‘At work yesterday afternoon. She had an important client meeting this morning and she never showed. Never phoned. Her boss said this isn’t in character. Her name’s Janie Stretton.’

‘I’ve got a list of four other names, Glenn. What makes this one special?’

‘Just a hunch.’

‘Janie Stretton?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’ll add her to the list.’

‘Put her at the top.’

The rain was permeating his suit, and dripping down his face. Grace stepped back into the shelter of the tented awning. ‘We still don’t have a head,’ he said. ‘And I have a feeling we’re not going to find it for a very good reason. We’ve already run a fingerprint test, which is negative. We’re sending off for a priority DNA to Huntingdon labs, but that will be a couple of days.’

‘I’ve found her,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘I’ll put money on it.’

‘Janie Stretton?’ Grace said.

‘Janie Stretton.’

‘She’s probably in bed, shagging some three-grand-an-hour brief.’

‘No, Roy,’ the Detective Sergeant insisted. ‘I think you’re looking at her.’

Tom spent the afternoon at the offices of a major new client, Polstar Vodka, shaving his prices – and profit margin – down to the bone to avoid a competitor getting the business. Further handicapped by not having his laptop with him, he left glumly with an order for 50,000 engraved martini glasses and overprinted silver coasters which he had originally been banking on to give him a good profit. Now he would be lucky to even cover his costs. At least it was turnover to show the bank, but he was painfully aware of the old adage, ‘Turnover is vanity, profit is sense.’

With luck it would lead to more profitable business in time, he hoped.

Arriving back at the office shortly before five o’clock, he was relieved to see his laptop up and running again. But at a cost of seven hours of the techie’s expensive time that he could ill afford. Peter Chard’s desk was empty and Simon Wong was on the phone; Maggie was also busy on the phone. Olivia brought him over a pile of letters to sign.

He dealt with them then turned his attention to Chris Webb, who had managed to retrieve some data. He talked him through the system upgrade he had done and the new anti-virus software he had installed – at further expense, of course. But he was still unable to explain where the virus that had wiped the database had come from other than from the disc Tom had found on the train, which he was going to take away to analyse further.

After Chris had left, Tom spent half an hour catching up on his emails. Then out of curiosity he opened his Explorer Web browser, and went to the recent history section, which showed him all the websites he had looked at in the past twenty-four hours. There were a couple of visits to Google, several to ask.co.uk and one to Railtrack when he had looked up train times yesterday. There was also one to the Polstar Vodka site he had visited yesterday, in order to brief himself for this afternoon’s meeting. Then there was one he did not recognize at all.

It was a long, complex string of letters and slashes. Chris Webb’s parting words as he had left were that he should not log on to any unfamiliar website, but Tom had been using the internet for years and years now and had a good understanding of it. He knew that you could pick up a virus from opening an attachment, but he just did not accept you could get one from a website. Cookies, yes. He knew that many retailers used the unscrupulous trick of sending a cookie when you logged on to their site. The cookie would sit in your system and report back to them everything you subsequently looked at on the net. That way they could build individual customer profiles on their database and learn what products people were interested in. But viruses? No way.

He clicked on the address.

Almost instantly the message came up on his screen:

Access denied. Unauthorized login attempt.

‘Anything else you need tonight, Tom?’

He looked up. Olivia, holding her handbag, was standing by his desk.

‘No, that’s fine, thanks.’

She was beaming. ‘Got a hot date. Have to go to the hairdresser!’

‘Good luck!’

‘He’s the marketing director for a magazine group. Could be some business there.’

‘Go kill!’

‘I will!’

He looked back at the screen and clicked on the address again.

Within moments the same message appeared.

Access denied. Unauthorized login attempt.

Later that evening – after a larger martini than usual, dinner and almost an entire bottle of a particularly yummy Australian Margaret River Chardonnay, instead of his usual couple of glasses – Tom sat down in his den, opened his laptop, went to his email in-box and started working. More emails came in every few minutes.

Two in succession contained decent repeat orders, which pleased him. One was from the marketing director of one of their major clients, thanking him personally for all his help in making their recent half-centenary such a success.

Feeling distinctly cheered, he scanned the rest of the emails, filing some, deleting some and replying to others. Then another new one appeared.

Dear Mr Bryce

Last night you accessed a website you were unauthorized to visit. Now you have tried to access it again. We do not appreciate uninvited guests. If you inform the police about what you saw or if you ever try to access this site again, what is about to happen to your computer will happen to your wife, Kellie, to your son, Max, and to your daughter, Jessica. Take a good look, then have a hard think.

Your friends at Scarab Productions

Barely before he had time to register the words, they vanished from the screen. Then all the rest of his emails began to vanish, also, as if they were being dissolved in acid.

Within a minute, maybe less, as he watched helplessly, his brain too paralysed to think about switching the machine off, everything on his computer vanished.

He tapped at the keys. But there was nothing, just a blank, black screen.

Dennis Ponds, the senior Sussex PRO, had been given the sobriquet Pond Life by many officers. Too many stories got leaked to the press, and the prime suspect was always his office.

A former journalist, he looked more like a City trader than a newspaper man. In his early forties, with slicked-back black hair, mutantly large eyebrows and a penchant for sharp suits, he had the tough task of brokering the increasingly fragile relations between police and public.

Roy Grace, swigging a bottle of mineral water, stared at him across his desk, feeling empathy with the man. Ponds wasn’t trusted by many police and the press were always suspicious of his motives. It was not a job anyone could win at. One police PRO had ended up in a sanatorium; another, Grace remembered well, sipped from a hip flask all day long.

Ponds had just laid the entire collection of morning newspapers on Grace’s desk and was now sitting in front of him, wringing his hands. ‘At least we managed to keep it off the front page, Roy,’ he said apologetically, his eyebrows rising like two crows preparing for flight.

They’d been lucky; a Charles and Camilla story took most of the front-page splashes. It was a reflection of modern times that the headless torso story made just a few lines on the inside pages of some papers, and was not mentioned at all in others. But, like the entire half-page of the Daily Mail open in front him, Two Dead After Police Car Chase had made every single national paper.

‘You did your best,’ Grace said. Unlike many of his colleagues he recognized the importance of public relations.

‘You handled the conference well,’ Pond Life said. ‘The best thing we can do is build on the torso story today. I’ve set a con for two. You up for that?’