‘Do you go for that second killer theory they’re bandying around in the papers?’ Ruckley asked him.

Bolt took another look down at the body, no longer feeling any hatred for Leonard Hope. Now he just looked pathetic lying there, pale and mutilated; it was clear that, one way or another, he’d paid the price for the terrible things he’d done. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, turning away. ‘Thanks for your help, Joe. It’s appreciated.’

‘Can we move the body now? The pathologist is waiting for it, and I want to get home for my supper. The wife’s cooking meatballs. I just hope to God she hasn’t burned them. I hate being reminded of work when I’m at home.’ He chuckled at his own joke.

Bolt didn’t join in the laughter. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s all yours. Enjoy dinner.’

He motioned for Mo to follow him and they walked back in the direction of their parked car, and away from the bright glare of the halogen lamps. Mo looked tired and frustrated. The case, it seemed, was getting to him too, and he’d seemed uncharacteristically down when Bolt had phoned him at home – where he’d been watching a movie with his wife and youngest two kids – to tell him the news. Bolt had told him he didn’t need to come out to view the body, but he’d insisted, which was Mo all over. He had an almost annoying sense of duty.

‘Do you think that guy’s always a joker like that?’ asked Mo, when they were out of earshot of the dozen or so officers and mortuary attendants still at the scene, and away from the lingering smell of decomposing flesh.

‘Probably. You know what it’s like. For some people, it’s just the best way of dealing with it all.’

Mo grunted. ‘He just gets on my nerves.’

They walked in silence back to the car. ‘So what do you think?’ Bolt asked him.

‘There wasn’t a second killer working with Hope,’ said Mo, leaning against the car. ‘We’ve never found any evidence linking him with someone else; all the missing trophies – the fingers, the items of jewellery – were found at Hope’s home. It was Hope who was spotted by Richard Oldham loitering alone outside the Morris murder scene the day before they were killed; and there was only one killer at the Rowan/Hanzha murder scene.’

‘Who we know about,’ Bolt pointed out. ‘There might have been another killer upstairs who Amanda Rowan didn’t see when she disturbed the murder of her husband and his mistress.’

‘It seems unlikely though, doesn’t it? If there were two killers, they could easily have ambushed and trapped her upstairs.’

‘As it happens, I agree. But that leaves us with an even bigger problem. Who the hell murdered Hope?’

They were both silent for a minute. Bolt was thinking. ‘Someone helped Leonard Hope escape,’ he said at last. ‘He never left the area on foot. We’d have caught him if he had. And he didn’t steal a car because none were reported stolen. So someone must have whisked him off, probably in the back of a car, and it’s got to have been the person he was on the phone to.’

Mo nodded. ‘That’s the theory that makes the most sense. Then he goes to ground, probably with the person who took him. They looked after him for a couple of days, then, for whatever reason, decided to torture and kill him, and dump his body out here in the middle of nowhere.’

‘But how did the person know Hope was being tailed?’

‘The only way would be if you already knew the police were onto him.’

The inference was obvious and it troubled Bolt. ‘You think it’s someone from the inquiry?’

‘Well, no. What would be the point? Everyone on the inquiry team’s trying to catch the killer, so why risk your career to help him escape?’

Bolt sighed. ‘There are over a hundred people on the team. All of them knew for three days that Leonard Hope was a suspect. I know we swore them all to secrecy, but some of them would have talked to friends, family and particularly other cops. So there are probably a couple of hundred people at least with access to that information.’

‘But we’re still left without a motive,’ said Mo. ‘Why would you help him escape? There’s just no reason for it that I can think of.’

‘It could be a vigilante thing. Maybe it was a cop who didn’t think Hope was going to get the treatment he deserved in prison. I mean, let’s face it, whoever killed him really wanted to make him suffer. He must have died in absolute agony.’ Bolt was surprised to realize that the thought of Hope dying in agony pleased him.

Mo shook his head. ‘I don’t buy the vigilante angle.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because most cops I know are professional, and detached enough not to take everything so personally. How many of them get so wound up in a case that they can’t think straight, and end up being prepared to risk their career, their pension, and twenty years behind bars just to make sure a man who’s going to go to prison for the rest of his life anyway dies in agony? And even if there was one prepared to put a plan like that into action, he couldn’t have done it alone. It requires organization, and real balls, because there’s no guarantee he’d have been able to get Hope in a car with him.’ Mo shook his head again. ‘I’m sorry, boss, but there’s no way it was some Dirty Harry-style cop.’

When he put it like that, it didn’t make much sense to Bolt either. ‘But someone helped him. Someone who hated him enough to burn his balls into Maltesers with a blowtorch.’

Once again they were silent for a few moments. Bolt took a deep breath and looked up at the night sky. It was a clear night but the stars were obscured by the thick orange glow of London to the east and the lights of planes as they queued up in a long, sweeping semi-circle for their approach into Heathrow Airport, the low rumble of their engines providing a constant background noise. He was stuck, and it irritated him. Worse, Leonard Hope’s death was only going to increase the pressure on him. Now it looked like they’d never find out exactly what had happened.

‘Shall we head back to town?’ said Mo, shivering as a gust of cold wind blew across the road, then opening the car door. ‘We need to get in touch with the victims’ next of kin and let them know that they’re not going to get their day in court.’

‘Jesus,’ sighed Bolt, opening the passenger door. ‘What a pig’s ear.’ And then, as Mo started the engine, a thought struck him. ‘The victims’ next of kin,’ he said aloud. ‘Now they’d have a real reason to hate Leonard Hope.’

‘Sure they would, boss, but none of them knew Hope’s identity before we announced it, and that wasn’t until after he was already on the run.’

‘What do we know about Ivana Hanzha’s family? You know, George Rowan’s mistress. I heard word that her old man’s one of those Russian oligarchs. Someone with a hell of a lot of money and good contacts.’ As SIO on the case, Bolt hadn’t had to deal with the next of kin, but now he was beginning to wish he had.

Mo sat forward, looking more interested now. ‘His name’s Vladimir Hanzha, and we haven’t gone into his background too much. I mean, it’s not as if he’s a suspect or anything, and from what I gather his daughter’s been estranged from him for the last five years. But, yeah, the word is he’s a bit of a shady character, like a lot of those guys. I still don’t see how he could have got hold of Leonard Hope, though.’

‘And maybe he didn’t. But we’re running low on leads, and he’s got to be worth talking to. I’m going to call Sam Verran.’

Sam Verran was a former colleague of both Bolt’s and Mo’s in SOCA, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency. A career cop with only a year to go until retirement, he was an expert in Russian and Eastern European crime networks, and the extent to which they’d impinged on the UK organized-crime scene. He knew all the key players, and quite a few of the not-so-key ones as well, and if anyone could give them a lowdown on Ivana Hanzha’s old man, it would be him. And if he couldn’t, then it meant the old man was clean.