She looked at Patrick and he looked at her. It was more than an exchange of glances: it was like a tangible force, there between them. Each knew the other intimately, each felt the attraction that had brought her here today. Each wanted the rift between them breached so that they could get on with their lives.

Kate’s eyes were like dark pools of liquid light. Patrick searched them for some sign that she had relented. That he was forgiven. As she picked up her wine glass and smiled at him, he felt as if someone had given him an injection of pure happiness.

‘Cheers, Pat.’ She sipped the heavy red liquid and as she did so knew that there was no going back. She had accepted his way of living one hundred per cent. Dan would be forgotten, everything would be forgotten, except for their urgent desire.

Patrick opened the serving dish that had been placed on the table by Willy just as they had driven up and filled Kate’s plate with slices of beef.

As she took the plate from him their fingers touched and the jolt that went between them was like a physical pain.

‘How’s Willy?’

Patrick filled his own plate and grinned. ‘He’s fine.’

‘Good. I rather like Willy.’

And she did. She knew that Patrick would go mad if he knew that Willy had been to see her, but it was the talk she had had with him that had helped her sort out her own mind.

‘Can I see you tonight, Kate?’

She smiled, taking a mouthful of juicy beef and wiping her lips with a napkin.

‘I don’t see why not.’

Putting down his own knife and fork he walked around the table and took her in his arms. They did not kiss, but as he rubbed his face in the softness of her hair, she felt as if she had indeed finally come home.

He was dangerous to her, she knew that. But she was determined to have him.

An hour later she was back at work, lighter of heart than she had been for days and raring to go. She looked and felt great, something which was noticed by just about everyone in the incident room.

DS Spencer, still smarting from Amanda Dawkins’s practical joke, whispered into Willis’s ear: ‘Screwing a villain seems to cheer her up no end.’

Willis gave him a dirty look. Spencer got on his nerves. In fact, Spencer got on everyone’s nerves.

‘Why don’t you piss off, Spencer?’

Willis walked away from him. Collating all the blood tests was much harder than anyone had thought, but it had given them an added impetus. It was a new avenue. It was their big chance to catch the Grantley Ripper.