Anderson pinned up a third sheet of paper, this time with a large question mark printed on it. He stood back and looked at the names on the board, then turned and faced his team.

‘At this stage, in the absence of any firm leads, we’re going to get things moving by looking very closely at the two victims we have managed to identify. I want to know every single thing there is to know about them. Habits, routines, likes, dislikes. Shoes sizes, fetishes. I want to know how they vote, how many sugars they take in their tea and the name of every single person they ever associated with. We’re looking for anyone who might make us think they are worth looking at more closely.

‘Now that it seems certain that we’re looking for a serial killer, I’m going to be getting a profiler in. That will hopefully give us some valuable leads. I’m also hoping they might be able to narrow down the geographical area our killer is likely to be in.

‘The street where the bodies were found is a little way off the beaten track, quiet enough to ensure they wouldn’t be discovered immediately. That takes local knowledge. It might well be that that particular street was chosen as the dumping ground for a specific reason. The profiler might be able to cast some light on that too.

‘Dr Matthews has given me a preliminary verbal report, but the full post-mortem and toxicology write-ups won’t be available for at least forty-eight hours. Although we have three victims, the post-mortems will be quicker than usual because of the lack of heads, hands and internal organs. It means they have much less work to do. Unfortunately it also means we are going to have a lot less to go on from forensics.’

Anderson leaned back against the wall and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. ‘I don’t want to be patronizing but I want this done by the book. This is going to be a major inquiry and I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. I don’t want a review squad coming in here in six weeks’ time because we haven’t got a result and telling me that we’ve missed a load of obvious leads.

‘I expect you to submit your intelligence reports into the HOLMES system a.s.a.p. so that I can see what progress is being made. But I find the quickest and easiest way to make sure that everyone on the team is up to speed is for you all to summarize your positions in regular morning briefings, or “morning prayers”, as I like to call them. That way everyone can stay cross-referenced with what every other part of the team is doing without having to spend hours trawling through the system to dig up every statement. So who wants to go first?’

DS Porter stood up and opened his notebook. ‘Myself and DI Hill have collected approximately twenty-two hours’ worth of CCTV footage from a variety of sources, covering streets close to where the bodies were found and some of the main roads leading to it. But there are no images of the street where the car was actually parked.

‘Some of the cameras show foot traffic in the area and we might have caught the driver on film, but several hundred people walk through the area each day. Without some kind of description of whoever it was behind the wheel, we can’t begin to eliminate anyone from our inquiries.’

Porter sat down and the officer beside him stood up. And so it continued around the room until each officer had given a short presentation of their work so far. Anderson made notes and asked a few questions. The breakthrough he had been hoping for was yet to emerge. Dozens of lines of inquiry were still being followed and hundreds of ‘actions’ were being dealt with. Nothing was being overlooked and, so far, nothing conclusive had been found.

When all the presentations were complete, Anderson threw the floor open for discussion. Collins put her hand up. She saw the DCI’s jaw tighten as he nodded at her.

‘The initial pathology report confirms that some of the internal organs of all three victims have been removed,’ she said.

‘That’s correct, yes.’

‘Do you therefore think that we’re looking for someone with medical training?’

Anderson shrugged. ‘Possibly. It depends on what you define as medical training. Even a schoolboy knows the difference between a heart and a kidney. And you can get all sorts of stuff off the internet these days. A doctor or surgeon or someone similar may well be behind all this, but I don’t want that to be our only focus. And I certainly don’t want to exclude suspects that have no link to the medical profession, not at this stage.’

A few other members of the team asked questions of their own until the energy in the room started to fade. ‘Okay. Let’s not stand around talking. Let’s get to work.’ Anderson began handing out assignments for the day and once again Collins found herself sidelined from the heart of the investigation.

Her task was to work with staff at the National Missing Persons helpline and compile a list of potential names for victim number three. Both Chadwick and Miller had been listed as missing at the time their bodies were found, so there was a good chance that the same would be true of the third victim, but Collins quickly discovered that the task was far more daunting than she could ever have imagined. After teenagers, middle-aged men are the most likely group to go missing, usually as a result of some kind of financial or emotional crisis. The initial list she was presented with contained thousands of names. It was clearly going to be another long day.

With an approximate height and weight as well as skin colour for the victim provided by the initial report of the pathologist, Collins could instantly eliminate those who were clearly too big or too small or from the wrong ethnic group, but it still left hundreds of names that had to be added to the ‘maybe’ pile.

And the pile seemed to be growing by the minute. Stories in most of the day’s papers giving vague details of the find ensured a stream of calls came into the incident room. Many were from distressed relatives wanting to know if their missing loved one could be among those found inside the vehicle.

Every time a new call came in, Collins’s colleagues passed on the name of the missing man for her to check and cross-reference.

As the day went on, so Collins’s level of frustration grew. At first she had assumed that the reason Anderson was being so awful to her was because he had his own DI and DS that he liked working with. But now it dawned on her that Anderson had not only been told to keep her on a tight reign by the officers from the DPS but had also been informed about the reason for her being interviewed in the first place. She couldn’t tell if Anderson had actually made up his mind about whether she was a corrupt officer or not, but it seemed clear that he had decided to err on the side of caution.

It was gone eleven o’clock by the time Collins clambered into her BMW and pulled out of the police station car park. She longed for a long, hot bath to ease away the stress of the day. The sooner she got home the better.

At the first set of traffic lights she stopped at, an old but tidy Vauxhall Vectra being driven by a man who fitted the same description pulled up alongside and stared across at her. After a quick glance, Collins continued looking forward and ignored him, her mind filled with thoughts about the case and about Anderson. The lights changed and the Vauxhall shot off. She was so distracted that she did not even notice that it soon pulled over to the side of the road to allow her to pass.

The sound of a horn snapped her out of her daydream. Dazzling headlights suddenly flashed in her rear-view mirror. She looked up to see the Vectra moving dangerously close to her rear bumper. She sped up a little out of instinct, but the driver matched her. What on earth was this idiot trying to do?

Collins pulled closer to the kerb to allow the car to go past, but the Vectra simply stayed tight on her bumper. She tried speeding up again, and at that moment the car suddenly shot out into the middle of the road and blazed past her, only to cut in front just inches from her bumper and screech to a halt. Collins stamped her foot on to the brake and came to a halt just inches from the man’s car.