The thoughts that flew about her head seemed terrible and impossible. Dee stood at the window, her face taut with pain, biting her nails off one by one. Her hand encircled her waist and gripped her skin until her nails were embedded deep in her side. In her head, she went through every detail of the profile. It all fit.

It all fit so closely that it might’ve been written by her. She went through the details again and again, doubt springing up in accusation, denial breathing fire on every new memory. Her mind was a rush of tiny fragments - tiny blood spots, dirt under his fingernails, mood swings, long absences, violence and sentimentality, perversion, rape, manipulation, drinking, cleaning the car. He was ticking every box.

Every box, that was, except the four-day absence from home. Dee checked her calendar. She had been at home and so had Nick. It was a doubt large enough to make her feel stupid, large enough to make an excuse for herself.

For two hours, while Nick was out chasing his two children through the woods, Dee bit her nails, grabbed her skin and felt her mind contort. One detail didn’t fit, but several did. She had to call the police number just to check, just to be reassured. Dee picked up the phone and began to dial. Her mind was still uncertain. Faith was turning somersaults in her heart. The line started to ring and she felt like a guilty child, her pulse racing, her breath short. In fact, Dee was terrified.

Then she saw Nick appear at the end of the driveway. He was carrying Michael under one arm. Michael was giggling and laughing with his father. Susan was on his shoulders, thumping his head as though he was a monster. She was screaming with delight and Nick was roaring like a troll.

Dee broke out a smile. She felt the muscles in her face ache from the tension. There he was, playing with his children. William and Susan with their father. He wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a bad man, he was her children’s father. Nick was right, sometimes she did get all confused in her head. Maybe she was going mad. The line rang once more and Dee replaced the handset. Once again in Dee’s life, faith won.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Missing Persons Unit

November 28, 12.05 p.m.

A hooker somehow disappeared and her kids had half starved in a project that housed 3,500 people. So much for neighbours looking out for each other. So much for equal opportunity policing. The neighbours even said they heard crying and screaming from the girls, but that was normal in the projects. No need to interfere and find yourself facing a teenager with a gun. Shut your own door and block your ears.

Tom stared again at the image of Lottie Bixley’s face. For four days, her children suffered on their own. For those four days, she was a missing person, not a murder victim. He logged on to the National Missing Persons database. He was looking for something. Anything at all. He typed in Lottie’s details. Within about half an hour, he’d found another missing girl called Elisa Dale. He opened her details.

Female, 110 pounds, Caucasian, nineteen years old, brown hair. Suspected prostitute.

He scrolled down to her address and considered it for a moment. The date was June 14, 2006. Nearly eighteen months before Lottie went missing. He looked at the brief description. She went out to work the street and never returned. That was it. No investigation. Case closed.

Tom’s curiosity clicked into gear. He narrowed his search location and dates and began to find other young women.

Within an hour, Harper had pulled together three photographs of young women in front of him. Two Caucasian, one Hispanic, all in their late teens or early twenties, all of a slight build. All hookers living in East Harlem. All missing without a trace in the last twenty-four months.

None of these cases ever reached the homicide squad. None were investigated. Hookers were not considered high priority. Somebody somewhere just wrote a report and filed it. What the hell had happened to all these young women?

Harper wanted to push on with this missing persons thing further. He got a map up on the internet and started to pinpoint the addresses and the points at which the three girls went missing. He looked at the pattern in front of him. If these were homicides and not missing persons, this would be a major investigation. Maybe something went wrong with Lottie. Maybe her killer never intended to dump her. A body causes problems.

Deep into the database, staring at face after face of lost people, Harper felt suddenly very lonely. But something was bothering him. Missing hookers got shit while the rich girls had hundreds of detectives assigned to their cases. No one gave a damn about the girls up in the projects who made up the numbers.

Women who just seemed to disappear.

It took hours of going through the files to try to piece the jigsaw together. He had all the last known locations of five missing hookers across several different precincts going back four years pinned on a map. The missing hookers obviously congregated around the areas of poverty and prostitution. They couldn’t all be just missing, could they? These girls were disappearing. Slowly, silently, invisibly - one after the other. And no one gave a damn. Deep in his gut was the churning feeling that this was somehow connected to the American Devil. The single cherry blossom petal was enough to keep him going. Harper clicked on to open cases. The face of Lucy James stared out at him. He read the report.

Lucy James was not a hooker, but she had gone missing in Central Park late at night, just like Lottie Bixley. Tom read the details. She had been with her boyfriend in the park. Then she had been abducted. He read the boyfriend’s statement. He said that they were out walking. She ran away from him into the bushes as some kind of tease and she was snatched. There was blood on the ground. Then something sprang out at Harper and he felt a rush of adrenalin. He re-read the boyfriend’s statement and there it was.

‘Along East Drive, we passed a guy sitting on a bench. He was a regular guy, tall, strong-looking, wearing a red rollneck and a black coat. He had a suitcase by his side. I remember that because Lucy asked him if he was going on vacation.’

Harper called Eddie directly. His voice sounded wired. ‘Eddie, did you pull that guy from the 7-Eleven yet?’

‘Just about to. Why?’

‘I was looking into the missing persons angle. I found a young college girl who’s disappeared. Last seen two nights ago. She’s not a hooker like Lottie, but she went missing in Central Park.’

‘Not from Harlem?’ asked Eddie

‘This girl was near enough to Lottie’s last known location down on East Drive.’

‘Any details? What’s her name?’

‘Lucy James.’

‘So what’s the connection?’

‘The boyfriend saw a guy sitting on a bench just before Lucy disappeared. And guess what? He was wearing a red rollneck and had a suitcase with him. That spark any memories for you?’

‘A fucking suitcase! He said he kept his laundry in it. He was also the last person to see Lottie alive.’

‘The scene at Lottie’s dump site had wheel marks,’ said Harper. ‘About the width of a suitcase. That’s how he did it! How he moves these girls from one place to another without being seen. He puts the girls in a suitcase. Shit. A fucking suitcase.’

‘I’ll call the team,’ said Eddie. ‘Maybe it’ll cross-reference with some sightings we’ve had for the American Devil. We’ve got thousands and thousands of statements but we weren’t ever looking for a suitcase.’

‘We’ve got to get back to the 7-Eleven, right now.’

Harper grabbed his coat and made for the door.