She continued reading. Jordan then moved to East Yorkshire Police, where she was promoted to Detective Chief Inspector and took charge of the CID in the North Sea port of Seaford. While she was stationed at Seaford, she renewed her professional relationship with Dr Hill, taking the lead role in an investigation which led to the eventual capture of the serial killer Jacko Vance. DCI Jordan’s work was central in obtaining the conviction of Vance, who is believed to have killed at least eight young girls. Another serial killer investigation, Petra noted. She’d take a look at the background to this one too. Maybe Carol Jordan could do her career another favour, aside from Radecki. There weren’t that many officers around who had experience of tracking serial killers. Perhaps Petra could pick Jordan’s brains and come up with a strategy for nailing the killer she believed had already struck in Leiden and Heidelberg. If Jordan was as good a cop as she appeared to be on paper, it was worth considering.

Petra returned to the file. Two years ago, DCI Jordan returned to the Metropolitan Police, where in addition to operational duties with the serious crimes unit, she has undertaken extensive training in intelligence gathering and analysis. For the purposes of this undercover, she has been temporarily assigned to the National Crime Squad.

That was the end of the brief. There was nothing in the file to suggest that Jordan had any undercover experience. Maybe they just hadn’t gone into details. Petra couldn’t believe they would put anyone into an operation this dangerous unless she really knew what she was doing. Radecki was way too smart to take anybody at face value. He’d be deeply suspicious of anyone who turned up with so convenient a proposal for solving his current problems. Jordan would have to be a superb operator to stay alive, let alone get under his guard and uncover anything worth knowing.

There was one more sheet of paper in the file. Petra flipped it over, seeing it was a photocopy of a photograph. She couldn’t stifle a gasp of astonishment. If the caption hadn’t told her this was Carol Jordan, she would have been convinced that she was looking at a photograph of Tadeusz Radecki’s late girlfriend.