One of them had been her husband.

She pressed her finger to the crime scene photograph. Although she had been at his postmortem, this was the first time she had seen him lying in the woods, reduced to nothing by a faceless killer. Eyes gouged from his face. A violent stripping of life.

Her legs began to shake. Stale, warm air filled her nose. She was shrinking, sucked into her shock. The rumble of voices sounded far away. She shouldn’t have come. She couldn’t bear it.

You’ve got this, Wild. Take your time. The patience in Adam’s voice calmed her.

Wildeve drew in another lungful of recycled air, and waited for the trembling in her legs to subside.

In every murder investigation she had worked on, the killer had left a trace, his or her mark. But The Doll Maker was not like other killers.

No stab wounds. No ligatures or signs of strangulation. No bruising or bullet holes, no shattered and splintered bones. No bite marks. No bleeding out. No suffocation or sexual assault or evidence of torture.

No visible signs of injury at all.

Except the eyes.

She turned her back to the photographs and tuned in.

The postmortem of Victim Five—formally identified by his wife as Detective Inspector Adam Stanton—had taken place that morning, Detective Chief Inspector Clive “Mac” Mackie—the senior investigating officer in this multiple murder investigation—was informing the officers who had gathered for the afternoon briefing.

Mac’s bloodshot eyes met hers, the strain of the last twenty-hours written in the lines of his face. Lack of sleep and relentless pressure from the public and the media to catch a killer had aged him by fifteen years. He acknowledged her with a nod, and she nodded back, hoping that he wouldn’t offer his condolences in front of the large team scattered across chairs and perched on desks. Thirty years in the police had taught him some compassion because his opening words were these.

“We all know his name. He was one of our own.” Mac rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Forty-two years old. Working this investigation. Found at sixteen hundred hours on Sunday in a sheltered copse in the southeast corner of Blatches Woods, sixteen acres east from where Victim Four—Elijah Outhwaite—was discovered. He was off the beaten path. A father and son came across him when their dog ran after a squirrel.