This steak was succulent, beautifully cooked. Game chips with it, cut into tiny lattice patterns. And asparagus! Then there was pavlova to follow, and coffee and mints.

Frank was watching her obvious enjoyment of the meal and their surroundings from across the table. Then he arrived. The monster. Dora felt her breath catch in her throat as she saw him. He came over to their table. Long-faced and massive. Dora shuddered as the lights caught and lit that awful scar on his head. Bruno glanced at Dora, then leaned in and whispered something in Frank’s ear.

‘Right,’ said Frank to the man. ‘Good.’

The man departed, and Frank turned his attention back to her.

‘You’re a beautiful girl, Dora,’ he said after a moment’s consideration.

Dora looked at his pudgy face, his cold shark-like eyes. He ate like a pig, belched, wiped his nose on his napkin and then scrubbed his face with it. Well, you’re certainly no beauty, she thought.

‘Thanks,’ she said awkwardly. She knew she was beautiful, she’d heard it all a million times before. Dora the Adored – she was used to that.

She was thinking of handsome Dickie, locked up for something he didn’t do. While this ugly bastard, this murderer, was still at large and living it large, too, sitting in a five-star hotel eating the finest food, flunkies bowing and scraping to him, everything being laid at his feet.

There was no justice in the world. None whatsoever.

‘Dora, I’m going to take care of you. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of everything.’

‘That’s nice of you,’ she said, uncertain.

Frank tossed his napkin onto the table. ‘Let’s go on up then,’ he said.

Dora looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Up?’

‘I’ve booked a suite,’ said Frank.

21

DI Colin Crompton stood with his DS Donny Maguire on the shingle at low tide at Bankside. You found all sorts of shit washed up by the river, day after day. Bottles, ropes, fishing nets, all sorts of crap. And today, a body. A passer-by had phoned it in, and now here they were, looking down at the remnants of what had once been a pretty blonde woman. Their first – and hopefully last – floater of the day.

The Thames wasn’t kind to floaters. Couple of days in there and they started looking more like a nightmare than a human being. And the smell of putrefaction could turn the strongest stomachs. Donny didn’t bother too much, but his DI held a handkerchief over his nose and shook his head.

‘Sad, yeah? What drives someone to chuck themselves in the river, eh?’

‘Who knows,’ said Donny.

‘I’m back off to the station,’ said Crompton. Up on the road, the ambulance had arrived, and they could see the pathologist’s car being parked up. ‘Sort it out, Don, OK?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Donny.

It had been a hard day, and when he got home Donny could see that the evening wasn’t going to be any easier.