‘Near to eighty, sir.’ Lafayette stared down at his shining shoes. He knew what was coming.

‘And you’ve got zilch? It’s bullshit!’ shouted Elwood. ‘Rainer, I’m right, aren’t I? It’s bullshit.’

Ged Rainer leaned forward. ‘We don’t want a killer on the streets of New York, do you understand, Captain? This isn’t the nineties, we can do without the drama.’

‘I don’t want one either, sir,’ said Lafayette. ‘But it’s not easy catching a pattern killer, if that’s what we have. There’s no motive, no witnesses, no informants and no leads. They strike where and when they want to.’

‘What do you need?’ said the deputy commissioner. ‘What is it you want from us? I presume there’s something or you wouldn’t have showed up here, taking shit for these assholes.’

Lafayette paused. Chief Rainer was the guy who’d refused his request and now he was going right over Rainer’s head in public. The captain swallowed hard. ‘Sir, with all due respect, if we want to move forward on this, we need our best man on the case.’ Rainer turned and shot a look of contempt down the table.

‘Who’s your best man, Captain?’ said Elwood.

‘Someone who knows how to track pattern killers, sir. One of the very best. You may know the name. Detective Tom Harper. Five years ago, he brought in the Mott Haven strangler, Gerry North. He traced a used dollar bill found in the victim’s throat back to a payroll of Gerry North’s employer. It gave us a list of thirty-five men. North was the fifteenth guy we saw. Great police work, sir. Last year, he brought in the serial killer Eric Romario. You’ll remember that case, sir. Eric liked to break into apartments and wire people up to the line power and switch it on. He killed eight people. Harper worked on the killer’s background. He thought the killer would’ve begun life as a firestarter, so he picked out the records of petty arsonists from ViCAP and traced them through employment records of the power companies. He got a hit list. Eric Romario was on his way to wire up a children’s swimming pool when Harper came calling. No one else would’ve taken that line, sir.’ Lafayette looked up. ‘He came in late, took over the lead and pulled these guys down. He got somewhere with next to nothing. He’s our best guy.’

‘Then get him in. What are you all waiting for?’

Rainer shouted across. ‘Lafayette, pipe the fuck down. I told you no already.’

‘Shut it, Rainer,’ spat Elwood. ‘If this is the guy who can do the job, then get him in.’

‘Harper can do it, sir.’

Rainer was up on his feet. ‘He’s on suspension for assaulting a superior officer, sir. He’s facing termination.’ He leaned into Lenny Elwood and whispered something.

Elwood nodded and looked up. ‘This is the same guy that knocked Lieutenant Jarvis off his fucking feet?’

‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Rainer. ‘A real throwback to the bad old days.’

‘He was provoked, sir,’ said Lafayette.

Rainer was shaking. ‘Detective Harper is not coming back on my team, sir. Lafayette, you’re overstepping the mark here. I’ve already told you that’s not gonna happen. Harper’s a volatile bastard and we’re just about ready to go with the termination.’

‘Is he our best detective or not?’ said Elwood, firing looks all round the room.

‘He’s the best, sir,’ said Lafayette. ‘Unconventional. Aggressive. But most important, he’s a specialist in these kinds of kills. He’s worked three previous pattern homicides, two in NYC as you just heard and one upstate. These aren’t the usual kinds of homicides we deal with, sir: we think this is a pattern killer.’

‘He assaulted a superior officer,’ Rainer snapped. ‘Are we losing our minds here?’

‘He lost his head one time and took a swipe at a lieutenant, but he had good cause.’

‘Took a swipe?’ said Rainer. ‘He busted his jaw so bad it’s been wired up for a month. He was on the boxing team. He’s dangerous. We can’t let this guy go around beating people up.’

‘And this is our best detective?’ said Elwood. ‘A pair of fists with a chip on his shoulder?’

‘If I could have one man on the team, it’d be Harper. No question. These girls have the right to expect us to do our best.’

The deputy commissioner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Will he do it?’

‘He doesn’t feel so charitable towards NYPD at the moment, but he might.’

‘Well, offer him a clean break. Tell him we’ll scrub the charge if he succeeds - that’s an offer he can’t refuse. Get some department shrink to sign him up for some anger management therapy to cover our backs. Bring him in, Captain.’

Rainer was shaking his head vehemently. ‘If it comes out that we’ve put a madman on the case, if the papers get hold of it, we’re going to be blown out of the water. I don’t think he’s our man.’

‘With all due respect, Chief Rainer, he’s exactly our man. Now go get him, Captain.’ Elwood stared hard at Rainer. Their eyes locked for a few seconds.

‘With all due respect to you, sir,’ said Rainer, ‘I’m the senior ranking operational officer here, and for the record, I’m not reinstating an officer who beats up other officers. I’ve got morale to think about. I’m not doing it. I categorically refuse.’

Larry Elwood rose from his leather seat and pointed a bony finger at Rainer. ‘Looks like I’ve just found my horse, Chief Rainer.’

Chapter Two

Central Park

November 15, 3.35 p.m.

The solitary walkers in Central Park were all wrapped up warm. The wide skies overhead were bright blue into the distance and the air was cold and dry. At the northeastern corner of the park, the suspended homicide detective Thomas Elias Harper crouched on his haunches on the edge of the sandbank overlooking the glittering water of Harlem Meer. He was dressed down in a pair of old combats, a well-worn overcoat and an orange cap. He was alone, with a pair of binoculars tight to his eyes, watching the movement in the trees on the far shore, keeping deadly still.

Then he spotted it again and his heart rose a beat. He focused slowly with his forefinger and caught the image crisp in his sights. There it was, almost flat against the oak bark, a white-breasted nuthatch edging down the tree trunk, its sleek head and white throat darting out for insects. Harper followed the bird across the leafy ground as it hopped on to a forsythia twig and pecked beneath the fallen maple leaves for grubs. He smiled with satisfaction.

The detective moved down through the park, a small knapsack on his back. He reached the brow of a hill in the North Woods and moved across the ravine. He climbed up a low bank to get a good position and stood looking into the dense vegetation, the stream babbling through the trees, the leaves crisp and whispering in the light wind. Reports had mentioned a glossy ibis in the area; he’d been back to the same site for three days, but hadn’t had any luck.

Out of the trees behind him, Harper caught a scuffling sound. He listened intently as the sound grew. It sure as hell wasn’t a glossy ibis. It wasn’t some walker strolling through, either: the movements were quick and determined. Every now and then, the noise stopped. A moment later, Harper could make out the heavy breathing of a man out of condition a few yards behind him. It could be only one thing - a homicide cop.

‘Harper!’ called a deep voice.

Captain Frank Lafayette had waited an hour outside Harper’s apartment in East Harlem before he got a lead from the guys in the fish market and went hunting in the park. The captain, his face a delicate lacework of tiny red veins, put his hands flat on his knees and looked at Harper’s back. ‘You couldn’t take up bowling or some fucking thing?’

There was no reply, not even a flicker. Tom Harper was standing still beneath a small group of bare trees. He was six two, athletic, his close-cropped hair brown, flecked with grey. He had been the NYPD cruiserweight boxing champion for three seasons and the muscle in his back and shoulders still showed.