I was on edge after my adventure in the park, still jumpy, alert for anything out of place. Otherwise, I might not have noticed the man on the other side of the road, some seventy yards away, watching me.

Five foot eight or nine, medium build, in jeans, boots and a dark, padded jacket, with a hood pulled up around his head. Although I could tell he was looking my way, I couldn’t see his face. His hands were tucked into his pockets and he stood half hidden inside a doorway, clearly trying not to be seen. He might have succeeded had his jacket not had triangles of a lighter-coloured, fluorescent fabric on the shoulders and cuffs. It wasn’t a jacket I remembered from the night of the murder, but people can have more than one jacket, can’t they?

I started to walk towards him, reaching in my own pockets for my warrant card and radio, but a second after I moved, so did he, stepping out of the doorway and heading off towards the main road. I picked up speed, he did the same. He reached the corner and turned. I was too far behind but I carried on, making my way through the snow as best I could. I got to the main road, but even with all the snow, there were still too many people around. He’d gone.

8

THE NEXT DAY I went to consult my plastic surgeon, which, in all honesty, is not something I ever thought I’d say. But in the midst of the Ripper investigation, I’d been at the centre of an attempted apprehension of a suspect in the early hours of the morning. On Vauxhall Bridge, he and I had had a difference of opinion about the wisdom of plunging into the Thames. He’d won. His victory, though, was short-lived and his body had been pulled out of the river by the Marine Policing Unit some days later. I fared a little better, managing to cling to some lines and be fished out like floating jetsom. For weeks afterwards I looked like the loser of a prize-title fight, and, specifically, my nose had been broken just above the bridge. As it had happened in the line of duty, the Met was paying to get it put right.

Mr Induri sat me down, shone bright lights, poked something long and sharp up both nostrils and took photographs from so many angles I wondered if he’d missed his vocation as a portrait photographer. Finally he projected one of the shots on to a white board behind his desk and picked up a felt-tip pen.

‘I like to take a conservative approach,’ he said, redrawing the outline of my nose in a thin black line. ‘When I work on a nose, I want the end result to be the patient looking better, not different. In your case, we’re largely trying to sort out some damage and get back to where we were before. Is that fair?’

I agreed that it was, and then he asked me if I was involved in the investigation into the Aamir Chowdhury murder. I nodded warily.

‘I knew Aamir,’ he said, adding a few curves to the end of the nose. ‘He was doing a rotation with me here when it happened. Have you made any arrests yet?’

This was the first time I’d come across someone who had actually known Chowdhury. I’d been aware that he worked at St Thomas’s, but it’s a big hospital.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen. And the investigation is still ongoing, I’m afraid.’

As Mr Induri stepped back to consider his line-drawings from a different angle, something made me ask, ‘Did you know him well?’

‘Rhinoplasty is a mixture of science and art,’ he answered, drawing more lines around the nose on the white board, as though the subject of Chowdhury had never come up. ‘The nose has to work. Fitness is very important to you, I see that from your file. You need to be able to breathe easily and well.’

I agreed again. Since my nose had been broken, it had been difficult to keep up my usual regime of exercise. The oxygen just wasn’t getting through the way it used to.

‘Aamir kept himself to himself,’ said Mr Induri. ‘Young men from devout Islamic backgrounds often do. No one seems to have known him too well. But he was intelligent and hard-working. Always very polite. And respectful – towards the patients as well as his colleagues. It was a dreadful thing.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Especially for his family.’

Mr Induri placed his hands on his hips, looking from my face to the one on the white board. ‘Unimaginable,’ he agreed, before bending forward at the waist, removing his glasses and peering at me. ‘This is not just about science. A surgeon needs a good eye,’ he said. ‘You need to know what looks good. I like to think I know what looks good.’

‘I hope so,’ I said, as he turned from me once more. ‘I think I saw his sister last night. At the park where it happened.’

Mr Induri nodded. ‘Yes, I think he mentioned sisters,’ he said. ‘And brothers, too. I got the impression of a large family. Now, we can smooth out these bumps and ridges fairly easily. The scarring will be around the nostrils and not noticeable after the first few weeks.’

I didn’t want to think about scars. ‘Did you ever meet any of his family?’

‘No. I think I saw a lady waiting for him outside one day – she could have been a sister … We’ll have to take some tissue from your scalp and maybe even some cartilage from your ear, so there’ll be secondary healing sites, but nothing to cause us too much concern. What I would really be tempted to do, in your case, is make it a bit longer. Can you see? ’

I looked again at the picture on the wall. Mr Induri had extended the length of my nose by roughly a quarter of a centimetre, giving something to my face I didn’t think I’d seen before. Then he flicked photographs to a profile shot and started drawing again.

‘You’ll now have perfect classical proportions,’ he said. ‘Before, you were a tiny bit snubbed. Now, perfect.’

As I left the hospital, I realized I had to talk to Aamir Chowdhury’s sister, if indeed it had been her in the park the previous night. And also that I’d just agreed to spending several thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on giving myself a bigger nose.

9

‘I’M NOT SURE, Lacey. Any suggestion that we’re being insensitive could reflect very badly on us right now.’

‘I know. Which is why I need something from you. Something new to talk to them about. And I was with him when he died. It’s natural I would want to visit them at some stage, isn’t it?’

‘We’re on a real knife-edge with this one. Maybe I’d better come with you.’

I hadn’t told DI Tulloch that I was in my car at the end of the street where Aamir Chowdhury’s family lived, that I was seconds away from knocking on their door. I wasn’t even sure what I hoped to gain. I just knew there was something odd about the woman in the park and that odd things were always worth following up. Tulloch had agreed with me that it was unusual, but was nervous about my going to visit them alone.

‘Ma’am, no disrespect, but you can be a bit scary at times. And this girl could be very young. No one’s scared of me.’

‘Well, I’m a long way from agreeing with you on that one. OK, it’s worth a go. What are you wearing?’

Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Trousers,’ I admitted, ‘but otherwise pretty respectable. Shirt, sweater. Do I need a headscarf?’

‘No, you’ll be fine. Just be modest and respectful. Can you manage that?’

Given that she was on the end of a phone line and couldn’t see me, I allowed myself to bristle. ‘It’ll be a push, but I’ll give it my best shot.’

‘Ring me the minute you’re done.’

An evening meal was being prepared as I was led along the narrow hall of the Chowdhury house. I’d removed my shoes just inside the front door; one of Tulloch’s last-minute pieces of advice had been that domestic cleanliness is very important to Muslims. The young man in his twenties who’d answered my knock had taken my coat.