That sound. The dull, grating thud of metal on bone.

The man’s legs buckled under him from the first blow, but Naysmith struck again immediately, bringing the wrench down hard before he fell. The umbrella skittered across the wet tarmac as the figure collapsed to the pavement. The first blow was rarely fatal, usually just fracturing the skull. It was the second or third that killed. He gazed down at the twitching figure on the pavement, then swung the wrench down hard once more. And in that moment, he felt it – felt the terrible give as the side of the head caved in under the impact, felt the life at his feet blink out and cease, felt the unbelievable rush of power surge through him. He controlled life itself.

When he came to himself, he found that he was shaking. The dreadful thrill of ecstasy coursed through him as he straightened up, and looked around. He had to keep to his plan, had to get the body off the road.

Dropping the wrench, he stooped to grab the man’s feet, pulling him across to the edge of the pavement. Euphoric, his pulse thumping in his ears, he lifted the body with surprising ease, tipping it over the fence to fall into the grass. Turning, he went back and gathered up the wrench and the umbrella, eyes sweeping the road for anything else he’d missed. Then, he climbed over the fence and half rolled, half dragged the body down the bank, trying not to look when the misshapen head turned face up.

Hidden behind the brick piling, he knelt beside his victim and carefully went through his pockets. Coins, wallet, house keys . . . there was very little to work with. But then, from the depths of the man’s inside jacket pocket, he drew out a mobile phone.

Naysmith smiled. He pulled the silver MP3 player out of the white envelope. Placing it in the man’s jacket, he took the phone and slipped it into the envelope.

The noise of an approaching car made him freeze, and he flattened himself on the ground beside the corpse. Headlights raked through the trees, lighting up the rain as the vehicle passed, but it didn’t slow. Nobody had seen anything.

Naysmith raised himself up slowly. Jamming the envelope into his pocket, he tipped the body so that it rolled over into the river, mercifully face down in the dark water. He collapsed the umbrella and threw it in too, before retrieving the wrench. With a final check to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, he leapt across the river and strode up the sloping side of the railway embankment.

And now he allowed himself to feel it, to bask in it – the uncontrollable excitement inside that made him want to scream out and punch the air. He stalked on through the storm, no longer aware of the wind or the rain, laughter echoing as he passed under the arched bridge and disappeared into the darkness.

24

Thursday, 9 August

Harland stepped off the uneven pavement and looked up at the trees. There was no sound except the gentle rustling of the leaves above him as he stood, lost in thought, on the quiet country lane. The scent of grass came to him on the warm air and he closed his eyes, enjoying the moment of peace.

They had been due a bit of luck. Days had stretched into weeks with nothing to show for their efforts, just one dead end after another. But this was more than just luck – this was a proper, old-fashioned hunch that had paid off. It had been Mendel who first asked the question: if Vicky regularly went out running, wasn’t there a chance that she might have had an iPod, or something, to listen to music?

‘Spend a lot of time watching young women jogging?’ Pope had teased, and they’d all laughed, seizing any opportunity to lighten the mood that could otherwise become unbearable. But Mendel’s idea was a good one. They’d gone back through the list of names, spoken to her family and friends and discreetly poked around.

Yes, poor Vicky loved her music, and come to think of it she had got herself one of those new MP3 players, a little silver one. No, nobody knew where it was now.

It hadn’t seemed like much, but it was a new lead to follow. There was a chance that Vicky had been wearing her music player when she met her killer, and a chance that the killer had taken it. But it might just as easily have been swept away by the tides, if it had ever been there at all.

‘It’s a possibility,’ Blake had shrugged when Harland told him. ‘But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you, Graham. This business is shaping up to be a lot worse than we first imagined. We mustn’t allow ourselves to get distracted from the evidence we already have, and we need to be sure that the other forces are all pulling their weight.’

Harland had been angry when he left the Superintendent’s office. Stalking out into the corridor, he’d stood there, shaking, struggling to shrug off the rage that gripped him. The man was a fool. He’d made his way down the stairs and out of the building to stand in a sheltered corner, his phone already in his hand. Drawing heavily on a cigarette, he’d called Mendel and told him to pull up any mentions of silver MP3 players on the database. Blake could go to hell.

It had taken Mendel some time. Searching for a commonplace item was never easy, and in this case there was still some uncertainty over the exact make and colour of the device. With so many unrelated pieces of evidence obscuring the one they were hoping to find, there was no guarantee that they’d turn up anything.

But Mendel had been smiling when he put his head round Harland’s door.

‘Got a minute?’ he asked.

Harland beckoned him in.

‘You look cheerful,’ he said. ‘What’s brought that on?’

‘I found something I think you’re going to like.’ Mendel eased himself into a chair and gazed across the desk at Harland. ‘Vicky Sutherland’s missing MP3 player – it was a small, silver one, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there are over a thousand possible matches for that on the database, but I had a bit of a think.’ He leaned forward. ‘We’re looking for something that’s turned up in the weeks since she was killed, and that narrowed it down quite a bit.’

‘What did you find?’ Harland asked.

‘I found a guy called Morris Eddings,’ Mendel said. ‘He’s a sixty-one-year-old university lecturer, killed near his home in some picture-postcard Hampshire village. Guess what he had in his jacket pocket.’

Harland nodded thoughtfully.

‘Can we be sure it wasn’t his own MP3 player?’ he asked.

Mendel shrugged and spread his large hands wide.

‘Too early to say anything for sure – this only just turned up and I thought I’d loop you in right away.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Seems a bit out of character though – some old duffer in the counties with a slinky little MP3 in his jacket.’

‘It does,’ Harland nodded. ‘If we can get our hands on the device, we should be able to establish the ownership one way or another.’

‘We could just check the tracks.’ Mendel grinned. ‘If it’s all R&B then it probably didn’t belong to our lecturer.’

‘Bad taste isn’t exclusive to the young,’ Harland smiled. ‘When did this one die?’

‘Last month. The Hampshire lot are still pretty warm on it, but they haven’t turned anything up yet. So far there seems to be no obvious motive. Sound familiar?’

‘Too familiar,’ Harland sighed. ‘Where did it happen again?’

‘I’ll send you the reports but it was some little village near Winchester. West Meon I think it was.’

He’d stood up and made his way to the door.

‘Picturesque little place by all accounts. Very Agatha Christie.’

And it was. The main street meandered left and right between rustic houses on a wooded slope in the Meon Valley, a charming muddle of thatched roofs and old flint walls draped with colourful bushes. There were pavements that suddenly disappeared where the road grew narrow, five-bar gates across gravel driveways, and hanging baskets everywhere. Harland had turned down a quiet lane, past the old butcher’s shop with its hand-painted sign and the tiny village Post Office. He’d parked just beyond the victim’s house and walked back along the lane. There was a small ‘For Sale’ board outside the place now – the only visible reminder of what had happened. How long would the house lie empty?