The Ukrainian, Sayenko, had arrived in his vehicle – an old Defender – and he and Mehdi were standing beside him awaiting instructions. Sayenko was a lean, wiry individual with tightly cropped grey hair and a dried-out, heavily lined face that looked in dire need of rehydrating. According to the boss, he had more than twenty years’ experience in the Russian military and had served in combat operations in Chechnya twice, and he wasn’t afraid of killing when it was necessary. He didn’t say a lot, but he spoke good enough English, and was capable of taking orders, although of the two men, Keogh considered Mehdi, who’d been living in the UK for more than a decade and a half, and whom Keogh knew far better, the more reliable. It was Mehdi he addressed now.

‘I need you to visit the canoe centre that rented out those canoes. The place is called Calvey Canoe Hire and, according to MacLean, it’s on the Inverness Road, about five miles northeast of here. There’s unlikely to be more than one person there, and it may be that he’s further downriver waiting to pick up the canoeists, but I want you to check it out.’

Mehdi nodded casually, seemingly unworried by the assignment. ‘And if there is anyone there?’

‘Talk to them. Find out how many canoes they’ve got out, and whether there’s anyone else working there today. Then call me straight away.’

‘And after that?’

‘Kill whoever’s there and hide the bodies. We need to close down this thing as fast as possible. When you’ve done that, we’ll join up again and get hold of that woman. Any questions?’

Mehdi shook his head, and Keogh fished a set of keys out of his pocket and threw them over. ‘Take the four-by-four. And move fast. We’re running low on time.’

Mehdi didn’t need asking twice and, as Keogh watched him jog back up towards the four-by-four, he was pleased he had men with him who weren’t squeamish about killing in cold blood.

Because, one way or another, there was going to be a lot of killing tonight.

Sixteen

Two weeks ago

MIKE BOLT LEANED forward in his seat. ‘We brought you on board to get a handle on the man we’re hunting. You’re supposedly the best criminal behavioural psychologist in the business but, with all due respect, I’m struggling to find anything you’ve told us that isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.’ He paused, hugely aware of the urgency of the situation. ‘I need something better. Something insightful.’

‘I’m not a miracle worker, DCS Bolt,’ answered Dr Thom Folkestone.

‘No,’ said Bolt. ‘I can see that.’

Dr Folkestone looked mildly put out by Bolt’s comment, and even managed a small pout. He was a handsome, if very boyish-looking man of thirty-eight, with foppish blond hair and twinkling eyes, who looked far too young and carefree to be the eminent psychiatrist he was. But, as Bolt had pointed out, however ironically, he was supposed to be the best.

As a general rule, Bolt avoided using behavioural psychologists. It wasn’t that they couldn’t provide useful information to aid an inquiry – sometimes (though not always) they did. But in his experience, some senior investigating officers became almost in thrall to the profiling techniques used by behavioural psychologists for narrowing down the list of suspects, thanks to the influence of TV and film. In the past, this had led to some notable injustices, and Bolt wasn’t keen to repeat the mistakes of past murder inquiries. But at the same time, with leads scarce and The Disciple’s body count steadily rising, the pressure for a result meant exploring every avenue possible; although, right at this moment, sitting in Dr Folkestone’s expansive central London office, Bolt was beginning to think they were wasting their time.

‘All I can do is give you an insight into The Disciple’s character,’ continued Folkestone, who was dressed in an expensive three-piece suit with the waistcoat done up – a look that, for some reason, annoyed Bolt. ‘We’re talking about a physically fit white male – I would say almost certainly between the ages of 35 and 45 – who’s of above-average intelligence. However, I don’t believe he’ll have a mentally demanding job. I don’t see him as a hard worker. He saves his planning for his crimes. I think his job involves driving long distances, which is why he’s able to spend time targeting his victims, and he lives alone somewhere in the west London area.’

‘Do you think he’s killed before this current spate of attacks?’ put in Mo.

‘It’s possible. Although, if he has, it would almost certainly not have been as well planned as the current killings.’

‘I’m glad you said that,’ said Bolt.

Folkestone leaned back in his leather swivel chair and raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’

‘Because we know he has killed before. Fifteen years ago.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We’ve only just found out ourselves. The forensic team discovered a trace amount of blood at the scene of the last Disciple killings that didn’t match that of either of the two victims: George Rowan and Ivana Hanzha, or that of Mr Rowan’s wife, Amanda. The DNA extracted from the blood matched that of the killer of a young Frenchwoman called Beatrice Magret, who was sexually assaulted and murdered in Hampshire in 1998.’

Folkestone nodded slowly, as if deep in thought. ‘That’s interesting. Can you give me the details?’

Mo Khan got out his notebook. ‘She was a twenty-one-year-old student studying at University College London, and she was on her way to the Isle of Wight Festival with two other students – one female, one male – when the car they were in broke down on the A31. There was some sort of argument and Ms Magret stormed off on her own. She was seen by a witness walking at the side of the road towards the village of Soldridge about twenty minutes later, but that was the last sighting of her alive. Her body was found two days later, ten miles away near Alton, partially concealed in woodland. She’d been beaten, tortured and sexually assaulted.’

Mo paused. Although he was as professional as any copper Bolt had worked with, the fact remained he had three kids of his own, including a seventeen-year-old daughter, so it was difficult not to get affected by the senseless waste of Beatrice Magret’s murder. ‘According to the coroner, the assault was prolonged and brutal,’ he said slowly, ‘and then her skull was caved in with a blunt instrument. The scene-of-crime photos make pretty grisly viewing.’

‘But no knife?’ asked Folkestone, with a professional’s dispassionate tone.

Mo shook his head. ‘No. No knife.’

‘And any Satanic symbols on the corpse?’

Again, Mo shook his head.

‘Needless to say, the case was unsolved,’ said Bolt, ‘with very few leads generated, even though there was quite a lot of publicity at the time.’

‘Yes, I seem to remember something about it,’ said Folkestone, ‘but I’m surprised it’s the same person. Not so much because of the different modus operandi – it stands to reason that this would develop over time, and certainly it bears other hallmarks of The Disciple’s MO – but the timescale between that killing and the start of the current crop feels too long. Have you looked to see if there were any similar unsolved killings in between?’

‘I’ve got a dozen detectives scouring the PNC right now, but nothing’s standing out.’ When Bolt had first heard about this new murder earlier that morning, he’d thought it might represent a significant breakthrough, but already his enthusiasm was beginning to fade. If the murder of Beatrice Magret was The Disciple’s handiwork, and it clearly looked as if it was, then once again it seemed his luck had held. The case, though still technically open, had been wound down many years back.

‘What do you make of The Disciple’s attack on Amanda Rowan?’ he asked Folkestone. ‘When we last spoke before the Rowan/Hanzha murders, you said the man we’re looking for is highly organized, forensically aware, and extremely careful. And yet he takes a huge, and potentially fatal, risk to try to kill a woman who hasn’t seen his face, and after he’s already got his rocks off with her husband and his lover. What do you think makes him do something like that?’ A week on, this still bugged Bolt, although given the often and impulsive irrational behaviour of even the most successful criminals, it really shouldn’t have done.