Praise for The Jigsaw Man

‘Pacy and gripping. If you love early Val McDermid and Fiona Cummins then you’ll love The Jigsaw Man’

Nina Pottell, Prima

‘Crime fiction has a significant new star’

Sarah Hilary, author of Someone Else’s Skin

‘So tense and dark. It has a real Silence of the Lambs vibe, and Peter Olivier is my new Hannibal Lecter. Brilliant’

Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

‘Move over, Hannibal Lecter, there’s a new serial killer on the block … The Jigsaw Man will have you in pieces. Literally’

David Jackson, author of A Tapping at My Door

‘What a fantastic book – gruesome murders, a wonderful new detective and some hard-hitting themes explored’

Chris McDonald, author of the DI Erika Piper series

‘The Jigsaw Man is smart, deftly plotted, and expertly paced, filled with characters you’ll love, and others who’ll make your skin crawl (and leave the lights on!) … Dark, devious and deliciously twisted’

Hannah Mary McKinnon, author of The Neighbours

‘A deliciously dark cat-and-mouse thriller that pits the best new detective in fiction against a truly menacing killer’

Kia Abdullah, author of Take It Back

‘A true page-turner that kept me up half the night’

Jenny O’Brien, author of the Detective Gaby Darin series

NADINE MATHESON was born and raised in Deptford (one of the murders in The Jigsaw Man takes place five minutes from her front door) and is a criminal solicitor. Nadine is also a winner of the City University Crime Writing competition and you can follow her on Twitter @nadinematheson. The Jigsaw Man is her debut novel.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

Copyright © Nadine Matheson 2021

Nadine Matheson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © February 2021 ISBN: 9780008359416

Version 2021-01-06

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008359393

To Amber, Esther, Jem, Jonathan, Keri, Luke, Patricia, Satu & Steph

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Prologue

6.44 a.m. Greenwich Pier, low tide, and Maxwell Perkins is walking his dog on the riverbank. He’s not expecting to find pieces of a body. He walks on grey clay, wet pebbles and shards of glass, avoiding scraps of wood and discarded car tyres. As he lets the dog, Petra, off the lead he notices the sunlight bouncing off something on the ground. He bends down and pulls at it carefully. Yesterday, he found a medieval pin and a Roman radiate coin. Today, it’s nothing more than broken links from a bath plug chain. Disappointed, Maxwell stands up and sees that his dog is sniffing at something in the mud. It’s late summer. The heatwave hasn’t broken and the temperature is steadily rising. Maxwell wipes away the beads of sweat from his forehead as he walks. His T-shirt clings to the folds of fat on his stomach. At 6.48 a.m., he reaches the dog and sees what has caught her attention.

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

He pulls the dog back by her collar. Adrenalin rushes through his body and his pulse beats in his ears. It’s the same feeling he had yesterday when he discovered the Roman radiate coin. Inquisitiveness and excitement, which quickly disappears. Now he is overwhelmed as disgust, fear and nausea sweep over him. His free hand is shaking as he takes out his mobile phone. The phone falls among the wet pebbles. He wipes the screen against his jeans, checks that the camera is clean. He takes a picture of the severed arm.

One mile away, Heather Roszicky, an archaeology professor, is supervising a group of second-year students as they complete their fieldwork on the site of the old Deptford Dockyard. Heather leans against the riverside wall, checks her watch and sighs. It will be another four hours before the tide comes in, but she is eager to leave and return to her office. She needs to finish the final draft of her book on the decline of London river excavations before her editor makes good on her promise to kill her. She’s missed her deadline twice and has already spent her advance.

A scream disturbs the calm air and Heather sees one of the students, a girl called Shui, running towards her. The rest of the students are backing away from the moss-covered rocks as Heather runs over to Shui, who has tripped over a piece of wood and fallen to the ground.

‘What’s wrong?’ Heather asks.

Shui shakes her head and begins to cry as Heather pulls her to her feet. The students are talking loudly and all at once as they make their way towards Heather. Someone grabs her arm and pulls her towards the decaying ferry steps. Heather can feel the scream rising in her throat as she looks down into the murky pool of water and sees a headless torso among the black and green jagged pieces of wood.

Christian Matei, a kitchen fitter, is walking towards Nelson Mews, the last cul de sac on Watergate Street in Deptford. The river is not too far away, and he thinks that he hears the sound of a woman screaming but is then distracted by someone playing the trumpet, badly. As he approaches number 15, he opens the gate and throws his empty coffee cup towards the skip on the driveway.

‘Shit,’ Christian says in his native Albanian as the cup bounces off the side of the skip and falls to the ground. As he bends to retrieve the cup something catches his eye. Half a metre away, a swarm of flies are dancing around an object on the ground. Coffee mixed with stomach acid is making its way up Christian’s throat. His vomit covers the flies that are all over the ragged and decaying flesh of the severed leg.

Chapter 1

The important thing was to stay calm. Not to let him see that he was getting to her. Again.

‘Rob, I don’t have time for this. I’m going to be late for work,’ Henley said, grabbing her car keys from the side table.

‘That’s the problem, you never—’

The sound of the front door slamming shut drowned out the rest of his words, but she knew what they were.

You never have time. Your work always comes first.

Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley looked back at the mid-terraced house with the freshly painted blue door. She wondered, not for the first time, what it said about her that she was happier dealing with rapists and murderers than her own husband. She checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror. She had rushed out too quickly and hadn’t had a chance to cover up the small scar on her right cheek and the dark circles under her eyes. Henley’s phone cut off the latest road traffic reports from BBC London and STEPHEN PELLACIA CALLING flashed across the screen.

‘Where are you?’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘Good morning to you too. I’m on Deptford Broadway. I’ll be about ten minutes,’ said Henley.

‘Don’t come in. I need you to make a detour. The bottom end of Watergate Street.’

‘Watergate Street? What for?’

‘We’ve got a case. A bunch of body parts have been found scattered around the area. Too early to say if they belong to the same victim or if it’s more than one. Ramouter’s already en route. He’ll meet you there.’

Henley slammed the brakes as a moped cut in front of her. The tension returned, as quick as a click, twisting through her body. ‘What do you mean you’re sending Ramouter?’ She tried but failed to stop the anger from coating her words. ‘What makes you think that I—’

Pellacia ignored her. ‘I’m emailing the CAD details to you.’

Henley smashed her hand against the steering wheel. The last thing she needed was an over-enthusiastic and inexperienced detective snapping at her heels.

Watergate Street, just off the gridlocked Creek Road, was usually quiet, but now, at 7.40 a.m., front doors were open and the residents clustered outside, wondering why a stream of police cars had assembled on their road. The looming branches of the cherry trees created a canopy over the street, casting an eerie, twilight darkness despite the beating sun. Henley parked her car opposite The Admiral pub, just a few metres from the police cordon where a small crowd was gathered.

Trainee Detective Constable Salim Ramouter was standing on the other side of the tape, a short distance from the crowd. He was dressed in a navy suit, white shirt and tie and Henley could see the shine bouncing off his black shoes. He was new to the team, though not new to the force, and he still looked ‘fresh’ and untouched by the reality that would soon come with being a detective on the streets of London.

Pellacia had told her that Detective Sergeant Paul Stanford would be responsible for Ramouter. That he would be the one showing him the ropes, not her. Henley had been updating the information on the Crime Reporting Information System known as a CRIS report, for another case, when Pellacia had made the introductions. Ramouter seemed taller than she had remembered; almost six feet. He had a beard which Henley thought he had probably grown in order to hide his youth.

Ramouter folded and unfolded his arms before settling on clasping his hands behind his back. She didn’t like how eager and unprepared he looked, not that she was looking that authoritative. She was dressed in jeans, trainers, a Wonder Woman T-shirt and a blazer that had lain on the back seat of her car for a week. More suited to sitting in an office and not acting as the senior investigating officer on an active crime scene.

‘Good morning, Inspector.’ Ramouter held out his hand. Henley ignored it.

‘Where’s DS Stanford?’ Henley held up her warrant card to the uniformed police officer who lifted the tape.

‘I’m not sure. I was only told to meet you here and to tell you that DC Eastwood is on her way to the Greenwich scene with uniform and Forensics,’ Ramouter replied, pulling back his hand and following Henley. They paused briefly outside 15 Nelson Mews. A couple of crime scene investigators wearing blue oversuits were crouched on the ground retrieving evidence. A third stood taking photographs of the driveway.

‘You do realise where we’re going, right?’ Henley asked as Ramouter put his hand on the gate.

‘We’re going to speak to Mr Matei, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, and when we’re done, I suggest that you ask one of the CSIs for some overshoes to put on when we get to the steps.’

It was a short distance from 15 Nelson Mews to the Watergate Steps, where the road narrowed down to a cobblestoned alley. They walked alongside a community park. An older woman and a Chinese girl were standing to the side talking to a policeman.

‘That’s Heather Roszicky,’ said Ramouter. ‘She found the—’

‘I know what she found.’

As they made their way down the alley, the smell of the river grew stronger. A mixture of stagnant drain water mixed with engine oil. Henley could hear the water breaking against the pebbled riverbank. A large terrace bordered Borthwick Wharf, converted from a meat processing and cold storage facility into a mixture of riverside apartments and commercial space.

Anthony Thomas, a senior crime scene investigator, appeared at the top of the terrace, pulling on a pair of purple latex gloves. Henley wouldn’t trust anyone else to protect a crime scene. He was fastidious but, most importantly, he was loyal.

Henley hadn’t worked with Anthony at a live crime scene for two years. A memory escaped one of the boxes in her mind: a hazy image of Anthony guiding her into a room to stand on a large plastic sheet. The goosebumps on her skin as the air-conditioning covered her in an icy chill. Not quite hearing the words that came out of Anthony’s mouth as he scraped under her fingernails and combed through her hair, waiting for the evidence to fall at her feet. She felt exposed as the doctor examined her and recorded her cuts and bruises on a body map. The realisation that she was the crime – it hit her in the gut with more fire than when the knife had pierced her stomach. They had trained her to be a detective, not a victim.

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you out and about,’ said Anthony. ‘Are you coming down to have a look then?’

‘It looks that way,’ Henley said. She was grateful that Anthony hadn’t made more of a fuss that this was the first time he had seen her in the field in two years.

‘Great, it will be like old times.’ Anthony pulled several pairs of blue overshoes out of a box by his feet and handed them to Henley. ‘Who’s your friend?’

Henley made the introductions.

‘Ah, a newbie. I’ve got one too.’ Anthony pointed to a young man who was standing stock still behind him, holding a camera. He had already zipped his blue oversuit up to his neck. His eyes darted anxiously from Henley to Anthony. ‘Fun, isn’t it?’ Anthony said with a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll see you down there.’

‘Come on,’ Henley said to Ramouter. ‘Let’s see what we’re dealing with.’

Henley looked down at the tattooed torso, which was at least five feet from the muddy waters of the Thames. The torso had been severed at the neck and through the thigh bones. Droplets of water glistened off the white skin. It had clearly been propped up between the moss-covered steps and the rotting, broken wood that was once part of the pier. The only thing that Henley could be certain about was that a white male, with a fondness for Manga anime tattoos, had had his legs cut off at the thigh bone, his arms at the biceps. The cuts were not clean and surgical like the severed body parts Henley had seen a few years ago. She had been frozen to the spot the first time she’d seen the separated arms, legs, head and torso, dumped under a railway arch in Lewisham. She had learned to harden herself since then.

Her calves tightened as she squatted down. The head had been cut off just above the Adam’s apple. Small hunks of bone were embedded in the ridged windpipe that jutted out among shredded muscle and clotted blood. Yellowing fat and connective tissue had the look of a raw, jointed chicken that had been left out in the air for too long. Henley stood up and breathed in deeply. The wind carried the briny, rotten scent of the river. She couldn’t find the compartments in her brain that she used to separate the logical and hardened detective from the damaged and not quite healed woman who was standing at the water’s edge.

She stepped away and made her way back up the Watergate Steps. She tried to shake off the sharp prickles of anxiety, but she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the torso had been staged for her.

Chapter 2

‘How long have we got until the tide comes in?’ Henley was facing the river watching the small waves crashing against the derelict pier. She checked her watch. Nearly two hours had passed since the first 999 call.

‘I checked online, and high tide is at 9.55 a.m.,’ Ramouter replied as he stepped around a half-submerged car tyre, his eyes glazed with anxiety. ‘Low tide was at 3.15. Sunrise was at 6.32. A three-hour window for someone to dump whoever this is and hope that someone would find it before the tide comes in?’

‘Maybe,’ Henley acknowledged. ‘But for all we know it could have been dumped after sunrise or was dumped earlier upstream before being washed up here.’ She inspected the glass façade of the Borthwick Wharf, empty commercial spaces and work units that opened to the terrace and lacked security cameras. Henley doubted that the local council would have extended their own CCTV cameras to this part of the street. They had been neglecting this part of Deptford for as long as she could remember.

‘Has it been touched?’ Henley asked Anthony, who had appeared at her side.

‘As far as I’m aware, it’s in situ. It wasn’t touched by the woman who found it. Matei, your builder, said that he hadn’t touched the legs but, unhelpfully, it’s covered in his vomit. I had a quick look at the arms that were found downstream before I came here. From the looks of things, the treasure hunters may have prodded around a bit.’

‘There’s always one.’

The wind dropped and the air softly crackled with the electricity generated from the substation nearby.

‘We’re isolating the recovery of evidence to the direct path from the alleyway to the torso,’ said Anthony. ‘I doubt very much that whoever it was sat here and had a coffee afterwards.’

‘They may not have had a coffee, but if we go with Ramouter’s theory and the body parts have been dumped, then whoever it was certainly knows the river,’ Henley replied. ‘We’ll let you get on. Ramouter and I are going to take a walk.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Ramouter.

‘To meet Eastwood.’

‘And you want to walk it?’

Henley did her best to push aside her frustration when Ramouter pulled out his phone. ‘Google Maps says that Greenwich Pier is almost a mile away,’ he said.

‘Your body-part dumper isn’t the only one who knows the river,’ Anthony shouted out as Henley began to walk determinedly along the riverbank.

The gold sceptres on the twin domed roofs of the Old Royal Naval College pierced the cloudless sky. The bare masts of the restored Cutty Sark completed the historical panoramic view that Greenwich was known for. It was a resplendent, whitewashed version of history that contrasted with the sewage that washed ashore. Henley stopped walking when she realised that she could no longer hear the sounds of Ramouter’s leather soles slipping on wet pebbles.

‘Where are you from?’ Henley asked, waiting for Ramouter to take off his jacket and loosen his tie. She moved closer towards the moss-covered river wall as the tide began to encroach.

‘Born in West Bromwich. Moved to Bradford when I was twelve.’ Ramouter tried to brush off the bits of mud that had stuck to his trousers, but they only smeared more. ‘Lots of moors, no rivers. Surely it would have been quicker in the car.’

‘This is quicker. Unless you fancy sitting in traffic for the next half hour while they raise the Creek Road Bridge.’

‘You know this area well?’

Henley ignored the question. She didn’t see the point in telling him that she could have walked this path with her eyes closed. That this small part of south-east London was ingrained in her. ‘Whoever dumped the torso would have taken this route. It doesn’t make any sense to come down here, go back up to the street level and then drive up to Watergate Street. Out of sight, below street level. Lighting would have been minimal.’

‘Body parts are heavy though.’ Ramouter tried to quicken his step to catch up with Henley. ‘The human head weighs at least eight pounds.’

‘I know.’ Henley pulled out her mobile phone, which had started to ring. She saw who it was and ignored the call.

‘Head, torso, arms, legs. That’s at least six individual body parts.’

‘I know that also. So, tell me, what point are you making?’ Henley waited for Ramouter to reach her before manoeuvring him towards the river wall as though she was chaperoning a child.

‘I’m just saying that that’s a lot of dead weight to be carrying around at three in the morning.’ Ramouter paused and placed his hand against the wall, trying to catch his breath.

Henley didn’t openly express her agreement. She fished out a black hairband from her jacket pocket and pulled her thick black curls into a ponytail. She had forgotten how much energy it took to walk across the gradient slope of the riverbank. Worse, she felt mentally unprepared for the job ahead, with a trainee struggling behind her who had no idea this was her first time as senior investigator in almost a year.

‘It’s a bit grim, isn’t it?’ DC Roxanne Eastwood shouted out as Henley finally reached the first crime scene. ‘Morning, Ramouter. Not a bad gig for your first day.’

Henley had always thought that Eastwood actually looked and carried herself like a detective. Now, Eastwood was poised on the riverbank, the sleeves of her jacket rolled up with her notebook in her hand. She had come prepared for the river and was wearing a pair of jeans and trainers that had seen better days.

‘Morning, Eastie. How does it feel to be out of the office?’ Henley asked, her eyes drifting to a crime scene investigator who was putting an arm into a black bag.

‘I should be asking you that,’ said Eastwood, with a look of concern.

Henley silently appreciated the empathy and placed her hand on Eastwood’s shoulder.

‘But since you asked, it’s bloody terrible. I think I’ve got sunburn.’ Eastwood rubbed a hand over her reddening forehead. ‘Forensics are going to be wrapping up in a bit. Not that there’s much for them to do. Bag it and tag it.’

‘Where’s Mr Thomas?’

‘Ah, our illustrious treasure hunter. Last time I saw him, he was heading towards the shops. Said that he needed to get some water for his dog.’ Eastwood shook her head, obviously not believing a word of it. ‘I’ve got an officer keeping an eye on him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already uploaded pictures of his find onto Instagram.’

‘I want him taken back to the station. Ramouter can take another statement from him.’ Henley said it purposely so that Ramouter would sense she was in control. ‘If he’s like most mudlarkers, he would have been out here first thing this morning waiting for the tide to go out. Where exactly were the arms found?’

‘Just over there.’ Eastwood pulled down her sunglasses and pointed towards the foamed waves created by a passing river bus. The tide had already come in where X had once marked the spot. A sense of urgency filled the air as the river regained its territory.

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Only that he found the second arm about three feet away from the first.’

‘It’s a sick trail of breadcrumbs,’ said Henley.

‘You’re telling me, and before you ask about CCTV, there’re loads of cameras—’

‘But none aimed at this part of the river.’

‘Exactly.’

Henley’s mobile phone began to ring. She pulled it out and answered. After a quick chat, she ended the call.

‘That was Dr Linh Choi. You wouldn’t have met her yet but she’s our go-to forensic pathologist. She’s just arrived,’ Henley explained to Ramouter. She wiped away the sweat from the back of her neck.

‘So, we’ve got two arms, both legs and a torso,’ said Ramouter. ‘Where’s the head?’

Good question. Henley thought of the places between the two locations. A primary school, two nurseries and an adventure playground among the flats and houses. The last thing she needed was to find a head in the kids’ sandpit.

‘Can I have a quick look?’ Henley asked the assistant from Anthony’s CSI team, who had just bagged up the arm and was scribbling in her notebook.

‘Sure.’ The assistant unzipped the bag and pushed the plastic apart.

‘Fuck,’ Henley said under her breath. Her heartbeat quickened, her stomach flipped.

‘Oh,’ said Ramouter as he peered over Henley’s shoulder. One arm was covered with gravel. Slivers of seaweed criss-crossed old scars. The second arm. Slender wrist, the ring finger slightly longer than the index, broken fingernails. Black skin. Henley could hear Pellacia’s words from earlier ringing in her ears.

‘Too early to say if it belongs to the same victim or if it’s more than just one.’

‘Call DSI Pellacia,’ Henley told Ramouter. ‘Tell him that we’ve got two possible murder victims.’

Chapter 3

To anyone walking past, the natural assumption was that Greenwich police station was closed. The blue shutters at the front of the building hadn’t been raised for three years, and two lonely orange traffic cones blocked the driveway which led to a row of empty parking spaces. A faded poster redirected all prospective visitors to Lewisham police station or to call 101 if it was a non-emergency. The locals walked past wondering when the building would be knocked down and replaced with another overpriced, privately owned apartment block with a concierge service for the rich and a backdoor for the lucky few who had been allocated social housing. If the people had looked up, then they would have noticed that three windows on the fourth floor were open and a soft swirl of cigarette smoke was wafting out.

The Serial Crime Unit had been temporarily based on the fourth floor for six years. When the Metropolitan Police was a bit more flush, DCSI Harry Rhimes had been rewarded with the SCU after his team successfully apprehended a district nurse named Abigail Burnley, who had killed fifteen people under her care. Serial killers didn’t pop up with great regularity, so the department busied itself with serial rapes, burglaries, kidnappings and cases considered too extreme for any of the twenty-six murder inquiry teams spread throughout London. Six years later, Burnley was serving a life sentence, Rhimes had been dead for eight months, Pellacia was in charge of an underfunded unit and Henley was heading towards him with a face like thunder.

‘How dare you?’ Henley didn’t stop Pellacia’s office door from slamming shut behind her.

‘Don’t you think a little bit of respect is due? How about, How dare you, guv?’

DSI Stephen Pellacia, who had been smoking out the window, stubbed out his cigarette. The strain of being in charge of the SCU was starting to show. There was more grey streaked through his brown hair and the circles under his creased eyes were darker. The euphoria of being the boss had worn off long ago and Rhimes’s absence still hung heavily in the air.

‘You could have given me some warning before putting me out there. Then to top that off, you dump a bloody trainee on me,’ said Henley.

‘Why are you making this an issue? You’ve been on restrictive duties for six months. I thought that you would be—’

‘There has never been an issue.’ Henley almost spat the last word out. ‘You’re the one who told Rhimes that it would be best to stick me behind a desk.’

‘And you’ve been complaining about it every day since.’ Pellacia’s green eyes narrowed and the small muscles in his jaw flexed with tension. ‘Look, we’re going round in circles and I haven’t got time to argue with you. I’m already late with this briefing. There’s a lot to get through and I’m due at the Yard.’

‘Before we start—’ Henley took a breath and counted to three. ‘Do you have any idea who the lead investigator is going to be on this case? The sooner I update the CRIS report and complete a handover the better.’

‘Yeah, about that,’ said Pellacia as he stepped around Henley and reached for the door. ‘We’re not handing it over.’

‘What do you mean we’re keeping the case?’

The voice of dissent came from DC Eastwood. She pushed aside a loose strand of blonde hair from her burnt forehead. ‘I thought this was just was a one-off.’

‘It’s not,’ Pellacia said firmly, avoiding Henley’s stare.

The SCU was housed in a room that was now far too big for their team. There was a time when the officers had hot-desked with CID and the Community Support Unit. The building used to shake with the sound of a suspect banging on the old pipes in his cell. Now the cells were more likely to contain Stanford having a snooze. The team at this point consisted of Eastwood, Henley, DS Paul Stanford, who was en route to the Old Bailey to give evidence in a serial rapist case, and now Salim Ramouter. Pellacia was in charge and these days very rarely left the office unless it was to answer the calls of his superiors who were based at New Scotland Yard. The SCU was supported by a civilian admin team: Ezra, an ex-con at twenty-three years old and a computer genius who Pellacia had taken under his wing, and Joanna. No one knew how long Joanna had been knocking around the police stations of south-east London and neither did they know how old Joanna was, but the general consensus was that she definitely knew where all the bodies were buried and how many skeletons the Met had in their cupboards.

‘We’re overstretched as it is,’ said Eastwood. ‘I’ve worked eleven days straight with not one rest day. We’ve lost Stanford for the week.’

‘You’re pointing out the obvious, Eastie.’

‘And the last time I checked we were running six active investigations…’

‘Seven.’ Joanna walked through the door carrying a large cardboard box filled with various breakfast orders from the café across the road. She put the box down onto Eastwood’s desk. ‘It’s seven if you include the Thames Valley job that we’re’ – she raised her hands and made the quotation signs in the air – ‘consulting on.’

Henley watched Pellacia bite his tongue as Eastwood rolled her eyes.

‘Look, you may not like it but that’s what’s happening. None of the other murder teams have the capacity to deal with it. The investigation is staying here. Is that clear?’ said Pellacia.

‘Crystal.’ Eastwood shook her head.

Pellacia turned his gaze to Henley, daring her to challenge the decision that he’d just made. ‘As Stanford is stuck in court, I’ve decided that Ramouter is staying on this body-part case with Henley.’

‘You’re splitting up the twins?’ Joanna exclaimed in mock shock.

‘I didn’t think that Stanford would take offence at no longer being Ramouter’s mentor and temporarily separated from Henley.’

‘That’s what you think.’ Joanna took a sausage sandwich from the box. ‘Ramouter, just to give you the heads-up, those two are as thick as thieves. Stanford is Henley’s brother from another—’

‘We get it, Joanna,’ said Pellacia. ‘Right, let’s move on.’

Henley mentally went through her own checklist. Muscle memory had taken over as she attended the crime scene: observe the surroundings, note the familiar and unfamiliar. Treat everything as evidence. Prepare a narrative. Secure and protect. To the outside world, she was calm and composed. Inside, her heart was about to burst out of her chest, and the knots in her stomach twisted and tightened.

Henley’s phone began to vibrate on her desk. She felt sick as she read the text from her brother Simon:

Just been round to Dad’s. Wouldn’t let me in. Bell you when I’ve finished work x

‘Now, about this river case,’ said Pellacia. ‘Potentially two victims?’

‘It’s not potentially two. There are two victims,’ said Henley. She began typing a reply to her brother. ‘The torso, legs and one arm belong to a white male. The second arm belongs to, although the sex hasn’t been confirmed, a black female.’

Henley’s mobile phone vibrated across her desk for a second time. She picked it up.

‘And no other parts have been found?’

‘CSI recovered a head belonging to a white male in the skip outside 15 Nelson Mews,’ said Henley. ‘That was a text from Linh, by the way. The… parts have arrived at the mortuary.’

‘Two bloody victims,’ said Pellacia. ‘You never know, though. This could still be a nice, straightforward investigation.’

Henley didn’t reply as she picked up her bag, because every nerve in her body told her Pellacia believed that even less than she did.

Chapter 4

The building that housed the dead was walking distance from the police station, just off the high street where the cafés, pubs and estate agents gave way to more sparkling new hotels, unaffordable apartment buildings and a twenty-four-hour gym. It blended in anonymously among the Georgian houses and the council estate that shared the quiet road. Henley didn’t feel out of place now that she had her uniform on, a sharp midnight blue suit. It screamed authority even though she had kept on the black Adidas Gazelles.

‘Greenwich Public Mortuary,’ Ramouter read the sign on the wall as he finished the rest of his coffee. ‘They make it sound like a library. Like you can just walk in, show your card, pull up a seat and watch an autopsy.’

‘How long have you got left?’ Henley asked.

‘For what?’ Ramouter waited for Henley to release the child safety lock.

‘Until you’re no longer a trainee?’

‘What you’re really asking is, how long are you stuck with me for?’ The grin on Ramouter’s smooth brown face quickly disappeared as he saw that Henley was not smiling back. ‘I’ve got four months left.’ He rubbed at his beard. ‘But I did spend six months working in the Homicide and Major Crime team. It was good solid work, but I wanted something more challenging and West Yorkshire Police have nothing like the SCU.’

Henley felt a flush of empathy – it wasn’t his fault that he had been dumped with her – but the warmth was brief.

‘Well, things work a bit differently at the SCU. It’s very rare that we hit the ground running like this. The cases are usually passed on to us once the potential emergence of a serial killer or rapist has been identified. The preliminary work that we’re doing now has usually been done before we get going.’

‘But that’s not all that the unit does,’ said Ramouter, following Henley towards the detached building in the middle of the grounds. ‘There was that serial kidnapping and human trafficking case a few years back and also the Jigsaw Killer case.’

Henley winced as a muscle pulled in her neck. The Jigsaw Killer. The case that had changed everything. There had been praise from her colleagues, a commendation from the commissioner, a promotion to detective inspector. But the case had stolen a piece of her.

‘That must have been amazing to work on,’ continued Ramouter. ‘It’s what made me want to join the unit. The reason… Well, one of the reasons why I came down to London.’

Henley turned and looked at Ramouter. Even though she knew that he was nervous, there was no mistaking that familiar look of excitement in his eyes.

‘Don’t let what you saw in the media fool you. The SCU is understaffed and underfunded. I’m surprised that your transfer was even authorised. Look, in your average Murder Squad it wouldn’t be unusual to have up to a hundred people working on an investigation from the DSI down to your civilians, but at the SCU it’s just us and we spend a lot of time pulling in favours. There’s no glamour here and any praise is short-lived.’

Henley turned her back, entered the passcode she wasn’t meant to have, and pushed open the door.

Head forensic pathologist Dr Linh Choi was sitting at her desk with her back to the door, hunched over her lunch. Her long black hair was piled on top of her head, secured loosely with a biro. She bobbed her head up and down in time to the heavy drum and bass that was escaping from the Bose wireless speakers on her desk. Henley had met Linh over fifteen years ago, when they were both starting out in their careers and feeling woefully out of their depth. Their friendship had flourished over time. Henley tapped Linh on the shoulder.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Linh jumped in her seat. The hot wing in her hand fell back into the box. ‘You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack.’

‘Reliving your raving days, are you?’ Henley said with a smile.

‘Don’t you mean “our” raving days. You love this as much as I do. I’ve got a wicked mix that I found at home. I’ll have to send it to you.’ Linh muted the volume on her laptop. ‘You didn’t tell me that you were back. Had to hear it from Anthony,’ she said.

‘I’ll talk to you about that later,’ Henley replied.

‘And you’ve got a new partner? What did Stanford have to say about that?’

‘This is TDC Salim Ramouter, and he’s not my partner.’ Henley moved aside to allow Ramouter to step forward. ‘I’m his mentor. He’s just transferred from West Yorkshire Police.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, you couldn’t have asked for a better person to train you than DI Henley,’ said Linh, getting up from the chair. She cleaned her hand with an anti-bacterial wipe before extending it towards Ramouter. ‘Nice to meet you. Dr Linh Choi.’

She’d had the benefit of a private school scholarship and Cambridge University education, but you’d never have guessed from her thick south London accent. She pulled her glasses down from the top of her head.

‘I’ve just completed a preliminary examination on your male victim, but let me tell you about the arm first. There wasn’t much to go over, considering that we’re missing bits. A head, legs, torso, another arm would be nice.’

‘What can you tell us?’ asked Henley.

Linh shrugged. ‘Black female. Probably in her twenties but that’s all that I can tell you until you find the rest of her.’

Henley and Ramouter followed Linh out of her office, towards an examination room that resembled a hospital operating theatre. There was a chill in the air. Against the wall a row of metal cabinets provided temporary storage for the dead, while opposite were three deep sinks with a fridge in the corner. In the middle of the room stood four metal examination tables. Linh’s assistant, Theresa, was working on a body on the far table while listening to music on her Beats headphones. The scents of industrial antiseptic and soured bodily fluids tickled Henley’s nose.

Theresa inserted an expander into the body’s chest.

‘That used to be a 23-year-old bodybuilder,’ Linh said, shaking her head. ‘Heart attack. Collapsed in the gym. I don’t need a toxicology screening to tell me that he’s going to be pumped full of steroids.’

The sound of someone stepping on broken glass filled Henley’s ears as Theresa cracked the chest open. Ramouter took a step back.

‘The loo is the second door on your left,’ Linh said, amusement tickling her voice, as Ramouter turned and ran.

‘Sorry,’ said Ramouter when he returned a few minutes later with the look of shame in his eye.

‘That’s all right. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last,’ said Linh. ‘Right, are you ready?’

Henley nodded her assent and Linh pulled back the protective plastic sheet. The body parts that had been found along the riverbank and the driveway of 15 Nelson Mews were now arranged on the examination table, like a bloodied jigsaw that had yet to be fully put together. Henley felt lightheaded. She took a step back and tried to anchor herself.

‘Are you able to give us a time of death?’ Henley asked, trying to hide the nervous quiver in her voice.

‘Rough estimate,’ said Linh, ‘I would say between twenty-four to thirty-six hours for your man.’

Henley took a closer look at the tattoo on the torso.

‘It’s a scene from Full Metal Alchemist,’ Linh said. She sounded quite pleased. ‘That’s a Manga anime film, if you didn’t know. Way before your time,’ she continued for the benefit of Ramouter. ‘He’s got Ken from Fist of the North Star tattooed on his back.’

‘What can you tell me about the dismemberments? Before or after death?’ Henley asked as she walked slowly around the body parts, taking every detail in, ignoring the mobile phone that was vibrating in her pocket.

‘Both.’ Linh moved towards the top of the table. ‘Right arm and the left leg were removed first. If you take a look here,’ she pointed to where the left leg had been cut, ‘the blood had already started to coagulate. Death would have occurred within four minutes.’

Linh turned the lower end of the torso towards Henley, pointing out the bone, flesh and bowels. ‘There is hardly any coagulation at all here. So, four hours after death, your killer starts to remove the limbs. There’s an interesting puncture wound in the chest, just above the heart. That was done before death. I’ll know more once I start the autopsy after lunch. I will tell you one thing, though. They made a right shit job of cutting this body up. Look here.’ Linh pointed a gloved finger to two long, jagged cuts on the right shoulder. ‘There were at least two attempts made before the arm was finally taken off. It’s as if whoever it was had never used a Black and Decker jigsaw before.’

‘Was it a Black and Decker jigsaw?’ Ramouter asked. He was standing almost three feet away with his back to the sinks.

‘I wouldn’t have a bloody clue. You need a DIY expert for that.’ Linh’s eyes crinkled with laughter as she straightened the right leg. ‘But more importantly, take a look at this.’

Linh picked up the head and turned it towards Henley. She then prised the jaw open with her fingers. ‘Ramouter, grab the torch on the side,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got enough hands.’

Ramouter picked up the small silver pen torch and walked over to the table.

‘Come on. Don’t be shy. Shine it here.’

Ramouter did as he was told and shone the torch into the opened mouth.

‘Erm… Where’s his tongue?’ Ramouter asked.

Henley forced herself to take the torch from Ramouter and shone the light towards the back of the throat. The mouth was caked in dried blood and she could see the remnants of exposed striated muscle that formed the base of the tongue.

‘How?’ Henley asked.

‘It was cut off,’ Linh replied. ‘A very clean dissection which could only be achieved by something like a very sharp fillet knife or a scalpel.’

‘But how easy is it to cut out someone’s tongue?’ Henley wriggled her own tongue around her mouth, feeling the small tendons at the base stretch and pull.

‘While they’re alive? Bloody difficult. Which is why it would have made sense if the tongue was cut off post-mortem, but it wasn’t.’

‘Hold on, he was still alive when his tongue was cut out?’

Linh nodded. ‘To grab hold of the tongue while the person is alive would be difficult and the cut is so clinical. My guess is your victim was unconscious. Also, there’s another thing. Tell me if you notice anything about the legs.’

Henley crouched down. The calf of the right leg, covered with small grains of sand, fragments of seaweed and dried vomit, was muscular with fine, light brown hair. The left leg was the same but, on the ankle, a strip of skin, about two inches wide, was paler than the rest.

‘Our victim was wearing a tag?’ Henley said.

‘I think so,’ replied Linh. ‘If you look here.’ Linh turned the leg to examine the pale patch, which was no bigger than a matchbox. ‘Definitely, I would say that he was wearing a tag. I’m sure that if I got the measurements of a generic tag from one of the monitoring companies, it would fit.’

‘So, our victim was on court bail with a curfew?’ asked Ramouter. ‘That should give us something to go on. There must be a way of finding out if anyone has breached their bail in the last few days.’

‘Do you have any idea how many people are granted bail and placed on tag?’ said Henley.

‘Good luck with that,’ replied Linh. ‘I’ve taken blood, urine samples, the usual, and sent them off this morning. Hopefully, I’ll get something back by the end of the week. So, do we have a name? It feels a bit disrespectful to keep calling him… well, one of them, Manga man, now that most of him is laid out on the table like this.’

Henley pulled her phone out of her pocket, which had been buzzing with alerts and read the message on the screen. It was from Anthony Thomas confirming that he had run the severed arm’s fingerprints through Livescan, the police database.

‘Actually, we do,’ said Henley. ‘Meet Daniel Kennedy.’

Chapter 5

It was almost 8 p.m. by the time Ramouter had entered his flat, taken off his shoes, which still had traces of dried mud on them, and placed them on the doormat. It had been four days since he moved in. The scent of the flat wasn’t his. It still smelled of artificial air freshener and bleach. A lingering stack of unopened boxes occupied the open-plan living room and kitchen. He turned on the radio for company and took out a ready meal from the fridge, pulled off the cardboard sleeve and stabbed the taut plastic with a fork.

A few minutes later, Ramouter pushed aside the remains of the bland spaghetti carbonara and picked up his iPhone.

‘Oh, we were expecting you to call earlier. We’re just about to eat,’ said Pamela, stepping away from the camera. As always, her face was perfectly made up and not one muscle moved on her face. She was dressed in expensive yoga clothes, even though Ramouter knew for a fact that Pamela had no idea what downward-facing dog meant and probably thought savasana was a type of tea.

‘Sorry, I didn’t realise how long it would take me to get back from the station. The traffic on the South Circular—’

‘Well, perhaps you could leave on time, tomorrow. Routine is important.’

Ramouter bit his tongue to stop himself from saying, ‘Murder isn’t a nine-to-five job.’

‘Where’s Michelle? I tried to FaceTime, but she didn’t pick up.’

‘She’s probably forgotten to charge her phone again but she’s upstairs. They both are. She was feeling tired. I’m going to leave in a bit to pick the boys up from football practice. I’ll bring my iPad up to her.’

Pamela found Michelle sitting on the edge of the bed. Her bedroom mirrored his living room with suitcases and boxes taking up much of the space. He chuckled to himself.

‘Michelle. Sweetheart,’ said Ramouter. ‘You OK, love? Where’s Ethan? How was his first day at school? I miss you.’

‘He’s already in bed,’ Michelle replied, steadying the iPad on the bedside table. ‘His first day at school completely knocked him out. I took loads of photographs for you.’

‘I know. Remember, you sent me the photos this morning?’ Ramouter’s heart sank as confusion spread across Michelle’s face. Early onset dementia at the age of thirty-six. A rare genetic form of Alzheimer’s, the specialist had said. Her father had died at fifty-eight, but the rest of the family had thought that maybe it would skip a couple of generations. He had received his transfer confirmation to join the SCU two weeks before Michelle’s diagnosis. They had found the flat in Forest Hill, a school for Ethan and a job interview for Michelle lined up, but the diagnosis had changed everything. Michelle’s older sister Pamela had argued that her sister needed stability and a move to an unknown city away from her family and friends would be detrimental. Ramouter couldn’t argue with that. He still had the email declining the transfer to the SCU saved in his draft folder. He had been ready to send it, but Michelle had told him no. That it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That she didn’t want him to regret it. To resent her.

‘How was your day?’ Ramouter asked.

‘My day was OK. Pamela took me to lunch to meet some of her friends. You would hate them. How was your day?’

‘It was good. They’re a good team and I’ve been paired up with Anjelica Henley on a case. Do you remember her, the one I told you about?’

‘The Inspector?’

‘Yes, that’s right. The Inspector,’ Ramouter replied, his voice brightening.

‘What is she like?’

‘She’s erm… Tough. Smart. Don’t think that she likes being stuck with me much, but it’s early days.’

‘Hmm. Ethan wanted to stay up to tell you about school—’

Ramouter looked at Michelle through his screen and felt overwhelmed with sadness. She was distracted again. He could see it in her eyes. Staring back at him as she tried to hold on to her memories. He couldn’t look back at her. He turned the phone screen down onto the counter. He should have ignored Michelle when she told him that it was OK for him to go to London. He should have stood by his wife like a man but instead he ran at the first opportunity. He wore the guilt in his shoulders, as familiar as his work suit. He was angry with Michelle and her illness. And the guilt and embarrassment that he felt from that anger was suffocating.

‘Sorry,’ Ramouter said, as he picked up the phone. ‘The reception is a bit dodgy in this flat.’

‘You need to stop,’ Michelle said.

It was these moments of lucidity that made Ramouter feel worse. His eyes filled with tears as Michelle stared back at him with intense clarity. She knew him and how to manage him.

‘We both agreed,’ she said.

‘Aye. I’m just missing you and Ethan. That’s all,’ Ramouter replied as he wiped away the tears.

‘It’s going to be OK. We’re OK,’ Michelle said firmly.

‘I know. I’ll have a word with myself.’

‘Good. Now, let me tell you about lunch with Pamela’s lunatic friends. I’m actually looking forward to the day when I don’t remember them.’

Ramouter laughed as he watched Michelle brighten up. The guilt was still there but for the next hour, as he spoke to Michelle, the weight was not so heavy.

Chapter 6

Henley knew that the collection time for the non-recyclable rubbish was around 11 a.m. She put down the shopping bags and checked her watch: 8.26 p.m. The blue wheelie bin was blocking the front gate. Her dad probably hadn’t left the house all day.

Henley dragged the wheelie bin to the side and opened the gate. The thorns on the overgrown rose bush caught on her jacket as she walked up the pathway. Weeds had forced themselves through the cracks in the paving stones.

‘What the hell?’ Henley said as the key to the front door refused to turn anti-clockwise. It was the same key that had been attached to the same blue Tesco Clubcard fob for the past five years. She pushed the key in again. It wouldn’t turn.

‘Dad, for crying out loud.’

Henley crouched down and shouted through the letterbox.

‘Dad. It’s me. Anjelica. Open the door.’

She sat back on her heels, keeping the letterbox prised open with her fingers.

‘Dad. Come on. Just… Please. I want to see if you’re OK.’

‘I’m fine. Go away.’

‘Not until you open the door. I’ve bought you some shopping.’

‘Leave it at the door.’

‘Dad. Please. Let me see you. I promise that I won’t come in.’

Henley peered through the letterbox and saw his legs approaching in their faded grey tracksuit pants. The letterbox slammed shut as the front door opened.

‘You need a haircut, Dad.’ It was the only thing that Henley could say as her stomach was twisted in knots. She hadn’t seen her dad, Elijah, in almost three weeks and his appearance was shocking. He’d lost weight. The skin around his neck was folding into itself like a rumpled handkerchief. Henley felt the shock give way to the type of fear that came when you recognised your parents were tapping on the door of mortality.

Elijah patted his hair which was now more white than grey. The number two fade devolved into a short unkempt afro.

‘Simon came around this morning.’ Henley placed her hand on top of her dad’s hand. He pulled his hand away. ‘Why didn’t you want to see him?’ she asked softly.

‘I don’t want to see any of you.’

‘Dad. You have to let us help you.’

‘I don’t need your help. I’m fine.’

‘Why did you change the lock?’

‘To stop you and your brother coming here whenever you felt like it. I’m not a child.’

‘No one said that you were. We’re just worried about you.’

‘Well, I’m fine. You’ve seen me. Now you can go.’

‘Dad… Don’t be… Can you at least let me in for a minute?’

‘I said no!’

‘Fine. Fine.’ Henley grabbed the edge of the door. ‘I won’t come in. Here, take this.’

She picked up the shopping bags and pushed them through the gap in the door. ‘I haven’t got a clue what you’ve got in your fridge. You could be living on crackers and sardines for all I know,’ she said angrily. ‘I’ve got you the basics, eggs, bread, ham, chicken and some party ring biscuits. I know that you like—’

Elijah pulled the bags towards him.

‘Fuck,’ Henley said as he slammed the door shut in her face.

‘Fourteen hours,’ Rob said without looking up from his laptop. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his temporary office, while the builders finished converting the shed in the back. He was a financial journalist who had taken the option to work remotely instead of depositing a redundancy cheque into his bank account. Once a week he left the house and ventured to Old Street where he graced the studios of a business channel to discuss breaking financial news. The arrangement suited Rob and Henley but he still wanted her home. Luna, part Alsatian, part Labrador, part something else, was asleep under the table. The French doors were open but the heat from the day still hung heavily in the air, mixed with the perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle that came from the garden. The seductive scents of a late summer’s night couldn’t cover up the strong odour of decay that had been with Henley since she’d seen the dismembered torso on the Watergate Steps.

‘You left the house just after seven and you’re walking in at twenty-one minutes past nine.’

‘Rob, I’ve had a really long day—’

‘You had a long day? I had to pick up Emma from nursery because she was sick.’

‘And I texted you to see how she was.’

‘She didn’t need a text. She needed her mum.’

‘Let’s not do this,’ said Henley as she put her bag on the kitchen counter and walked towards the fridge. Rob being Rob, he wasn’t selfish enough to cook for one. She pulled out the Pyrex dish covered with clingfilm. Honey and garlic grilled chicken with vegetable fried rice and broccoli. She put the dish back and closed the fridge door. She needed to shower first to remove the thin film of death coating her body and the scent of failure that trailed her since she had left her dad’s house. She wondered if Rob could tell that she was back working an investigation.

‘I went to see Dad,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ Rob’s features softened a bit. ‘How is he?’

‘Not good. He refused to let me in.’

‘This isn’t good for him. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Henley opened the fridge door again and pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘I’ll have to talk to Si, but… I don’t know.’

‘Look, I know that things aren’t great with your dad, but you could have let me know that you were going to be late. An apology would be nice.’

‘An apology for what?’ Henley said, picking up a wine glass from the cupboard. ‘For seeing my dad?’

‘No, of course not. I only meant—’

‘Do you want me to apologise for going to work? I have to work, Rob. One of us needs to hold a stable job.’ Henley regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth.

‘And what? I’m just sitting here playing the house husband, looking after our child and making jam while you go to work.’

‘You know exactly what I meant. I know what you do and I… I appreciate how hard you work for us, but we keep going around in circles with this.’

‘Appreciate?’ Rob looked up at Henley for the first time since she entered the kitchen. He took off his glasses, and rubbed the small grooves on his nose where the frames had been pinching. ‘I’m not one of your colleagues. I’m your husband. I don’t want you to appreciate me. I want you to understand what I’m saying to you, what I have been saying to you.’

‘You want me to stop working. To give up my job—’

‘You know that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t want you to stop working. All I want is for you to find another job. It’s a miracle that Emma even knows what you look like.’

‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. You’re acting like I’ve abandoned her. I go to work to try and do my bit to make the world safer for her.’

‘From behind a desk? How is that helping her? You’re on restricted duties. You’re not out there catching rapists and murderers with your bare hands. I sometimes wonder what the real reason is why you won’t leave.’

The legs of Rob’s chair screeched across the tiles as he stood up. Henley waited for the familiar accusation of the betrayal to be thrown in her face.

‘I don’t want to argue with you, Rob. Not about this. Not again. I know that we need to talk.’

‘That’s the thing. You always know, but have you ever taken the time to sit down and talk to me? You’re putting our lives on standstill because of what? You told me last Christmas that things were going to change but they haven’t. We’re still here. In the same place.’

Rob grabbed his lighter and rolling papers off the table. ‘I’m going to walk Luna. I’ll be back in half an hour.’

The front door slammed and Henley let out a pent-up sigh. She should tell him now. Tell him that she was back out there. No longer restricted to the desk, that Pellacia had put her back on the streets. That their lives were going to be turned upside down again. Instead, she went upstairs to her daughter’s bedroom. Emma was starfished across her bed. Henley was tempted to wake her just to hear her say ‘mummy’. Instead she kissed the top of her head. She smelled of cocoa butter and baby powder. Emma was the one thing Henley could see the good in.

Henley sat on the edge of the bed and fell back, letting the towel fall loose around her. She’d showered but she didn’t feel clean. The investigation had already crawled into her pores. She closed her eyes and ran her fingers across her body until she came to the familiar ridge of thickened, rippled skin. Two inches of scar tissue on the right. The second scar, three inches above, was slightly flatter. The knife had narrowly missed her liver and if it had been any lower, she would have lost the baby that she didn’t know she was carrying. Two and a half years later she could still feel the hot steel piercing her skin. Henley squeezed her eyes tighter. She could see Daniel Kennedy’s dismembered body in front of her. She took a deep breath. She had kicked up a fuss about being made the senior investigating officer on a murder investigation, but she couldn’t ignore the electric thrill that had run through her. Death was her adrenalin and it scared her.

Walking along that riverbank, examining the corpse, she felt a renewed sense of purpose, but the tendons in her hand tightened and her fingers started to tremble, her body was telling her that something wasn’t right. She shook her head to quiet her inner voice. The voice was slightly louder than a whisper, but it was insistent: A storm is coming, and you’re not ready.

Chapter 7

The rules of the High Security Unit at Belmarsh prison didn’t apply to him. The doors to the prison cells accommodating the Category A prisoners, deemed too dangerous to associate with the rest of the prison population, were not opened until 8 a.m. Peter Olivier, prisoner number A0743TP, had been out of his cell since 6.30 a.m. He had brushed his teeth and taken a shower alone, before changing into a brand-new navy Nike tracksuit and a black pair of Air Force 1 trainers. He had worn the regulation prison-issued maroon tracksuit only once in the two and a half years he had been a prisoner. The first care package containing clothes, toiletries and books had arrived forty-eight hours after he had been escorted in as a remand prisoner.

He could have watched the breakfast news on the small television in the corner of his room, but he preferred not to have his morning routine disturbed by the 38-year-old drug trafficker in the cell next door who couldn’t handle prison life and screamed and banged his head against the wall every morning. Olivier had left his cell and was sitting alone in the recreation room opposite the forty-six-inch television screen.

‘It was coffee you were after?’

A prison officer was holding a steaming mug. Olivier smiled, his pale skin crinkling around piercing blue eyes. This officer was new. Olivier could smell the cotton fresh spray starch emanating from his shirt.

‘Coffee is absolutely perfect. Thank you very much, sorry – I didn’t catch your name.’

‘It’s Paul.’

‘Ah, that’s it. Paul. Just wait there, will you?’

The officer stood still as Olivier leaned back, blew the steam off the cup and took a sip.

‘Hmm, it’s a little bit heavy with the hazelnut syrup, but it will do. You couldn’t do me a favour and pass the control? It’s far too early in the morning for that Piers twat.’

Olivier grinned as the officer handed him the remote control.

‘Now, what is going on here?’ Olivier said to himself as he switched the channel to BBC One where the local news had begun. The reporter was standing on Greenwich Pier.

‘Investigating officers have now confirmed that the body of a young man found on the riverbank yesterday morning just a few metres behind me, has been formally identified as Daniel Kennedy. It has been confirmed by the senior investigating officer that this is a murder investigation; however, she did not confirm local rumours that the body of Daniel Kennedy had been found dismembered.’

‘That’s an awful way to go,’ said the prison officer, who hadn’t moved. ‘How could someone cut him—’ Paul stopped as Olivier turned slowly to face him and smiled.

‘You are a very funny man, Paul. I doubt that it’s a rumour, though.’ Olivier approached the TV as a photograph of Daniel Kennedy appeared. He cocked his head to the side and tapped the screen three times.

‘Why do you look familiar, son?’ he asked.

‘A press conference with investigating officers has been scheduled for this afternoon. In the meantime, Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley has appealed for any witnesses to contact the Serial Crime Unit. The contact details should be appearing on the screen.’

‘Paul, did I hear that correctly? Did that reporter say “Henley”?’

‘Henley, Henman. I’m not too sure.’

‘I’m pretty sure that she said Henley.’ Olivier picked up the control and turned off the TV. ‘And my girl is now an inspector.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.