After Lucy had told him about the fibres that morning, it had shaken him and he’d had to come home. He’d had no idea about them. He was furious because he’d been so careful. There were no blue rugs or carpets in the house. He needed to find whatever it was they’d come from and get rid of it. When he’d finished preparing the acid drum, he’d searched the house from top to bottom, scratching his head, and then he’d checked the van and felt a bubble of anger explode inside his chest when he noticed the blue Afghan throw in the back. How could he have been so stupid? He would take care of Lewis, then come back and dispose of it – and him.

He’d crept up on Lewis, who had fallen asleep, and had been about to wrap the thick rope around his neck and strangle him when he’d heard the crunching footsteps walking up his gravel drive. He turned to peer out of the bedroom window and saw her. Panic had taken over and he’d picked up the heavy brass lamp from the bedside table and whacked him over the head with it instead. Lewis went out without a fight – he let out a small ‘ugh’ and that was it; he was unconscious. It was messy, though – there was so much blood and he hated mess. Especially in his own house: blood left way too much forensic evidence.

He’d stood and watched the dark red liquid seep from the wound on the side of Lewis’s head, frozen to the spot, until he heard her hammer on his front door. Just like that, as if she had every right to. Lucy Harwin had definitely got far too big for her boots since he’d last worked with her. He looked down at his Lycra top, which had blood spatter on the front of it, and swore. Stripping it off, he rolled it into a ball and left it on the floor next to the bed. He rushed to the bathroom, where he began to scrub at his hands with antibacterial soap to get rid of any germs that might be in the druggie’s blood. Then he padded back to the spare room to slip on a fresh top before descending the stairs to deal with Lucy.

As he carried her, he couldn’t believe how heavy she was for such a little thing. He took her into the front room, where he laid her on the sofa, then ran back to the garage to get some more rope to tie her up with. He didn’t want to kill her until he’d taken care of Lewis properly, but if she woke up now he’d have no other option: it would be self-preservation. What he did need to know was why she’d come here, pounding on his door. He would ask her when she came to if she’d known she was walking into the spider’s web or whether she was just pissed with him about something else. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d just come to have a go at him, oblivious to what he really was.

Tearing a strip of material off one of the cleaning cloths from the bucket he’d brought in with him, he tied it roughly around her mouth, gagging her. No doubt she would start screaming the moment she woke up, because there was no way she would lie there and be quiet – she was far too feisty for that. Once he’d done that, he tied her arms and feet so she couldn’t run away if she tried. For the moment she was out cold; pressing two fingers against her neck, he could feel her strong pulse. Good, that meant he could finish off what he had to do to Waite in peace. He didn’t feel one ounce of regret about what he’d done to all his other victims – not even Jenny, and he’d liked her; she’d been his first teenage crush. But for some reason he knew that when he killed Lucy she would be the one to end up haunting him for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know if he could cope with that.

* * *

Back at the station, Col had rallied an assortment of officers and spoken to the duty sergeant, who’d shaken his head at the mention of Lucy’s name.

‘What if her phone just died? It happens all the time.’

‘She said she’d found the killer.’

‘Did she sound in distress?’

‘No, she was fucking whispering, so I couldn’t really tell. Look, I need her phone pinging now – we need to get a location on her and fast. If I’m wrong and she’s fine then you can send the bill for it to me, Andy. Is that okay?’

Andy picked up the phone and dialled the control room. ‘I need to speak to the force incident manager. Now, please.’

There was a short delay as he was put through and relayed everything that Col had just told him.

‘Right, I see. No, that’s fine, we’ll go and check that address first. Thanks.’ Andy put the phone down. ‘Apparently about forty minutes ago she asked for the home address of the new DCI and was given it. Maybe you should try there first – you could have misheard her. They had a bit of a thing a few years ago. They could be in the middle of a quickie.’

Col held his hand up. ‘Enough – don’t talk bollocks. What’s the address? I’ll go and check it myself.’

Andy passed him the piece of paper. Col looked at it, then shoved it into his pocket. ‘Thanks.’

He ran out, grabbing a set of van keys from the whiteboard and pulling out his phone to ring Mattie, who answered straight away, putting the phone on loudspeaker.

‘Three Oaks, Country Drive. She phoned control to find out Patrick’s address. I think we should check there first, while they faff around taking forever to ping her phone.’

‘I don’t even know where that is.’

Colin shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I think it’s those posh new detached houses past the old asylum.’

Mattie felt as if his world had been turned upside down and he was reliving the same day from six months ago.

‘Oh, and Mattie? Andy reckons that it’s possible she’s gone round there for…’

‘For what?’

Col paused, embarrassed to be speaking like this about Lucy because it wasn’t her style, but he thought that it was only fair to warn them in case they did rush in to rescue her and she was pinned to the bed underneath Patrick of her own free will. It happened – there had been plenty of officers who’d spent their shift sleeping around when they should have been solving crimes.

‘For sex.’

Mattie wondered if he’d heard Col right. Browning ended the call for him. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at Toby, who looked as if he were going to cry. Then he looked at Mattie and realised that if he thought the kid in the back was upset, Mattie was positively crushed.

‘Look – so what if she has? She’s a grown woman. I just don’t think she would, though; Lucy would never be so unprofessional in working time. It’s fine to bear it in mind, but I still think she’d be in touch.’ Just to prove his point, he dialled her number and it went straight to answerphone.