‘It makes me go all funny, just thinking about it.’ The woman paused to force a large packet of cornflakes into her shopping bag.

‘I mean, poor Gerry, she had three of the most gorgeous children you’re ever likely to see. And she was happily married.’ She nodded her head sagely. ‘And how many can say that in this day and age?’

‘You’re right there. So who found her then?’

The woman rearranged her silk scarf. In the heat of the supermarket it was beginning to make her head itch.

‘It was a young kid. He was on his way to deliver the papers. Well, he used the cut through from Vauxhall Drive and there she was . . . dead as a bleeding doornail!’ She shook her head again.

‘I bet this will just be the start. You mark my words. This is just the start.’

Elain grimaced and totalled her till.

‘Seventeen pounds and eighty-five pence, please.’

The woman opened her purse and took out a twenty-pound note. ‘Bleeding daylight robbery, if you ask me. I ain’t even got the makings of a dinner here!’

Elaine smiled in sympathy but her mind was still with Geraldine O’Leary. Poor woman, to die like that. She shuddered.

Giving the woman her change, she went on to the next customer.

The whole of Grantley was appalled and shocked at the rape and murder. Every woman knew that it could easily have been her and they were all frightened.

Frightened and excited. Because nothing like this had ever happened in Grantley before.

Detective Inspector Kate Burrows looked down at the body and winced.

Detective Sergeant Willis watched her surreptitiously, smiling slightly as he watched her blanch.

Who, he wondered, in their right mind, would give a female copper a rape and murder? Women were too emotional for this type of thing.

He looked Kate up and down on the sly. Not a bad-looking bird for her age. Bit flat-chested to his mind, but she had good legs and nice eyes. Deep brown eyes that matched her hair exactly.

Willis dragged his mind back to the present as the pathologist spoke again.

‘The nail entered the head here.’ He pointed to Geraldine’s temple. ‘On the left-hand side, where it entered the brain. I would say that death was instantaneous. We found traces of semen on her thighs and breasts, which is unusual in these cases. Only a small amount was inside the vagina.’

The man rubbed his eyes with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

‘The blow to the face was administered after she had died. As you can see, he crushed the nose. She has several broken ribs. I would hazard a guess that she had been kicked. Kicked very hard as one of the ribs broke and punctured a lung.’