Harper opened his eyes quickly and saw the glaring reflections on his window from the street below. The city was a mosaic of shadow and light. Once upon a time, city lights excited him, but he didn’t like the promises any more. He reached for his backpack and pulled out his notebook. Each dog-eared page was beautifully illustrated with quick sketches of various birds. Dates, times, locations and notes surrounded each sketch.

He picked up his pen and sucked the end until he tasted ink on his tongue. He drew the faint outline of the warbler from memory. He wrote the date, stared at it and then looked again to the window. His mind wouldn’t settle.

Across the room, his cell phone chimed a cheap tune. Harper jumped up and grabbed it. He’d not once given up on Lisa. He was endlessly optimistic that one day she’d want to come back. And he would forgive her - no question. He put the cell close to his ear. ‘Yes?’

‘Didn’t disturb you, did I?’ Harper’s heart sank. Not her voice. A man’s voice. Captain Lafayette.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘Blue Team have just left the crime scene. Don’t know much about the victim yet. But she looks the same type and the injuries are similar. Like we feared, we think it’s the same unsub.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘They found her on Ward’s Island. She was left out on the rocks in the water. Probably died late last night. The body’ll be there another hour or so.’

Harper sat down. ‘What’s the MO?’

‘She’s been strangled. Same ritual - torture cuts, left naked. She was also posed.’

‘Posed how?’ said Harper, pen in hand, tracing the outline of a rock on his notebook.

‘Like she’s praying.’

‘Hands tied together?’

‘Yeah, with copper wire.’ Lafayette paused. ‘I want you to take a look before they take the body. No commitment. Just give us something, Tom. Anything. For God’s sake.’

‘I’m not ready to go back, Captain.’

‘How about you just take a look at this girl, tell me what you can? Maybe what you see will help us nail this bastard. Call it a leaving gift.’

Harper was silent. The figure of a girl with her hands in prayer appeared in black ink on the page in front of him.

‘I’m in a black Impala outside your apartment. I’ll wait ten minutes. If it’s a no, then whatever you go on to do, Harper, good luck and all that. You were a first-rate cop, the best. Don’t ever forget that while you’re down there in Vegas hunting slot-machine fixers.’

Chapter Four

Ward’s Island

November 15, 7.18 p.m.

Darkness was holding fast over Ward’s Island. Only the distant lights of Kirby Psychiatric Hospital and the near glow of the crime scene were visible from across Hell Gate Bridge. The whole area was still being scoured by Crime Scene Unit detectives.

The east wind had blustered all day and now raced across the island, whipping up the surface of the water and making it dance against the black rocks. Across the river, Manhattan’s teeming grid of coloured lights reflected in the dark water like a street-level rainbow promising wealth and fulfilment. But there on Ward’s Island, on the rough grass against the rocks, lay a naked body lapped by the shallow surf. Her guts were torn open and a couple of seagulls had stayed around after dark to take what they could.

The icy wind was also freezing the four officers standing in a half-circle above the corpse, their bomber jackets zipped chin high, their eyes streaming and their faces pale as pig skin. In silence, they stared down at the mutilated body. Officer James Cob was stamping his feet and playing around with his flashlight.

‘Hey, Hernandez, did you eat already?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Hernandez. ‘How the fuck could I eat out here?’

‘Here, you like fresh meat?’ Cob shone his torch on to the corpse.

‘Serious, Cob, knock it off, buddy. You’re making me sick here.’

‘It’s your fucking diet that’s churning your guts,’ Officer Lees put in. ‘He had three hot dogs and a doughnut in the wagon.’

‘Why the fuck is she marrying you, Hernandez?’ said Cob. ‘Can anyone explain how this big fuck is getting hitched to a ninety-five-pound looker? These fat guys are taking all our women.’

‘Fuck you and your mother, Cob, I’ve got the magic touch. They’ll be crying out for more when they feel these.’ Hernandez held up his chubby fingers and wiggled them in the air. ‘They call me the feather, my touch is so light. I’m like a butterfly wing. They just keep howling for more.’

The guys laughed aloud in the darkness. For a moment they forgot that they were on a city shore next to a murder victim. Then silence seemed to capture the small huddle again. Their conversations kept dying out like a match in the wind.

Harper watched from a distance, a shadow in a black coat. It wasn’t his case, he was still on charges that would no doubt end in a termination, but he already felt responsible. And being out in the cold sure beat sitting in his apartment and letting the emptiness swirl over and over in his head. He’d done enough of that. Maybe he had even let the self-pity take him over.

He couldn’t help but feel the crackle of his nerves at the sight of the crime scene. This was his territory. He felt the tingling at the tip of his fingers like he used to. He breathed deep and walked towards the officer guarding the yellow tape. Harper had a vague outline of the first kill in his mind, mainly from the secondary sources - no real facts yet, just the fragments of other people’s horror and a bit extra that the newspapers liked to sprinkle across the story by way of speculation and sensation.

The uniform read the name on the log when he signed in. ‘Nice to see you out here, Detective Harper. You taking the case?’

Harper looked at the young officer. ‘No.’

‘Wish you were. This guy’s bad news. I saw what he’d done.’

Harper nodded and moved towards the lights of the crime scene. He could hear the officers laughing as he approached and saw their little game of dead woman peek-a-boo with their flashlights. He wasn’t impressed. Whose investigation was this? It looked wide open - no structure, no urgency, just a forensic team and a bunch of patrolmen. The detectives from Blue Team had all left. Since when did Blue Team let things slip this far? The whole of the NYPD should be on top of this case. He walked directly towards the officers and stamped on the edge of a sheet of corrugated iron. It clattered violently.

The four men turned with a start and pointed their flashlights towards the noise. Harper stared right back at them, his granite face contorted by the torch beams. ‘Get your fucking lights out of my face, gentlemen.’

He moved slowly across to them, shining his own torch into the officers’ faces one by one, taking it all in. ‘This is a crime scene. Get away from the body. And have some damn respect for the dead.’ His light remained on Cob’s face.

‘Nice of you to turn up, Detective,’ said Cob. ‘All the big boys have come and gone already.’

Harper scowled and looked down at the corpse. He felt the anger rise in his knotted muscles and flap like a black flag inside his mind, wiping away all other thoughts. An intense concentration formed in his head.

He turned to the officers. ‘All right. Move back. Get out of my way. One of you get across the top on the right and shine a light from that side. Get a move on! Move! Now! You, down on to those rocks.’ He took Hernandez by the shoulder and marched him to the water. ‘Get down on that rock and shine a light for me from there.’

‘I’ll get my shoes and pants wet,’ said Hernandez.

‘Do I look like I care? Go.’

Hernandez looked down at his shiny shoes and pressed pants. His foot stepped down on to the black rock Harper had indicated and he watched his ankle submerge slowly beneath dark freezing water. The other two cops stared at Harper.