Matthews leaned in close over the two bodies in the boot and then did the same with the remaining corpse, her eyes dancing around as she quickly took in all the details. Collins was rooted to the spot, fascinated by the sight of the pathologist at work. Matthews half climbed into the back of the car, resting her knee on the edge of the seat and leaning forward so she could run her gloved fingertips lightly over the edge of the open chest cavity. ‘Well, no stomach, so no contents for me to look at, and no liver for me to take a reading from,’ she said out loud. ‘No head means no eyes, so no chance of a fluid check. Not enough blood on the seat to suggest death was in situ so there’s little point in checking lividity.’ She looked back at Collins. ‘Nothing like a challenge to brighten your day.’

The pathologist looked around the tent, seeking out the police photographer. ‘Have you got all angles on this?’

The man nodded. ‘Stills from both sides and on top. I also shot some video. I’ve got all I need. The CSM says it’s fine for you to move them if you need to.’

Matthews nodded and turned back to the body. She reached forward, gripped the edge of the severed forearm and tried to pull it straight. It did not budge. ‘Rigor mortis,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘That puts time of death somewhere in the last twenty-four hours. Fits in well with the level of putrefaction when you factor in the open wounds.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a long, slender, rectal thermometer.

Collins winced. ‘I really don’t know how you can do your job,’ she said softly. ‘I mean, I see dead bodies occasionally, but to have to deal with them so intimately day in day out, I don’t know how you cope. Especially when they’re in this sort of condition.’

Matthews looked up and smiled. ‘It’s not so bad. I see myself as the victims’ last hope if they’re going to get justice. The blood, the gore, the bodies – none of it bothers me. But what does is trying to get my head round what goes through the minds of the people who can do such terrible things to another human being. I want to get as much evidence as I can to help you guys catch whoever was responsible.’ She paused and began prodding at the skin of the corpse’s thigh with her index finger.

‘I’m really glad you’re working on this job. I never know who I’m going to be dealing with from one case to the next until I get to the crime scene. There are so many slimy coppers out there, it’s good to have you on board. How are you finding the new DCI?’

‘Seems efficient enough.’

Matthews turned, her eyes wide. ‘That’s a very diplomatic answer, Stacey. You two not getting on?’

‘I think I’ve managed to work my way into his bad books already.’

‘Between you and me, I hear he doesn’t like working with women. Thinks we should all be at home in the kitchen or something like …’

Matthews stopped speaking. She had removed the thermometer and was staring hard at it, her forehead creased with a frown.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Collins.

‘Doesn’t make sense. I’ve just taken a reading. This guy has early-stage rigor mortis but his core temperature is lower than ambient.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Bodies normally cool down to room temperature after death, but at ten degrees Celsius, this one is well below the temperature of his surroundings, so he’s actually warming up. I’d need to check the other two, but my guess would be that the bodies have been kept in cold storage.’

‘You mean frozen?’

‘Possibly, but not necessarily frozen solid. Just somewhere cold enough to retard the normal death processes. I’d need to do more tests.’

Collins’s mind was buzzing. ‘So how long ago could they have been murdered?’

Matthews laughed. ‘There’s no crystal ball in my bag, Stacey. I have no idea at this stage. I’m just telling you what the initial evidence suggests. Could be hours. Could be days. Could be weeks. I really couldn’t say.’

‘Well, that means they might not have been killed at the same time. They could be months apart.’ Collins stepped forward and took another look at the two bodies in the boot. ‘We could be looking at a serial killer.’ Collins glanced at her watch. ‘Shit. I’d better go. I don’t want to be late for the briefing. Thanks for that, Jessica.’

‘Good luck.’

Collins took a few steps towards the entrance of the tent, then stopped and turned back. ‘We should do it, you know.’

Matthews was puzzled. ‘Do what?’

‘Meet up again, without a body. The last time was what, a year ago?’

‘More like a year and a half. It was after that serial rapist case, wasn’t it? Christ, that makes me feel old.’

‘You and me both.’

‘That’s right, we went to that Italian place, do you remember?’

‘I do now.’

‘Let’s sort something out. I’ll call you once I’ve got the PMs out of the way, some time towards the end of the week.’

‘You’re on.’

‘Nice of you to join us, DI Collins,’ Anderson said glibly as Collins squeezed her way on the edge of the semicircle of officers that had gathered around him inside the small room. Tony Woods shot her a weak smile before turning his eyes back to the boss.

‘Another key field I want to get on right away is CCTV,’ Anderson continued. ‘This car can’t have been there more than a few hours. The traffic and congestion charge people are already looking into it but I want to gather CCTV from this area as well. We want to see if we’ve caught any images of the driver decanting. We need to move fast – these private cameras tend to erase their stuff in a few hours and my nose will be seriously out of joint if we lose anything because we weren’t quick enough off the mark.

‘I want uniform carrying out house-to-house for the same reason. And let’s track down the drivers of the cars that were parked in front of and directly behind this vehicle at the time the bodies were found, see if they remember anything.’ Anderson sighed as he saw Collins raise a hand in the air. ‘What is it, Collins?’

‘Sir. I was just talking to the pathologist. It seems highly likely that the bodies are older than they look. I think they may have been kept in cold storage. It means they might not even have been killed at the same time. The deaths could be days, even weeks apart.’

A murmur ran through the crowd of officers, and Woods began shuffling uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Anderson thumbed the end of his nose, then folded his arms and stared hard at Collins. ‘And for your next trick you can come round to my house and teach my granny to suck eggs!’

Collins looked around, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’d already worked that one out, Collins. DS Porter, for the sake of our latecomer here, why don’t you recap what you told us all a few minutes ago?’

Porter, a heavy-set blond man with small beady eyes, flicked through the pages of his notebook before he spoke. ‘The car belongs to a Mr Raymond Chadwick, forty-four, a property developer, reported missing by his wife approximately six weeks ago. Described as five feet ten, heavy build, IC1. Last seen wearing a charcoal double-breasted jacket, matching trousers and black Oxford cap shoes. No mobile phone, bank or credit card activity reported since his disappearance. No ransom demand received by the family.’

Anderson nodded as he listened to the details, then cleared his throat. ‘Working on the assumption that Chadwick is the man on the back seat – though we’ll need DNA confirmation before we can be absolutely sure – it seems unlikely that he went awol for the best part of two months, vanished off the face of the earth, only to get himself killed just twenty-four hours ago.’

Anderson looked at the officers gathered around him before fixing Collins with his glare. ‘Three bodies at once would be bad news. This is even worse. Three bodies from three different times with a cooling-off period in between. Looks like we’ve got a serial killer on our hands. Not only that, we’ve got a serial killer who wanted us to make a link between three separate killings. They needed to be sure we knew what was going on right from the start.’