‘What you see is pressure,’ said Lafayette. ‘By the fucking truckload. They’ve got Judge Capske’s rulings and every third one is some battle with the gun lobby. He’s been threatened a hundred times. They don’t need an autopsy report to put two and two together. And someone called them, Harper. Someone wanted this to make the front page.’

‘I get the connection, Captain. I get how we’re supposed to read this, but we’ve got to work from evidence, not from what the media think.’

‘That’s how it used to be, Harper, but you know as well as I do that this is not how it is these days. The media is your biggest fucking threat. Worse than me, Harper. They apply the pressure, start questioning why a homicide team are leading on a political assassination, why we’re ignoring the obvious, and we’re history.’

‘Looks to me that this is an East Harlem gang shooting. Cocaine found at the scene. All the hallmarks.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Harper. Twenty-four hours, then I’m fighting our corner at a multi-jurisdictional meeting with the Feds and Counter-Terrorism, and you better give me something better than three wraps of cocaine and a smile.’

‘If it’s a political kill, then I’ll back off, but until I get to look at the whole story, I can’t lie down for the Feds or anyone else.’

The Captain stared down at the street. ‘It’s the way of things now. Trial by media. You don’t want to get caught up in the middle of it.’

‘We need time,’ Harper repeated. He looked at the man who’d headed up North Manhattan Homicide for nine years and protected him for most of them. He knew Lafayette’s intentions were good, but sometimes things got taken out of the Captain’s hands. ‘I’ll get you something.’

Harper started down the corridor. Lafayette called after him, ‘Why do you want to play it like this, Harper? A conviction on this isn’t going to be easy. The media will want a fall guy. Who do you think that’s going to be?’

‘I am what I am,’ said Harper. ‘Let’s just say I get excited by the complex cases.’

‘This might be the shortest lead you’ve ever taken,’ said Lafayette.

Harper turned. ‘If I’ve got just twenty-four hours, I need help. I want Blue Team, plus four other detectives. No rookies — I want experienced guys. I want whoever it is leading the Federal investigation to come and tell me what he’s got. I want a profiler from the FBI Field Office to start working on this. And I want someone to keep the press happy. I need a specialist team to respond to the calls. We’re going to get a lot.’

‘You finished?’

‘For now,’ said Harper.

He moved back into the investigation room. The overriding smell was of coffee and fresh paint; it wasn’t a good mix, or a good time to start a major refurb. Three maintenance men in blue overalls were finishing up the latest addition to North Manhattan Homicide’s investigation room — a new set of cubicles for each of the detective teams.

The rest of the room remained as it had for twelve years: a big open space with a dirty blue carpet and a long string of fluorescent lights that leaked out a dull yellow glow. Outside, the sun hit the building only to show up the haze of deep gray dirt on the windows. Beyond the grime, the heavy bass note of the city could still be heard.

Harper walked across to his old desk, his head swimming with details from the case that he needed to get down and think about. He didn’t want a cubicle. Career advisers used cubicles. It wasn’t right. Harper just wanted the old, worn, paper-stacked brown wooden desk that had been good enough for the last five years. Blue Team liked to spread and merge and, like all cops, they didn’t like change.

Calls of, ‘Hey, champ!’ followed Harper through to where the rest of the team were setting up base camp. Cops didn’t make a very sentimental bunch. It never took long to go from a hero to a zero in the eyes of your fans. Harper shrugged it off.

Eddie Kasper pulled out a chair and fixed his backside to it with a sigh. ‘What did he say?’

‘The press want it to be political. The Feds want to argue jurisdiction. I need something to give the Captain and the Chief of Detectives if we’re going to keep this in house. And that means I need to know why Capske was killed.’

‘What if it is some wacko from the gun lobby?’

‘I got to tell you, Eddie, I’m not buying this Judge Capske thing. There are too many questions. Why the son not the father? Why has no political organization claimed the kill? They say it’s a political statement but not what for or who made it.’

‘You’ve got a point.’

‘Then ask another question: why would they torture the guy? If it’s a group, then they’ve got to be in and out fast. This feels different. This killer liked to spend time with his victim.’

Eddie narrowed his focus. ‘You know something more than you’re saying, Harper? You got that look about you.’

‘Maybe this is about Judge Capske and some group who thinks he’s a threat to American freedom, but if it is, they found someone who hated the victim. Hated him so bad they wanted to watch him bleed to death. Think about the mind that can do that, Eddie. If Denise Levene were here, she’d say the same thing. Overkill like this is pretty unusual — it’s either a hell of a political statement or it’s not political at all, it’s something much more personal.’

Squad Room, Missing Persons

March 7, 4.15 p.m.

Denise spent three hours being spat at, hounded and abused — and what’s more, she paid for the privilege. After the session, she didn’t go home. She walked a while and thought about things. What Mac had done was not nice but it had left her feeling stronger than she had in months.

She grabbed a cab over to Missing Persons. All she was thinking about as Mac was screaming at her was Abby Goldenberg and what she might be going through. Abby Goldenberg who was just sixteen and had her whole life ahead of her.

Denise could help herself now, but if Abby was somewhere out there she wanted to try to help her too. The guy on the desk called upstairs and Detective Sarah Gauge came down, welcomed her and showed her into their offices.

At the squad room at Missing Persons, Abby Goldenberg’s disappearance was cataloged in four large box-files and one chronologically ordered lever-arch file. The two detectives had gone through a lot of leads in the eight days since her disappearance.

Although they’d not voiced the level of their concerns to Dr Goldenberg, it appeared that they’d treated it as a potential abduction since day one. They’d even tried to get the detectives from the Major Case Squad to consider it a kidnapping. The latter had looked at the case-file and sent it back, saying there wasn’t a single shred of evidence. Or, more importantly, the evidence they did have suggested she was a runaway.

Denise saw the problem. If the case stayed with Missing Persons, Abby Goldenberg would become another sad photograph on the NYPD Missing Persons website.

Denise flicked through the case-files. Munroe and Gauge had been working hard to find a break, often on their own time. Not many cops would’ve visited every last person on Dr Goldenberg’s list, but they had done it. Was it something to do with the girl’s beauty or her father’s distress? It was difficult to say what moved cops to go the extra mile, but in the end it came down to a mixture of professionalism and personal integrity.

Denise pulled out the daily report summaries written by Munroe. The pair didn’t seem to have taken a break in eight days. ‘You’ve done well,’ Denise said. ‘You’ve kept the trail warm.’ She flipped another page; pulled out an FBI profile. It was a one-page document, nothing more.

Denise turned to Gauge. ‘You seem pretty convinced that Abby’s not just a runaway.’

‘I know runaways. What can I say? Some strike you that way, some don’t. I can’t see this Abby kid putting her father through this if she could help it. Not a chance.’