If Judith and her friends were at something of a low ebb, so was Tanika. The sad truth was that with the murder of Liz Curtis, and the subsequent exposure in the international press, she and her team had become overwhelmed. There was no way an officer as inexperienced as Tanika could lead three such public murder enquiries. Her Superintendent had spoken to the Regional Crime Commissioner about getting an experienced detective inspector brought in to head up the cases, but it was taking time to arrange.

For the time being, Tanika was on her own.

To make matters worse, her team could see how out of her depth she was. It’s not that she wasn’t up to the job, far from it. Her diligence and desire to do everything ‘by the book’ meant that her team knew exactly what they were doing and when they were supposed to do it. It was more that there was simply too much for her to stay on top of.

Tanika saw it in the glances from her team when they thought she wasn’t looking, and in the way conversations would sometimes stop when she walked into the room. They were losing confidence in her.

‘Have you any active leads?’ her Super asked at his daily meeting with Tanika in his office.

‘Which case, sir?’ Tanika asked.

Her Super could see that for once she wasn’t sitting bolt upright and putting on her best face. She looked exhausted.

‘Liz Curtis.’

‘I’ll be honest, sir, we’ve almost nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No leads, no witnesses, no motives.’

‘What about her husband?’

‘Multiple witnesses place him at a roadside outside Nottingham when she was killed. We’ve also pulled his life apart, and we can find no link, be it email, phone, text, message, you name it, between him and Stefan Dunwoody or Iqbal Kassam.’

‘So he’s not our shooter?’

‘He can’t be.’

‘Then what about the weapon that killed Liz Curtis?’

‘According to ballistics, it was the exact same Luger pistol that killed Iqbal Kassam and Stefan Dunwoody.’

‘So the press are right? We have a serial killer on the loose.’

‘We have.’

‘In Marlow?’

‘I know. In Marlow.’

Tanika’s boss could see how bewildered she was. He well remembered running his own homicide cases. How easy it was to get swamped. Nonetheless, he had a job to do.

‘I must insist you step up your efforts, Detective Sergeant, until we can second a more experienced officer to head up at least one of these cases, perhaps all three,’ he added ominously. ‘Do everything in your power to move the cases on.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Everything in your power. You hear me?’

Tanika nodded. She understood.