'The majority of the clients aren't here at the moment. Most of them attend local schools, or are supposed to anyway. Those who are in the building now are the ones who have special learning needs, and require one-to-one tuition. They might not be too helpful.'

They weren't. There were seven of them altogether and we interviewed them one at a time in Carla Graham's office, with her present. Two refused to answer any questions at all with anything more than yes or no, and of the rest only one claimed to have heard of Miriam Fox, and that was Anne Taylor, the youthful legal expert I'd met earlier. She said that she'd known Molly 'a bit' and that Molly and Miriam had been friends, even though Miriam was older. Anne had seen Molly with Miriam a couple of times while out in the evenings (she denied knowing that either of them had been prostitutes), but claimed she'd never really spoken to Miriam beyond the usual pleasantries. 'She seemed a bit stuck up,' she told us. 'She thought she was better than anyone else.'

And that was it. Carla made some effort to get her charges to speak, but it was a losing battle. They weren't going to tell the police anything, not if they could help it.

After that we interviewed the other members of staff present, four of them altogether. Two of them recognized the photo of Miriam and identified her as a friend of Molly's, but once again, neither had had any meaningful contact with her so couldn't, or wouldn't, add any further information.

'I don't know how much help that was,' said Carla when we were finished.

'It's difficult to tell,' I said. 'That's the thing with murder inquiries. It can often be a long, slow process and it always involves talking to a lot of people. Most of the time you don't hear anything significant, but just occasionally you do, even if you don't notice it at the time.'

'Well, I hope you're successful. It's worrying thinking that there's some maniac out there who could easily kill again.'

'We'll catch the perpetrator. I'm sure of that.' I stood up, and Malik followed suit. 'Anyway, thanks for your assistance this morning. It's appreciated.'

'I'll show you out,' she said, getting to her feet and leading us out of the office.

At the double doors, I shook hands with her while Malik nodded briefly and walked out. 'We'll need to come back and speak to the other clients at some point,' I told her.

'Of course. It would help if you could phone ahead, though. I'd like to be here when you come.'

She had nice eyes. They were a deep brown colour, with laughter lines round their edges. I would make sure she was there when I came back. 'I'll do that. It'll probably be sooner rather than later. It's important to close every avenue of inquiry.'

There was a sound of hysterical yelling and shouting from one of the rooms down the hall. It sounded like one of the female clients was experiencing a lack of customer satisfaction. In reply, we could just about make out the calm, measured tones of one of the social workers. It was greeted with another blast of abuse. Talk about a hiding to nothing.

Carla Graham sighed resignedly. 'I'd better go and see what all that's about.'

'You certainly have a difficult job to do here,' I told her.

'We've all got difficult jobs to do,' she answered, a rueful smile playing about her lips, and turned to

go. 'I think you had a bit of a thing for her,' Malik

said when I joined him outside.

I grinned. 'She's an attractive woman.'

'A little bit old.'

'For you maybe. Not for me.'

'A social worker, though, Sarge? It would hardly be a match made in heaven, not with your views.'

'Yeah. Somehow I don't think it's a goer.' But in an odd way I wished it could be. I needed some romance in my life.

It was getting on for one o'clock, so we grabbed some lunch at a nearby McDonald's. Malik plumped for Chicken McNuggets while I took the traditional route of Big Mac, fries, and a hot apple pie for pudding, washed down with a regular Coke. Not exactly the ideal start to my new diet.

'I didn't like her,' Malik said as he slowly chewed on a McNugget.

'I know you didn't.'

He swallowed. 'She was too cynical, you know? Like nothing would faze her.'

'It's no different to the way it is in our game. You build up a shell so that things don't affect you. You have to. I mean, let's face it, how would you like to work with those little fuckers?'

'No discipline. That's the problem.' He picked up another McNugget with his fork. 'Do you think any of them knew anything?'

'Anything of interest? I doubt it. I think we'd have known if any of them were lying through their teeth. They're not that good actors.'

'So it was a bit of a waste of time going down there, really.'

I smiled. 'Well, in some ways maybe.'

He ignored my comment, and changed the subject. 'I was surprised this morning by the preliminary findings.'

'That there was no sign of sexual assault?' He nodded. 'So was I. It sort of begs the question, what was she killed for?'

Malik hunted down and pinned his last McNugget. 'That's why we need to talk to the pimp.' But talking to the pimp had not proved any easier for our colleagues than it had for us the previous day. When we got back to the station we heard that he hadn't been at home when DS Capper and three others had called there several hours earlier. Apparently, he had a girlfriend who lived in Highbury, and he was supposed to spend quite a lot of his time with her, but he hadn't been at her place either. Nor was she in residence. Both properties were now under surveillance and all patrols had been advised to bring him in for questioning should they come across him. So far no-one had.

When I left that afternoon at 4.20, citing a nonexistent doctor's appointment as the reason for my departure (Malik made me feel guilty by looking concerned and asking if it was anything serious), the inquiry was heading towards thirty-six hours old with few substantial leads and a suspect against whom there was pretty much no evidence and who, so far, hadn't even got a viable motive.

There was, of course, still a lot of the race left to be run, as a sports commentator might say, but whichever way you looked at it the start hadn't been particularly inspiring.

After picking up the suitcase at King's Cross, I took it home, counted the contents (it was all there), and stuffed a jiffy bag with Danny's cut. I sealed the bag and placed the rest of the money, bar a couple of hundred spending, in a safe in my bedroom. It wouldn't stay there for long. I have a personal deposit box at a hotel in Bayswater where I stash my ill-gotten gains. One day I'm going to have a hefty lump sum. It doesn't pay interest, but it keeps growing.

I've known Danny for about eight years now. He was the brother of a girl I used to go out with. Her name was Jean Ashcroft and she was the only non-Force girl I've ever had a relationship with since joining up. We were together about a year, and for a while it looked like it was going to get serious. We'd even started looking at places to rent together, which is the closest I've ever been to any sort of real commitment, and I think it's probably fair to say that I loved her, as much as I've loved anybody in the sexual sense. But then Danny fouled things up. Not intentionally, mind, but a foul-up all the same. You see, in those days he was a bit of a rascal. Although he was intelligent and came from a respectable family, he didn't have a job, nor did he want one. He preferred dope dealing. It was easier, and it was more profitable. Somehow he managed to keep his illicit activities hidden from the rest of his family, including his sister, and so it turned out to be a terrible shock for them when one of his pathetically small-time deals went pear-shaped, and he ended up on the wrong end of a savage beating.