‘That would fit,’ he said. ‘Very sick but very apt.’

‘Fit?’ Grace asked.

‘It is an appropriate location – for reasons that will become clear to you.’ He gave a wry smile.

‘I’m all ears.’

‘Do you want the full Year Two university biology class lecture on this little fellow? Or the short summary.’

‘Just the simpleton download – I’ll have to pass it on to some people who are even bigger numbskulls than myself.’

The entomologist smiled. ‘His name is Copris lunaris, and he’s about average length – they are normally fifteen to twenty-five millimetres. He’s indigenous to southern Europe and North Africa.’

‘Are they found here at all?’

‘Not outside a zoo.’

Grace frowned, thinking about the ramifications of this.

The Professor continued: ‘It was considered a sacred creature by the ancient Egyptians, and is also known as a dung beetle or Scarab.’

Now Grace understood. ‘Dung beetle?’

‘Exactly. The best known are the subspecies called dung-rollers. They use their head and front legs to scrape up the dung and shape it into a ball, then they roll it along until they find a suitable place to bury it, so it can mature and break down.’

‘Sounds delicious,’ Grace said.

‘I think I prefer Swedish meatballs.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘So putting this beetle up the woman’s rectum has some significance.’

‘It would seem a warped one, but yes.’

A siren whupped past in the street below. ‘I think it’s a fair assumption that we’re dealing with someone who has a different value set to you and me,’ Grace said with a grimace. ‘What exactly is the connection with the ancient Egyptians, Lars?’

‘I’ll print it out for you; it’s really quite fascinating.’

‘Will it help me find my killer?’

‘He’s clearly someone who knows about symbolism. I would think it is important for you to understand as much about this as possible. You haven’t been to Egypt, Roy?’

‘No.’

The Professor was starting to look quite animated. ‘If you go to Luxor, the Valley of the Kings or any of the temples, you’ll see scarabs carved everywhere; they were a fundamental part of Upper and Lower Egyptian culture. And of course they were significant in funeral rites.’

Grace sipped some more of his coffee, running through in his mind all he had to do this evening, while the Professor worked on his keyboard for a few moments.

Twenty minutes ago DC Emma-Jane Boutwood had phoned to tell him the DNA results were in and there was no match on the database. No more body parts had yet been found. One more of the missing women had been eliminated in the past hour. DNA from the rest had been couriered up to the lab and hopefully – for the police, at any rate – there would be a match. If not they would have to immediately widen their search.

Suddenly, a printer spat a sheet of paper out inches from where he was sitting, startling him.

‘Funeral rites?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was the significance of these beetles in funeral rites, Lars?’

‘They’d be put in the tombs to ensure eternal resurrection.’

Grace thought about it for some moments. Were they dealing with a religious fanatic? A game player? Clearly it was someone intelligent – cultured enough to have read up on ancient Egypt – the placing of this particular beetle in the woman’s rectum was no random act. ‘Where would someone get hold of a scarab beetle in England?’ he asked. ‘Only in a zoo?’

‘No, there are a few importers of tropical insects who would deal in them. I don’t doubt they are available on the internet as well.’

Grace made a mental note to have someone list and visit every tropical insect supplier in the UK and do a trawl on the Web.

The entomologist returned the beetle to the evidence bag. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with on this, Roy?’

‘I’m sure there will be. I can’t think of anything more at the moment. And I really appreciate your staying on late to see me.’

‘It’s not a problem.’ Lars Johansson nodded towards the window and the view out over Exhibition Road. ‘Turned out to be a fine evening. Are you heading back down to Sussex?’

Grace nodded.

‘Let me buy you a drink – one for the road?’

Grace glanced at his watch. The next fast train down to Brighton was in about forty minutes. He did not have time for a drink, but he sure felt in need of one. And as the Professor had been helpful to him so many times in the past, he thought it would be rude to decline. ‘Just a quick one,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to run.’

Which was why, thirty minutes later, at a street table outside a crowded pub, he found himself wondering just exactly what the hell was wrong with his life. He should have been out on a date tonight with one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Instead he was drinking his second pint of warm beer, having first had a fifteen-minute lecture on the digestive system of the scarab beetle, and now a lengthy analysis from the increasingly maudlin Lars Johansson of all that was wrong with the man’s marriage.

The Thursday-night rush hour traffic out of London had been worse than usual. And tonight being a fine, balmy night, it seemed every Londoner was escaping into the countryside. Tom normally travelled by train to avoid this hell, but he’d had to take the car today to get out to Ron Spacks’s office, and afterwards he’d had to drive back into central London to collect his laptop.

His plans to get home early and have a barbecue supper in the garden with his family had been shot to ribbons by Chris Webb arriving late to fix his computer and then taking much longer than he had thought. It was almost half past four in the afternoon by the time Chris had finished, freeing Tom to start his journey at the worst possible time.

Normally in the car he would catch up on phone calls or listen to the radio – in London he particularly liked David Prever on Smooth FM, otherwise he listened to the Radio 4 news or Jazz FM – but this evening, apart from one call to Ron Spacks to say he had his team working on prices for the Rolex Oyster watches – that was potentially a dream order he just had to get – he had driven in silence, just with his own sombre thoughts.

Is that Tom Bryce speaking?

The strong eastern European accent. His conversation with Kellie earlier.

What kind of an accent?

Sort of European, not English.

The same person?

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.

Tom had had no intention of informing the police about what he had seen on Tuesday night. The internet was a sewer; you could find anything you wanted on it, however erotic or gross. He’d been to a website that was either a movie trailer or some gratuitously violent site for sickos and would have left it at that. It wasn’t his job to police the sewer.

But that threatening email implied there was something more to that site.

He was approaching the South Downs now; the traffic, although heavy, was moving quickly. Over to his left, half a mile across meadows, he saw a glint of light in reflected glass. A train. Forgetting the cramped, stuffy conditions for a brief moment, he envied its passengers the relative ease of their journey. However, he’d be home in fifteen minutes, and he was looking forward to a large, stiff drink.

He looked out through the windscreen at the brilliant yellow ball of sun sinking low in the cobalt sky. Beyond the hills was his home, his sanctuary. But he didn’t feel safe; something was shaking his insides, mixing up all his emotions, pouring a cocktail of confused fears into him.