“No.” He laughed. “Not at all.”

Her fingers flew on the keyboard. “Let’s see. I’ve got the standard reports on here anyway. The ones we sent round to you.”

Carefully, one by one, they went through each of the case file summaries. All were brief, reduced to just a few pages.

“This is ridiculous,” Emily snapped. “Why the hell didn’t I see this in the first place? Why didn’t your people?”

“You’re not a detective. And we didn’t have the time. Remember?”

“Sorry.”

She’d left the last document on the screen open. It was the report on her own father’s death. Now that he thought about it, the omission almost screamed at them from the screen. The summary gave a cause of death-strangulation-but contained no forensic data on the material used by the murderer.

“That can’t be normal.” Emily pointed at the screen. “Just a cause of death. Nothing about the actual ligature itself. Forensic would have information there, wouldn’t they? Something that could be useful?”

“Absolutely. A couple of years ago Teresa Lupo coaxed some skin samples out of forensic when they were about to give up on a domestic we had. When they took a good look again they had proof the husband was responsible. He’d pulled the cord so tightly he’d left material there himself.”

Emily glowered at the screen. “Watch this. I still have some clearance.”

She hit the keys. The modem inside the machine cracked and whistled. Costa watched her thrash her way through more security screens than he’d ever seen in his life. Finally she got to where she wanted: a report topped by the FBI logo. The full file, of which until then he’d only seen the summary.

“Forensic, forensic, forensic…” she whispered. “Shit!”

She’d scrolled down until she found the section. It contained just four words: PENDING. REFER TO HIGHER AUTHORITY.

“You could…” he began to say.

“… try the others? You bet.”

She bent down over the computer, head in hands, furious. Costa gingerly put a hand on her shoulder, then removed it.

“Emily?”

“Say something useful. Say something I want to hear.”

“You just made a discovery. You’ve just worked out what those people were really killed with. Not just ”cord.“ The same thing we found here. US military webbing. Maybe he brought it with him. Maybe he acquired it here. Either way, we know. Why else?”

She took her head out of her hands and smiled brightly at him. “Christ, you’re right, too. It’s the dog that didn’t bark.”

Costa looked baffled.

“I’ll explain later, Nic. Now what do we do?”

The last thing she wanted, he thought. “We leave this till the morning. We continue this conversation with other people around.”

“Is that what you want?” At least she didn’t argue. There weren’t many options open to them.

“You mean, am I scared?” he asked.

“Kind of.”

“No.”

“Don’t you ever get scared?”

He looked around the living room. It felt good with another person there. The fires were doing their job at last. The place finally seemed warm, human.

“Not here,” he answered. “Not now. But I have to tell you, another fifteen minutes and I fall fast asleep, Agent Deacon. You’d better have something else to amaze me.”

“Oh, I have,” she said with a grin, and went back to stabbing the keys of the machine.

PERONI HAD NEVER DONE well on the weapons range, never paid much attention to the smart-ass firearms monkeys who thought you could run the world through the sights of a gun. He was a vice cop. He didn’t mind frontline work. When he was a senior officer he’d made damn sure he didn’t let his men take risks he’d never face himself. All the same, vice was nothing like this. It was pimps and hookers, turf wars and stupid, cheated johns. Black and white in the corners sometimes, but more often a difficult, indeterminate shade of grey. Not something shapeless moving through the dark, unknown, unseen, looking to kill for no real reason at all.

Peroni did what seemed natural, put his big arms out and covered the girl with his body. A futile gesture, one designed more for reassurance than anything else. The huge door opposite was completely shut. The side exit was doubtless locked too. This killer made no mistakes. They couldn’t flee. They couldn’t do much but wait and face whatever lay out there.

And think…

Even a stupid old vice cop could do that.

“What do you want?” he yelled into the darkness.

Someone moved, feet tapping on the ancient stone floor, a menacing presence shifting around the echoing interior like a ghost. He could be anywhere. The sound of his shoes on the hard floor bounced around the upturned stone eyelid, came at them from every direction.

“What do you want?” Peroni yelled again.

The footsteps stopped. The hall was silent except for the faint rumble of a lone car making it through the night in the distant world beyond.

“What’s mine.”

It was an American voice. Flat, middle-aged, monotonous. A voice that sounded as if most of the life had been squeezed out of it somewhere along the line. Peroni wondered if he could guess where it came from. If he could just point the service pistol in that direction, loose off a few shots and hope something-good luck, God, the remnants of a benevolent spirit still lurking here-would send one piece of metal spinning in the right direction.

But he didn’t believe in God or ghosts. You had to make your own way.

Peroni turned, still doing his best to cover the kid behind him, peered into her face and held out his hand. She was clutching the wallet, thin fingers tight on the leather, as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

“Laila,” he whispered. “Please…”

Stealing’s a bad thing, he wanted to say. Stealing gets you into big trouble, marks you out for life, as visibly as if you were wearing a sign round your neck saying “evil.” Or a magical symbol carved out of your back.

That was why cops like him spent their working days chasing little thieves, looking for those telltale marks. It was too hard trying to catch the big, smart guys, the ones who carried scalpels and didn’t baulk at using them. And as for the really big fish-well, they just got immunity from their paid politicians anyway. None of which helped a dumb cop on the street to work out the difference between what was truly good and bad.

She passed the wallet over to him without a word, eyes glittering, shiny, full of fear.

“Here!” Peroni bellowed into the darkness and sent the wallet spinning out into the heart of the building, hard enough, he hoped, to take it into the shade on the other side where their unseen stalker could collect it, say a quick thank-you, then disappear into the night leaving everyone safe and sound.

Instead, the thing fell with a gentle thud, slap bang in the middle of the tiny mound of snow building beneath the oculus, and sat there under the silver light like a beacon, like a bright, shiny trap.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Peroni said, half to himself, half to the figure hiding in the dark. “I’m not playing any tricks here, friend. Just take the damn wallet and go, will you?”

The gun felt heavy in his hand. Behind him, Laila was beginning to squirm. If there’d been an easy and obvious exit he’d have sent her flying towards it, screaming at her to get the hell out of this makeshift tomb in the centre of a slumbering, snow-covered city. Instead, all he could think of was how to hide her from whatever was approaching, how to keep her frail body protected behind his.

And even that wasn’t enough. When it came, straight out of the darkness, it came as a storm of pure physical force, furious, relentless. The man was punching and kicking and screaming, pistol-whipping Peroni’s skull with what felt like a hammer. The gun flew out of Peroni’s hand, clattering across the stonework, spinning into the shadows. He tried to dodge, to find some way of shifting his frame away from the sudden, vicious onslaught of violence, but it was impossible. His hands left Laila and tried to cover his face. He felt his breath flee from his lungs, his mind start to wander off into another place.