Once on the road, Grant called back the Yard with an address to send reinforcements. He’d just finished telling Rachel and Frankel about Fleming’s Surrey estate and how he’d interviewed the tobacco tycoon twice there.

“You might want to tell Jeffries to have a team ready as well,” Grant informed his colleague before ending the call.

“Who is Jeffries?” asked Frankel.

“The forensics medical examiner.”

Frankel wished he could tell Grant he was overreacting. But Hawley’s car parked outside the Esher mansion did nothing to dissuade that feeling of dread that Frankel knew they all shared by now.

They removed their bags from the cab and placed them beside Hawley’s car. As the taxi moved off, Frankel glanced through the gates at the mansion. A Bentley was parked in a circular cobblestone driveway. The only sound came from chirping birds brave enough to stay in the barren trees for another dreary winter.

“Do you want to wait for your colleagues?” Frankel asked.

Grant placed a hand on the hood of Hawley’s car. “Ice cold,” he observed. “It’s been here since at least some time last night. I say we head inside.”

Rachel visibly reacted. “Dad, maybe you should wait for someone.”

“It would be helpful if you’d do that for us,” Grant told her.

His gaze returned to the mansion lying behind the massive gates.

The only thing missing is that “Keep Out” sign at the Far Rockway hospital, thought Frankel.

Grant echoed the unspoken sentiment.

“We’re too late to stop whatever happened here.”

Sergeant Hawley had been unable to prevent anything either, as evidenced by his dead body having been draped over those of Jared Fleming and Elizabeth Dozier atop the bed in the master bedroom. It resembled a twisted version of Michelangelo’s Pietà, with Fleming added to the tableau as a second parent grieving the loss of their grown child.

Frankel knew the killer had staged the display for Grant. It was as if he were saying, “I hereby offer you your son, the good Sergeant Stanford Hawley.”

For the first time since he’d met Grant, the detective saw pure anguish appear on the man’s face. Along with a fair share of rage.

“I’m so sorry.” They were the only words Frankel could muster up, knowing there were none in the English language that could be strung together to offer Grant any form of solace.

Grant barely nodded.

Frankel knew he would have reacted the same way with the sudden loss of a close colleague in the line of duty. The only choice was to focus on the work at hand and redirect one’s grief and fury to try and make things right.

London was on the verge of spontaneously combusting with fear.

Merry Fucking Christmas.