She walked past the antique armoire and for a brief second a framed photograph caught her eye. Most of the images lining the shelves had come in the frames and she had never had her own photos to replace them. She had a father and that was about it. There were no friends or other relatives that she knew well enough to display. She had come to realise that she had started selecting frames for the generic images inside rather than the frames themselves. There was one with a young girl sitting on a horse which was being pulled by her father. The girl's face was a picture of nervous excitement, but the trust in her father was absolute. Often, Marion would stare at the collection of images - her adopted family of photographic models in various poses.

She reached out and touched the frame and felt a strange wetness in her eyes. The slight blurring was enough for her not to see the reflection in the gla.s.s until it was too late. The heavy blow would have knocked a lesser person unconscious immediately but Marion only staggered forwards, scattering the photographs onto the floor. The sight of her friends. .h.i.tting the ground stoked the angry fire in her gut and she climbed back to her feet, still clutching the kitchen knife. The man was a stranger to her but his face ran white in shock and fear as he moved backwards.

Marion could feel blood trickling from a scalp wound as it ran down her face and she cared little for the throbbing pain in her head. The man suddenly broke and ran back the way he had come and she gave chase, knife held high in a warrior's arc.

They ran through the apartment towards the front door, the man desperate for escape and Marion desperate for vengeance; she cared little who he was or why he'd attacked her.

The man hit the front door and pulled at it uselessly. She knew that it automatically double locked from the inside every time that it was shut, something that she'd installed before she'd moved in - a hangover from her city days.

She rushed at him, swinging the knife gripped in both hands - down hard,but he pulled away from the door at just the wrong time for her as he realised that the door wouldn't open.

The knife plunged into the wood up to the hilt and the man ducked under the clumsy blow. Marion desperately tried to rip the knife free with furious rage but it wouldn't come. She turned and chased the man back into the apartment unarmed, but he had disappeared from immediate sight. Regardless, she charged ahead full steam, refusing to be denied.

As she entered the lounge for the second time, she only realised that she was barefoot just as her heel came down on one of the scattered photo frames. The gla.s.s shattered and speared into her flesh, which made her lift her leg up off the ground before pirouetting clumsily. As the blow hit her again, finding the same spot as before, she couldn't help but notice that the image that she'd stood on was the only one of her father; none of her adopted smiling friends had betrayed her, only him.

The blows fell with sickly wet thuds until the darkness fell upon her. She was dimly aware that her t-shirt was being hoisted up and the tip of a sharp knife was biting into her chest.

"Marion? MARION!" A voice called out from what seemed like somewhere very far away. "What the h.e.l.l's going on? There's a b.l.o.o.d.y knife sticking out of your front door! Are you in there? Are you okay?"

As she died, accompanied by Jacob pounding on the front door, his voice laden with panic, she wondered if it wouldn't have been so bad to let him have a key.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

UNEASY ALLIANCES.

Jane pushed aside the demolished plate of pasta. Despite the dinner conversation's topic, her appet.i.te had not been affected and she figured that it would take more than a little blood and guts to do so. Danny sat opposite her, barely touching his own meal.

"Is everything okay?" Dante Furio, the restaurant owner, asked, nervously appearing at the table.

"Its fine, Dante," Jane rea.s.sured the man. "Your food is as perfect as always."

Momentarily appeased the owner wandered off, but glanced back over his shoulder a few times.

"He takes his job seriously," Jane said, to the look of irritation on Danny's face. "He'll take it personally if he thinks that you don't enjoy your meal."

"Well boo-hoo for him," Danny grumbled as he pushed the exquisite plate of homemade ravioli aside.

"Tough day at the office, dear?" she joked and was glad to at least see the touch of a smile grace his lips.

They had been conversing for the past few days now and Danny's demeanour was slowly warming up to her. He had indeed found Alan Holmes' body at the public toilets outside of town and, as she'd suspected, the death had been written off as unconnected to the Crucifier case. The case itself was oddly absent from the national news bulletins and largely the public's consciousness. Danny had told her that Superintendant Chalmers was running some kind of interference over the local media and he seemed to be doing an adequate job thus far. However, she knew in her heart that the whole thing was a powder keg ready to explode and it wouldn't take much to set it off.

"So where are we?" she asked, hoping that the detective was past his distrust of her, or at least that he had come to the conclusion that he needed her help.

"We aren't anywhere," he replied sternly. "I, however, am getting nowhere fast. This guy seems incapable of leaving a single piece of himself behind at any scene: no prints, no hairs, no fibres of any kind. The forensic boys are running around in circles and n.o.body wants to admit that we don't have s.h.i.t to work with. This guy is butchering people in broad daylight and no one sees a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing."

"And my name?" She couldn't help but ask.

"Don't worry. I'm as eager to keep your name out of it as you are."

"Did you get a chance to trace that licence plate that I asked about?" Jane asked, thinking of the car with the photographer in that had been following her.

"Rental. Paid with cash. Some spotty kid took an extra hundred because the guy forgot his driving licence and was in a hurry; no CCTV cameras at the desk and the kid couldn't give much of a description, just an average ordinary looking guy. You sure that this isn't the killer?"

Jane had thought long and hard about her admirer the other day, but she was sure that it wasn't the man committing the murders. There was a different scent to him. "I'm pretty sure, but I'd still like to know who he was, especially if he's press; that was my first thought when I saw the camera."

"Well, Chalmers a.s.sures me that he's got that particular avenue covered. The man may be an a.s.s, but he's good at his job."

"You sure that he can keep a lid on this?"

"Trust me, it would take a s.h.i.t storm of major proportions to blow this open."

Jane looked across the room as the three victims to date sat at an empty table. Their faces were hungry, but not for the local cuisine. She had been seeing them on and off for days now and she could feel their impatience growing with each pa.s.sing hour. Lana, Donna and Alan sat on their triple date pa.s.sive and waiting, but Jane knew that they wouldn't wait forever.

The taxi pulled up to the plush apartment block and Randall climbed out. He paid the fare and made sure that he remembered to get a receipt; there was no way that he was going to spend a single penny out of his own pocket if he didn't have to.

He was tired and every fibre of his being ached. It had been a long time since he had walked a trail and it had been hard work on young shoulders, let alone his weary bones. But he had the taste for the hunt now, there was no mistake about that. It was the first time that he had felt alive in years and however weak his body might be, his mind was razor sharp.

He had more than enough at the minute to blow the story wide open across every national news outlet, and yet he was still holding tightly onto the reins. Marion Ramsey had him effectively working under a cloud of silence for the time being, but that suited him just fine. He wanted to have everything lined up in an unimpeachable parade before he would shatter the wall of silence. The police had leaned on Ramsey hard and whatever they had on the woman had been enough to render her mute. Their actions only proved to spurn Randall on though; if they were that desperate to shut any outside investigation down then they clearly had major skeletons to hide. The story was going to make him and it was going to earn him a fortune.

The only problem was that he was running out of funds and Ramsey was playing hard to get. The woman had not been in the office for several days and she wasn't answering any calls or returning any messages. He had managed to track her down to her apartment and was impressed by the opulent building.

He headed in and towards the lifts. Ramsey was on the penthouse floor and he didn't fancy taking the long winding stairs.

When he stepped out on the top level, the hallway was long and empty. There seemed to be no other apartments other than Ramsey's on this floor and only one door into her place. He reached the door in a fog of his own thoughts and was upon it before he saw the hole. From the damage on the wood, he could clearly see that the impact had come from the inside.

He reached out, placing his hand inside his jacket sleeve, and pushed lightly. The door was unlocked and swung open easily and he stepped inside, immediately wishing that he hadn't.

The summer heat had not been kind; the windows were all shut and the air conditioning was off. The stench of blood hung thickly in the air and a hand flew to Randall's mouth against the wave of sickly death that a.s.saulted his senses.

His first instinct was to turn and run, but his second professional instinct was stronger and held his feet firmly on the floor. He carefully checked where he was standing and moved further into the apartment, watching where he walked so as not to disturb any possible evidence or leave a trace of himself.

He walked slowly towards the large open lounge and withdrew his own weapon from his jacket. The digital camera almost slipped from his sweaty grasp and he realised that he was still holding his breath. He let his lungs open gently, trying to keep as quiet as he possibly could. He knew that that there was probably no immediate danger for him here, but that didn't stop his heart from pounding painfully against his chest.

He stepped into the lounge and found the light switch on the wall. As the room was flooded with light, he stared for a few moments at the scene until it all sank in. Marion Ramsey was suspended against the long window wall. Her arms were outstretched and fixed to the wall by chains on either side with the sunlight beaming behind her. Her face was a b.l.o.o.d.y, swollen mess, barely recognisable. She was stripped naked and there was an all too familiar symbol carved into her chest.

Randall stared at the posed figure in front of him. The crucifixion pose was unmistakable and he couldn't help but wonder at the amount of care and time that it must have taken to hoist her up and fix her stretched across the window wall.

It took a few minutes until the weight of the camera in his hand reminded him why he was there and he started snapping. Eventually, when he was satisfied that he had caught the disturbing scene in all of its gory glory, he started to think about calling the police. The only problem was, of course, that he didn't want to be directly involved in the case. The last thing that he wanted was to spend the rest of the night answering questions and having his camera seized. He needed his name to be kept a long way out of this case if he wanted to work and write it.

His bowels suddenly started to cramp as his system struggled to cope with the sudden onrush of adrenaline. His guts had been churning for days in retaliation at the sudden drop of alcoholic intake combined with a diet of solid food.

He ran quickly for the closest bathroom, throwing open doors in a desperate search but still making sure that his bare fingers left no prints. He found the ensuite and threw open the door, barely making it to the porcelain throne in time. As he sat there gripping the sides, he was suddenly struck by the notion that he wasn't alone. He finished quickly and stood up, flushing behind him. The frosted gla.s.s screen was drawn across the bath and Randall couldn't help himself as he found his feet moving towards it. He gripped the cool gla.s.s and whipped the door back, knowing that if he didn't then he would stand holding the frame for hours.

Jacob Yeller was dumped in the bath. His throat was an angry red open wound and his shirt was splattered with more blood than surely the human body held. Randall turned and ran at that point, pausing only to snap a couple of quick shots before he fled.

Jane headed into the kitchen and poured herself a tall gla.s.s of Chardonnay. The chilled white wine was a welcome respite from a stressful day. She stood holding the fridge door open with one hand and allowing the cold air to bathe her body, easing the heat of the summer's day.

She closed the door slowly and with some regret as the bottle stayed on the shelf inside. One gla.s.s was all she would allow herself for now. She gripped the crystal gla.s.s tightly and resisted the urge to drop it in shock as Marion Ramsey stood in front of her. Her face was twisted into a demented silent scream from a black hole where her mouth should have been. She took a deep breath and calmed her racing heart as the old instincts warmed up again. It may have been 8 years since she had been an active psychic, but the muscle memories were strong and this was not the first p.i.s.sed off dead woman she had seen. The only surprise here was that she hadn't actually witnessed the woman's death firsthand.

She now had four spirits in tow, all of them falling at the hands of the new Crucifier and, according to Danny, the police didn't have a clue who he was, but, more importantly, neither did she. She had been a witness to the deaths of three of them through the eyes of the killer, a man who was able to control what she saw and felt but able to shield his own ident.i.ty from her. Despite not seeing the death of Marion Ramsey, she knew that it was the same killer as the woman wore the crucifix inside of a pentagram symbol. Just how the killer was able to be in total command of her visions was a mystery, but it was one that she had to solve.

She closed the fridge door and was relieved to see that Marion had faded away along with the interior light. She had discovered long ago that the dead held no anonymity. She knew Marion's name and all about her sad life; in fact, the only thing that she didn't know was who'd killed her.

Jane had sat for hours inside of her sanctuary, replaying the visions over and over again, looking for any clue that would help lead her to the killer, only to come up frustratingly empty.

The phone on the counter rang and she knew who it was. Her senses had been growing in strength like an athlete getting back in shape and finding form.

"Hi, Danny," she answered. "Missing me already?" she joked.

"Jane, I just wanted to warn you that the s.h.i.t's about to hit the fan here," Danny whispered, as though afraid of being overheard.

"Marion Ramsey?"

"How did you..., never mind... yeah, it's Marion Ramsey. If you know who her father is then you need to realise just how wide open this case is about to be blown, and I don't need to tell you that the wider it gets blown open the greater the risk of your name coming out. I gotta go."

Jane stared down at the handset and then at her four companions standing behind her and watching with the impatient eyes of the dead. "Yeah, I know," she sighed heavily. "I know."

Danny was grateful that the ire of Chalmers seemed to be concentrated on him rather than his team. They had all been unceremoniously summoned to the station by the superintendant who was on the war path.

"I want this maniac caught! Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW!" Chalmers positively squeaked as his face flushed bright red.

Danny knew that there was no point interrupting his boss while in mid-flow and waited for the storm to pa.s.s overhead. DC Selleck twisted nervously in his seat as Sergeant Landing idly brushed crumbs left over from her evening meal off her top. Wilson sat calmly with the look of a man who'd experienced all of this before and worse. His face was expressionless and his eyes unblinking. Danny was glad that their admin a.s.sistant, Kim, had been spared this scene as she was a civilian employee and not a conscripted soldier.

Chalmers seemed to be in danger of blowing himself out and Danny sure hoped that was the case. He knew that Commander Barrett must be leaning hard on the Superintendant but he still couldn't bring himself to find any sympathy for the man.

"And now to top it all off, we are about to be under siege from the glare of the national media spotlight!" Chalmers exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. "Do you know what that means? Have any of you any comprehension about the sort of storm that's about to land on my shoulders?"

"Our shoulders, Sir," Danny couldn't help but interject. "Meaning that we're all in this together," he added quickly.

Chalmers stared long and hard at him, trying to figure out if he was taking the p.i.s.s or not; after a few seconds, he pa.s.sed the test. "Of course. We are a team, after all," Chalmers offered magnanimously.

The intercom buzzed on Kim's desk and Danny motioned for Selleck to answer it. The young DC's face paled as he listened before hanging up. "Commander Barrett is downstairs, Sir," he said to Chalmers. "He's coming up with a Mr Ramsey."

Every face in the room paled at that announcement, Chalmers' the most of all.

"Alright you guys; take off and do it quickly," Danny said as soon as Chalmers ducked out of the room to greet his unwanted guests.

"We can wait around, Boss," Wilson said as the others nodded in agreement. "It's no problem."

"I appreciate that, Bryan, but there's nothing you guys can do here tonight, other than get tarnished so take off and use the back stairs." He held up a hand to quieten any other shows of support.

Once they had left, he wandered over to the display in the centre of the room. The large white board was covered in information but nothing that had yet yielded results. There were boxes of details from the first Crucifier case still sitting in his office that he hadn't gotten around to and he couldn't help but feel like today's answers were linked to the past.

The intercom on Kim's desk started to flash and buzz loudly; he had been summoned to learn his fate.

As he approached Chalmers' office, the sound of raised voices echoed along the long empty hallway. Danny braced himself to bear the brunt of a father's misplaced anger, but as he drew closer it became clear that the loud voice belonged to Commander Barrett and the bereaved.

He tapped gently on the door. "Get in here, Meyers!" an angry voice greeted him.

He stepped inside and saw immediately that Barrett had sequestered Chalmers' desk and chair. The commander was basically Chalmers on steroids - ambition and bureaucracy taken to a higher plane. He was a tall man who carried himself with an air of superiority and ent.i.tlement, a career officer in the job for the pension and perks with no interest in police work. His hair was military short and gun barrel steely grey; his shoulders were broad and his figure fit and trim.

"What the h.e.l.l kind of investigation are you running here, Meyers?" Barrett demanded as soon as he entered the room.

"I can a.s.sure you, Sir, that everything is being done by the book and no stone is left unturned," Danny answered firmly.

"Then where are my results?" Barrett demanded.

"This is not an ordinary case, Sir," Danny said carefully, holding on to his temper. There was nothing more galling than being second guessed by a man who had never walked a beat in his life. "99 times out of 100 when you find a body, you find 20 people who saw who did it and you find the guy still covered in the evidence of his crime. But this is the 100th case where nothing makes a whole lot of sense."

"So what do you have?"

Danny looked over as Alfonso Ramsey spoke for the first time. The media mogul was a short, una.s.suming man somewhere in his mid to late fifties. His accent was hard to place but obviously foreign at some point despite his elocution lessons. He was a ball of dark thick hair with unruly tufts protruding from his cuffs and collar. Danny had only ever seen the man within the pages of his own carefully monitored publications. He had received multiple honours from the British establishment, including an honorary knighthood. But now he seemed a far stretch from the global striding mastodon; now he seemed like a man, like a father.

"I can a.s.sure you that we are very close to finding the man responsible, Sir Ramsey," Chalmers bl.u.s.tered.

Danny held his tongue as Ramsey stared hard at him; he didn't say aloud that the superintendant was lying, but he also knew that he didn't have to.

"I can't begin to tell you, Sir Ramsey, that a ma.s.s media outbreak at this time would be hugely detrimental to the investigation," Barrett said warily.

Danny watched as Ramsey seemed to mull the options over in his mind.

"I find myself placed in a somewhat disconcerting position, gentlemen," Ramsey stated as they all listened on intently. "My daughter is dead and her killer still walks free. I was born in a small village where what you had, you took and what you took, you held. I have built an empire with my own two hands by sticking very closely to that motto, never showing weakness and always projecting an overwhelming sense of force. I have many enemies, gentlemen, and many would love to see me fall, but I can't have that. I won't stand for it."

Danny risked a sideways glance and saw that both Chalmers and Barrett were listening on in deference despite their surroundings and ranks.

"I remember as a small child I used to play by the sea. Every now and then the ocean would offer up a gift. Sometimes I would rise before the sun and wander the sands just in case. One morning I found a small red plastic tractor; the silly little thing only had three wheels and had been battered and twisted by the waves. I was only 6 years old at the time but I loved that toy and it was mine. One morning, one of the neighbours' children caught me playing with it and he wanted it for himself. He was a large child, much bigger than me and he bloodied my nose when he took it. That night I crept into his bedroom as his family slept. I took a rock from the garden and I battered his face until my hand was wet and sore. It wasn't the toy, gentlemen, it was because it was mine. You protect what is yours and you never let anyone take it from you."

Danny got the strangest feeling then that the man was more concerned with the act of someone murdering what was his, than the actual loss of his daughter. It was a very clear and succinct feeling that he thought Jane would have been proud of. It made Ramsey seem like a much more dangerous man than before.

"I will give you a week, gentlemen; a week to end this and bring a killer to justice. If you do not have a suspect in custody by then I will use the full force of my empire to scorch the earth and burn every living thing alive until I find the man myself. I will make sure that there is no explosion of press coverage to muddy the waters for now, and in the meantime I have a gift for you. There is an FBI Special Agent who is currently in Amsterdam at a conference. I've arranged for him to come and take a look at the case, to offer some insight."

"That's very kind of you, Sir Ramsey," Barrett said immediately. "Any a.s.sistance is gratefully received."

"You," Ramsey said, looking straight at Danny. "I understand that your father caught the last killer?"