‘No, not homework. Just thinking. This, speaking to you, is the homework. Assume Natalya was a mistake. Without her body, we would likely never have known she was missing at all. She had no real friends or family. The people who knew her would have assumed she’d just run off somewhere else. It’s only because she escaped, and then because the killer was spooked when he caught up with her, that we have a body. But there are other missing women too. What if they’re victims of this same killer?’

Grant sighed, but Dani sensed he was coming around to the idea more.

‘I need you to tell me what you can about a killer like the one I described. How could we catch a killer like that, who leaves no trace of the victims?’

Grant shrugged. ‘It’s pure simple luck, most often.’

Dani waited for Grant to expand and felt herself becoming more agitated when he didn’t. The last time they’d spoken he’d been ready and willing to talk about anything and everything to do with murderers. Was he simply uncomfortable broaching the subject in that level of detail because he was at home with his wife and daughter, and didn’t want his morbid interests to be overheard by them? Dani figured that wasn’t such an outlandish reaction.

She wasn’t giving up though.

‘Please, just indulge me here,’ Dani said.

‘Ok,’ Grant said, and his eyes focused beyond her. Checking the door was closed and the coast clear?

‘Have you heard of John Childs?’ Grant asked.

‘No.’

‘He was a contract killer. An assassin. Not necessarily a master in the art of killing, but more a brute who bludgeoned and stabbed his victims to death in horrific attacks. His method of disposal, however, was very effective. He dismembered the bodies and burned the remains in the fireplace of his London home. This was in the 1970s, and no traces of the victims were ever recovered.’

‘No traces? So no bones or anything? Just from burning in a household fireplace?’

‘You’d have to work methodically to burn only small pieces of the body at a time, which creates its own issue. If you’re dismembering bodies you’ve got a lot of blood and other mess to clean up. But if constructed and lit effectively then a fire is easily good enough to break down every element of a body, and all you’re left with is a pile of ash. Same as in a cremation. The police actually demonstrated Childs’s technique by burning the body of an eleven stone pig in that same fireplace.’

‘Then how was he caught? Trace evidence from the murder scenes themselves?’