As they approached, two men emerged and stood talking. One was Detective Inspector Henry Wade, Head of Forensic, a fat balding man who wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a heavy overcoat. He usually smiled a lot, but now he looked grim and serious as he wiped rain from his glasses with a handkerchief and listened to what Detective Chief Superintendent George Mallory of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad was saying to him.

He nodded and moved away and Mallory turned to Miller. ‘Where were you?’

He was forty-five years of age, crisp, intelligent, the complete professional. The provincials he had to work with usually didn’t like him, which suited him down to the ground because he detested inefficiency in any form and had come across too much of it for comfort on his forays outside London.

He thoroughly approved of Miller with his sharp intelligence and his law degree, because it was in such men that the salvation of the country’s out-dated police system lay. Under no circumstances would he have dreamt of making his approval apparent.

‘Brady and I had a lead on Doyle.’

‘The prisoner who escaped from the Infirmary? What happened?’

Miller told him briefly and Mallory nodded. ‘Never mind that now. Come and have a look at this.’

The body lay a little way inside the alley covered with a coat against the heavy rain until the Studio boys could get a tarpaulin rigged. The constable who stood beside it held his torch close as Mallory lifted the raincoat.

‘From the looks of it her neck is broken just like the others,’ Mallory said, ‘but the first thing we’ve got to do is find out who she is. Typical of a lot of these girls these days there isn’t any kind of identification whatsoever in her handbag.’

Miller looked down at the waxen face turned sideways awkwardly, the eyes staring into eternity. When he spoke, it was with difficulty.

‘I think I can help you there, sir.’

‘You know her?’

‘Her name is Packard, sir,’ Miller said hoarsely. ‘Grace Packard.’

6

The Gunner went through the back gate of the yard at the rear of Doreen’s house and ran like a hare, turning from one street into another without hesitation, completely forgetting his bare feet in the excitement of the moment.

Then he paused in a doorway for a breather; his heart was pounding like a trip-hammer, but not because he was afraid. On the contrary, he found himself in the grip of a strange exhilaration. A psychologist might have found a reason in the sudden release from confinement after two and a half years in a prison cell. The Gunner only knew that he was free and he lifted his face up to the rain and laughed out loud. The chase was on.

He would lose it in the end, he knew that, but he’d give them a run for their money.