‘He thinks he’s used something like a filleting knife and some kind of bone shears - not the kind of thing you carry around in your pocket. Definitely premeditated.’

‘Any witnesses? Anyone hear anything?’

‘We’ve got near thirty officers from Nineteenth and Twenty-fifth going round the blocks, but nothing yet.’

‘How do you read it, Harps?’ Eddie said. ‘Who is he?’

‘It’s not spontaneous. It was planned. He humiliates and likes hurting. He’s posed the body. It looks to me that he’s got the whole thing figured out - where he kills, how he kills, how he escapes. He’s been dreaming this a long time. My take on the victim is that she’s just like the others. She’s rich.’

‘And how can you tell that?’ Williamson asked.

‘She’s got a half-carat diamond in each ear, she’s had a nose job, her hands and feet are unused to work, and she looks like she spent most of her life in a gym.’

An hour later the scene was a buzz of police activity. NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit was fast, thorough and precise. Staffed, unlike some CSUs, with police detectives - they knew the importance of speed.

The next twelve hours were crucial. If they got a quick lead, they might be able to run this killer down before he got to dispose of his bloody clothes and put his trophies away. Williamson reckoned that he had a car and would put her clothes in the trunk and then maybe leave them until the heat calmed down - but that was a long shot.

Harper stayed at the scene and sat on the low wall at the edge of the lot. He pulled out his sketch pad. A sleek dark greckle stared across the page from a couple of days earlier at the Ramble. He turned over and drew the crime scene with a few quick lines. The dead woman appeared on the page in front of him. Thoughts of Lisa flittered into his mind but he stopped himself. The imagination could be a cruel thing. He focused on the sketch. Without the shock-red blood and bruising, she looked serene - she was positioned with her arms across her pudenda like a Renaissance nude, the butterfly wings either side of her, strange and otherworldly.

What was he doing, this maniac killer? The posing was important. Harper knew that much. It was an act of communication. He was saying something. As yet, Harper didn’t speak the killer’s language. But something was happening. This was the second kill in two days. His rate was escalating dramatically. Why? Was it some kind of kill frenzy? Time would tell.

‘Hey, Harper!’ a voice at the far end of the parking lot called out. Harper looked up and saw the tall, thin figure of Eddie Kasper, dressed in his low-slung pants and bubble jacket, his hair braided tight to his scalp.

‘Yeah, what?’

‘It’s just like old times, ain’t it?’

Chapter Nine

The Station House

November 16, 9.14 p.m.

Harper had a quick decision to make if he was going to make a difference to the case. He drove straight from the parking lot back to the precinct, the mass of information from the crime scene turning in his mind. He needed to know the deal.

Captain Lafayette was not in his office. He was down in the gym, sweating out his frustrations. He’d been working round the clock on the case, trying to get the breakthrough from Blue Team while keeping the executives from breathing down everyone’s necks, but nothing was biting.

He’d left a message for Harper to go down to the gym if he turned up. Tom Harper was the one hope he had of turning down the heat, and talking to Kasper had been his last-ditch effort to pull him into the case.

When Harper arrived in the gym Lafayette was alone. Everyone else was out hunting down witnesses and following up vague possibilities. Lafayette was on the weights. He saw Tom and huffed through another five repetitions. Always one to make people wait.

‘Heard you showed up at the crime scene. I was first down there. Worst I’ve come up against. How about you?’

‘Yeah, it’s brutal.’

‘Serial homicides usually escalate like this, Harper?’

‘No. Not quite so quickly, but there are no fixed patterns. They usually take a longer cooling off period between kills. For some reason, the killer got hungry real quick this time.’

‘Same guy, right?’

‘Almost certainly. As long as you keep the specific injuries and the cherry blossom detail out of the press, we should avoid copycats.’

‘What’s wrong with plain old-fashioned murder? You want to kill someone, take a gun. One shot. Be tidy, you know.’ The chief towelled his shoulders dry. His thick moustache was also dripping. He licked the sweat off the bristles and then towelled his face. ‘Offer still stands, Harper. Where are you now?’

‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘Look, I can be specific. Do you want to try to save any part of your career by taking the clean slate and helping us nail this case? You’d have to apologize and sign up to some therapy for the aggression, just to keep ourselves in the clear. Rainer is gunning for you, Harper. You need to know that I had to go over his head for this one.’

‘Thanks, Captain. I appreciate your faith in me.’

‘Fuck faith, Harper. I looked up the stats. You’re a closer. The best we got.’

Harper looked around him. ‘I’m not sorry for what I did to Lieutenant Jarvis. He called Lisa a slut, and everyone knows I’ve got a short fuse. He knew what he was doing.’

‘I know, I know. Divorce is a pig of a business. He said the wrong thing. Listen, one day he’ll realize what an ass he is, but until then you’ve still got a life to lead. Look, I can probably apologize on your behalf, but will you help us stop this scum from terrifying half of New York?’

‘What do they want from me? They’re not going to rip up the charges, are they? And Jarvis won’t like it, either. He’ll take it as far as he can.’

‘Jarvis will hate it, but let me worry about him,’ the captain said. ‘He’s got his own troubles. A lot came to light during the internal investigation - he’s been intimidating the new recruits and anyone else not able to stand up to him. He’ll be lucky to keep his own fucking job. And as for the charges, we can maybe get away with a Letter of Instruction. With psychological assessment and therapy for that temper of yours, I think we can get that signed off by the deputy commissioner.’

Harper rose. ‘I can do without the psychological assessment. ’

‘Just go through the motions for me, will you? It’s part of the deal.’

‘I got my own way of handling it.’

‘I know, and look how successful it is. Come on, give yourself a break. Jump on board. You could do with the focus.’

Harper stood silently, then nodded once and the two men shook. ‘Good to have you back on the team, Detective Harper. You get signed up to the department shrink and you’re back on Blue Team. Dr Levene works at headquarters. She knows you’re coming. Just don’t take a pop if things get tough. Keep your fucking hands in your pockets, Sugar Ray.’

‘Sure,’ said Harper. ‘If people lay off me, I’ll lay off them. Simple laws of physics, Chief.’

Chapter Ten

Blue Team Major Investigation Room

November 16, 11.15 p.m.

For the first twenty-four hours of each homicide, the focus was on three main points of investigation - victim identification, witness search and forensic leads. Back at Blue Team, Tom Harper went straight from the gym to his old desk and started working on victim ID. He’d not been happy with the speed of ID on the previous victims. It took them eight hours to ID the Ward’s Island corpse as Grace Frazer and those eight hours were lost hours.

Harper insisted on going through the CCTV images himself. He knew two things for certain from his visit to the crime scene: one, the woman in the parking lot drove there in a car, and, two, that car had disappeared. Simple conclusion was that the killer didn’t use his own car. He’d gone to the lot on foot and after the murder he’d driven the victim’s car out of there. It was the only way he could’ve left in such a bloody state without being seen.