She reached out and laid the back of her hand against his arm. "Still warm. Very fucking convenient."

Stacey frowned. "Convenient for who?"

"For whoever wants us to believe that Carl Mackenzie was smart enough to plan a series of murders and to kidnap a cop."

"I don't understand. His prints were on Paula's power pack Do you mean he was working with someone?"

Carol sighed. "Not with someone, Stacey. For someone."

It wasn't so bad after all. Nothing like as exciting as making the others do the work, but still a thrill. Having the power to take a life and having the nerve to exercise it; how could that not be close to as good as it gets?

I wonder how long the suicide scenario will hold water. It depends on whether they find him because they know they're looking for him for the murders or whether they just find him. If it's the ice blonde and her team of nodding dogs, it won't take them long to realize Carl wasn't alone when he died. It's a pity I had to use the pillow, but I didn't have a silencer and it was more important that I got away than that I made the scene watertight and some nosy neighbour clocked me leaving after the gunshot.

Maybe I should have tried the line that I was interviewing him when suddenly he reached for the gun and shot himself. I could have been the hero of the hour. But that would have been a high-risk strategy, and I haven't got this far by taking unnecessary risks. I've always stacked the odds in my favour. Like with the trained monkeys: I always made sure they were well in my debt before I started pushing the buttons to make them perform. With Derek, there was the evidence of the rape that I conveniently made disappear. With Carl, there were the drugs.

Now it's time to finish clearing up. I'm keeping an eye open for what I need, doubling down the side streets a couple of miles from Carl's place. And there it is, tucked down an alley. A builder's skip, full of wood and broken furniture and rubble. I pull up at the mouth of the alley and grab the ruined pillow. I stuff it under a broken sheet of chip board and I'm back in the car inside a minute.

I need to get back on to the visible plane, but I want to see her first. I'm aching for her; it's been a long time since this morning, and Carl won't be bringing any more videos. I'm going to have to go there myself later to change the video cassette and to check on her. Shoving a dildo garnished with razor blades into a woman's vagina myself will be less satisfying. Making someone else do it, now that's worth the candle. But getting my own hands dirty was never part of the game plan.

But there's no other way out. Left to her own devices, she'll take too long to die. They'll have found where I'm keeping her long before that happens. And even though there's nothing there to point the finger at me, I'd prefer her to be dead when they get to her.

Of course, there might be more pleasure to be had in her staying alive .. . Watching her struggle with the damage my power has inflicted might just offer something rather special to savour. It's possible that would amuse me while I look for another monkey to train."

Yes. Perhaps for once the exercise of mercy might be a more entertaining route to take.

But first I want to see her suffer some' more.

The immaculate cream carpet continued throughout the upper floor of the house. The room straight ahead was clearly the main bedroom. Although it was as perfectly ordered as the living room no clothes thrown over chairs, bed neatly made, dressing table as organized as Dr. Vernon's instrument tray in the pathology lab it wasn't what he'd expected. Somehow, though the overall effect managed to be sterile, this was undoubtedly intended to be a boudoir. Decorated in peaches and cream, the curtains matching the bed linen, the room contained more flounces and frills than Tony had ever seen outside the bedding department of John Lewis.

"Who are you trying to be here?" he asked out loud. "Who do you bring here? Are you trying to lull them into a false sense of security? Are you trying to kid them that you're not really a shark?" He walked over to the chest of drawers and, feeling uncomfortably like the sort of sexual pervert that ended up as his patient, he slid open the top drawer. It was crammed with excessively feminine lingerie of the kind Tony had only ever seen in expensive shops and then only in occasional glimpses. But even here, order prevailed. Bras on one side of the drawer, briefs that deserved their name on the other. He gingerly moved his hand among the lace and silk. Nothing untoward met his fingers.

The next drawer contained carefully folded T-shirts, many of them silk, and an assortment of hosiery. The bottom drawer was packed with sweaters. He closed it, having found nothing except clothes.

He looked over at the bed. Kingsize, traditional iron bedstead painted cream. It was, Tony thought, a measure of his intellectual investment in perversion that he could never contemplate such a bed without automatically thinking of bondage. On either side there was a bedside table complete with lamp. It was impossible to tell which side Jan slept on.

He checked the drawer of the bedside table nearest the door. Empty. The other offered a couple of books of lesbian erotica, one with an S&M theme, a dildo and a small anal probe. Nothing very remarkable, he thought. "Of course, I could be wrong about you. It does run counter to the probabilities," he muttered. "And if I am, that could be very embarrassing." He shut the drawer and looked around purposefully.

One wall of the room appeared to consist solely of doors. Tony tried the first and found himself inside a small en suite shower room. Not a hiding place in sight. The next door opened into a walk-in wardrobe stretching the rest of the length of the room. He moved slowly along, flicking through the clothes. Suits, trousers, jackets, blouses, a couple of formal evening dresses. Everything clean and ironed, some items still in their dry-cleaning bags. He got down on his knees to look behind the shoes. She had what he thought Carol would find a depressing penchant for cowboy boots.

Probing among the boots, his fingers brushed against the coolness of metal. Scrabbling under the footwear, he discovered a metal file case pushed back into a recess in the wall. "Bingo," he breathed. He pulled it out into the light and tried the remaining key he'd had cut.

The lock turned with the smoothness of frequent use. Hoping for more than a stash of porn, Tony opened the lid.

Carol stood on the landing in Grove Terrace, watching the SO COs work their tedious magic. She could hear Stacey's voice floating down from the floor above.

"How well did you know Carl Mackenzie?"

Then a woman replying, "I wouldn't say I knew him. We'd speak on the stairs, that sort of thing. But that's as far as it went. He wasn't the full shilling, poor lad."

"Did you ever see other people coming and going from his flat?"

"Can't say I noticed anybody. A proper Billy No-Mates, that was Carl. Eager to please, but not the sort you'd want following you round."

"And did you hear anything this afternoon?"

"Not me, love. I was watching the telly."

Kevin walked up from the floor below. He shook his head. "Nobody heard a thing."

Carol sighed. "They really didn't, or they conveniently didn't?"

"I think they were telling the truth," he said despairingly. "There's a little old lady downstairs, she'd love to have heard or seen something. She hasn't had this much excitement since the Boer War."

"You know, Kevin, if Carl Mackenzie killed himself, I'll apply for a transfer to Traffic. Get the uniforms to search the bins."

"The bins? What are we looking for?"

"Look at the bed. What's wrong with this picture?"

Kevin looked but he couldn't see past the body steadily cooling on the soiled sheets. He shrugged.

"There's no pillow. Can you sleep without a pillow, Kevin?"

The penny dropped. "A pillow with a hole in the middle."

Sam Evans was fed up. He wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be doing. Jan Shields had marshalled half a dozen of them back down to Temple Fields to go over what was, as far as he was concerned, old ground. They were ordered to carry out another canvass of the area immediately surrounding the bin where the transmitter pack had been found. They'd dispersed on their rounds and he hadn't seen Shields since. He'd knocked on the doors assigned to him, asked the same questions, logged the same negative responses. He decided to have a quick pit stop in Stan's Cafe. The coffee was terrible, but the atmosphere was marginally less depressing than that inside the police station. As he walked down the street towards the greasy spoon, he saw Honey on the kerb, touting for trade. "Hey, girl, how're you doing?" he said easily.

"Hi, Sammy," she said. "Crap, actually. You lot are killing the trade."

"Fancy a coffee?" He'd thought she had something for him in the pub, but Jan Shields' arrival had closed her down tight as a drum. Maybe he could loosen her up again. "You buying?" "I'm buying."

"In that case, you can treat me to an all-day breakfast." He grinned. He'd always admired bottle. "Come on, then." A few minutes later, Honey was attacking a monstrous fry-up with all the gusto of a starving dog. Mouth full of sausage and egg, she mumbled, "Brilliant, Sammy."

"It'll kill you, that shit," he said censoriously. "Clog up your arteries, make you fat."

She shook her head. "I never put a pound on, me." Evans gave her a cynical look. "Can't imagine why that would be."

She winked. "All that exercise." "Not to mention the recreational drugs .. ." She looked disappointed. "Aw, Sammy, don't spoil it." "I'm a cop, Honey, I can't help it." She acknowledged his reply with a sad little twist of her mouth. "You know the other day when we were having a chat?" he continued. She nodded. "I had the feeling you were going to tell me something. And then DS Shields turned up and you did one."

Honey swallowed, buying herself some time, considering. Then she said, "She disgusts me, that one."

He shrugged. "She's only doing her job. Just like me."

Honey gave him a disbelieving look. "Is that what it's called?"

This wasn't going quite where he'd expected but Evans was nothing if not a good listener, especially when it meant adding to his store of knowledge. "Meaning what?" he prompted.

Honey cast her eyes upwards. "Come on, Sammy. Don't tell me you don't know about the Vice and their freebies?"

At first, he didn't get it. "Are you saying Jan Shields is on the take?"

She picked a piece of bacon rind from between her small, feral teeth. "Not like you mean it. Not in money." She understood his stillness. She knew he wanted her to spell it out, as if that would somehow make it easier to believe. "She takes it in sex. She makes some of the girls have sex with her."

Evans didn't much like Jan, but he thought she was a good cop. She'd been the one who'd spotted the Tim Golding photo. And she'd worked her arse off trying to find Paula. He didn't want to think of her in the light Holly was shining. "Come off it, Honey," he protested. "That's just people taking a pop at a cop because she's an easy target."

Honey put down her fork and knife. She looked both serious and miserable. "She's had me. Face down on a table, rough and ready. She fisted me. I couldn't walk straight for days. Another time, she fucked me in the arse with a Coke bottle. Do you have any idea how fucking scary that is, someone ramming a glass bottle into you? That's what your precious detective sergeant likes."

He recognized truth when he heard it, but he still didn't want to accept it. "I'm finding this hard to believe, Honey."

Her mouth twisted in a bitter line. "Which is why she's been getting away with it for so long. You lot don't want to hear this kind of shit about one of your own."

"You should have made a complaint."

"Yeah, right. Like anyone would believe that a nice lady cop would hit on a slag like me." She picked up her cutlery and attacked a slice of fried bread, dipping it in her egg yolk and crunching angrily.

"Has this happened with other women?"

"Only a few, as far as I can make out. She's choosy. And we know to keep our mouths shut unless we want to be banged up on a charge. We all hate her. She drools all over us, makes us kiss her. And, like, that's the thing we don't do with punters, you know? It's sick. And you never know when she's going to be back for more. Out of the blue, suddenly she's there." She gave him a sidelong glance, knowing she was about to deliver the killer punch. "That's why we call her the Creeper."

He stared at her, open-mouthed and horrified.

"See, I knew you wouldn't believe me," she said with a kind of sad triumph.

"What did you call her?" Evans strained to get the words out.

"The Creeper. It's what the girls she screws call her."

He gave her the standard-issue policeman's hard stare. "This better be the truth, Honey," he said, pushing his chair back.

"I got no reason to lie about it, Sammy," she said huffily.

Evans jumped to his feet and threw some money on the table. "Right, Honey. On your feet. You're coming with me." He marched her protesting to the door, pulling out his mobile as he went.

The first thing out of the file case was a thin stack of photographs. Tony recognized the top one immediately. Jackie Mayall lay spreadeagled on the bed where she'd died. But there wasn't as much blood as he remembered. In the following two pictures, more blood appeared. The final two shots showed crime-scene tape at the edges; in one a SOCO stood by the bed with a ruler in his hand. Tony's stomach turned over as he realized what he was looking at. "Official crime-scene photos .. . and very unofficial ones."

With a gesture of disgust, he put them aside and carried on looking. There were more photos, this time of Sandie Foster. They fell into the same two categories: official and unofficial. Under the photos he found a handful of DVD-ROMs. He leaned back on his heels and stared at them. "Memories," he said softly.

He'd been right. It had taken him far too long to get there, but he'd been right. He thought about phoning Carol, but the need to know, to be certain was stronger. He gathered everything together and retraced his steps down to the dining-room table.

He sat down in front of the laptop and pressed the button to open the CD/DVD drive. Empty. He was about to insert one of the disks when it occurred to him that it might be worth checking out which websites Jan had book marked He clicked on her com ms program, then on the icon for favourite places. Her bank. The BBC website. Amazon. Something called lesbiout.co.uk. And one called simply 'webcam'. "Oh shit," he said.

Hurriedly, he checked there was a cable connecting the laptop to a phone line, then he clicked the icon to get online. Against the background sound of modems warbling to each other, he spread out the photographs on the table around him. A bright voice said, "Welcome. You have mail."

Ignoring the prompt to access the incoming mail box, Tony clicked on the webcam link. The screen went black. Then it filled with a blurred image. Seconds later, the pixels shunted into place and with pinprick clarity Paula Mclntyre appeared on the screen. "Holy fuck," Tony said.

At first, he couldn't tell if she was dead or alive. There was no blood, which was a mercy. He frowned at the screen, trying to work out how to control the image, whether he could zoom in or not, whether there was any way to find where the image was coming from. He was so intent on what he was doing, he completely missed the drift of headlights up the cul-de-sac and the sound of a car engine cutting out only yards from the house.

She knew as soon as she turned into her street that something was seriously wrong. Her house was a blaze of light, upstairs and down. But there were no cars in sight, other than the ones she knew belonged to her neighbours. For a moment, she considered making a run for it. She'd have a head start and she had plans in place for precisely this contingency. However, she reasoned, if it was her colleagues who were on to her, she would have picked up something unusual in the radio traffic. But all afternoon, the police radio in her car had spat out the usual crap. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. She'd heard the call for support when Carl's body had been found and was glad she'd had the foresight to get rid of him before the fingerprint evidence came back. Besides, if it was her lot, Jordan the ice maiden would have made damn sure that she was well out of the way during the search, performing some pointless task on the other side of town.

So if it wasn't the cops inside the house, it had to be Tony Hill. She'd sensed something this morning in the car with him, but she'd thought she was being paranoid. Now, it seemed her instinctual nervousness might have been justified. Sudden realization dawned. He must have lifted her keys and had them copied. She swore under her breath. That's what had happened earlier. She hadn't been losing it at all. He'd tricked her. Outrage swelled inside her and she knew she wasn't about to run. Nobody got one over on her. Nobody.

If it was Hill and he was there alone, she could finesse the whole problem out of existence. Get rid of him, move her souvenirs where they couldn't be found, show terrible remorse at killing the psychologist she'd mistaken in the dark for a burglar. At the most, she'd do a couple of years.

If that was going to play, however, she'd need to make it look like she'd come home as normal. About thirty yards from her house, she cut the lights and switched off the engine, coasting into her drive on momentum and habit. She got out of the car, closing the door with the gentlest of clicks. From the darkness of the drive, she could see the length of her living room.

There he was, the cheeky bastard. Sitting at her dining table, using her laptop like he was Goldilocks and she was the three bears. Well, there was no doubt about it now. She was going all the way.

She crept round to the back of the house, ducking beneath the dining-room window as she passed. She leaned against the wall by the back door, raking through her bag to find the back door key, which she always kept loose, just in case she lost the rest of her keys. A cautious planner, that's what she was. And why she should have realized earlier that Carl wasn't her only problem.

She slipped the key into the lock and turned it with infinitesimal care. The click as the tumblers released was barely audible. She kicked off her shoes, pushed down on the handle and inched the door open. Gingerly she stepped through the gap and stood listening. She felt wonderfully alive, buzzing with the knowledge that she was in control, and he had no fucking idea. Through the half-open door between kitchen and dining area, she could hear the tap of keys and the click of the track-pad buttons.

So taut was she that she physically jerked when the sound of his voice cut through the silence. "Where are you? Come on, tell me. Where are you, Paula?" Her heart rate dropped back as soon as she realized he was talking to the image on the screen, not to her.

She took a deep, silent breath. In the dim city glow bleeding in through the kitchen window, she could see the outline of her neat, sterile, modern kitchen. One of the few women she'd brought back to the house to fuck had commented that it looked like somewhere serious micro waving went on. She hadn't been invited back a second time. By the cooker, the knife block sat, its contents seldom used and still factory sharp. She reached out and gently removed a long-bladed boning knife, then walked soundlessly towards the dining-room door.

Carol reached out her free hand to the wall, unconsciously supporting herself against the weight of the information coming down the phone at her. "Are you sure, Sam?" she said, knowing in her gut that he was right, that Tony had been right, that this was the worst of all possible scenarios for Paula Mclntyre. The knowledge wormed its way into her brain, making sense of the loose connections that had been troubling her for days.