arol slipped her hand away from his. "I'm glad you said that, because I'm starting to feel really edgy about uncovering hard evidence like this without any formal relationship to the investigation and no chain of custody on any of the physical evidence apart from

"It was in my handbag, Guv." I keep thinking about the defence counsel making mincemeat out of me on the witness stand. "And so, DCI Jordan, you expect the jury to believe that on this maverick quest for justice that only you, as opposed to the entire West Yorkshire force, could conduct you just happened upon the one piece of evidence that links my client to the murder of DC Bowman, a woman he met once for less than an hour? And what is it your brother does again, Ms. Jordan? Computer wizard, would that be a fair description? The sort of whizz kid who can make a digital image say anything he wants it to say?" We need to get this under

West Yorkshire's umbrella so they can construct the case properly."

"I know. There comes a point where you have to stop playing at being the Lone Ranger and we're there now. We need to cover your back as well. In the morning, I'll go straight over to the murder room. How does that sound?"

"It's not that I want to wash my hands of this, Tony," she said plaintively. "It's just that we're going to lose it if we don't bring it in."

He felt a rush of warmth towards her. "I couldn't have achieved any of this alone. When Jacko Vance faces a jury, it'll be thanks to you coming on board."

Before she could reply, her phone rang, splitting the closeness between them like an axe in wood. "Oh, shit," she said, grabbing the handset and hitting the button. "DCI Jordan."

The familiar voice of Jim Pendlebury came down the line. "We've got what looks like another one, Carol. Paint factory. It's gone up like a torch."

"I'll be there as soon as I can, Jim. Can you give me a locus?" Without being asked, Tony shoved pencil and paper across to her and she scribbled down directions. "Thanks," she said. She ended the call and closed her eyes momentarily. Then she hit the memory buttons and was connected to her communications room. "This is DCI Jordan. Has there been anything from DS Taylor or DC Earnshaw?"

"Negative, ma'am," came the anonymous voice. "They were supposed to be maintaining radio silence unless they had something specific to their stakeouts."

"Will you see if you can raise them and get them to meet me at the site of the paint factory fire on the Holt Industrial Estate. Thanks. Good night." She looked at Tony, perplexed. "It seems we were wrong," she said.

"The arsonist?"

"He's struck again. But neither Tommy Taylor nor Di Earnshaw radioed in, so it looks as if it was neither of our suspects." She shook her head. "Back to square one, I guess. I'd better get over there and see what's going on."

"Good luck," Tony said as she pulled on her mac.

"It's you that'll need the luck, talking round Wharton and Mccormick," she said as he followed her down the hall. On the doorstep, she turned and impulsively put a hand on his arm. "Don't beat'

yourself up about Shaz." She leaned into him and kissed his cheek.

"Concentrate on beating up Jack the Lad."

Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a shiver of her scent in the night air.

Above the blur of sodium and neon, it was a clear, starry night. From his eyrie on top of the Holland Park house, Jacko Vance stared out across the London night and imagined the Northumberland stars. There was a loose end, the only possible strand that could unravel and leave him stripped of his protective colouring. It was time for Donna Doyle to die.

He hadn't actually had to kill one for a long time now. It wasn't the killing he enjoyed. It was the process. The disintegration of a human being through the degradation of pain and infection. One had been defiant. She had refused to eat or drink or to use the chemical toilet.

She'd been a challenge, but she hadn't lasted long. She had failed to consider the infective possibilities of piss and shit all over the floor. All she'd been thinking about was making herself too disgusting for him to touch, and she'd failed in that, too.

But he'd have to get rid of this particular Jillie soon. Her existence had been worrying him, a constant itch like a fleabite under a waistband. But while the police had been sniffing around after Shaz Bowman's death, he hadn't wanted to make an untoward move. An unscheduled dash for Northumberland would have been suspicious. The swift visit he had made hadn't been long enough to deal with the bitch properly. Then there had been Tony Hill's involvement to consider. Did the man have anything or was he just trying to rattle him into doing precisely the one thing that would expose him?

Either way, she had to go. That she might still be alive was a possibility that put him in mortal danger. He should have disposed of her on the night he killed Bowman, but he'd been afraid that his movements might come under too close scrutiny for comfort. Besides, he'd been too exhausted to have been certain of making a proper job of it.

He'd just have to rely on the invisibility of her hiding place, entombed beneath the stone flags. The only people who knew about the old crypt were the two builders he'd hired to install the perfectly engineered opening. Twelve years before, people had still believed in the nuclear threat. His talk of wanting to create a bomb shelter

had gone down as merely eccentric among the locals. It would, he felt certain, be long forgotten.

Nevertheless, she had to go. Not tonight. He was filming early in the morning and he needed what sleep his apprehensions would allow him. But in a day or two, he could slip away overnight and see to the girl.

He'd have to make the most of it. It would have to be a little while before he could indulge himself again. A thought flickered into his mind. If he was ever going to feel safe again, perhaps Tony Hill needed to be taught a lesson more personal than Shaz Bowman. Jacko Vance gazed across the city and wondered if there was a woman in his life. He'd remember to ask his wife in the morning if Hill had said anything over dinner about a partner.

It had been no hardship killing Shaz Bowman. A repetition with Tony Hill's girlfriend could only be easier.

Hands thrust deep into the pockets of her mac, collar turned up against the harsh estuary wind, Carol Jordan stared stonily at the still smoking ruin of the paint factory. Her vigil was already three hours old, but she wasn't ready to leave yet. Fire officers, their distinctive yellow helmets smudged with greasy residue, moved in and out of the fringes of the building. Somewhere inside that creaking shell, some of them were trying to penetrate to the seat of the fire. Carol was beginning to accept that she didn't need the evidence of their eyes to know why Di Earnshaw hadn't responded to the control room's radio messages telling her to come to the fire site.

Di Earnshaw had been there already.

Carol heard a car draw to a halt behind her, but she didn't turn her head. A rustle of the crime scene tapes, then Lee Whitbread moved into her line of sight, proffering a carton of burger joint coffee. "I thought you could probably do with this," he said.

She nodded and took the brew wordlessly. "No news, then?" he asked, his normally eager expression apprehensive.

"Nothing," she said. She flipped off the polystyrene lid and raised the cup to her lips. The coffee was strong and hot, surprisingly good.

"There's been nothing at the station, neither," Lee said, cupping his hands round his mouth to light a cigarette. "I bobbed round her house, just to check, like, that she hadn't knocked off and gone home, but there's no sign. Bedroom curtains are still shut, so maybe she's got her head down and earplugs in?" Like every cop, his occupational pessimism was always tempered with hope when it appeared that a colleague was in line for a police funeral.

Carol couldn't bring herself to share even the fragile hope of earplugs.

And if she knew Di Earnshaw wasn't the sort to go on the missing list, Lee must be doubly sure that his fellow DC was out of action for good.

"Have you seen DS Taylor?" she asked.

Lee hid his expression behind his hand as he smoked furiously. "He says she never called in. He's back at the station, seeing if anything comes up there."

"I hope he's coming up with something a little more imaginative than that," Carol said grimly.

Three figures emerged from the dark hulk of the factory and pulled the breathing apparatus from their mouths. One detached himself from the other two and walked towards them. A few feet away from her, Jim Pendlebury came to a halt and pulled off his helmet. "I can't tell you how sorry I am, Carol."

Carol's head tilted back, then dropped in a tired nod. "No doubt, I suppose?"

"There's always room for doubt until they've done the business down the path. lab. But we reckon it's a female, and there's what looks like a melted down radio next to the body." His voice was soft with sympathy.

She looked up at his compassionate expression. He knew what it was like to lose people he was nominally responsible for. She wished he could tell her how long it would take before she could look herself in the mirror again. "Can I see her?"

He shook his head. "It's still too hot in there."

Carol exhaled, a short, sharp sigh. "I'll be in my office if anyone wants me." She dropped the carton of coffee, turned away and ducked under the tapes, hurrying blindly in the direction of her car. Behind her, the coffee pooled on the Tarmac. Lee Whitbread flicked his cigarette butt into it, watching it fizz depressingly before dying. He looked up at Jim Pendlebury. "Me too. We've got a fucking cop killer to nail now."

Colin Wharton shuffled the pile of video stills together then leaned across and ejected the tape from the video recorder in the training suite that Tony's team had abandoned what felt like half a lifetime ago.

Avoiding Tony's eye, he said, "It proves nothing. OK, some body else was driving Shaz Bowman's car back from London. It could be anybody behind that disguise. You hardly see anything of the guy's face, and these computer enhancements ... I don't trust them, and juries are worse. By the time fucking Rumpole the defence brief's finished, they assume anything that's come from a computer's been doctored to make it show what we want it to show."

"What about the arm? You can't doctor that. Jacko Vance has a prosthesis on his right arm. The man putting the petrol in never uses that arm at all. It's really noticeable," Tony pressed.

Wharton shrugged. "There could be all sorts of reasons for that. Could be that the man in question is left-handed. It could be that he'd hurt his arm in a struggle to overpower Bowman. It could even be that he knew about that daft bee Bowman had in her bonnet about Jacko Vance, and he decided to play on that. Punters know about video cameras now, Dr. Hill. Vance works in the business -do you really think he's not going to have thought about cameras?"

Tony ran a hand through his hair, gripping the ends as if he were holding on to his temper. "You've got Vance coming off the motorway at Leeds in his own wheels at the crucial time. Surely that's too much of a coincidence?"

Wharton shook his head. "I don't think so. The man has a cottage in Northumberland. He does all that volunteer work up there. OK, the A1 might be the more direct route, but the M1's a faster road, and it's easy enough to pick up the A1 north of the city. He might even have decided he wanted fish and chips at Bryan's on the road," he added with a pale attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

Tony folded his arms as if this would hold his dark anger inside. "Why won't you take this seriously?" he asked.

"If Simon Mcneill wasn't on the run, we might not assume everything you produce is tainted," Wharton said angrily.

"Simon has nothing to do with this. He did not murder Shaz Bowman.

Jacko Vance did. He is a cold-blooded killer. Everything I know about psychology tells me he killed Shaz Bowman because she threatened to bring his playhouse down about his ears. We've got pictures of him driving her car, she's nowhere in sight. Then in his car, covering the same ground. You've seen the psychological profile I prepared. What more do we have to do to persuade you to at least take a serious look at the man?"

The door behind him opened. DCS Dougal Mccormick thrust his massive torso into the room. His face was the dark red of a

man who'd had too much drink at lunchtime, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his fleshy cheeks. His light voice had dropped half an octave with the alcohol. "I thought you were barred from here unless we came for you?"

he added, stabbing a finger at Tony.

"I brought you the evidence to make a case against Shaz Bowman's killer," Tony said, his voice weary now. "Only Mr. Wharton doesn't seem to be able to grasp its significance."

Mccormick shouldered his way into the room. "Is that right? What have you got to say to that, Colin?"

"There's some very interesting motorway petrol station footage that's been computer-enhanced to show someone else driving Shaz Bowman's motor the afternoon she was killed." Silently, he spread the pictures out for Mccormick to check. The Chief Superintendent screwed up his dark eyes and studied them closely.

"It's Jacko Vance," Tony insisted. "He took her car back to Leeds, then made his way back to London before driving north again, presumably with Shaz in the boot."

"Never mind Jacko Vance," Mccormick said dismissively. "We've got a witness."

"A witness?"

"Aye, a witness."

"A witness to what, exactly?"

"A neighbour who saw your blue-eyed boy Simon Mcneill going round the back of Sharon Bowman's flat the night she was killed and didn't see him come back out front again. I've got a team taking his place apart even as we speak. We were looking for him already, but now there'll be a public announcement. Maybe you'd know where we could find him, eh, Dr. Hill?"

"You're the ones who disbanded my squad. How would I know where Simon is now?" Tony said, his voice a cold disguise for the frustration boiling inside.

"Ach, well, never mind. We'll be able to put our hand on him sooner or later. I've no doubt my boys will end up with something better to show a court than some videos your girlfriend's brother' started up." Seeing Tony's startled expression, he nodded grimly. "That's right, we know all about you and DCI Jordan. Do you really think we don't talk to each other in this job?"

"You keep telling me you're interested in evidence, not supposition," Tony said, hanging on to his self-possession by sheer force of will.

"For the record, DCI Jordan is not now nor has she ever

been my girlfriend. And my contention that Vance is the killer does not rely solely on the video evidence. I'm really not trying to teach you how to suck eggs, but at least look at the report I've drawn up. There's solid evidence there."

Mccormick picked the folder up from the table and flicked through it. "A psychological profile is not what I'd call evidence. Rumour, innuendo, jealous people getting their own back. That's what you're relying on here."

"His own wife says he's never slept with her. You're not telling me that's regarded as normal behaviour in West Yorkshire?"

"She might have all sorts of reasons for lying to you," Mccormick said dismissively, dropping the report with a soft rustle.

"He met Barbara Fenwick a couple of days before she was abducted and murdered. It's there, in Greater Manchester Police's murder file. One of his first ever charity events after the accident that destroyed his dream. We have photographs of him at later events with other girls who have disappeared and never been heard from again." Tony's voice was discouraged now. He'd failed to establish a rapport that would have allowed the two policemen to back down and consider what he had to say.

Worse than that, he seemed to have alienated Mccormick to the point where if he said '', Mccormick would retort, ''.

"A man like that meets hundreds of lassies a week and nothing ever happens to them," Mccormick said, sinking into a chair. "Look, Dr. Hill, I know it's hard to accept that you've had the wool pulled over your eyes, with you being a senior Home Office psychologist. But look at your man Mcneill. He was in love with the lassie, and she doesn't seem to have felt the same about him. We've only got his word for it that she was supposed to be meeting him for a drink in advance of their night out with the other two. He was seen going round the back of the house at about the time she could have died. We've got his fingerprints on the glass of the French windows. And now he's done a disappearing act. You've got to admit, it's a hell of a lot more persuasive than a stack of circumstantial evidence against a man who's a national hero.

What you're trying to do, Dr. Hill, it's understandable. I'd probably feel the same as you if it was one of my officers in the frame. But face it, you made a mistake. You picked a bad apple."

Tony stood up. "I'm sorry we can't see eye to eye on this. I'm particularly sorry because I think Jacko Vance is holding another teenage girl prisoner, and she might still be alive. Gentlemen, there are none so blind as those who will not see. I sincerely hope your blindness doesn't cost Donna Doyle her life. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

Wharton and Mccormick made no attempt to prevent him leaving. As he reached the door, Wharton said, "It would better for Mcneill if he didn't wait to be arrested."

"I don't think so, somehow," Tony said. Out in the car park, he leaned against the car door, head on folded arms. What the hell was left to do? The only senior police officer who believed his flimsy evidence was Carol, and she had no clout with West Yorkshire Police now, that much was clear. The evidence they still needed was the sort that came from TV reconstructions and nationwide press appeals; not resources available to a discredited psychologist, a pair of maverick cops from opposite ends of the country and a ragbag of junior detectives.

Conventional means had failed them. Now it was time to throw away the rule book. He'd done it before and it had saved his life. This time, it might just save someone else's.

Carol stood in the doorway of the squad room, fists on hips, glaring down the room. The news had travelled ahead of her and the only two detectives on the premises were clearly downcast by it. One was typing up notes, the other working bleakly through a wad of paperwork. Neither moved more than their eyes, a quick sidelong glance to register her arrival.

"Where is he?" Carol demanded.

The two detectives flicked their eyes towards each other, mutual understanding and decisions passing instantly between them. The one at the keyboard spoke, keeping his eyes on his work. "DS Taylor, ma'am?"

"Who else? Where is he? I know he was here earlier, but I want to know where he is now."

"He went out just after the news came through about Di," the other man said.

"And where will he be?" Carol wasn't giving an inch. She couldn't afford to. Not for the sake of her future authority, but for her own self-respect. The buck stopped with her, and she had no wish to evade that responsibility. But she needed to understand how her operation had gone so disastrously wrong. Only one man might be able to tell her, and she was determined to find him. "Come on," she urged. "Where?"

The two detectives exchanged another look. This time resignation was the key component. "Harbourmaster's Club," the typist said.

"He's in a drinking den at this time of the morning?" she demanded angrily.

"It's not just a bar, it's a club, ma'am. Originally for officers on merchant ships. You can get meals there, or just go in and read the papers and have a cup of coffee." Carol turned to leave, but the typist continued. "Ma'am, you can't go there," he said, his voice urgent.

The look she gave him had induced rapists to confess. "It's men only," the young detective stammered. "They won't let you in."

"Jesus Christ!" Carol exploded. "God forbid we should disturb the native customs. All right, Beckham, stop what you're doing and get down the Harbourmaster's Club. I want you and DS Taylor back here within half an hour, or I'll have your warrant card as well as his. Do I make myself clear?"

The file folder closed and Beckham jumped to his feet, brushing past her with an apology as he hurried out. "I'll be in my office," Carol growled at the remaining detective. She tried to slam the door behind her, but the hinges were too stiff.

Carol flopped into her chair, not even taking off her mac. Bleak self-reproach settled oppressively, immobilizing her. She stared emptily at the back wall where Di Earnshaw had stood during their briefing, remembering the dead fish stare, the badly fitting suit, the pug-nosed face. They'd never have been friends, Carol knew that instinctively, and in a way that made what had happened worse. Coupled with the guilt of Di Earnshaw's death in her own botched operation, Carol had the guilt of knowing she hadn't liked the woman very much, that if she'd been forced under duress to choose a victim from her command, Di wouldn't have been last on the list.

Carol ran through the case history again, wondering what she could have, should have done differently. Which was the decision that got Di Earnshaw killed? However she cut it, she came back to the same thing every time. She'd not kept a tight enough grip on the investigation, or a close enough eye on junior officers who weren't worried about discrediting her with their sloppy policing. She'd been too busy playing knight-in-shining-armour games with

Tony Hill. Not for the first time, she'd let her emotional response to him interfere with her judgement. This time, the consequences had been fatal.

The peal of her phone cut across her self-flagellation and she grabbed it in the middle of the second ring. Not even a major guilt-trip could stifle her instincts to the point where she could ignore a ringing phone on her office desk. "DCI Jordan," she said, her voice dull.

"Guv, it's Lee." His voice sounded brighter than it had any right to be. Even as negative personality as Di Earnshaw had the right to a little more sorrow from her immediate colleagues.

"What have you got?" Carol asked brusquely, swivelling round in her chair to stare out of the window at the deserted windswept quay.

"I found her car. Tucked away down the side of one of the other warehouses, well out of sight. Guv, she had this little tape recorder.

It was lying on the passenger seat, so I got one of the traffic lads to get me into the car. It's all there, name, time, route, destination, the lot. There's more than enough there to nail Brinkley!"

"Good work," she said dully. Better than nothing, it still wasn't enough to assuage the guilt. Somehow, she knew that when she told Tony that, after all, he'd been right, he wouldn't consider it an acceptable trade-off either. "Bring it in, Lee."

She turned to replace the handset to find John Brandon standing in the doorway. Wearily, she started to get up, but he motioned her to stay seated, folding his long limbs into one of the comfortless visitor's chairs. "A bad business," he said.

"No one to blame but me," Carol said. "I took my eye off the ball. I left my officers to their own devices on an operation they all thought was a waste of time. They weren't taking it seriously, and now Di Earnshaw's dead. I should have stayed on their tails."

"I'm surprised she was out there without back-up," Brandon said. The words were censure enough without the look of reproach on his face.

"That wasn't the intention," Carol said flatly.

"For both our sakes, I hope you can substantiate that." It wasn't a threat, Carol realized, seeing the warmth of regret in his eyes.

Carol stared unseeing at the scarred wood of her desk top. "Somehow, I can't get worked up about that now, sir."

Brandon's voice hardened. "Well, I suggest you do, Chief Inspector Di Earnshaw doesn't have the luxury of feeling sorry for herself. All we can do for her now is take her killer off the streets. When can I expect an arrest?"

Stung, Carol jerked her head up and glared at Brandon. "Just as soon as DC Whitbread gets back here with the evidence, sir."

"Good." Brandon got to his feet. "Once you have a clearer idea what happened out there last night, we'll talk." The ghost of a smile crossed his eyes. "You're not to blame, Carol. You can't be on duty twenty-four hours a day."

Carol stared at the empty doorway after he'd gone, wondering how many years it had taken John Brandon to learn how to let go. Then, weighing up what she knew of the man, she wondered if he ever had, or if he'd simply learned to hide it better.

Leon looked around, bemused. "I thought Newcastle was supposed to be the last place on earth where men were men and sheep ran scared?"

"You got a problem with a vegetarian pub?" Chris Devine asked mildly.

Simon grinned. "He only pretends he likes his meat raw." He sipped his pint experimentally. "Nothing wrong with the bevvy, though. How did you find out about this place?"

"Don't ask and you won't be embarrassed, babe. Just trust your senior officer, especially when she's a woman. So, how are we doing?" Chris asked. "I got nowhere showing her picture round the station. Nobody in the buffet or the ticket office or the bookstall remembered seeing her."

"The bus station was the same," Simon reported. "Not a sausage. Except that one of the drivers said, was it not that lass that went missing in Sunderland a couple of years back?" They contemplated the irony glumly.

"I got a sniff," Leon said. "I talked to one of the train guards, and he put me on to a cafe where all the drivers and guards go for a brew and a bacon butty on their breaks. I sat down with the guys and flashed the photos. One of them reckoned he was pretty sure he'd seen her on the Carlisle train. He remembered because she double-checked with him what time the train got into Five Walls Halt and that they were running on time."

"When was this?" Chris asked, offering him an encouraging cigarette.

"He couldn't be sure. But he reckoned it was the week before last."

Leon didn't have to remind them that timetable would fit perfectly with Donna Doyle's disappearance.

"Where's Five Walls Halt?" Simon asked.

"It's somewhere in the middle of nowhere this side of Hexham," Chris informed him. "Near Hadrian's Wall. And presumably another four. And don't ask how I know that either, right?"

"So what's at Five Walls Halt that she'd want to get off there?"

Leon looked at Chris. She shrugged. "I'm only guessing, but I'd say it might be somewhere near Jacko Vance's place in the country. Which, I don't have to tell you, we're not supposed to be going anywhere near."

"We could go to Five Walls Halt, though," Leon said.

"Not until you finish that pint, we can't," Simon prompted.

"Leave the pint," Chris instructed him. "She can't have been the only one who got off the train there. If we're going knocking on doors, we don't want to smell like a brewery." She got to her feet. "Let's go and discover the beauties of the Northumberland countryside. Did you bring your wellies?"

Leon and Simon exchanged a look of panic. "Thanks, Chris," Leon muttered sarcastically as they trailed after her into the soft rain.

Alan Brinkley stood under the shower, the cascade of water almost scalding. The man who made the decisions had finally decreed that the officers who had fought the fierce fire at the paint factory could be stood down and replaced by a smaller crew who would damp down the hot spots and keep their fresh eyes peeled for anything significant among the wreckage. No one in authority was taking any chances now the body had been found.

At the thought of the body, a shudder convulsed Brinkley from head to foot. In spite of the steaming heat, his teeth chattered involuntarily.

He wasn't going to think about the body. Normal, he had to be normal.

But what was normal? How did he usually behave when there had been a fatal fire? What did he say to Maureen How many beers did he drink the night after? What did his mates see in his face?

He slumped against the streaming tiles of the shower cubicle, tears falling invisibly from his eyes. Thank God for the privacy of the new fire station, not like the old communal showers they'd had when he'd learned his trade. In the shower now, no one could see him weep.

He couldn't get the smell out of his nostrils, the taste out of his mouth. He knew it was imagination; the chemicals in the paint factory overlaid any hint of incinerated flesh. But it was as real as it had ever been. He didn't even know her name, but he knew what she smelled like, what she tasted like now.

His mouth opened in a silent scream and he pounded with the sides of his fists against the solid wall, making no sound. Behind him, the shower curtain rattled back on its metal hoops. He turned slowly, pressing himself into the corner of the cubicle. He'd seen the man and the woman before, inside the scene-of-crime tapes at the fires. He watched the woman's lips move, heard her voice, but could not process what she was saying.

It didn't matter. He suddenly knew this was the only relief. He slid down the wall into a foetal crouch. He found his voice and started to sob like a damaged child.

Chris Devine was only a few miles out of Newcastle when her mobile rang.

"It's me, Tony. Any joy?"

She filled him in on the limited success of their morning, and in turn he told her about his failure to convince Wharton and Mccormick to take him seriously. "It's a nightmare," he said. "We can't afford to hang around indefinitely on this. If Donna Doyle is still alive, every hour could count. Chris, I think the only thing to do is for me to confront him with the evidence and hope we can panic him into a confession or an incriminating move."

That's what killed Shaz," Chris said. Mentioning her name brought the grief back like a physical blow. If she could ignore the bright presence Shaz had been in her life and the darkness of her absence, she could get through this in a fair simulacrum of the normal breezy Chris Devine. But every time Shaz was mentioned by name, it knocked the breath from her. She suspected she wasn't the only one who suffered a reaction; it would explain why Shaz was seldom spoken of directly.

"I wasn't planning on going it alone. I need back-up."

"What about Carol?"

There was a long silence. "Carol lost an officer in the night."

"Ah, shit. Her arsonist?

"Her arsonist. She's beating herself up because she thinks heir involvement in this made her derelict in her duty. She's wrong, as it happens, but there's no way she can walk away from her responsibilities in Seaford today."

"Sounds like she's got more shit on her plate right now than anyone should ever have to eat. Yeah, forget Carol."