Her fight or flight instinct was kicking hard, but she had sworn an oath to herself that she would never again be a victim and that wasn't a promise she intended to break now.

She took the collapsible police baton, which she had bought on eBay from a survival nut, from her bag. She flipped the weapon and it extended in a flash, locking into shape as she gripped the handle with a strong steady hand.

She ducked into the dark hallway and carefully avoided the floorboard that always groaned in protest at any direct weight put upon its shoulders. She tiptoed down the corridor, hugging the wall, pausing every now and then straining her ears into the quiet. She could feel the presence but she couldn't hear or see anyone.

She reached the lounge and peered into the darkness at the solid silhouettes of her furniture. She knew each piece by virtue of seeing them a million times in the light and nothing felt out of the ordinary. She was starting to think that the blow to her head, after it had bounced off the windscreen, had perhaps done more damage than she'd realised, when something moved in the kitchen. Throwing aside her natural caution, her rage at the invasion into her inner sanctum took over and she bolted towards the noise.

She flew into the room as someone darted out of the shadows and towards the back door. Jane heard the unmistakable sound of boots crunching on broken gla.s.s and she knew that the intruder had smashed the gla.s.s on the back door to gain entry.

She charged towards the shape, swinging the baton hard. Her aim was offset by her anger and the baton struck the kitchen countertop hard enough to chip the marble. A foot shot out of the shadows and smashed into her stomach. The breath exploded from her but she caught the foot on its way back and refused to let go. She braced herself and pivoted to the right, twisting the foot over in two hands. The shadow let out a squeal of pain and surprise as it fell over and landed heavily on the linoleum floor.

She was close enough now to see that the figure was dressed all in black with a woollen ski mask over his head. She could also see, from the absence of curves and the low-pitched timbre of their voice when she'd twisted their ankle, that it was a man.

She moved over the fallen man with the baton raised and ready for a more deadly blow. "Stay right where you are!" she ordered, as she raised her left hand out towards the light switch on the wall.

She didn't want to take her eyes off the fallen man as her left hand flapped for the switch. Her fingers brushed it once, twice, and then found purchase. The kitchen was suddenly flooded with light, stinging her eyes, but the light didn't stop at merely being on. The bulb exploded, showering her with gla.s.s fragments; this was swiftly followed by every other bulb in the cottage following suit and exploding in a blinding flash.

She staggered backwards, dimly aware that the man who had been at her feet was now darting for the back door. Her vision still swam as thousands of lights popped in front of her eyes. She heard the door being flung open and footsteps running out into the night.

It took her a few moments to gather her senses and process the facts. The Crucifier killer had been here, but it seemed like he had only been here in the abstract sense. The man who had been lying on her kitchen floor seemed familiar but somehow different from the man who had been invading her mind.

Once the fog had cleared from her eyes, she retrieved a large flashlight from a cabinet in the kitchen. The powerful beam lit her way as she searched the pantry cupboard for replacement bulbs. She also found the junction box and reset the fuse that had blown when the lights had exploded.

She was replacing the last bulb in the hallway when she felt a presence again somewhere close by. She realised that she had left the baton in the kitchen but she still held the long metal flashlight tucked under her arm. The front door was still open and she stepped behind it, gripping the flashlight. A head poked inside the door and she hit it hard. A man slumped forward, landing inside the door, and she could see that he was holding something in his right hand. She recognised the slender frame and saw the bunch of flowers: Marty Kline, the teenager who had been clumsily wooing her, had come calling with flowers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

NEW FACES.

Danny headed into the office bright and early the following morning. Alfonso Ramsey's deadline still hung over them and there had been no breaks in the case to date. He'd a.s.sumed that he would be the first one in, but he was surprised to find Bradshaw in his office, methodically studying box upon box of case files and notes. The FBI agent looked to be running on empty; his carefully manicured appearance was now fading fast.

"Hey, Inspector," Bradshaw said, looking up briefly.

"Call me Danny. I thought that I'd be the only one in this early."

"I'm afraid not. Don't suppose that you have access to anything vaguely resembling a decent cup of coffee in this place?"

"Sorry, pal, but the brown sludge is about all we've got; I can make you a cup of tea if you like?"

"What, with the little china cups and doilies and all that?" Bradshaw asked seriously.

"I hate to break it to you but Downton Abbey isn't a doc.u.mentary," Danny grinned. "I'm sure that we would no longer live up to your stereotypes than you would to ours. We do like to start the day with a strong mug of tea. Plenty of us do drink coffee but personally I've always found it a trifle bitter."

"DI Meyers?" A voice called from behind and Danny turned to see Kim Croft, the admin a.s.sistant, standing behind him.

"What's up, Kim?" Danny asked.

"Dr Reese was looking for you yesterday. Did he catch up with you?" Kim responded.

"Did he say what it was about?"

"What, and talk to a mere mortal like me? I don't think so," Kim grinned back. "You know what a pompous p.r.i.c.k he can be."

"Miss Croft, I think that you are forgetting your place," Danny replied, stifling a smile.

"My apologies. He's a pompous p.r.i.c.k, Sir," she said, heading to her desk.

"That's better. Well, Agent Bradshaw, how about a trip to the morgue?" Danny asked the agent.

Bradshaw stood up and straightened his trousers. "Why not? I need a little time to process this stuff anyway; my brain's approaching overload," he said, nodding to the discarded boxes on the floor.

DC Bryan Wilson refilled the bird feeders and waited for his feathered friends to shyly appear from the hedgerow. The garden was long and wide and had its fair share of tranquillity. This was his sanctuary where he came to be alone and decompress from a long day at the office. His supposed day off had already been planned and filled to the minute with ch.o.r.es from his wife.

Back when he'd first met, and then started seeing Suzy, his professional life had been one long round of innuendo. Suzy had been a working girl that he'd met when running with Vice. She had been all steel on the surface, but he had seen past her defences to the girl underneath. He was a firm believer that no one could ever choose who they fell in love with; it was a meteor that fell from the heavens and landed indiscriminately, flattening whoever was in its path.

He'd dragged her kicking and screaming from the only life that she'd ever known and had slowly broken down her barriers. It had taken time and patience but he'd known that his purpose had been to save her, even from herself. He'd had no great visions of ever being rewarded for his actions. He was no great white knight, just a man trying to make a difference in a cesspool of death and despair. It had been the only way that he could have ever made sense of the world around him. The pimps, the beatings, the drugs and the hopelessness had been drowning him, holding his head under the filthy water until he couldn't breathe.

He'd held onto her like she was a lifeboat and in the end she had saved him as much as he had saved her. He'd ridden the wrath of his so-called colleagues and peers. He'd been made a pariah, an outcast who had lain down in the gutter and would never be clean again.

Despite the ruination of his career, he'd never had second thoughts about his decision. One look at his angel now through the kitchen window as she busied herself with breakfast was enough to confirm that he'd made the right choice. Over time, Suzy's demeanour had softened somewhat and now she only used her claws to defend her family.

He'd hoped that time would heal the wounds in his career, especially after he'd married Suzy, but they never had. For some reason, his decision to build a life with Suzy had only provided more scorn over time, as the wound festered and rotted.

He offered his wife a small wave and she beamed back at him, as usual washing away all doubt.

He noticed that the lawn was getting a little long and was still fighting against Suzy's insistence that he employ a gardener. There was a 14 year age gap between him and his wife and he was always a little more concerned than he should be with his age and the appearance of growing old.

He headed for the shed at the bottom of the garden and used the small key in his pocket to unlock the small wooden building, only the padlock was hanging open. His first thought was about the travellers that had pa.s.sed through the area recently. There had been a few reports of petty thefts and, despite his usual tolerance and lack of prejudice, his mind went instantly to the caravan dwellers.

He opened the door and was relieved to find all of the garden equipment seemingly still in place. The ride on mower was expensive but still there and he breathed a sigh of relief.

The glint of sunlight on silver did catch his eye, but it was all too late. The sharpened garden shears plunged into his throat at an angle, piercing the skin effortlessly until they struck the bone of his spine.

Bryan stumbled backwards towards the door and back out into the daylight before a strong hand reached out and pulled him back into the shadows. Blood spurted from his mouth as he tried to cry out. His hands flapped, pawing uselessly at the embedded shears as he crashed into an a.s.sortment of hanging tools on the wall. He fell to the floor, still jerking and bucking, as his life pumped from his open throat until he finally lay still.

The man stepped over the body, pausing only to pull the cop's jacket from it and to remove the floppy summer hat. The man slipped on the jacket and pulled the hat down low on his head before heading up the garden and towards the house and the woman inside.

"You looking for me, Doc?" Danny asked as he entered the pathology lab.

"I was, yesterday," Dr Wendell Reese replied haughtily.

"It's nice to meet you, Dr Reese," Bradshaw said brightly.

"You must be the American that's setting hearts aflutter," Reese said, eyeing the agent up and down suspiciously.

"I must say that your reputation precedes you. I was lecturing in Amsterdam and your name came up in several conversations, especially concerning your studies into forensic anthropology. Your paper on the Jane Doe skeletal remains found in Iceland in 1989 was quite fascinating, even to a layman."

Danny watched Bradshaw's obvious b.u.t.tering of Reese and stifled a smile as he watched it work. He had always had a problem with the police surgeon -a clash of personalities born out of a cla.s.s system hundreds of years in the making; perhaps Bradshaw would be of some use after all.

"I have some papers in my office if you're interested, Agent Bradshaw?" Reese beamed.

"Unfortunately, time is pressing, Doctor. Perhaps later," Bradshaw said sadly. "Maybe when you've finished with Inspector Meyers?"

"Oh yes, well I just wanted to follow up about the information that was picked up yesterday."

"I'm sorry, Doc, but you've lost me," Danny said, confused.

"I understand that this is of a sensitive nature, DI Meyers, but I can a.s.sure you of my utmost discretion," Reese said, leaning in close and lowering his voice.

"And I can a.s.sure you, Doc, that I don't have a clue what you're talking about; who picked up what?"

Reese stared at him long and hard, seemingly weighing up a decision. "Come into my office," he finally said.

Danny motioned for Bradshaw to wait outside. The man was new and he didn't know how far he could be trusted yet. He closed the door behind them and waited for the doctor to speak.

"Can I have your a.s.surance that this does not leave the room?" Reese implored.

"You have it," Danny nodded.

"You remember the Alan Holmes' murder scene?"

"Of course."

"You remember asking me to cross-check the blood at the scene for identification?"

"Whose was it?" Danny asked, trying to contain his rising excitement.

"Well, you were right. I don't know how you knew but most of it didn't belong to Alan Holmes; a large quant.i.ty belonged to another man."

"Have you been able to identify it?"

"Yes."

"So it was in the system?"

"It was in our records from 8 years ago, Danny, and don't ask me what the h.e.l.l it means because I feel like we're in the Twilight Zone. It belonged to Arthur Durage."

Danny's head spun at the revelation. He didn't know what he had expected, but a serial killer who had been supposedly dead for 8 years wasn't it. "Who have you told about this?"

"Superintendant Chalmers came down and collected the files himself. He made it pretty clear that this wasn't for common consumption. Look, Danny. I know that you and I don't see eye to eye on most things, but I don't mind admitting that this is not sitting easy with me. I don't like secrets, especially within the police. They get out, Danny; maybe not today, maybe not next year but they always do. Nothing stays buried forever."

"Thanks for telling me, Doc," Danny conceded.

"I didn't tell you anything, okay? Not a d.a.m.n thing."

Danny left the office with his mind still racing. After all, it had been his own father who had died a hero bringing down the man christened the Crucifier by the press. As far as everyone in and out of the police force was concerned, Arthur Durage was dead. There had been four people in the bas.e.m.e.nt that night: his father, Durage, Lana Genovese and Jane, and Jane was the only one who he knew to be still alive.

"Bad news?" Bradshaw asked as he exited the office.

"Honestly, I don't know what sort of news," Danny sighed.

"Boss, BOSS!" DC Selleck bellowed down the corridor in a shrill panicked voice that got Danny's attention in a flash.

"What is it?"

"It's Wilson," Selleck replied in a choked voice and Danny didn't need to hear the rest.

Jane had tried her best to convince Marty to let her call an ambulance to check his head wound but he had been insistent that he was fine. She had cleaned the wound and had been relieved to find that while the lump was large, the cut was small. She'd let him sleep the last few hours of night away in the spare room, checking on him from time to time. She was still recovering from her own head injury and the doctors had been concerned about concussion.

"Morning." His sheepish voice startled her from behind as she sat at the kitchen counter nursing a coffee.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like someone hit me in the head with a sledgehammer," he replied, rubbing the bandage. "Hey. I'm only joking. I'm fine really," he said quickly, in response to her worried expression. "Tough as oak," he said, tapping his head. "My mother always said that it was full of nothing but rocks."

"You want some breakfast?"

"Sure," he replied, sitting down eagerly as though worried she would change her mind and cut short his stay.

"Why were you here last night, Marty?" she asked as she broke a few eggs into a pan.

"I heard about your accident. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay."

"How did you know that I was home?"

"I called the hospital, said I was your brother," he answered proudly. "They told me that you had signed yourself out and had gone home. I just wanted to check on you..., I brought you some flowers; did you get them?" he asked, looking around worriedly.

Jane pointed to a vase on the table opposite. "They're very nice. Thank you, Marty."

He beamed and blushed in equal shades of red.

She had been hoping to avoid this conversation, especially when her own head still ached and she had inflicted a similar wound on the young man. He was a good kid, if a little over-zealous. "Marty, we're friends right?"

"Sure," he answered quickly.