I washed my face in warm and cold water and then embarked on the most disgusting washing-up of my life, and I’m speaking as someone who shared a house with a girl and two boys at college. The activity made me feel steadier. I was able to walk back to the table and close the photograph album without looking at it.

I didn’t have much time. I would have to be selective. I rummaged through the files quickly, checking their contents. I saw plans of Zoe’s flat and Jennifer’s house. I skimmed through witnesses’ statements. They were so long, rambling, and diffuse that it was almost impossible to extract any sense from them. Zoe’s boyfriend, Fred, talked about the increasing fear she had felt and his efforts to calm her. Her friend, Louise, seemed distraught. She had been the one who had actually been sitting outside the flat in her car while Zoe had been strangled. The witness statements for Jennifer’s murder filled ten bulky files. I could do little more than identify the interviewees, mainly people who worked for her. The Hintleshams seemed to have been major employers.

I paid a little more attention to the pathologist’s reports on the two dead women. Zoe’s was much simpler: ligature strangulation with the belt of her dressing gown. There were some minor contusions, but these were only related to the force required to hold her down while she was strangled. Vaginal and anal swabs showed no sign of sexual assault.

The report on Jennifer’s death was far longer. I did nothing more than note details: ligature strangulation, a thin deep furrow on the neck consistent with the use of wire; incised wounds and stabbed wounds; blood splashes, pools, smears, trails; tearing of the perineum; a copious amount of urine. She’d pissed herself.

There was a fat file dealing with the analysis of the letters. They included photocopies of the letters sent to Zoe and Jennifer, and I read them with a macabre guilty sense that I was reading stolen love letters. But they were love letters, with their promises and their vows. And there was a drawing as well of a mutilated Zoe. Strangely, of all the horrors I saw that day, it was that vile, crude drawing that made me cry. It was the one that made me dwell on the crazed ingenuity that one person was putting into destroying another. I skimmed through the analysis of the documents. There had been attempts to associate the letters with people Zoe knew: her boyfriend, Fred; an ex-boyfriend; a real estate agent; a potential buyer of her flat. However, incised marks on the drawing (confirmed, a note added, by injuries inflicted on Jennifer Hintlesham) showed conclusively that the murderer was left-handed. The above suspects were all right-handed.

There were files of crime-scene reports on dust and fabric and hair and much else. Many of them were so technical that I couldn’t work out whether anything significant had been found. It didn’t look like it. There was a single-page summary report at the front, which was copied to Links, Cameron, and other members of the murder inquiry. What was clearly stated was that no significant links had been found among the forensic traces recovered from the two murder scenes. The hair and fiber samples found on the clothes that the dead Zoe was wearing, and also found on the carpet, bedclothes, and other items of clothing, were only those of the recent inhabitants of the flat: namely her boyfriend, Fred, and Zoe herself. The hair and fiber analysis of the Jennifer Hintlesham crime scene was more complicated. There were numerous unidentified samples due to the sheer number of people who had been on the premises. There was, however, no forensic link between the two scenes, apart from Jenny’s locket found in Zoe’s flat, and Zoe’s photograph found in Jenny’s house. More awful news.

I also read through a bundle of internal memos, which outlined the various stages of the inquiry, including the result of an informal internal inquiry that was marked “Most Secret.” It was there I learned that Jennifer Hintlesham’s guard had been removed because her husband, Clive, was in the process of being charged with the murder of Zoe Haratounian. What a fuck-up.

Just as I was about to call Cameron back I started flicking through a routine-looking file. It consisted of rosters, minutes of meetings, holiday assignments. But then at the bottom a photocopied memo caught my eye. It was from Links to a Dr. Michael Griffen, with copies to Stadler, Grace Schilling, Lynne, and a dozen other names I didn’t recognize. It began by apparently responding to a complaint by Dr. Griffen that the two murder scenes, especially in the flat of Zoe Haratounian, had been compromised by faulty procedures by the first officers on the scene:

I will make every effort to ensure that the scene of any future scene will be swiftly and effectively sealed. I realize that in all probability, and in no small part because of the practical difficulties of personal protection, the solution of this case will lie in the hands of the forensic scientists and we will furnish you with all possible cooperation.

I shouted for Cameron and he was in the room in a few seconds. Had he been watching through the window? What did it matter?

“Look,” I said, handing him the note. “ ‘Any future scene.’ Not exactly a vote of confidence in your own abilities.”

He looked at it, then replaced it in the file.

“You asked to see the files,” he said. “Obviously we have to plan for every eventuality.”

“Maybe it looks different from where I’m standing,” I said. “That’s me: any future scene. Me.”

“So what did you think?”

“It was horrible,” I said. “And I’m glad I know.”

Cameron started gathering up the files, putting them in boxes, cramming them into the briefcases.

“We’re not very alike,” I said.

He paused.

“What?”

“I thought we’d all be the same type. I know it’s hard to tell from photos and a few particulars, but we seem completely different. Zoe was younger, sweeter than me, I bet. Also, she had a real job. And as for Jennifer, she looks like a member of the royal family. I don’t think she’d have had much time for me.”

“Maybe not,” said Stadler wistfully, and at that moment I felt a stab of jealousy. He’d seen her, talked to her. He knew what her voice sounded like. He had seen her funny little gestures, the sort that would never get written down on a form.

“You’re all small,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re all short and light,” he said. “And you live in north London.”

“So that’s where you’ve got to,” I said. “Nearly six weeks and two women dead and you know that this murderer doesn’t choose six-foot bodybuilders and he doesn’t choose women who live randomly all over the world.”

He was finished packing up.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Lynne’s about to arrive.”

“Cameron?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t tell your wife, or Links or anyone.”

“Good.”

“But I would have done.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We were both acting a bit embarrassed with each other now. For me it was that embarrassment of being with someone who you’ve been naked with and now don’t fancy in the very least. Added to it was a very strong feeling that all I wanted to do was retreat into my bedroom and cry and think about dying for a few hours.

“Nadia?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry about everything. It has all been so… so.” He stopped and rubbed his face, then looked around as if he thought Lynne might already be in the room without either of us knowing. “I’ve got something else.”

“What?” I could tell from the tone of his voice that it wasn’t good news.

He reached inside his jacket and took out a paper. In fact it was two sheets of paper. He unfolded them and flattened them on the table.

“We intercepted these in the last few days.”

“How?”

“One was sent as a letter. I think the other was pushed through the door.”