He allowed himself a smile. Now was the time. It had taken longer than he’d expected for her body to be found, considering that the path nearby was used by joggers and dog-walkers. He must have concealed it well.

He turned away when he saw people look over. The gaggle of the crowd. Someone taking photographs. Like fucking sheep heading for the pen. The first stretch of the crime scene tape and they all shuffle forward. All of that thrill could have been theirs, but they’re spineless, like leeches, second-hand thrill-seekers.

And then the images came back to him in flashes, bright snapshots of her clothes, of her walking, the cloth moving against her soft skin, young and unblemished. Not knowing. Just another night. Then that look in her eyes. The flash of fear replaced by anger, and then back to fear when she knew that her time had come.

Then it came, like always, the sharp focus, where he could see everything more clearly than ever before, in more detail than is possible with the naked eye. Her pupils, black saucers, but he could see the other colours in them too, swirls of dark green and deep blue, the clear view broken only by the flecks of spittle that bubbled up when she first went to the floor. And the coughs of mud. He could see the soil turning in the air in front of him as she spluttered, tumbling in the fading sunlight. Just tiny specks, but he could see their form, uneven and dirty. He remembered the whites of her eyes. He had seen the veins in them and how they were broken by the small explosions of red, just pinpricks, like splashes as the blood came to the surface.

He grinned as he felt the familiar tremble in his groin as he thought of her struggling, the fight under his hand. He knew it would come. He was waiting for it. He liked to feel it, to control it. He could do that, control it, so that it was a present for later, something he had to touch, to feel in his hand as he thought of her struggling and then slowly giving up the fight, her body limp.

He gave the crowd a salute but no one was watching as he slipped away.

Chapter Five

Laura leaned against her car and peeled off her forensic suit. The hood had made a mess of her hair, dark and long, and so she used the wing mirror to tease it back to life. The body had been taken away, rolled onto plastic sheeting and then wrapped up in a bag, and was on its way to the mortuary. Now it was time for the fingertip search of the undergrowth, and she could see the line of police in blue boiler suits waiting to crawl their way through the small patch of woodland. Joe was looking back towards where the body had been found, his hood pulled from his head. Carson was in his car, talking into his phone.

‘What is it, Joe?’ Laura said, reaching into her car for her suit jacket.

He didn’t answer at first, his gaze trained on where the stream headed under the estate. Then he turned round, chewing his lip.

‘Something about this isn’t right,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The location. It doesn’t make any sense. Why here?’

‘That occurred to me too,’ she said, and looked again at the houses that backed onto the crime scene, a line of wooden fence panels forming the boundary on both sides.

‘It isn’t secluded at all,’ Joe continued. ‘One scream from her and all of those lights are going to flicker on, and what escape route is there? There is only one way to the street, because the other way is down that path, into the woods, but he couldn’t get a car down there. So if he drove to the location, he would have had to leave his car on the street, and so he would be blocked in and easy to catch.’

‘Perhaps she was just walking past?’ Laura said. ‘You know, the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was hiding in there, waiting to pull someone in.’

‘Same thing applies,’ Joe said. ‘Too many houses. What if she fought back? If she ran or screamed? There is a whole community to wake. And you saw how the body was concealed, just left on the ground and covered in leaves and bark. She was always going to be discovered.’ He sighed. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’

‘You’re giving the killer too much credit,’ Laura said. ‘How many people do we catch because they do dumb things?’ She checked her hair in the mirror again, and then pulled away when the sun glinted off some grey strands. ‘So what do you think?’

Joe looked around again. ‘It must have been the victim he was after, not someone random. He wouldn’t have chosen this location unless it was the only place he could get to her, and this is all about the victims, not the killer. We need to know about her.’

They both turned as they heard a noise behind them, and they saw it was Carson, grunting as he climbed out of his car.

‘We’ve got a possible name for her,’ Carson said. ‘Jane Roberts.’

‘Don’t know it,’ Laura said.

‘No, me neither,’ Carson responded. ‘But I know her father. Don Roberts.’

Laura shrugged, the name didn’t mean anything to her, but she saw the look of surprise on Joe’s face.

‘The Don Roberts?’ Joe said.

Carson nodded. ‘It was called in yesterday, when she didn’t return home at the weekend.’

‘How sure can we be?’ Joe said.

‘The description matches, and she doesn’t live too far away.’

‘It’s Wednesday today. Why would Don leave it so long?’ Laura asked.

Joe turned to her. ‘Because it involves calling us,’ he said. ‘Don Roberts will not want us digging into his life. He’s a long-time thug, Blackley’s most violent doorman before he started to run his own gang of bouncers, leasing them out to the clubs. He’s turned to clamping as well, and trust me, you were wise to pay rather than contest it.’

‘But why would that make him want to keep away from us?’

‘Because he makes a lot of money, and that cannot all come from fixing metal clamps to car wheels. However he makes his cash, he won’t be happy to see us looking into his life, and I can tell you one thing: we’ve got trouble now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because this is one of two things: targeted or bad luck. We need to look into the last murder again, see if there is any link with Don Roberts, and if there is, we can expect the revenge killings to start.’

‘And if it is just coincidence?’ Laura asked.

Carson almost smiled at that. ‘The killer just has to hope that we catch him first, because if Roberts gets to him, he will die, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be pleasant.’

Chapter Six

Jack was smiling by the time he reached the court, even though the shadow of the court building took away the warmth of the sun.

The drive into Blackley had done its job, with the wind in his hair and the roof down on his Stag, and so the ghoulishness of the murder scene began to seem a little more distant. He had driven as quick as he dared through the terraced back streets, avoiding the traffic lights and relishing the echo of the engine as he shot between the rows of parked cars, hemmed in between the solid line of brickwork dotted by windows and door frames. The car was his father’s legacy when he died, and so Jack liked to give it a good run out when he could, the feel of the wheel his link to those childhood Saturday mornings spent with his father.

He looked up to the four storeys of millstone with tall windows and deep sills, decorative pillars built into the walls on the upper floors. The police station had once been next door, the prisoners’ journey into court through a heavy metal door at the end of the cell corridor and then up some stone steps, the light of the courtroom making them blink as they arrived in the dock. The police station had moved out to an office complex by the motorway, but the court had survived redevelopment, if survival was measured by draughty courtrooms and bad acoustics. The prisoners arrived at court in a van now, the subterranean journey through the tiled cell complex replaced by a short walk across the town centre pavement in handcuffs.