‘There’s been some talk about it in certain circles. I just wanted to know if the whisper mill had reached you yet.’

‘Not that I’m aware.’

‘Okay. But if you hear anything, let me know.’

‘He might not have had time to mention it. He’s having woman trouble and then there’s this aggro with the Albanian mob. That’s keeping him pretty occupied.

‘You need to keep a lid on that, Danny. I don’t want our hand being forced.’

‘It’s under control.’

‘The kind of control that leaves a lot of dead bodies on the street?’

‘You’re funny, you know that. Ever considered a career in stand-up?’

‘I mean it, Thompson. You lot go to war and all bets are off. We’ll have no choice but to bring you all in.’

‘And we’ll be back out again in a day.’

Milton leaned forward. ‘Let me put this in language you can understand. You fuck up the arrangements from your end and I’ll do the same from mine. If you find yourself in the shit, there will be no point in calling on me.’

DCI Milton watched as Thompson finished his drink, stood up and walked out of the pub. A split second later a man from a nearby table came and sat down next to him.

‘You get it all?’

The man held up a miniature recording device.

‘Clear as a bell. You think we can trust him?’

He looked back round to face the front. ‘The thing you have to understand about grasses is that out of all the people in the world, they’re the ones everyone despises. Criminals hate them and, even though a lot of police work relies on them, we don’t like them much either. Sell their own grannies if they thought it would get them somewhere. So if you ask me do I trust Danny Thompson the answer is a definitive no. I wouldn’t trust the fucking scumbag as far as I could throw him.’

Thompson’s driving during the return journey was equally erratic.

Every roundabout was circled at least twice; he joined and rejoined the motorway three times and doubled back on himself every half an hour. Cocky and confident, he was certain that he had made himself impossible to follow. And he had, which is why the team keeping him under surveillance had opted to fit a small GPS device to his car instead.

His entire journey appeared on the screen of a laptop computer, and it was only when he stopped for more than a few minutes that one of the team of cars and motorcycles that were always a few miles behind was sent forward to investigate.

As the map showed Thompson pulling up to his home, the head of the team hit the redial button on his mobile and held it up to his ear. ‘He’s back now,’ said the man in his strong South African accent. ‘I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere else so I’m going to call it off for the day and send the rest of my boys home. The photographs will be with you by the morning. There will also be a couple of audio recordings, though the quality isn’t great because we didn’t want to risk getting too close. Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr Stanley?’

‘No,’ Jack replied softly. ‘I’ll call you when I get the prints. In the meantime, feel free to send me your invoice.’

6

The shelves in the incident room at Peckham were creaking under the weight of all the reports being written up by members of the team, but so far nothing seemed to have taken them even a single step closer to finding out who was behind the triple murder.

Rajid Khan, a geeky computer expert attached to the unit, had been brought in to examine Chadwick’s home and laptop computers to see if they held any clue to his whereabouts in the weeks before he died. Khan used specialist software to scan the hard drives, looking for evidence of incriminating emails, letters or instant messages.

His investigation had produced hundreds of pages of data, all of which had to be read, recorded and cross-referenced. Yet, despite the huge number of man hours invested in this part of the inquiry, nothing of interest was found.

Leroy Banks, the lover of Sandra Miller, had been arrested, brought to the station and subjected to a lengthy interview under caution. He made no secret of the fact that he hated his love rival and that he had publicly expressed a desire to see him dead on numerous occasions. However, he had a cast-iron alibi for the night the bodies were dumped.

‘He can’t be totally in the clear because we don’t know how many people we’re talking about,’ said Porter as the team discussed their findings that afternoon. ‘There could be two or three killers all working together. Just because Banks wasn’t actually driving the car on the night the bodies were dumped doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’

A murmur of agreement passed through the room. Collins looked across at Porter and found herself unable to resist the urge to cut him down to size. ‘It’s not Banks. That theory only works if there’s some kind of connection between the victims,’ she said. ‘They’d have to all live in the same street or work for the same company. It’s one thing having a lone killer working at random, quite another having group effort. If that kind of link existed, we’d already know.’

Now it was DI Hill’s turn to speak. ‘Maybe you just haven’t found the link yet. Don’t go knocking our end of the investigation while your own research is coming up short.’

Collins couldn’t believe what she was being accused of. She could feel her chest tightening as anger rose up within her. She was just about to let loose a stream of vicious swearwords and put-downs when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted DCI Anderson entering the room.

Collins had spent all morning psyching herself up for what she was about to do and knew that it was now or never. She had to make her move, and revenge on DI Hill would have to wait. Anderson had barely reached the halfway point across the room when Collins appeared beside him.

‘Sir, I need to attend the post-mortems this afternoon.’

Anderson raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘Myself and DI Hill are already attending,’ he said, his voice calm and firm. ‘I really don’t see the need for anyone else to be there. And besides, you already have your assignment –’

‘I need to know if there are any distinguishing marks on the unidentified body.’

‘That will be in the report –’

‘But that won’t be ready for a couple of days. I’ve got a contact on Crimewatch but their deadline for the next show is the day after tomorrow. If anything useful comes out of the PMs, I need to know about it as soon as possible.’

Anderson reached one hand up to his chin and began scratching it slowly – a habitual gesture. Collins could see that he was deep in thought and held her breath.

‘Let’s talk about it in my office,’ he said at last. ‘Right now.’

Moments later Collins found herself standing in front of Anderson’s large wooden desk while he seated himself and studied her cautiously.

‘I don’t think it’s any secret that you do have something of a reputation as a loose cannon. I’d even heard about your exploits long before I arrived at MIT, and, I have to confess, some of what I’ve heard makes me very uneasy,’ he said.

Collins blinked and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know what to say. I get results. Sometimes my methods may be a bit unorthodox but I get the job done.’

‘But there’s no point in getting the job done if it all falls apart when the case comes to trial. And with the kind of antics you get up to, that’s just the situation we’re likely to end up in. That’s my big fear.’

‘I know the law, sir,’ snapped Collins. ‘I’d never do anything to jeopardize a trial. Just because I’m determined doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.’

‘I never said you were.’

Anderson sat back and scratched his chin again as he ran through the options in his mind. He enjoyed the challenge of running a murder squad – so far as he was concerned it was what policing was all about – but he was unhappy about having inherited so many officers that would not have been his first choice had he been putting the team together himself.