“We might want to leave that for a while,” Frank said smoothly, “all depending, of course. If by any chance her acquaintances should end up under the impression that she’s alive and well, we don’t want to rattle their cages. We want them relaxed, off their guard, thinking the investigation’s wound down. The DNA’ll still be there in a few weeks’ time.”

Sam shrugged. He was starting to tense up again. “We’ll work that out as we go. Three: an enemy from her previous life, someone who had a grudge and tracked her down.”

“Now that’s the one I fancy,” Frank said, straightening up. “We’ve got no indication of any problems in her Lexie Madison life, right? But wherever she was before, something obviously went wrong. She wasn’t going around under a fake name just for the laugh. Either she was on the run from the cops, or she was on the run from someone else. My money’s on someone else.”

"I’m not sure I buy it,” I said. Screw O’Kelly’s feelings; I could see exactly where Frank was going with this, and I don’t like being railroaded. “The killing’s completely disorganized: one stab wound that didn’t even need to be fatal, and then-instead of finishing her off, or at least holding her so she can’t go for help and give him up-he lets her get away, to the point where it takes him half an hour to find her again. To me, that says no premeditation, maybe even no intent to kill.”

O’Kelly gave me a disgusted grimace. "Someone stuck a knife in this girl’s chest, Maddox. I’d say he knew there was a fair chance she could die.”

I have years of practice in letting O’Kelly wash over me. “A chance, sure. But if someone had spent years thinking about killing her, he’d have it planned down to the last detail. He’d have every base covered, he’d have a script, and he’d stick to it.”

“So maybe he did have a script,” Frank said, “but it didn’t involve anything like violence. Say it’s not a grudge that has him chasing her, it’s unrequited love. He’s got it in his head that they’re soul mates, he’s planning a lovey-dovey reunion and happy ever after, and instead she tells him to fuck off. She’s the one who breaks away from the script, and he can’t handle it.”

“Stalkers snap,” I said, “yeah. But they do it a whole lot more thoroughly than this. You’d expect a frenzy of violence: multiple blows, facial disfigurement, serious overkill. Instead, we’ve got one stab, barely even deep enough to kill her. It doesn’t fit.”

“Maybe he didn’t get the chance for overkill,” Sam said. “He stabs her, she runs, by the time he catches up with her she’s already dead.”

“Still,” I said. “You’re talking about someone obsessed enough to wait years and follow her God knows how far. That level of emotion, when it finally gets an outlet it’s not going to vanish just because the target’s dead. If anything, the fact that she’d escaped him again would have made him even angrier. I’d expect at least a few more stab wounds, a couple of kicks in the face, something like that.”

It felt good, getting stuck into the case like this, like I was just a Murder detective again and she was just another victim; it spread through me strong and sweet and soothing as hot whiskey after a long day in wind and rain. Frank was sprawled casually in his chair, but I could feel him watching me, and I knew I was starting to sound too interested. I shrugged, leaned my head back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.

“The real point is,” Frank said, inevitably, “if she’s foreign and he followed her over here, for whatever reason, then the minute he knows he’s got the job done, he’ll be out of the country like a hot snot off a slate. The only way he’ll stick around long enough for us to catch up with him is if he thinks she’s still alive.”

A brief, heavy silence.

“We can run checks on everyone leaving the country,” Sam said.

“Checks for what?” Frank inquired. “We haven’t a clue who we’re looking for, where he or she might be heading, nothing. Before we can get anywhere, we need an ID.”

“We’re working on that. Like I said. If this woman could pass herself off as Irish, then odds are English was her first language. We’ll start with England, the U.S., Canada -”

Frank shook his head. “That’s going to take time. We need to keep our boy-or girl-here until we find out who the hell we’re looking for. And I can think of exactly one way to do that.”

“Four,” Sam said, firmly. He ticked off another finger, and his eyes went to me for a split second, then slid away. “Mistaken identity.”

There was another small silence. Cooper came out of his trance and started looking distinctly intrigued. My face had started to feel like it was scorching me, like overdone eye shadow or a top cut too low, something I should have known better than to wear.

"Piss anyone off lately?” O’Kelly asked me. “More than usual.”

“About a hundred abusive men and a couple of dozen abusive women,” I said. “No one’s jumping out at me, but I’ll send over the case files, flag the ones who got most obnoxious.”

“What about when you were undercover?” Sam asked. “Could anyone have held a grudge against Lexie Madison?”

“Apart from the idiot who stabbed me?” I said. “Not that I recall.”

“He’s been inside for a year now,” Frank said. “Possession with intent. I meant to tell you. Anyway, his brain’s so fried he probably couldn’t pick you out of a lineup. And I’ve gone through all our intelligence from that period: not a single red flag anywhere. Detective Maddox didn’t piss anyone off, there’s no sign that anyone ever suspected her of being a cop, and when she was wounded we pulled her out and sent someone else in to start over. No one was arrested as a direct result of her work, and she never had to testify. Basically, no one had any reason to want her dead.”

“Does the idiot not have friends?” Sam wanted to know.

Frank shrugged. “Presumably, but again, I don’t see why he’d sic them on Detective Maddox. It’s not like he was charged with the assault. We pulled him in, he gave us some bullshit story about self-defense, we acted like we believed him and cut him loose. He was a lot more useful outside than in.”

Sam’s head snapped up and he started to say something, but then he bit his lip and focused on rubbing a smudge off the whiteboard. No matter what he thought of someone who would let an attempted cop killer off the hook, he and Frank were stuck with each other. It was going to be a long investigation.

“What about in Murder?” Frank asked me. “Make any enemies?” O’Kelly gave a sour little laugh.

“All my solves are still inside,” I said, “but I guess they could have friends, family, accomplices. And there are suspects we never managed to convict.” The sun had slid off my old desk; our corner had gone dark. The squad room felt suddenly colder and emptier, blown through by long sad winds.

“I’ll do that,” Sam said. “I’ll check those out.”

“If someone’s after Cassie,” Frank said helpfully, “she’ll be a lot safer in Whitethorn House than she would be all by herself in that flat.”

“I can stay with her,” Sam said, without looking at him. We weren’t about to point out that he spent half his time at my place anyway, and Frank knew it.

Frank raised an amused eyebrow. “Twenty-four seven? If she goes under, she’ll be miked up, she can have someone listening to the mike feed day and night-”

“Not on my budget she can’t,” O’Kelly told him.

“No problem: it’ll go on our budget. We’ll work out of Rathowen station; anyone comes after her, we’ll have guys on the scene in minutes. Will she get that at home?”

“If we think someone’s out to kill a police officer,” Sam said, “then she bloody well should get that at home.” His voice was starting to tauten.

“Fair enough. How’s your budget for round-the-clock protection?” Frank asked O’Kelly.

“Fuck that for a game of soldiers,” O’Kelly said. “She’s DV’s detective, she’s DV’s problem.” Frank spread his hands and grinned at Sam.