‘Oh, Patrick, I need you tonight. I need you so much.’

He looked down into her brown eyes. The lashes were glistening with tears and he felt an overwhelming sadness. Kate was hurting, and he could stop the hurt with a few words. The solving of this case was everything to her, and he could tell her everything she wanted to know.

Instead he began to kiss her, losing himself in her sweet-smelling body as he felt her respond to him. Felt her tongue slip between his lips. Her nails travel down his back and under his body to cup his testicles.

Then she was shuddering beneath him. He watched her face as she thrust her hips into him and he loved her then. Loved her to death.

Soon it would be all over, and Kate would never be any the wiser.

At least, that was his prayer.

Amanda Dawkins had stayed relatively sober. She sat on in the incident room collating everything she had about George Markham. She stared at the picture of him from his file. He had attacked a young girl on a train eighteen years earlier. It had been a vicious assault, and he had been sent to Broadmoor. He had been in and out in three years. His wife had given birth to a stillborn son, and that had helped with his release.

Amanda shook her head as she read his statement: ‘The girl was asking for it, she was smiling at me. Egging me on.’

How many times did a policeman hear that?

She looked at his picture again. At the nondescript man staring out at her. He had lifeless grey eyes and a weak, almost non-existent chin. He did not look like a sexual pervert at all. He looked like someone’s uncle.

She poured another Scotch into the paper cup by her side. They’d really thought they had him.

Her eyes travelled to the pictures on the wall. Cynthia Redcar and her young son were now added to them. The picture of the little boy’s battered face seemed to be imprinted on her mind. Who the hell could hurt a child like that?

She dragged her eyes back to the file in front of her. There had been ructions earlier over this. Caitlin and Kate had wanted to know why George Markham had not been brought to their attention. Amanda had been sorry for Willis then. He had knocked over a whole stack of files and got them all mixed up together. He had then shoved them into a filing cabinet and promptly forgotten them. It was only when they had tapped into the central computer that they had found out they had already been sent a copy of Markham’s file, along with many others. Caitlin’s swearing could be heard all over the building.