wants to liaise with him about it.'
George Napier swore under his breath as he turned round to see Melanie Jones and her cameraman coming up the stairs towards them.
'How the hell did she know about this?' he hissed.
'Seems the killer has a thing about her too. Likes to call her up for cosy chit-chats.'
Napier turned his back on the approaching reporter. 'Jesus Christ, Diane. This kind of thing can ruin careers.'
'If Jack is suspended, sir, I guess she can deal with you.'
Napier glared at her. 'You've made your bloody point, Diane. Let's not push it, eh?'
Delaney stood in the centre of the small room. A bed in the corner, a wardrobe, a desk with a laptop computer on it and a digital camera beside it. A stack of pornographic magazines at the base of the bed with a waste-paper basket beside it full of old tissues. He picked up a couple of the magazines and flicked through the titles, voyeuristic stuff mainly, peeping Tom-type shots. Posed for the camera as though the subject was unaware the camera was there. And every spare inch of every wall of the room covered with photographs. Photographs of women genuinely unaware they were being photographed. A lot of them from South Hampstead Heath. A lot of them in nurse's uniform.
Sally waved a hand under her nose. The odour in the room was overpowering and distinctly unpleasant. The smell of stale sex. Solitary, self-administered sex. She crossed to the curtains, opened them and after struggling with the catch managed to release the window, letting a little fresh air into the room. She glanced at the waste-paper basket and grimaced at Delaney. 'The greatest love of all.'
But Delaney wasn't listening, he was staring at the photos on the wall.
'Have a look here, Sally.' He was pointing at a photo on the wall near to the desk. It was of a dark-haired woman dressed goth-style and walking on the South Hampstead common.
Sally looked at the picture. 'It's hard to tell, sir. The make-up makes them all look alike. Goths, I mean.'
Delaney tapped at the picture. 'Blow this up and I'll bet you we'll see a belt buckle with two green men on it.'
'It does look like her.'
'Check all the others.'
Sally and Delaney methodically worked their way along the photos. After five minutes Sally stopped and looked at a picture.
'I think this is the second one, sir. She's got blonde hair, but I think it's her.'
Delaney walked across and looked. The hair colouring was different but the face was the same, she was dressed in a nurse's uniform from South Hampstead Hospital. It felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. He deserved it. 'Shit!' he said.
'Sir?'
'We let the sick fuck get away.'
There is a connection between life and death. Delaney believed in that, if he didn't believe in much else. When he was four years old and living in Ballydehob, he had been bundled out of the house one day during the summer holidays. His two older, twin cousins, Mary and Clare, had taken him down to the old railway viaduct over the river. It was a scorching hot day and he had been given ice cream and lemonade in the village, then taken down to the river and up on the viaduct where they allowed him to pick up pebbles and throw them into the water cascading far below.
A crow had landed on the spur of green land under the entrance to the viaduct where they were standing, high overhead and just by the lamp post. The girls, older than him by some eight years, looked on Jack
