Читать книгу: «A Killing Mind», страница 3

‘Or?’ Sally tried to bring him back.

‘Or,’ he continued, ‘he did it simply because he liked it. He liked pulling their teeth and fingernails. It made him feel … good.’

‘How the hell could doing that make anyone feel good?’ Zukov asked.

‘He’s not like you,’ Sean warned him. ‘He doesn’t think like you, any more than you think like him. He’s different.’

‘You mean us,’ Sally said. ‘He doesn’t think like us.’

‘What?’ Sean asked, confused by her words before another question saved him.

‘Why not take some of their hair?’ Cahill asked. ‘Hair’s personal and non-biodegradable and a lot easier to remove, so why not take hair?’

Again Sean had considered it. ‘Too gentle,’ he answered. ‘Too compassionate. Parents keep locks of their children’s hair. Lovers keep locks of each other’s hair. It’s a sign of affection and caring.’ The connection he felt with the killer was growing stronger as he expanded on each theory. ‘He wants us to know he feels no compassion. Wants us to know how strong he is – mentally – that he’s capable of anything. For this one, it’s all about the violence – and he wants us to know it.’

‘Killers in the past have eaten parts of their victims,’ Sally reminded them. ‘It’s a way of keeping them forever – as if they’ve ingested the victim’s soul. Any obvious reason why he didn’t consume something at the scene? It would have certainly been a statement of his violent intent.’

‘That’s not his mindset,’ Sean answered without having to think about it. ‘Yes, plenty of serial killers – if that’s what he is – have consumed a part or parts of their victims, but it’s not usually out of violence or anger. For them, it’s an act of love. They want to be one with the victim – keep them alive and with them forever by consuming them.’

‘Love?’ Donnelly asked disbelievingly. ‘Hell of a funny way to show love.’

Sean paused, wondering how to explain. ‘You’re a parent, right, Dave?’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly answered in his gruff voice with an accent part East London and part Glaswegian – the city where he’d spent that part of his life before joining police.

‘Remember when they were young and you used to play with them and hold them and tell them you were going to gobble them all up?’

‘Aye,’ Donnelly replied, shaking his head, ‘but that was different.’

‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘Psychologically, the same. But not for this one. He doesn’t feel compassion or love for them and he doesn’t want them to live forever inside of himself. He wants them dead. He wants to destroy them.’

‘Why?’ Sally asked. ‘Why such strong feelings of violence and hatred towards strangers?’

‘Who says he hates them?’ Sean corrected her. ‘Maybe they’re simply a means to an end.’

‘What means? What end?’ Sally pushed him.

‘I don’t know,’ he told her honestly. ‘Not yet.’

‘Great – another paranoid schizophrenic off his meds,’ Donnelly said, dismissing anything more sinister.

‘No,’ Sean explained. ‘There’s no frenzy to these attacks. They’re controlled and planned. This isn’t someone hearing voices in their head or seeing demons on the train. I don’t sense mental illness here, or at least nothing a court would recognize as such.’

‘Then we’re looking for someone who’s made the conscious decision to select victims and kill them,’ Cahill asked, ‘but with controlled violence?’

‘That’s what these photographs say to me,’ Sean agreed. ‘And I reckon we’ve got about ten days to find him before he kills again. I could be wrong, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to become a sleeper. Now he’s started, he’ll keep going, probably at about the same pace or faster.’

‘Do you think he’s killed before? Sally asked.

‘Possibly,’ he admitted. ‘We’ll have to look into it – anything that looks remotely similar will have to be checked. But I think Tanya Richards was his first. He tried something new and he liked it. It didn’t scare him or freak him out. It was probably everything he hoped for, maybe more and he needed it again – and quickly, hence …’ he turned and tapped a photograph of William Dalton ‘… ten days later he strikes again. It’s a drug to him now. He needs it.’ He looked around at the quiet, stoical faces – all eyes on him, waiting for ideas and leadership. He let the responsibility sink in before speaking again.

‘All right,’ he stirred his team, ‘we’ve all done this before. We all know what an investigation like this means and how to get a result.’ A few heads nodded. ‘Dave,’ he turned to Donnelly. ‘You sort out the door-to-door. Dalton was living in a garage, so maybe he was something of a local celebrity. People might know him more than usual.’

Donnelly nodded. ‘Want me to do the same for Richards?’ he asked. ‘Not sure I want to trust some other MIT’s findings.’

‘Fine,’ Sean agreed. ‘They won’t like it, but do it anyway.’

‘They’ll survive,’ Donnelly shrugged.

‘Sally,’ Sean continued assigning tasks: ‘track down Dalton’s friends and family, will you? Chances are they don’t know he’s dead yet. He was a heavy drug user working the West End. Let’s find out what his associates can tell us about his lifestyle. They might have some useful information, as might his family – especially about how he ended up homeless. There’s a crucial piece of information hiding somewhere waiting for us. We dig and dig and dig till we find it. Don’t second-guess what could be important and what’s not.

‘We know he had an Oyster card and used it regularly, so let’s get it interrogated and see where and when he’s been moving around. Fiona …’ Cahill looked up from the notes she was scribbling; ‘Take care of it, OK.’ Cahill nodded her agreement. Sean turned to Jesson. ‘Alan: Dalton moved around the West End most days and travelled back to Southwark most nights, most likely to Borough Tube if he was living off Mint Street, so we’ll have CCTV coming out of our ears. Get hold of British Transport Police and tell them to preserve all CCTV from those areas and routes until we can give them something more specific once we’ve looked into his Oyster card.’

‘BTP. Done,’ was all Jesson said in his Liverpudlian accent.

‘As I’m sure you all understand, the original investigating team will not be happy about losing this case,’ Sean reminded them. ‘No MIT wants to lose a job like this, so if you come into contact with them, keep it nice. No rubbing their faces in it, please. We need them onside and cooperative. Don’t want them holding back any information to make things difficult for us. I’ll do my best to smooth things over with them and I expect each of you to do the same.

‘That’s it for now,’ Sean told them. ‘Get yourselves organized and ready to go. Dave will be office manager and will put you into teams as soon as he can and give you your individual tasks. OK – let’s get on with it.’

As the meeting broke up, the team moved quickly back to their desks gathering phones, notebooks, pens and anything else experience had taught them they might need, chatting loudly and excitedly to each other as they did so. Sean drifted back towards his office followed by Sally, while Donnelly remained in the main office and started barking out orders.

Sean paused next to him as he passed and quietly spoke in his ear. ‘Keep them on it,’ he told Donnelly. ‘Two victims is enough.’ Donnelly merely nodded. As soon as he entered his office, Sean started putting on his coat and filling his pockets with the detritus from his desktop.

‘Going somewhere?’ Sally asked.

‘Ugh,’ Sean grunted as he looked up, suddenly pulled out of his own thoughts. ‘Yeah,’ he rejoined the world. ‘I need to go out.’

‘Where?’ Sally pushed.

‘The scene, of course,’ he told her.

‘The MIT will be all over it,’ Sally reminded him. ‘Maybe we should leave them to it and take control of their exhibits when they’re done.’

‘No,’ Sean replied firmly. ‘I want our people on it. I want DS Roddis and his team. No one else. Roddis is the best.’

Sally didn’t argue. ‘OK. Want some company?’

‘No,’ Sean told her. ‘I’ll go alone. Stay here and help Dave.’

‘Fine,’ Sally reluctantly agreed. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Sean sensed her doubt. ‘But …?’

‘So long as you haven’t decided to try and solve this one all on your own,’ she voiced her concern. ‘It’s been a long time since we had a proper investigation. I know what you’re like, Sean. You’re hungry for this, I know you are, but we’re a team, remember? We work as a team we solve this quicker. You try and do it alone, it could be …’ She let her words trail off.

‘Could be what?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Dangerous,’ she said with conviction. ‘For you and everyone around you.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘We’re a team – I get it. It’s early days and there’s much to do. We just need to divide and conquer until things are moving, is all. You’re more use to me here, helping Dave, than you are trailing around after me.’

‘Thanks,’ she replied sarcastically.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ he tried to recover. ‘Look, I’ll be back soon and I’ll tell you everything I find. OK?’

‘Fine,’ she relented.

‘I won’t be gone long,’ he insisted as he brushed past and headed across the main office before disappearing through the door.

David Langley returned home to the small rented flat in the wrong part of Wandsworth that had been his home since his wife decided he’d had one too many ‘encounters’ with other women and had thrown him out. Where low-rise estates dominated and danger was never far away. The bitterness he felt towards her and at having to leave the family home burned deep in him like a stove of hatred. He blamed her for the failure of their marriage. She’d enjoyed pushing their sex life to the boundaries of near torture in the early years, but as he tried to push even further she had suddenly turned conservative and uninteresting. No wonder he’d looked elsewhere.

He grabbed himself a beer from the fridge and drank it quickly before taking another. The drab walls of the flat began to close in on him, making him feel trapped and depressed. He decided to phone his ex-wife, who still lived in their smart terraced family home in upwardly mobile Earlsfield. Maybe she would let him speak to their two children instead of constantly trying to poison their minds against him. So what if he’d forgotten he was supposed to pick them up or take them out a few times? He was busy providing for them, wasn’t he?

He punched the number into his phone and listened to the ringing tone as he waited for it to be answered. There was a click, followed by a familiar voice.

‘Hi. This is Emma, Charlie and Sophie Hutchinson.’ Hearing her use her maiden name for his children as well as herself started his blood boiling. How dare she? ‘We can’t get to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Bye.’

‘Pick the phone up, Emma,’ he demanded. ‘I know you’re there.’ He waited a few seconds; nothing. ‘I said, pick the phone up. I want to speak with my children.’ Still nothing. ‘Stop being a bitch, Emma and answer the damn phone. You can’t stop me speaking to my own children. I have a right to speak to them whenever I want.’ He was met with more silence. ‘Fine,’ he shouted into the phone. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll be speaking to my solicitor first thing in the morning. Who’s paying for that bloody house you live in anyway?’ He slammed the phone down. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he cursed to the empty flat.

Painful memories of the day she made him leave the family home swept back into his spinning mind – him blaming her for his infidelities while she screamed at him to get out, calling him a complete loser. ‘Loser,’ he repeated the insult she’d thrown at him. ‘I’ll show you who’s a fucking loser. I’ll show everyone.’ He breathed in deeply and felt himself begin to calm as images of his victims washed over him, leaving him feeling powerful and in control. He chastised himself for not having mastered his temper. Control was everything. If he was to achieve his ultimate goal, he needed to put aside everything from his past – including his children and lost wife. He needed to let them go.

Calm once more, he knew he needed to feel strong again. Needed to relive the moments when he was at his most powerful. He returned to the fridge, opened the freezer compartment and removed a plastic box containing all that was now precious to him.

The first thing he took from the box was a transparent freezer bag that contained what looked like oversized playing cards. Again he took a deep breath before removing the items and spreading them out before him. Photographs of his victims, taken while they were alive. Tanya Richards leaving her flat. Tanya Richards walking to the tube station. Tanya Richards sitting on a bus. Tanya Richards walking the streets close to Smithfield Market. William Dalton begging in the West End. William Dalton walking into Tottenham Court Road Underground station. William Dalton walking out of Borough Underground station. William Dalton entering the garage he called home.

He arranged the cards carefully and neatly before retrieving two more small freezer bags from inside the plastic box and placed them side by side on the table. Again he took a deep breath to steady himself before emptying the first bag, which was marked with a number 1 in permanent marker. The nails and teeth slid out in front of him – the teeth rattling on the table like dice, whereas the nails sounded like tinkling raindrops. He picked up a few of the nails and dropped them into the palm of his other hand. They were still coated with cheap red nail varnish that blended perfectly with the traces of her blood. He hoped they would never fade. It may be necessary to repaint them if it did.

As he held the nails he could picture them as they had been when they were attached to the young woman’s slim fingers. They’d possibly been her best feature. That and her crystal blue eyes that were yet to be destroyed by whatever drug she was addicted to. He remembered her eyes staring into his in disbelief as she realized he had come to end her existence. He sighed almost happily at the memory before delicately spilling the nails from his palm back on to the table.

Next he picked up the teeth one by one and dropped them into the palm of his hand. Molars with gold fillings and other lesser teeth that showed little decay or staining. As young teeth should, despite her lifestyle. He pinched one of the molars from his palm and held it up to the light as if he were examining a diamond – slightly twisting and rotating it as he took in every detail of the tooth – every curve and peak – every scratch on the enamel. Finally he held it under his nose, closing his eyes as he inhaled deeply – each trace of its dead owner bringing exquisite memories of pulling them from her jaw flooding back. How he wished she’d been fully alive and conscious when he’d gone to work on her, but it would have been all but impossible to perform the extractions on a struggling victim.

Satisfied with the relics of his first victim’s death, he ritually placed all the items on top of the clip-seal bag and put them to one side. His back straightened as he took hold of the other bag – glancing at the photographs of the living William Dalton before sliding the seal open and allowing the odour of its contents to rush at him. To the uninitiated, the scents were barely detectable, but to him they were as vivid and raw as the smell of a zoo – animalistic and pungent.

He carefully tipped the contents on to the table and shifted them about with the tips of his fingers – ensuring each item had its own space to shine before picking up one of the larger fingernails that he assumed must be a thumbnail. It, like all the others, was in poor condition. The dark dried blood, mixed with the dirt that had built up over months of not being able to clean himself properly, had left the nails looking much older than they were. They looked as if they’d been taken from a body that had been buried for years – brittle, broken and jagged at the tips. But they were no less precious to him. He’d enjoyed killing the prostitute more, but the homeless man was still an experience beyond most people’s stunted and dull imagination. In any case, it was important that his second victim was a man so the police and media would know he wasn’t some perverted sex offender. They needed to understand he was much, much more than that.

He swapped the nail for a clean-looking molar, although the root was stained with the victim’s blood – the sight of it ignited images of the nearly dead homeless man lying on his back and gurgling on his own blood as it slipped down his throat. The memory pleased him and made his muscles tense as he remembered the power he’d felt as he crouched over the dying man. It was as if he was absorbing the victim’s energy, becoming more powerful with each new kill.

Without knowing why, he was suddenly overcome with the urge to taste the tooth, to engulf it in his tongue and roll it around his mouth. Wary of sucking the blood and odour away, he made do instead with delicately placing the tip of the tooth against the point of his tongue and holding it there – his eyes closing with the pleasure of it as his entire body became aroused. Removing the tooth, he cursed his body’s physical reaction and knew that others would use it as evidence that his actions were driven by sexual needs. But he knew they were not. Yes, he’d ejaculated inside the dying prostitute and done things to the dying homeless man, but they were not sexual acts. His body had simply become so electrified by the power he felt that it was overwhelmed with every sensation – as if he was feeling every emotion and physical feeling a person could ever have, only he was feeling it all at the same time. It was too much for any person to control – even one as strong as he was. Ejaculating in and on his victims had merely been an emergency release – to allow him to regain control of his own growing power. Still, he knew he needed to do better in the future and suppress his body’s crude needs when in a heightened state of stimulation. It was either that or risk forever being branded as a sexually motivated killer, which would undermine everything he was trying to achieve.

Using a breathing exercise he’d picked up from a yoga video, he tried to calm his tense body and relax. The killings had left him feeling invincible, but it was gratifying to know he remained in complete control of his own body.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, he picked up the photographs and mementoes, placing them neatly in their bags before packing them tenderly into the plastic box that he returned to the freezer compartment of his fridge. As he closed the door he was already debating what type of person he should choose next.

3

Sean pulled up close to the police cordon in Mint Street, Southwark – the area of London south of the Thames from the City. Some of that wealth had spilled across the river, but the financial institutions clung to the bankside like limpets, leaving the south side of the river dominated by sprawling housing estates. It was an area he knew well.

He was about to climb from the car when his phone rang. Cursing under his breath, he struggled to free the phone from his jacket and looked at the caller ID. It was Dr Anna Ravenni-Ceron. His heart skipped a beat and his stomach tightened. It had been a good few months since he’d spoken to the psychiatrist. He’d hoped distance and time would fade his feelings towards her – remove the temptation she always seemed to represent when they were close. Now another murder investigation appeared to be bringing them back together. He cleared his throat and slid his finger across the screen to answer.

‘Anna,’ was all he said.

‘Sean,’ was all she replied.

They allowed a few seconds of silence between them before Anna spoke first. ‘How have you been?’

‘OK,’ he answered, shrugging as if she could see him. ‘Busy with other people’s problems.’

‘I heard,’ she told him. ‘How’s Kate? How are your kids?’

‘Good,’ he replied. ‘And you?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Though finding life dull, compared to being part of an SIU investigation.’

‘And now you are again,’ he reminded her.

‘Only if I want to be,’ she explained. ‘And only if you want me to be.’ He didn’t answer – her question making his mind swirl too much to be able to speak. Did he want to be close to her again? Every day. ‘Assistant Commissioner Addis wants me on the investigation.’

‘Featherstone told me.’

‘Right,’ she replied.

‘I assume Addis wants the same as always?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t met him yet,’ she explained, ‘but I’m assuming so.’

‘Keep an eye on me while pretending to be helping profile the killer,’ Sean spelt it out, ‘and report back to him on whether I can be … trusted.’

‘I would imagine,’ Anna agreed, ‘but as far as I’m concerned, our arrangement stands.’

Sean thought hard for a while. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘If Addis ever found out you were feeding everything back to me, he could make things very difficult for you.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m not a police officer. There’s a limit to what he can do to me – whereas you …’

‘I’m an asset,’ he reminded her. ‘It buys me some leeway, even with Addis.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked him bluntly.

He chewed his bottom lip for a few seconds. ‘Meet him,’ he found himself saying, although in his mind he was urging her to walk away from him, from Addis and the Special Investigations Unit and never come back. ‘Find out what he wants and if it’s the same as always, agree to do it. At least that way if he decides to come after me I’ll have a heads-up.’

‘OK,’ she agreed solemnly.

He sensed her unhappiness, how confused her feelings were. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he told her. ‘You don’t have to do this for me.’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I want to.’

‘OK,’ he agreed, then tried to move things on: ‘I could use you anyway. This new one,’ he explained, ‘feels … complicated. Anything you can tell me about him will help.’

‘No doubt Addis will give me a copy of the file,’ she went along with him. ‘Once I’ve read it, I’ll give you my thoughts.’

‘Good,’ he told her, then struggled with what to say next. ‘It’ll be nice to see you again,’ he managed, immediately wincing at his own words.

‘It’ll be nice to see you too,’ she answered.

He touched the screen to end the call and stared at the phone for a while before sliding it back into his jacket pocket. Climbing from the unmarked car, he made a beeline for the two uniformed officers who were guarding the tape that marked the cordon. He spoke to the tall female constable who was clutching the crime scene log. Sean held up his warrant card so they could both see.

‘DI Corrigan – Special Investigations Unit. This is officially my scene now,’ he told them.

The constables looked at each other, confused. The woman spoke for both of them. ‘Sorry, sir. The DCI from the MIT is inside with forensics. DCI …’ she looked down at the log, ‘DCI Vaughan.’

‘Like I said,’ he reminded her, ‘it’s my scene now.’ He pulled a business card from his warrant card and handed it to her. ‘No one in or out without my permission,’ he insisted. ‘You call me before letting anyone in. I don’t care if it’s the Commissioner – you call me first. Understand?’

The female constable gave a shrug of resignation before answering. ‘Whatever you say … sir.’

Sean awkwardly covered his shoes with a pair of forensic foot protectors he’d pulled from his pocket and ducked under the tape before heading to the garage some forty metres away where he could see figures in blue forensic suits working under the spotlights that lit the scene. As he drew nearer he noticed a figure standing in the dark observing the activities. The man wasn’t wearing a forensic suit, but stood in a long dark coat, his back to Sean, although his feet too were covered with protectors. Once Sean was within a few feet of the man, he turned to face him. His face appeared tanned, despite the depths of winter; he was in his early fifties, but handsome, his physique stocky and powerful. Sean noticed some of the grey strands of his hair reflecting the streetlights.

‘DCI Vaughan?’ Sean asked, holding up his warrant card.

‘Yes,’ Vaughan answered in a London accent – his demeanour immediately telling Sean he was dealing with another career detective and not someone racing through the ranks on accelerated promotion. ‘And who might you be?’

‘DI Sean Corrigan,’ he told him. ‘Special Investigations Unit.’

‘DI Corrigan,’ Vaughan smiled knowingly. ‘I’ve heard so much about you I feel I already know you. So what’s SIU doing here?’

Sean felt uneasy, knowing that he’d been talked about by people he didn’t know. He preferred to be anonymous. ‘This murder’s linked to another,’ he explained. ‘That makes it SIU’s.’

‘No one’s told me it’s linked,’ Vaughan argued. ‘And no one’s told me to hand over my investigation to you or anyone else. SIU’s not needed here. Me and my team will have this wrapped up in a few days, tops. We know how to hunt down bastards like this. Why don’t you save yourself for something a bit more exotic and leave this to us old-fashioned by-the-numbers detectives.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Sean told him. ‘Orders of Assistant Commissioner Addis. SIU are to take over this investigation.’

‘Addis hasn’t told me about SIU taking over anything,’ Vaughan growled. ‘Until he does – the investigation stays with me.’

‘He left it to me to tell you,’ Sean explained. ‘Addis wants SIU to take over and Addis gets what he wants. And you don’t want to get on Addis’s wrong side. Believe me – I know.’

‘I don’t take kindly to DIs marching into my crime scenes and telling me what’s gonna happen,’ Vaughan continued to dig his heels in.

Sean didn’t have time to argue, but neither did he want to alienate Vaughan and his MIT. He needed them onside and cooperative. He couldn’t afford to have anyone withholding some important fact they’d discovered – deliberately or otherwise. ‘I understand it’s a difficult situation,’ he said in a conciliatory tone, ‘but my unit was set up to deal with exactly this sort of investigation. I know you and your team could find whoever did this, but the fact is I have access to things you don’t, which means I’ve a better than decent chance of finding him sooner – before he kills again. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?’ Vaughan looked him up and down – weighing up Sean’s words. ‘All I need is full cooperation. I need everything you’ve found to date and in return I promise you’ll get full credit for what you’ve achieved.’ Still he sensed Vaughan wasn’t satisfied. ‘If we need any help I’ll come straight to you. Fair enough?’

Vaughan sighed in resignation. ‘Very well. Fair enough, but no airbrushing us out of what’s been done.’

‘Of course,’ Sean readily agreed, ‘but I need the forensic team to stop whatever they’re doing and prepare their exhibits for transfer.’

‘You want them to stop?’ Vaughan questioned his wisdom.

‘Like I said,’ Sean reminded him, ‘I have access to things you don’t – including a specialist forensics team who know exactly what I expect from them.’

‘If you insist,’ Vaughan agreed, unconvinced.

‘And I’ll need all the paperwork you have so far. Door-to-doors, witnesses spoken to. Anything you’ve generated – in order and filed properly, so I can find what I’m looking for.’

‘It will be,’ Vaughan assured him.

Sean moved on. ‘I understand the body’s been removed to the morgue at Guy’s?’

‘It has.’

‘Good,’ he said, knowing that it would fall under the care of his most trusted pathologist – Dr Simon Canning.

‘Your forensic team on their way?’ Vaughan asked.

‘No,’ Sean told him. ‘They’re briefed and preparing, but no point starting now. Better to start afresh in the morning, when your people have packed up and gone. Just make sure everything’s secure till then.’

‘Very well,’ Vaughan answered, but Sean had already started to drift away – looking out across the streets and the park close to the garage where William Dalton came to his violent end.

Vaughan noticed it. ‘You want to take a closer look at the scene?’

Sean looked at the houses and flats around the scene – full of light and life – children awake, meals being prepared, people walking home across the park, the smell of heavy traffic thick in the freezing air, its sound a constant hum in the background. It wasn’t right. ‘No,’ he told Vaughan. ‘This isn’t how it was.’

‘Excuse me,’ Vaughan asked, confused.

‘Nothing,’ Sean realized he’d been speaking out loud. ‘I’ll send a couple of my people over to your office tomorrow to pick up whatever you have.’

‘It’ll be ready,’ Vaughan assured him.

‘Good,’ Sean told him and turned to leave. ‘I need to be somewhere.’

‘One thing,’ Vaughan stopped him.

‘Which is?’

‘If you ever decide you’ve had enough of the SIU, give me a call, will you,’ Vaughan told him. ‘I wouldn’t mind that job myself some day.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Sean replied before heading off back to his car, fully aware that Vaughan wouldn’t be the only one who’d like his job and that Addis wouldn’t hesitate to replace him if he ever looked like he’d lost his special edge.

Anna Ravenni-Ceron entered the private members’ club in St James’s Park, close to New Scotland Yard, and was led to a large dark dining room where Assistant Commissioner Robert Addis sat in full uniform looking as trim and tidy as ever – his peaked cap and brown leather gloves perched on the edge of the table next to him. He sipped water from a crystal glass as he read from an open file he held expertly in one hand.