Carve Up

By TONY NASH

DI John Hunter is a mess, having fouled up badly with the latest victim of the Badger – a panty-sniffing serial killer who exsanguinates his victims, and carves a symbol on their foreheads – a symbol designed with malicious intent that he fully expects Hunter to solve – eventually. He rings Hunter and taunts him, but omits to tell John that he and his family are to be the final targets – his retribution.

Hunter realises that the killer must be someone he knows from an old case, but though he goes through the long list of murderers he has helped imprison, he cannot remember.

 Jane, his new partner, suggests hypnosis, and after undergoing a session, the name comes back to him.

Though he now knows who the perpetrator is, he is no nearer locating him, and the murders continue, until the killer decides the time is right to escalate his operation and kidnap Hunter's ex-wife, Anita.

He rings the detective to goad him again, and tells him he has just six days to find her, before she dies of thirst.

Hunter enlists the help of friends, but time is running out for Anita, who has lost consciousness and is close to death.

Even when John gets almost within touching distance of her, he is still helpless.

The killer is watching it all, enjoying the spectacle. The odds are high in his favour…

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Nov 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215214879

TONY NASH

Tony Nash is the author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels. He began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

Book preview

Copyright © Anthony Nash 2014

––––––––

This author also wrote these books for your delight:

THE TONY DYCE/NORFOLK THRILLERS:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

Bled and Breakfast

THE JOHN HUNTER/MET. COP THRILLERS:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Bloodlines

Beyond Another Curtain

HISTORICAL NOVELS – THE NORFOLK TRILOGY:

A Handful of Destiny

A Handful of Salt

A Handful of Courage (WWI EPIC)

No Tears For Tomorrow  WWII EPIC)

THE HARRY PAGE THRILLERS:

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

So Dark, The Spiral

THE NORWEGIAN SERIES – author Stig Larssen:

LOOT

CNUT – Past Present

CNUT – The Isiaih Prophesies

CNUT – Paid in Spades

CNUT – The Sin Debt

CNUT – They Tumble Headlong

CNUT – Night Prowler

CNUT -  Cry Wolf

CNUT -  When The Pie Was Opened

CNUT – The Bottom of the Pot

CNUT -  Mind Games

CNUT -  Nemesis

CNUT -  Cut and Come Again

CNUT -  Deadly Relations

CNUT -  Deadly Premise

CNUT -  Tontine Trauma

CNUT -  The Man Who Did It Doggy Fashion

CNUT -  The Man From Next Week

CNUT -  Cabal of Silence

CNUT -  Hide the Lady

OTHER NOVELS:

The Devil Deals Death 

The Makepeace Manifesto

Panic

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

Hardrada’s Hoard (with Richard Downing)

‘Y’ OH ‘Y’

The Thursday Syndrome

This is a work of pure fiction, and any similarity between any character in it and any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. Where actual places, buildings and locations are named, they are used fictionally.

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice)

CHAPTER ONE – STARKLE, STARKLE, LITTLE TWINK...

Lifting the eyebrow had been a big mistake.

It was a face; that he was sure about, bloody grinning at him too. Sure, why not? If anyone deserved the piss taken it was he. Perhaps it was his; he was certainly off his face. The state he was in was bad enough, but he knew he deserved worse, far worse.

Nine sodding years of orange juice and cola down the proverbial. That doctor, what was his name? Strangeways? Strange bloody name. ‘Next time, you’re dead. Your last chance.’

Well, he’d shown all of them, hadn’t he? Nine years, and they hadn’t given him six months. Georgie B, eat your heart out. A couple of years in, when he began to hope he might just have started to crack it, he googled ‘liver damage’. It told him the same as the quacks: the liver would have recovered some, but the scarring stayed - for life. What was left of it.

If he needed an excuse, the Chief Super had delivered it. The two of them went back a long way, to when Geoff Taylor was wearing new sergeant’s stripes and Hunter had just made detective. Taylor had never been one to mince words.

‘I have only one thing to say, John: it was a right royal fuck-up. Entirely your fuck-up. And I don’t have to tell you, probably your last.’

Because of that fuck-up, Petra Slanik was dead.

Sure, she’d been hanging on to life by the thinnest of threads, and likely to die anyway, but that made it no easier. He’d sat by her bed for nearly an hour after they’d finished sticking tubes and needles and electrical gadgets into and onto her. It was not the actions of a tough city cop, and it was the first time in his long career that he’d done anything remotely like it. He still did not know why. Maybe because she was the first one they’d found alive, and he felt somehow responsible for the others: Susan Klee, Janette Crask, Alice Mayne. He knew every detail of their lives by heart, and could see their faces in his dreams; Christ, he’d spent enough time looking at their photographs and histories on the white boards.

He’d had the job locked up so tight a cockroach couldn’t get through: policewomen in nurse’s uniforms checking the room every few minutes, a brown-overalled copper doing a janitor’s job with an electric polisher on the floor outside, two detectives poncing around with stethoscopes round their bloody necks, and Glocks strapped to their bodies under their white coats, and four armed men with him in the nurses’ room at the end of the corridor. Damned near enough to start a bloody war. Just the bill for the job would be enough to send the Home Secretary’s blood pressure through the roof. He was positive: if the Badger showed up, they’d have him. The room was on the third floor, the corridor the only approach.

The Badger showed up all right, using the window-cleaners’ hoist and a diamond glasscutter.

The alarm note on the monitor in the nurses’ room had them all charging down the corridor. He was first in.

Petra’s throat had been slashed from ear to ear, a quick botch job, and blood was still spurting with her last remaining heartbeats over the bed covers and onto the floor.

It was not the Badger’s MO, but then he’d fucked-up too, hadn’t he? She hadn’t died like the others after he’d cut her. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

CHAPTER TWO – WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE, I THINK....

He tried rolling over in bed and the pain in his head almost made him scream.

How much fucking whisky had he put away? He vaguely remembered buying a bottle in the off-licence near the cop shop and opening it as soon as he hit the car seat. After that it was a blank. If he’d driven home he couldn’t remember a yard of it. Sweat had soaked the bed and what he was wearing. Sixteen days into one of the longest heat waves on record; the night-time temperature had not fallen below seventeen Celsius, and the body trying to sweat the booze out had made it far worse.

He tried easing one eye open. That bloody face again; the Mickey-Mouse-with-a-permanent-take-the-piss-grin clock that Marie had brought with her when she moved in, and had the good sense not to take with her when she moved out. Thank God he hadn’t been with it enough to set the bloody alarm.

The damned thing started to ring. No, it didn’t - it was his mobile on the bedside table. Keeping his eyes firmly closed, he grabbed for it and pressed the ‘on’ switch.

He grunted.

‘John, are you all right?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

‘Christ, you sound pissed.’

‘As a fart.’

‘Jesus. And you a teetotaller. D’you want me to come round?’

‘Janie, if you’re coming for a quick shag, believe me, it’s out of the question.’

‘In your dreams, soldier. I can make you a coffee.’

‘Thanks anyway. I’ll see you later.’

‘Everyone’s looking for you. Carlisle’s right pissed off. You’d better have a damned good excuse.’ She switched off.

In seven months Jane Bliss had become a good pal and had proved more than once that she was a damned good copper, even though to start with he’d hated having a ‘pest’, as the fast trackers were known, as a partner. They tended to be distrusted for years by the old-timers, and boy, was he a member of that club.

Best of all, she backed him all the way, no matter how wrong he was.

He knew he was not doing her any favours. Working with him, she’d be tainted with the same suspicion he was, but he could never change.

When his long-time partner, Wes Halford, had retired, he’d guessed they’d give him another superannuated, tired old body, to slow him down. Give or take Taylor, and possibly Superintendent Ralph Cutter, he was far from being a blue-eyed boy with the rest of the hierarchy, particularly Chief Inspector bloody Carlisle, sod his eyes. Maybe the Chief Super had arranged it, hoping to spruce him up a bit.

Leastways, Jane was easy on the eye: an inch shorter than he was, a natural blonde, with dancing blue eyes, a high-cheeked, attractive, but thankfully not pretty-pretty face, a ready wit for her age, and a figure to die for. Best of all, she was unattached. He fancied her something rotten, but she wouldn’t play ball, and he’d all but given up trying. Not that she was putting it about anywhere else, at least not as far as he knew, and he was a bloody detective, after all.  He’d never seen her phone or meet a man, and if there was one she was keeping him well hidden. She hadn’t given out any vibes that might hint she was gay, but then they didn’t, did they? He guessed he was just too old for her twenty-three year old body. Twenty bloody three and already a DI, with a law degree from London University and fast-tracked through Bramshill, and here he was at thirty-nine, the same fucking Inspector rank, and no one to blame but himself. And, he had to face it, bloody lucky to still be one. Even that was down to Taylor, who’d saved his bacon when he’d crashed, and several times since.

Jane had impressed him most with her reaction to being sexually hassled by Jim Relsus, another of the DIs, who’d pushed his luck too far with what he saw as fresh new game. She’d come out with the most wonderfully salacious put-down Hunter had ever heard, and he’d heard more than a few, not repeating herself once, and keeping it going for over a minute. He couldn’t remember all of it, but it started with, ‘You fucking ignorant, jumped-up, never-come-down, syphilitic, pox-ridden, arsehole-creeping clown...’ From that moment, she was ‘in’, as far as he was concerned.

She was quite a girl.

He groaned. Jesus, the sweat was bad enough, but if he didn’t get out of bed right now, he’d soon be lying in piss. The pain in his bladder was nearly as bad as the one in his head.

Keeping his eyes closed he levered himself onto his feet and felt his way into the bathroom, sitting down to pee. Having to concentrate where the stream was going would be pushing it. Anita, his ex, would be proud of him, he knew. Towards the end, when recriminations were flying fast and loose, she’d told him one of the main reasons she’d married him was that he always lifted the seat, no matter how pissed he was. In her mind, it raised him far above most of his fellow men. From the state of the bogs at work, and those he’d been in all over the country and abroad, he knew what she meant.

Remembering the detox process, he knew what the next six months would be like, after falling off the wagon. It was going to be hell on Earth again. Stupid, stupid bastard. And what he should have been doing was going after the killer, instead of wallowing in self-pity.

Still on the throne, he took the plunge and opened first one eye then the other. Shit. The pain felt as if it was splitting his skull in two, but he stuck it out, and gradually it diminished to the point where he dared to pull himself upright, holding onto the edge of the sink, and look in the mirror.

The face that stared at him was one he hardly recognised. It was an old man’s face, sagging and rheumy-eyed, with mussed-up pepper and salt hair falling haphazardly all over it.

He stuck the plug in the hole and ran cold water till the sink was nearly overflowing, then painfully lowered his head until his face was under water. He left it there until he needed to breathe again.

It did wonders, but the face in the mirror hadn’t improved any. One thing he noticed: he was still wearing the trousers and shirt from the day before.

The house phone rang and he waddled into the living room, wincing with each step, and picked it up.

A cultured voice he’d heard three times before, and knew instantly, told him, ‘You have let me down badly, John. When I chose you, I never imagined that you would go on the bottle again. I was watching you. I could have killed you any time I wanted.’

‘You fucking bastard. Why d’you have to slit her throat?’

‘Unfinished business, John. You can understand that, I’m sure. You’re a pretty tired old cop, but even you don’t like to leave a job unfinished, do you? Well, neither do I. I was worried about you, thought you might drown in your own vomit, but it sounds as if you’ll live. You will need to leave the whisky and vodka alone, and you really should have locked your door last night. There are dangerous people about; you should know that. By the way, I took a little memento of our time together; I hope you don’t mind. Just remember, keep off the booze. I do not want a second-rate drunkard looking for me. I want a challenge, and I expected that from you. Don’t prove me wrong, John. You will never catch me unless your brain is a hundred percent. Oh, no, that is not correct; I’ll rephrase it: you’ll never catch me. Oh, and no wonder your girlfriend left you; Marie, wasn’t it? You snore so very loudly. Keep well.’

Hunter slammed the handset onto the telephone base, picked the whole thing up and threw it onto the parquet flooring, where it smashed into dozens of pieces and sent chips flying out of the real wood floor that had cost him over a grand. The bastard wouldn’t be able to ring him again. And how had he got the number? It was ex-directory.

Bloody hell. He’d been in the flat.

He steered a wobbly course to the door, almost tripping over something on the way, and tried the handle.

‘Oh, shit.’ He couldn’t believe he’d been so fucking stupid. Fuck the booze. And what was that about a memento? What had the bastard taken?

He looked around at the clutter he could never be bothered to clear up since he’d been on his own. Nothing seemed to be missing, but he saw what he’d almost tripped over: a half litre vodka bottle with the top off, empty; the one he’d kept in the cupboard to prove to himself that he’d beaten the booze, and wasn’t that a fucking laugh? Grain and potato together; it was no wonder he felt bloody lousy.

He could feel his bunch of keys in his pocket, pressing into his thigh, so they were safe; he kept no money in the place, and no valuables, except, oh, no. Not his grandfather’s gold hunter.

The kitchenette had been described as ‘compact’ in the real estate literature, and he wouldn’t have tried to swing a moggy in it, even if he’d had one, but he’d managed to fit in a small washing machine that hadn’t been used since Marie left. He pulled open the powder drawer at the top. The plastic bag was still there, the watch sealed inside it.

What the hell had he taken then?

The wallet? No, it was still in his jacket pocket. No worries there, or were there? He opened it up and checked his cards. All present and correct, but the bastard might have taken a note of the numbers and security codes. They’d all have to be changed, along with the locks. Marie’s face still looked out at him from behind her plastic cover, so he hadn’t taken her picture. There was just the one behind it, the one he kept hidden, because of all the bad memories it brought.  He pulled Marie’s photograph forward. It was gone: the only picture he had of his daughter Patricia.

He let out a roar that would have been heard at the corner of the street. The bastard had taken the only thing in the world he still valued.

He slammed his hand into a cupboard door in frustration, wanting so badly to hurt the perp, and only hurting himself in the process.

Getting in to work was urgent, and he’d have to hurry, but no way could he go into work without trying to smarten himself up a little.

He showered and shaved, put on clean pants and shirt and one of his better work suits, combed his hair and looked in the mirror.

He still looked ten years older than yesterday, but it would have to do.

Hitting the street, he had to close his eyes again. The way he felt, it should be pissing down. Instead, that bloody great yellow orb was hitting him with rays so blinding, out of a cloudless sky, that the urgent need was for the darkest pair of sunglasses he owned.

They were in the glove compartment of his old Ford Mondeo, which was parked badly askew in his reserved space.

He’d driven home. What a prat. If a uniform had stopped him, it would’ve been the end of the whole shebang. Till last year, the relationship between plainclothes and uniform had been good. Sure, they’d always taken the piss out of each other, but had mutual respect. Just two cases, where CID had sorted out a few of the bad apples, had soured things to the point where now there was bloody near open war.

He checked the door of the old banger. It was unlocked. Fucking idiot. He kicked the wheel in frustration and damned near crushed his toe. The air turned blue.

No way could he drive in. It would have to be a taxi, but he needed to cover up his boozy breath first.

He walked to the corner and turned right. A hundred yards brought him to the Blue Diamond Indian takeaway he used. It was closed, but he banged on the door for over a minute, till the owner, bleary-eyed, opened the door. He was angry, and trying not to look it. You didn’t upset the police, ever.

Hunter shrugged, ‘Sorry, Sammy, I badly need your help. I can’t go in smelling of booze. Can you find me something to mask it?’

Sansiranjit took one look and felt sorry for him. He wasn’t too bad for a cop and he was a good customer; always insisted on paying, not like most of his sort.

‘A really hot curry, laced with lots of garlic, Mr H?’

Hunter tried to force a grin but couldn’t manage it.

‘You’re a lifesaver, Sammy.’

It fell on stony ground: ‘No, Mr H. I cannot swim, but I am a bloody good cook.’

‘That you are.’ And a lifesaver, he added, under his breath.

‘Sit down. I put in microwave.’

‘Don’t heat it up too much. I’m late.’

It was one of Sammy’s hottest, and must have had half a bottle of chilli in with the curry. It broke the sweat out on his forehead, but strangely enough the spicy food made him feel almost like a human being again, even though he was disgusted with himself. Curry for breakfast; how bloody low can you go?

‘How much, Sammy?’

‘On the house, Mr H. It was left over from last night.’

‘And you’d have kept dishing it up for the rest of the week, so how much?’

‘Two pounds to you, Mr H.’

Hunter took a fiver from his wallet, ‘Here. It was worth ten times that.’

There were always taxis cruising his area of Lambeth, and he picked one up within minutes in Black Prince Road.

CHAPTER THREE – NOT UNDER THE AFFLUENCE OF INCAHOL...

The buzz of conversation died as he walked into SCD1, and then started up again with more intensity. Ahead of him someone began humming ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’

As he passed Detective Inspector Glen Cain’s desk the humming changed to words, ‘Our Johnno’s right - in the shite, deep in the doggie’s doo-dah.’ Hunter kept his eyes forward, deliberately ignoring the smirk on the DI’s face.

Jane, sitting at her desk by the far wall, glanced over. She looked worried. He produced a huge grin and a wave and walked straight through into Carlisle’s office, without knocking.

The DCI looked up angrily, ‘Just where the bloody hell do you think you’ve been?’ He pointed at his watch.

He was only one year older than Hunter, but had gone badly to seed, although he paid over the odds for hand-mades, trying to appear suave. He never would. He was one of those unfortunates with bristly black hair, whose beard never stops growing. There was grey in it too now, and he always looked as if he’d just got up and come to work without troubling with the bathroom mirror or a razor. Though he was sitting down, it was still possible to see that he was over six feet in height, two inches taller than Hunter, with the build to match. A ‘strictly-by-the-book-don’t-stick-your-head-up-over-the-parapet’ attitude had got him slowly promoted to his present level of incompetence, and he hated Hunter with the deep, burning hatred that only a lesser man can feel for a more able but subordinate colleague, who fails to acknowledge his superior rank. Beyond that, he still got pains where the jawbone had been reset after Hunter had broken it.

‘I’ve been going round every snitch I’ve got, trying to get a lead. I ought to claim for ten hours overtime.’

As soon as he opened his mouth, Carlisle got a whiff of his breath.

‘Jesus Christ. What the fuck have you been eating? You smell like a bad week in Mombai.’

‘Is it still there from last night? Jesus, that was twelve hours ago. I met one of them in an Indian place, and it had to look authentic.’

‘I don’t believe one word of it, and if I thought for one second you’d been on the piss, Hunter...’

John gave him his broadest grin, ‘Shit, Chief. You know I never touch the stuff.’

‘Okay, get out. Keep me informed in future, and don’t call me ‘Chief’.’

‘No, Chief.’ He turned and opened the door.

Jane got up and joined him, and they walked through the room and out into the corridor.

‘You’re a crafty sod, John, and you stink, but at least it’s covered up the smell of booze. Good job you haven’t got a woman.’

‘No, Jane. It’s not a good job. If I had a woman, I wouldn’t have got rat-arsed last night.’

‘Yes, you would. You just wouldn’t have gone home.’ She laid a hand on his arm, ‘Look, John, I know how you felt. We all did. Hell, I think I’d have gone on the piss myself if I’d been in your shoes. It was a lousy deal; you could never have foreseen what that bastard would do.’

He looked into her eyes, ‘That’s the whole point, Jane; I should have. I wasn’t thinking outside the box, and he bloody was. He even came to take the piss, the bastard. He was in my flat last night.’

‘What?’

‘He was in my bloody flat, while I was out cold. He took Trish’s picture, the only one I had of her.’

‘Oh, John. I’m so sorry.’

He shrugged, ‘Life goes on.’

She was puzzled, ‘How do you know he was in your place?’

‘He phoned me, this morning.’

‘Christ. Have you told Carlisle?’ She saw his look, ‘You bloody haven’t, have you? You stupid sod. He’ll have your guts if he finds out. He...’ She stopped as two detectives came out into the corridor.

She waited until they’d disappeared round the corner before continuing, with her voice lowered.

‘What did he say?’

‘Just bragged a bit about being there, and then said I’d never catch him. He did say he’d chosen me, whatever that meant.’

‘Now that really does have me worried. You’ll have to tell Carlisle, John.’

‘And he’d have me off the case quicker than you can get your knickers down. He’d say I was personally involved, and there was conflict of interest; any bloody thing to get me away from the action. Look, I’ll tell Taylor, and I’ll do whatever he says. At least that way I’m covered. What worries me is that if he’s targeting me, you’re in the firing line too. He may come after you to get at me.’

‘Did he mention me?’

‘No, but he’s a bloody psychopath, Jane. He’s obviously been watching me, and therefore you. Who knows what twisted paths their minds follow? I think you need to be watched over.’

She laughed, ‘If that’s your way of trying to get me to move in with you, you can forget it right now.’

He lifted both hands, ‘A man can only try. Seriously, how’s the security at your place?’ He’d never been invited in when he’d picked her up or dropped her off.

‘It’s tight. The outer door is electronic and only opens if a tenant let’s someone in. I had the lock changed on my flat door when I moved in. The one that was on it was just a straightforward Yale type. There’s a five-mortise deadlock on it now, one recommended by our tech guys, and top and bottom bolts, as well as a security chain, and an eyehole.’

‘Make sure you don’t let anyone in unless you know and trust them.’

She grinned, ‘That let’s you out then, John.’

He shook his head sadly, ‘More’s the pity, Jane. You don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘You know what they say, ‘If you’ve never had it, you won’t miss it’.’

‘And you’re telling me you’ve never had it?’

Her grin died instantly, and the light seemed to go out of her eyes. For just a split second she looked as though she hated him, and he realised he’d overstepped some line he’d not been aware of, but for the life of him couldn’t think how. Normally she’d accept a joke with the best of them.

He saw her force a grin back onto her face as she replied, ‘Not with you anyway, nor likely to.’

‘You will be careful though?’

Soberly she told him, ‘I will be careful. I do know how dangerous this perp is.’

‘What did Carlisle have to say at the briefing this morning?’

‘Your ears would have been burning if you’d been awake. He called it a ‘salutary lesson, which he hoped had been learned. Serious mistakes had been made in underestimating the unsub, and in the running of the operation.’ He went on about the cost and the AC’s displeasure. He kept looking at the door while he was speaking, and I could see he was bitter and twisted that you weren’t there to hear the few kind words he was saying about you. I think that’s why he was so bloody angry with you. You denied him his moment of triumph.’

‘He’d like to have me transferred to the Trident and Trafalgar OCU.’

‘Oh, no. He’d want to find something far worse for you than black community gun crime. I think he’d form a post in Siberia for you if he could. He really hates you, John. Why?’

‘It’s a long story, Jane. I might get around to telling you about it one day. Was there anything new?’

‘No. She was drugged before he bled her, just like the others, but he cocked up the dosage, they think because she was a stone or so heavier than his previous victims. She was only out for a few minutes; not long enough to bleed out, and that’s how she managed to live.’

‘But not for long, due to me.’ He said bitterly.

‘It was not your fault, John. Stop beating yourself with it. All three doctors who treated her said she had at most a ten percent chance of survival, and even if she did live it was almost a given that she’d be a vegetable for the rest of her life. She’d lost a hell of a lot of blood, and her brain had been deprived for too long.’

‘Ten percent is a damned sight better than none. Have they decided what the drug is yet?’

‘Forensics are not sure. They know it wasn’t rohypnol or gamma hydroxyl butyrate, and the ketamine levels weren’t high enough. The urine ‘drugs-of-abuse’ screen couldn’t identify it. Janet Keller is the senior forensic working on this one. You know her, don’t you?’

The way she said ‘know’ made Hunter wonder if she had been checking up on his past. Not too many people were aware that he and Janet Keller had been an item for a while after Anita had left him. She’d helped him through the divorce and for a year afterwards. He’d always blamed the job for his failure to keep women, but deep down he knew it was the devil that drove him that they couldn’t stand. Truth to tell, he couldn’t stand himself some days. With Marie, his last live-in lover, it had been different: the sex had been terrific, and twice daily at the start, but it gradually went down to two or three times a week. Then for a month he hadn’t been able to get it up, for the first time in his life, and she got the fixed but completely wrong idea he was seeing someone else. He’d bought some generic Viagra that worked for a while, but she knew he’d gone off her, and that was that. Truth to tell, he was glad she’d gone. Sex was the only thing they’d had in common. She hated his music and his choice of food, and conversation between them was almost non-existent. The human mind was a funny thing: he had gone off her, and though he enjoyed sex as much as the next man, it had to be with someone he wanted to shag, and not out of duty.

‘Yes, I know her. I’ll have a chat with her later; see if she’s got any ideas she’s not sharing. What have we got today?’

The two of them were one of the teams in SCD1, the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command, responsible for the investigation of homicide, attempted homicide and infanticide, as well as abduction and missing persons cases where it was suspected that death might follow as a result, and Hunter had been in the unit for over ten years. Compared with today, the job then had been a doddle. With the exception of a couple of serial killers, the murders were domestics, which were easily solved, and organised crime killings, which were anything but. Now, every man and his bloody dog seemed to be at it, and street gangs were responsible for the major part of