hapter 37

Fiona looked at the clock on her office wall. Breakfast that morning had been tense, in spite of both their efforts to maintain something like normal life in the face of the fear that flickered below the surface. She had extracted an assurance from Kit that he wouldn't open the door to strangers, nor would he go out alone, not even for his usual lunchtime walk on the Heath. She could see he was already chafing under these restrictions, but at least he could salvage his pride by telling himself he was doing it to mollify Fiona rather than out of cowardice.

The worst part of it was the not knowing what was going on. She almost wished she had been able to be sanguine about Steve's refusal to offer Kit any formal protection. At least then they'd be in communication and she would be aware of how the investigation was progressing. But she couldn't bring herself to forgive his failure to stick his neck out for the sake of friendship. So she would somehow have to deal with her unaccustomed ignorance.

She glanced at the clock again. This was pointless. She was achieving nothing sitting here. The paper she was supposed to be revising before submitting it for publication stared accusingly at her from the computer screen, as neglected as a piece of waste ground In her heart, Fiona knew she couldn't concentrate in the office. If she took the paper home, she could at least hope to get the work done there. Nothing would happen to Kit while they were in the house together.

The decision made, Fiona was taking her jacket off its peg when her phone rang. She resisted the temptation to ignore it and crossed the office to pick it up on the fourth ring. "Hello, Fiona Cameron," she said.

"Dr. Cameron? This is Victoria Green from the Mail. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?"

"I don't think so."

"If I could just explain what it's about?" The journalist's voice was warm and ingratiating.

"There's no point, because I'm not interested. If you bother to look at your cuttings library, you'll see I don't do interviews."

"It's not an interview we want," Green said quickly. "We'd like you to write an article for us. I know you write articles, I've read you in Applied Psychology Journal."

"You read APJT Fiona said, her surprise holding her back from putting the phone down.

"I have a degree in psychology. I've read your work on crime linkage. That's how I knew you were the best person to talk to about writing an article for us."

"I don't think so," Fiona reiterated.

"You see," Green continued undaunted, T've got a theory that Drew Shand and Jane Elias were murdered by the same person. And I think Georgia Lester might be the next victim. I'd like you to apply your crime linkage work to these cases to see if I'm right."

Fiona replaced the receiver without responding. The word was out. It wouldn't be long before others jumped on Victoria Green's bandwagon. If she'd had any doubts about going home to Kit, they had ended with the phone call.

The man with the face like a chicken shrugged. "Meat's meat, in nit Once it's skinned and off the bone, your human flesh isn't going to look much different from a piece of beef or venison."

Sarah Duvall sighed. "I appreciate that."

"And it's huge, the market. I can't begin to count the number of fridges and chill cabinets and freezers in that place. It's not like walking into your local butcher's shop, you know. There's twenty-three trading units in the East Building and another twenty-one in the West." His dark eyes glittered and his beaky nose twitched in a sniff.

Sergeant Ron Daniels smiled benevolently at the small man. Working as officer in charge of the Smithfield Market policing team, he'd got to know Darren Green, the traders' representative, over a period of years. He knew that behind his aggression was a reasonable man, provided he was accorded sufficient respect. "Nobody appreciates that more than me, Darren. We've got a big job on our hands and that's why we've come to you."

Duvall turned to the Home Office pathologist. "Professor Blackett, what's your take on this?"

The balding, middle-aged man sitting behind her looked up from his notebook and frowned. "It is problematic, as Mr. Green points out. But on your suggestion, I read the relevant section of Georgia Lester's book. And if we're dealing with a copycat killer, then the cuts of meat he would end up with are going to vary from the standard butchery cuts in several key details."

"It's still just going to look like meat, though, in nit Darren Green insisted.

Tom Blackett shook his head. "Trust me, we can spot the difference." He flicked his pad over to a clean page and began to draw. "Human beings are bipeds, not quadrupeds. Our shoulders and our upper leg muscles are very different from those of a cow or a deer. Particularly the leg. If you take a transverse section through the middle of the thigh, taking off the head of the femur, which is far too obvious to leave in place ..." He pointed to the rough sketch he'd made. Darren Green leaned over and looked suspiciously at it. "You've got the rounded outline of the shaft of the femur here. In front of it, you've got the anterior group of muscles, the rectus fe moris and the vasti. Behind it you've got the posterior group, the adduct or magnus and the hamstrings. And here, on the inside, you've got the medial group of muscles, which is where most of the blood vessels and nerves are also situated. The chances are you're also going to have a lot more fat than on the average animal carcass."

Green's face broke into a smile as understanding dawned. "Right," he said. "That arrangement of meat, it's nothing like what you'd get on a leg of beef or venison."

"And of course, a joint of human beef is going to be a lot smaller than the corresponding cut from a cow or a deer," Blackett continued. "Which is something any butcher would recognize at once, I presume?"

"I dare say," Green said cautiously. "But even if a group of us do help you out with this search, it's still going to take forever to cover the ground. We'll never get it done and dusted before the morning's trading begins. Don't forget, it's not like a shop that opens at nine o'clock. We do most of our business between four and seven in the morning."

If we were talking about searching the whole market, I'd have to agree with you, Mr. Green," Duvall said. "But we do have information that will narrow the targets down considerably. We're looking for freezers that are not in everyday use. Ones that are for more long-term storage. Probably ones that are locked up. That's why we need the full cooperation of your members. We don't want to have to go around breaking into their property. So what I need you to do is to contact everyone who has a unit in the market and ask them to make sure they'll have staff on the spot tonight who can give us access to all their storage. And that they'll be there all night if need be."

"Bloody hell," Green protested. "That's a tall order."

"If you don't have the resources to do it, I can second some of the market police officers to you. But it has to be done," Duvall said, her voice adamant as her face was implacable.

"They're not going to like this," he complained.

Daniels took over. "We're not doing this for fun, Darren. This is a very serious matter."

"That's right," Duvall said grimly. "Now, I need you and your volunteers at Snow Hill police station for nine o'clock so Professor Blackett can give you a full briefing on what you'll be looking for, and so you can be assigned to the officers you'll be assisting. I intend to commence operations at ten precisely. I have no desire to disrupt your night's trading. But that depends on you and your members. I suggest you get on with it." The smile on her lips did nothing to diminish the force of the command. With muttered complaints, Green left the others.

"What do you think, Ron? Will it work?" Duvall asked.

The big man nodded. "I think you'll get all the cooperation you need. I'll have a word with Darren, make sure he lets people know that the traders aren't under any suspicion at this point."

Duvall nodded. "You seem very confident that you can spot what we're after, Professor," she said.

"If I'd sounded as dubious as I feel, your Mr. Green would have been as obstructive as possible. It's not easy to identify human flesh by sight, Chief Inspector. It's simple enough to run tests to confirm it once we have something suspicious, but whether we find anything depends entirely on how good your killer is." Blackett paused, then raised his eyebrows. "Always providing he exists."

Chapter 38

Detective Constable Neil McCartney was tired. Watching Francis Blake for twelve hours a day was a killer assignment, in no small part because the man led such a bloody boring life. Sometimes he wouldn't see hide nor hair of his target for the whole shift. At least Neil had swapped over on to days, ten till ten, which was slightly less desperate than the long nights when all Blake seemed to do was watch videos and sleep. But Neil knew this was only a brief respite. With Joanne stuck in the office bashing the computer, it wouldn't be long before John was hassling to get the day shift again. It wasn't unreasonable he had a wife and young kids who didn't want to be quiet all day because daddy was sleeping.

That could have been his life, Neil thought with an edge of sourness. If he hadn't been stupid enough to choose the wrong woman. He'd met Kim on the job. She was bouncy and vivacious, the life and soul of every party. Not the sort he'd normally have gone for, being a quiet sort of bloke, really. He'd thought the looks he got were envy. It was only a long time later that he realised they were pity. He was her alibi for her affair with one of the custody sergeants, the perfect distraction to fool the man's wife at every police function. And the best possible alibi was marriage.

At first, his bitterness had been turned on himself. But there was no point in being sour about Kim; she was the woman she was. So his search for somewhere to put the blame had ended with the job.

He could so easily have turned into another rancorous copper, taking out his spite on those he came into contact with professionally. But the transfer he'd sought had taken him into plain clothes and on to Steve Preston's team. And that had saved him. It had reminded him of why he'd joined the police in the first place. Putting villains away, that was what it was all about, and to hell with the office game-playing. That was how Steve ran his squad, and officers who couldn't live with that didn't last long.

So now Neil's loyalty, first and last, lay with his boss. That was why, however tedious the surveillance got, he was prepared to stick it out. The fiasco of Francis Blake's entrapment and subsequent trial had only stiffened his resolve. That was what happened when politics got in the way of policing, and he was as determined as his boss to set the record straight and catch Susan Blanchard's killer. So he stifled his doubts about the point of what he was doing and stuck to Blake like chewing gum.

He yawned. The rain drizzled relentlessly down his windscreen. It seemed a fitting counterpoint to the lack of excitement in his and Francis Blake's lives. If he had the kind of money that Blake had trousered over his newspaper deal, Neil was bloody sure he'd be living somewhere with a bit more class than this. No two ways about it, this was a dump.

The flat Blake had rented on his release was less than a mile from his old place in King's Cross. The new place was in a busy but faintly seedy street off the Pentonville Road, the sort of place where the locals were off-duty hookers, the hopelessly unemployed, the elderly poor and the mentally ill. The best you could say about it was that it was handy for public transport. Halfway up the road, some uninspired architect had designed a utilitarian block in grey brick that looked like it had been jerry built in the sixties. It was cut off from the neighbouring terraced houses by a service lane that ran up either side and round the back. On the ground floor were half a dozen shop units a news agent an off-licence, a betting shop, a mini market a kebab shop and a minicab office. The two floors above were divided into flats, and it was in one of these drab boxes on the second floor that Blake had taken up residence. It depressed Neil just thinking about it.

Not only would he be living somewhere with a bit more class than this, he'd be doing something a bit more exciting than the occasional trip to the bookies or the video shop round the corner.

From what Neil could see, Blake might as well still have been locked up in the Scrubs.

A couple of miles away, Steve Preston and Terry Fowler were having a very different evening. For once, Steve had managed to drag himself away from work with time to spare, leaving Joanne ploughing her way through apparently endless criminal record searches. Neil had had nothing of significance to report, so there was no specific professional worry niggling at the back of his mind to distract him from the company.

Terry had been five minutes early, claiming pathological punctuality made it impossible for her to be fashionably late for anything. "I'm always the one who arrives at parties while the hosts are still in the shower," she'd said. "Makes for an interesting start to the evening."

Steve didn't mind in the least. He was perfectly happy with an extra five minutes in the bar to enjoy admiring her. Terry was wearing a simple knee-length black dress in some material he didn't recognize that seemed to flow and shimmer around her body whenever she moved. For someone who'd been languishing in the doldrums for what he now realized was far too long, Steve allowed himself warily to wonder if his luck had truly changed as much as it appeared. Careful, he cautioned himself. You know as soon as your emotions are engaged you build too much too fast. Take it easy, don't let her see how much you need this. Just for once, treat your personal life with the same circumspection you bring to building a case.

But nothing happened over dinner to change that feeling of overwhelming luck. He was aware of being an engaging companion, and she seemed more than willing to appreciate him. The conversation never lurched into one of those awkward silences while someone figured out what to talk about next. They'd swapped stories, made each other laugh, started to sketch the details of their lives. For a man accustomed to containing himself in a private place for most of his waking hours, Steve was pleasantly surprised to find that Terry's apparent candour had the knack of making him open up. For the first time since he'd met Fiona all those years ago at university, he recognized a woman who allowed him to relax, who made no demands other than that he be himself. Ironic, intelligent and apparently lacking all pretension, Terry seemed to Steve to be as attractive inside as she was on the outside. He couldn't for the life of him figure out what she'd seen in him. When she left him at one point to go to the toilet, he found himself watching the door, eager for her return as he hadn't been with anyone for years. I feel like a teenager again, he thought, bemused. This is insane, Preston. Put the brakes on.

All through dinner, Steve had kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it didn't. She didn't even demur when he insisted on paying for the meal. "You earn a lot more than me, sugar," she'd said with a casual shrug.

It was after ten when they emerged on Clerkenwell Green. A thin rain had started while they'd been inside so they huddled together under the awning to wait for a vacant taxi. The white neon of the restaurant's name cast its shadow on Steve's face, turning it into a chiaroscuro of planes and angles. Terry's haxr flared platinum in its glow. She snuggled into Steve and grinned up at him. "So, handsome," she said, 'did you put clean sheets on this morning?"

Steve laughed out loud. "Why? Did you?"

"In spite of the fact that I figure your place will be a lot more civilized than mine, yes, I did."

He shook his head, his smile crinkling the skin round his eyes. "OK, I'll own up to being presumptuous. Yes, I changed the sheets this morning." He squeezed her close.

In response, Terry shifted so that she was facing him. She stood on tiptoe and leaned into his body. She gripped his lapels and pulled his face down to hers. Then she kissed him. Long, languid and luxurious.

It was all the reply he needed. Any pretence at caution disappeared in the instantaneous heat of his desire for her. When they got back to his flat, for the first time in years, Steve unplugged the phone and turned off his pager. For tonight, there was nothing so urgent it couldn't wait until morning. Nothing except Terry, and that was more than enough.

Night in the city. A few years previously, the streets around Smithfield Market would have been deserted at this time of night. Tall grey buildings, blank-faced, turned the narrow streets into twisting canyons. The streetlights hardly seemed to cut the gloom. The market itself was closed, the vast Victorian glass, brick and iron construction under restoration.

But now, all that had changed. Bistros and brasseries, bars and restaurants had colonized the area, their bright lights spilling on to pavements and making the streets lively with patrons. Old buildings had been developed into luxury apartments for the new rich and Smithfield had reinvented itself as a brave attempt at the epitome of cool.

The market halls had been restored to their former glory. Even when it was closed for business which was how most people only ever saw it -it was an impressive sight. Tall elaborate wrought-iron railings stretched the length of the avenue dividing the East from the West Building, richly painted in grape-purple, dark-cyclamen and deep-aqua, with their details picked out in gold. From their midst, ornate cast-iron pillars sprouted, acanthus leaves flowing into cantilevered struts supporting flat canopies that sheltered the roadway from the rain.

The inside was a marriage of magnificent Victorian ironwork and relentlessly modern technology. Lorries carrying carcasses backed into special sealed loading bays to protect the meat from the elements, then the meat was loaded on to a mechanical meat rail system and delivered directly to the tailor-made trading units. Smaller boxed and crated deliveries were brought into temperature-controlled service corridors running either side of both buildings. It was a far cry from the old market system of porters rushing hither and thither with meat exposed to whatever airborne contamination came its way. It was a system that should have made the killer's job much harder.

Just before ten o'clock, Sarah Duvall's team arrived. Some came in unmarked cars, but most had walked the short distance from their briefing at Snow Hill police station. Duvall had been adamant that the operation should be kept as low-key as possible. The last thing she wanted was a squad of liveried police vans and cars lined up outside Smithfield late at night. Such a sight would inevitably alert the news media and once they had the sniff of a story, it wouldn't take them long to ferret out what was going on.

Darren Green had done his job well. The traders knew what was coming, and surprisingly few had complained about the potential disruption to the night's trading. Now the search was about to begin, it was Green's moment. His earlier irritation had given way to excitement and he was buzzing round the uniformed officers like a fly around uncovered meat, making sure they were all supplied with the overalls and headgear they needed to comply with the strict hygiene regulations.

Duvall surveyed the team before her. She'd managed to scramble together a dozen uniforms, half a dozen detectives, and four butchers who would assist the officers permanently based at the market in the search. Tom Blackett was there, along with two of his assistants from nearby Bart's. As they waited for the last stragglers to arrive, Blackett crossed to Duvall's side. "I'm amazed you got a warrant for this," he said. It was half a grumble.

"I called so many favours in on this that if I end up with egg on my face, I'm going to be in payback city for years."

"I can imagine. Not many magistrates would stick their neck out on something as tenuous as this." Blackett's smile was as cheerful as the drizzle that had just started to fall. "Let's hope we find something." He moved away to talk to his assistants.

Duvall cleared her throat. "Right, everybody. You all know what you're supposed to be doing once we get inside. Professor Blackett and his assistants will wait with me under the clock in Middle Street. If anyone finds anything at all suspicious, come to us at once and the pathologists will go with you and examine whatever it is you've found. Mr. Green?"

Barren stepped forward with a theatrical gesture that looked completely absurd. "This way," he announced.

"Good luck," Duvall called as the team filed in. She followed them as they fanned out to their allotted sections. "We'll need it," she added under her breath.

Chapter 39

For once, Kit was awake first. He shifted across the bed and wrapped his arms round Fiona, kissing the back of her neck. "Unnh," she groaned.

"I'm getting up now," he said. I'm going to make kedgeree for breakfast."

"Oh God," Fiona sighed. "Must you? Couldn't we just lie here and luxuriate in the afterglow for a while?"

Kit chuckled. "The afterglow was then. This is now. I can't think why, but I've woken up with an appetite. Get yourself out of bed, Dr. Cameron. Breakfast in ... oh, make it forty minutes." He peeled himself away from her with another kiss and jumped out of bed, pumped with energy. When it came to displacement activity, like most writers, Kit had turned it into a fine art.

Fiona listened to his receding footsteps, then dragged herself into a sitting position. She yawned, stretched her spine and got out of bed, flexing shoulders that had stiffened in the night. Too much tension, she told herself. Far too much tension. Not knowing what was happening in Sarah Duvall's investigation was a kind of torture. And given how she'd left things with Steve, she couldn't even use him as a way in.

If Georgia was dead, she needed to know. Her fear for Kit vibrated through her constantly now, and she couldn't be with him twenty-four hours a day. At least if they found Georgia's remains in the market, they could take steps to make him safer than he was now. And if she was wrong ... For once in her life, Fiona longed to be hopelessly, embarrassingly wrong. She wanted nothing more than to see Georgia's face smiling out of the morning papers, restored to Anthony's arms in one piece. She'd even forgive her for the anxiety she'd caused, if only it meant she could feel Kit was safe again. She didn't know how she was going to get through a normal day at work when her mind was so heavily occupied elsewhere.

Twenty minutes later she was showered, dressed and decently made up. More than that, she was awake. Over breakfast, they said little, allowing the radio to fill the silence. There were too many thoughts and fears rumbling in the background of their minds for idle chatter to be possible. Fiona finally pushed her plate away after two helpings. "That was wonderful," she said. "Not only a night to remember, but a morning as well." She stood up and reached for her briefcase.

"You're lucky to have me," he said, grinning wolfishly, then spoiling it with a wink.

"I know. And I plan to keep it that way. You will look after yourself today, won't you?" Fiona gave a nervous smile and stepped into his arms for a hug. "Take care," she said softly.

"Of course I'll take care. I've got a book to finish, love. I'll talk to you later." It was a promise he fully intended to keep.

Like a child on Christmas Eve, Steve had scarcely been able to sleep. What had happened between him and Terry thus far had left him feeling breathless and exhilarated. But the promise of what could follow had robbed him of all but the sketchiest of sleep. And yet he wasn't tired.

He leaned back on the pillows, stretching his arms over his head and arching his spine. Relaxing again, he rolled on his side to watch her. She was a sprawler, legs and arms extended like a giant starfish. Terry lay on her stomach, face turned towards him. Even with smudged make-up and sleep-distorted hair, he thought she was gorgeous. He felt dazzled and dazed in equal measure. His own body felt strange and new. He'd made more technically perfect love with a woman before, but last night technique had seemed irrelevant. He'd occupied his body entirely, not a scrap of himself available for scrutiny of what he was doing. There had been none of that sense of performing for someone else's benefit, or his own. Whatever had happened between him and Terry, it had consumed him as never before.

And it had been fun. They hadn't just burned up in the heat of passion, they'd found laughter as well. Steve had woken in the same familiar space, but he was looking at the morning with the eyes of an explorer. It was unnerving, almost frightening to find himself so thoroughly gripped by attraction. All his adult sophistication, all his professional shrewdness had left him unprepared and vulnerable, and he didn't know how to handle it.

Terry stirred, making a small indeterminate noise in the back of her throat. Her face twitched, eyebrows rising. Then she opened her eyes.

A

moment's disorientation, then her mouth spread in a self-satisfied grin. "Thank fuck it wasn't a dream," she said, gathering her limbs together and snuggling against him.

He rubbed his chin, bristled with overnight stubble, across the snarl of her hair, slipping his arms around her. "You academics have a real way with words."

"Ah, but actions speak louder than words, and I am definitely a woman of action," Terry countered, running her fingers down the defined muscles of his chest and across his ribs. She could feel him hard against her, and hooked one leg over his, languorously moving her hips towards him.

Steve groaned softly. "You're a morning person, then," he said, his voice roughening with arousal.

She pulled her head back and pouted. "You have a problem with that?" Her voice was as much of a tease as what her body was doing to his.

He drew her into his arms, her breasts warm against his chest. "Not unless you have to be somewhere in the next hour."

Sarah Duvall felt sick. She knew it had more to do with having had no sleep and too much coffee than with what she'd seen at Smithfield Market, but understanding didn't make her faint underlying nausea go away. Explaining to Anthony Fitzgerald exactly what he was going to have to identify at the morgue hadn't helped either. She almost wished that the killer had stuck more closely to the text. Then there would have been one less horror for them to face.

She sat grim-faced in the back of the car. But the immobility of her features disguised a mind that was racing. This case was messy in more ways than the obvious. It was going to produce potentially devastating media interest, which meant every move she and her team made would be under scrutiny not only from an army of hacks but also from a nervous hierarchy worried lest she should do or say the wrong thing.

And then there was Fiona Cameron. With this latest development, Fiona would no longer be the only person putting two and two together and coming up with a serial killer. It wasn't something Duvall wanted to acknowledge publicly, but she had no conviction that they could continue to maintain there was no connection between the deaths of Drew Shand, Jane Elias and Georgia Lester. Either way, it wouldn't be long before some bright and ambitious journalist remembered that Fiona lived with a crime writer. They'd be beating a path to her office, and while she believed Fiona was unlikely to go to the press off her own bat, Duvall had no idea how she would respond to a direct question from a journalist. And once the kite was in the air, there would be a stream of panicking thriller writers demanding police protection. It was a minefield. Especially if the media also found out that someone had been sending out death threats to crime writers.

And then there was the investigation itself. This morning had been a nightmare, but that was only the beginning. After the gruesome discovery just after midnight, she had tried to prevent the market from opening for trading less than four hours later. But Barren Green had argued vigorously that she was out of order. By no stretch of the imagination could she claim the whole market was a crime scene. It was obvious, he pointed out, displaying an intelligence and a steely determination she wouldn't have suspected him capable of, that whatever had been done had been done some time previously. Hundreds of people had been in and out of the market since then, and there was no chance of the police finding any traces of their quarry anywhere other than the immediate vicinity of the freezer in question.

His trump card had been to point out that the best way to make sure the police questioned every potential witness was to allow the market to function as normal. They could take names and addresses of everybody who turned up and maybe even begin their interviews.

It had been a smart suggestion, not least because it allowed Duvall to save face. So they'd sealed off the storage area and drafted in a small army of officers to make sure nobody entered Smithfield without providing contact details. Meanwhile, the SO COs had begun the painstaking task of examining every inch of the equipment store where the grisly discovery had been made.

So far, so bad. What made it even worse was that she was going to have to continue her liaison with the local police in Dorset. Whatever had happened to Georgia Lester might have ended up on her ground, but it had started on their patch. If there were going to be eyewitnesses, the chances were far higher that they'd turn them up down there. Much more likely that someone noticed something out of the ordinary in a remote country area than that one person with a load of meat would attract attention in Smithfield Market. Always provided the officers down there knew what the hell they were doing, she added automatically. Duvall had never been good at delegating authority even to her own team, but having to rely on another force for the core of an investigation was her idea of hell on a stick. Thus far, she'd not found anything specific to complain about in the work of her Dorset colleagues, but nevertheless she felt a general unease that they weren't moving sharply enough on the case. She'd have to set up a meeting, preferably down there so she could get a feel for where the initial abduction had taken place.

But that would have to wait. First, she owed Steve Preston the courtesy of filling him in on what his steer had led to, so she'd asked her driver to detour to New Scotland Yard before returning to her offices in Wood Street. She took the lift to his floor and stalked down the corridor, earning a few apprehensive looks from those she passed. A quick tap on the door, and straight in. Her first impression was that Steve had somehow squeezed a week's holiday into the last twenty-four hours. The lines of strain round his eyes had relaxed. Instead of the pallor of the senior officer overworking on an obsession, his skin had a healthy tone. His eyes were bright and the grin he greeted her with was light years away from the careworn smile of the previous day.

"You look as if your caseload is going better than mine," Duvall said, easing herself into the seat opposite him, aware that her suit was crumpled and she probably smelled stale as a pub ashtray.

Steve arched his eyebrows in surprise. "Must be an optical illusion. I hear you had a long night."

Duvall nodded, pushing her glasses up her nose. "And it's going to be a long day. I thought you'd like to know how it worked out."

"Appreciate it," Steve said, dipping his head in acknowledgement.

"We went in around ten and started turning the place upside down. Butchers and bobbies searching freezers and cold cabinets for dodgy-looking meat, traders screaming about their stock being interfered with, pathologists poking around anything that looked remotely abnormal. Which there wasn't much of, I have to say. The deal was, if we found anything seriously suspicious, the pathologists would take it back to the lab and test to see if it was human or not. I'd had the whole team briefed about what they should be looking for. But when it came to it, it was all academic."

"How do you mean?"

"Around midnight, the lads found a freezer at the back of a storage area. It was padlocked shut, and nobody would admit to having keys for it. According to the market supervisor's office, it had been put there a month ago by one of the traders who was supposed to arrange for it to be taken away. But he was adamant that it hadn't been locked, and two of his staff backed him up on that. So we took the bolt cutters to it. When they opened the door, it was full of packaged meat. Except for one shelf. All that contained was a parcel wrapped in black plastic bin liners." Duvall paused for effect, her expression a question.

Steve closed his eyes momentarily, his angular face pained. "The head?"

"The head. The butcher who was helping them dropped to the floor like a stunned ox. They had to take him to hospital to have the cut on his head stitched. He hit the corner of a work top on the way down."

"He'll be drinking off that for the rest of his life," said Steve. "I presume it was Georgia Lester's head?"

"No question. The husband's got to ID it later today, but there's no doubt about it."

"When are you making the announcement?"

Duvall sighed. "My boss wants to hold a press conference this afternoon. We're waiting for Dorset to confirm they can have someone here for it."

"Would you have any problem with me breaking the news to Kit Martin ahead of the press conference? He and Georgia were close, and he'll know that Fiona talked to us. It seems the least I can do."

Duvall frowned. "I'd rather we kept it in the family for as long as possible. I know he's your friend, but we can't afford a perception that one writer is getting preferential treatment from the police."

Steve shrugged. "It's your case, Sarah. To be honest, I was thinking about the long-term interests of the Yard as much as being considerate to Kit. Fiona Cameron is a good operator, and we've been denied her services for a while now because of our own bloody-minded stupidity. In spite of that, she came to us with her suspicions. I'd have liked the chance to do a bit of bridge-building here, maybe mended the breach. I'm sure it could have benefits for the City force too."

Duvall's wry smile concealed the burn of genuine annoyance. First Darren Green and now Steve Preston had out manoeuvred her in a matter of hours. It wasn't good for the spirit, especially a spirit as normally self-confident as Duvall's. "That's a good point, sir."

Steve recognized the use of his title as the signal to back down. "It's your decision, Sarah."

"I suppose it can't do any harm. Provided you make it clear to him that he mustn't talk to the media before we do." A last attempt to appear in control.

"I don't think it would even occur to him." Steve stood up and reached for his jacket. "She was his friend, Sarah. He's not that desperate for personal publicity."

She accepted the implied rebuke in silence and got to her feet. "I'll keep you posted," she said. "How's the Blanchard case going?"

Steve shrugged into his jacket and spread his hands wide. "Chasing what might be a lead. But it's an uphill struggle. I haven't got the resources to run a proper operation."

Duvall's smile was tight. "Keep it deniable, huh?" "Something like that. At least until we've got a cast-iron case." Duvall winced. "And I thought I was having a bad day." Steve opened the door and stood back to let her precede him. "Don't let it get you down. There's more to life than the job."

He walked down the corridor with the loose-limbed stride of a man out for a walk in the park. Duvall stared after him, the usual impassivity of her face defeated by her astonishment. Steve Preston, claiming there was more to life than the job? It was about as likely as Bart Simpson joining the diplomatic service.

Feeling somewhat shaken, Duvall headed for her car to return to her own office in Wood Street. It was clearly a day for surprises. Maybe Dorset would turn out to be the home of a new breed of super cops And maybe, just maybe, between them they would find Georgia Lester's killer before the media ate them alive. Stranger things could clearly happen.