Having parked at the end of the cordon, Collins made her way towards the line of blue-and-white tape that was stretched across the road. A crowd of nosy onlookers watched jealously as she ducked underneath and showed her ID to the Community Service Officer on guard. ‘DCI Anderson is waiting for you over at the mobile command unit,’ he said flatly.

Collins quickly spotted Anderson in the midst of a group of other officers outside the small Portakabin decked out in police colours that would be the team’s base in the early hours of the inquiry. Her own DS, Tony Woods, was already there, as were DS Richard Porter and DI Leonard Hill, the two officers Anderson had brought with him to the murder team. There were also a few DCs, and Collins silently cursed herself for being one of the last to arrive. The presence of a mobile command unit meant they were in for the long haul. She would have to call her parents and get them to look after Sophie for the evening.

Anderson was in his mid forties, well over six feet tall with the kind of slim, athletic build that suggested he either spent hours in the gym or was a sports fanatic in his spare time. Clean shaven, his dark, wavy hair had been styled into a smart-yet-fashionable cut. His deep hazel eyes seemed to flash with irritation as he spotted Collins coming towards him, and he took a long drag on the cigarette he had been smoking.

‘I got here as soon as I could sir,’ said Collins. ‘What’s going on? Who’s the victim?’

Anderson said nothing for a moment but just eyed Collins carefully as a stream of smoke slid out of his nostrils. ‘Don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Haven’t got a positive ID for any of them yet.’

‘Them? I thought there was only one.’

‘That’s because you’re late. Follow me, Collins.’

He set off at a rapid pace towards the large white incident tent that had been erected to cover both the car and its immediate surroundings. A box of protective paper suits, along with their accompanying masks and overshoes, sat outside the entrance.

Anderson and Collins both suited up before he led her inside, reminding her to stick to the makeshift path of plastic planks that had been laid out to avoid the crime scene being contaminated. Spotlights blazed away from the corners of the tent. Grim-faced forensic officers wearing knee pads carried out a fingertip search of the ground around the vehicle, while others dusted the doors and windows for prints. Blowflies were swarming all around and the stench of death was everywhere. Collins knew she would smell it in her hair and taste it in the back of her throat for the next few days at least. Every now and then there was a huge flash of light as the police photographer took another snap of the remains. Anderson steered Collins towards the back-passenger side door of the car, which was wide open.

‘This is victim one,’ he said. ‘Found by a couple of traffic wardens. Hasn’t been touched apart from having the blanket that was covering the upper half of the body pulled away.’

Collins held her breath and leaned towards the car to get a better look. With its missing head and open, empty chest cavity, the corpse looked more like a cattle carcass from a meat market than like anything human.

She could see the white of the bones along the edges of the hole where the ribs had been ripped apart and the ragged flaps of muscle and tissue hanging down inside like shredded curtains. There was no sign of the missing organs in the footwell or elsewhere on the backseat and precious little blood anywhere – a firm indication that the victim had been killed elsewhere.

The body was naked from the waist upwards. The lower half was clad in trousers that had been pushed down to just above the knees. In the place where the genitals should have been Collins saw only another gaping hole.

Having taken in all she could, Collins stepped back and Anderson led her towards the rear of the car, where the boot lid had been raised. Inside Collins saw two more figures that had once been human beings but were now reduced to something almost unbearable to look at.

The bodies, both naked, had been arranged top to tail, the limbs twisted into awkward angles to fit into the available space. Once again both were missing heads and hands, but this time Collins had a close-up view of the decapitations.

The tissues of the neck were severed all around down to the bone. The remaining bright red flesh had become wet and slimy, and seemed to pulse slowly as thousands of tiny white maggots moved across its surface.

Collins held her breath and gulped air in through her mouth to prevent her from throwing up.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped.

‘Looks like the MO’s the same on all three victims. Best I can tell they are all men of a roughly similar age. IC1s. I’ve seen this level of decomp before and it’s the same for all three. I’m working on the assumption that the bodies are a couple of days old at most. It’s gonna be a right git of a case. Triple killings like this are as rare as rocking horse shit.’

‘Do you think it could be some sort of gangland vendetta, a drugs hit maybe?’

‘That was my first thought, but that doesn’t square with the open chest cavities. The organs could have been taken as trophies or for some kind of ceremony. Either way, we’re looking for a seriously sick bastard.’

Collins cocked her head to one side as she looked at the corpses. Outside of the drugs world, the usual pattern for a serial killer was for the murders to take place one at a time and for the rate of killing to escalate over a period of months or years. For someone to begin with a triple homicide was unprecedented.

‘No one starts out like this,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘We should check the cold case files to see if there has been anything like this before.’

‘Already been done and we’ve drawn a blank,’ said Anderson. ‘Plenty of headless bodies and a few corpses with missing organs, but never the two combined. We’re breaking new ground here. Lucky us.’

Anderson glanced at his watch. ‘Initial briefing in ten minutes inside the MCU. Try not to be late again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

As she watched Anderson leave the tent, Collins briefly pondered the fact that it was a shame he was such an arsehole. If not, he would almost be her type. Just outside the entrance, Anderson was stopped by a tall, slender woman with chestnut-brown hair peeking out from behind the confines of a white-paper hood. Collins immediately recognized her as Dr Jessica Matthews, the Home Office pathologist with whom she had worked with many times before.

Anderson could only summon up a tight smile and brief handshake in response to the doctor’s cheerful greeting. Matthews entered the tent, closely followed by the Crime Scene Manager. Collins couldn’t help but notice that the pathologist even managed to look good in her protective disposable white boiler suit.

Although the situation continued to improve, the police force was still dominated by men and male values, and many of the women working within it seemed to think the only way to get on was to have bigger balls and more testosterone than their male counterparts. He-bitches, Collins called them. But Jessica Matthews was different, far more like Collins herself. Resolutely professional and with an air of absolute authority, she walked her own path and refused to be led by those around her. Collins liked and admired her enormously as a result. She was one of the few women she came across during her working life that she considered to be a friend.

‘Hi, Jessica.’

‘Hey, Stacey, lovely to see you.’

Collins looked over her shoulder towards the bodies in the boot. ‘Hardly lovely circumstances.’

Matthews smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. ‘Come, come, Stacey, we only ever meet at crime scenes or at the mortuary. There’s always a dead body or two close to hand.’