and discretion unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being, under the Queen's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied, the death following within a year and a day.
It had been a Saturday night, nine months before, an emergency call at close to half past two, the Force already stretched by the usual array of running fights and mass brawls and sudden, singular acts of violence, as the clubs started to disgorge their customers and began the arduous task of counting the weekend's profits and swabbing down the floors.
The call was to a sauna and massage parlour above a sex shop on one of the seedier side streets in the old Lace Market, the caller an alarmed customer who, unsurprisingly, had refused to give his name. When the two uniformed officers arrived only minutes later, despatched from a disturbance they had been attending at an Indian restaurant on the same block, they found several young women sitting on the pavement outside, another slumped, bewildered, against the sex-shop window. A young man in a stained dress shirt and the still-smart black trousers of a dress suit sat on the stairs with his head in his hands. At the top of the stairway, a woman with dyed reddish hair, wearing the same short pink overall as the rest, mascara smeared across her face, was leaning back against the wall, cigarette in her shaking hand.
As the officers moved past her along the narrow corridor, one of the doors near the far end opened abruptly and a man lurched out, stumbled two paces forward, and stopped. He was a little above medium height, broad- shouldered, solid, muscle turning to fat, a purple shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist, the purple at the left shoulder darkened almost to black. There were splashes of what looked like blood on his face and neck and caught in the dark hairs of his chest. In his eyes, a mixture of anger and surprise. His right hand held a knife, a short, straight blade close against his leg.
'Drop it,' the first officer said. 'Drop the knife. Now. On the floor. Put it down.'
The man's muscles tensed, and in the dim light of the single bulb overhead, the officers could see the movement in his eyes as he looked beyond them towards the stairs, as if seeking a possible way out.
'Down,' the first officer said again. 'Drop the knife down now.'
The man's fingers tightened further around the handle, then gradually opened and the knife landed with a quick, dull sound on the meagre carpet covering the floor.
'Kick the knife over here, towards me. Now, with your foot. Not hard. Towards me, that's it. Okay, now clasp your hands behind your head. No, clasp, clasp, fingers together, like this. Good. Now, get down on the floor. Down. Down, that's right. Now don't move. Don't move until you're told.'
The officer nodded to his companion and began to call for backup, and the second officer moved towards the doorway from which the man had emerged.
The room was narrow, little more than a cubicle, with a high, narrow bed to one side, the kind you find in doctors' surgeries, a thin yellowed sheet hanging half on, half off towards the floor. On a small circular table at the head were several pots and plastic tubes of lotion and a single transparent latex glove, pulled partly inside out. Poking out from beneath the corner of the sheet where it brushed the floor was a woman's foot with a fine-meshed gold chain above the ankle and chipped red polish on the toes.
The officer squatted down and used finger and thumb to lift away the sheet.
The woman was on her back, face turned towards the wall, and even in the dim light available, the officer could see that her throat had been cut.
Vomit hit the back of his throat and he swallowed it away.
Steadying his breathing, he let the sheet fall back into place.
Lynn was the first senior detective at the scene, anxious to ensure it was contaminated as little as possible and that vital evidence was preserved intact.
The body.
The presumed assailant.
The knife.
She could conjure up, even now, the mixture of smells in that narrow trenchlike room: cheap baby lotion and stale sweat, spent jism and fresh blood.
Before the man who had been holding the knife was taken away under police guard for treatment, Lynn had established his identity. Viktor Zoukas. Originally, he said, from Albania. The premises were licensed in his name.
Of the five female workers, two were local, two recently from Croatia, their legal status doubtful, one, a student, from Romania. Mostly they were frightened, unwilling to talk, in various stages of shock. One of the local women, Sally, a sometime stripper, some ten or fifteen years older than the rest, was paid extra to take bookings, collect the cash from the customers, keep a weather eye on the girls.
Lynn quickly separated her off from the rest.
'There's not much I can tell you,' Sally said.
Lynn waited, patient, while the woman lit a cigarette.
She had heard voices raised, Sally told her, an argument between the dead girl and one of the customers-not unusual with the dead girl, Nina, especially. She'd been about to go and see what was happening when Viktor had stopped her. He wasn't that often on the premises, not that early, usually only came around to collect at the end of the night, but this time he was. He would go and sort things out, he said. The next thing she knew there was this awful screaming and one of the girls-Andreea Florescu, the Romanian-came running into the reception area, shouting that Nina was dead.
Pandemonium. Customers not able to get out fast enough. Which of them might have phoned the police, she'd no idea. Surprised, to be honest, that anyone did.
Viktor, Lynn had asked, Viktor Zoukas, when all this was going on, people leaving, shouting and screaming, where was he?
Sally didn't know. She hadn't seen him. Still in the room with Nina, perhaps? Who could say?
Lynn had talked then to the other women who worked there, several, she suspected, feigning a worse command of English than was actually the case, but she had got little from them. Andreea, who had raised the alarm, kept her eyes averted when Lynn spoke to her, head mostly angled away.
'Just tell me,' Lynn said quietly. 'Just tell me what you saw.'
Andreea did look at her for a moment then, and the shadow of what she had seen passed across her eyes.
'It's okay,' Lynn said. 'Later. Not here.' And briefly, she touched the back of the young woman's hand.
They met next morning in the Old Market Square, Andreea wearing a grey short-sleeved jacket over a yellow vest, blue jeans that bagged at the knees, white sneakers like old-fashioned school gym shoes, makeup heavy around her eyes.
Lynn took her to one of the few cafes in the city centre the coffee conglomerates had yet to take over. Somewhere anonymous where she thought they were less likely to be noticed or disturbed.
There were sauce bottles on the tables and small foil containers that had previously held pies and pasties serving as ashtrays: only a few months till the smoking ban came into force, and most of the customers were taking full advantage.
Lynn ordered tea, asked questions, listened.
Andreea lit one Marlboro from the butt of another.
Through the window Lynn could see the usual panoply of men and women walking past, talking into their mobile phones, some smartly, even fashionably dressed, others in the camouflage of cheap sportswear, young women who looked as if they should still be at school pushing prams or gripping unsteady toddlers by the hand.
'You?' Andreea said, following Lynn's gaze. 'You have children?'
Lynn shook her head.
'I have little girl,' Andreea said quietly. 'Monica. She is three.'
'Here?' Lynn asked, surprised.
'No, at home with my mother. In Romania. Constanta. It is on the sea. The Black Sea. Very beautiful.'
She took a photograph from her purse and passed it across the table. Lynn saw a girl in a red and white dress with big, dark eyes and ribbons in her hair.
'She's lovely,' Lynn said. 'You must miss her a lot.'
'Yes. Of course.' Andreea wafted smoke away from her face. 'I saw her last time at Christmas. When I went
