‘Was he married?’

Again the question took Collins by surprise. ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

Miller’s eyes flicked upwards and to the left before she spoke. Collins spotted it right away and knew that whatever was said next would be a lie. ‘I just wonder how his wife is coping,’ said Miller. ‘I mean, this is something you never really think you’ll have to go through. Losing someone like that. I don’t know anyone else who it’s happened to.’

Collins could sense that a part of Miller was desperate to open up, to get things off her chest. She moved towards her and placed a reassuring hand on her arm to encourage her to go on, hoping she would eventually reveal the truth.

‘What I can’t work out is how I’m supposed to feel,’ Miller continued. ‘What I’m supposed to feel. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. I don’t think I feel sad enough; I don’t think I feel enough grief. To be honest, I just feel relieved.’

Collins nodded. ‘Sometimes it takes a little while to sink in. It’s the shock. You’ve been in limbo for a long time, and now that’s over a kind of relief is quite natural. We have some very good family liaison officers and victim support can be –’

‘No, it’s not that,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s that I don’t feel any guilt, I don’t feel any sadness.’ She looked at Collins, her face deadly serious. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

Collins held her stare for a few moments, silently urging her to continue.

Miller nodded wearily. ‘In the end I couldn’t take it any more. The lack of intimacy. He wouldn’t even so much as hold my hand, let alone kiss me or make love to me. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone that you love lying just a few inches away from you in bed night after night and knowing that they don’t have even the slightest interest in you?

‘I’d actually been to see a couple of solicitors about getting a divorce, but I don’t think Edward would have consented. He wasn’t interested in me as a wife, but it suited him socially to be able to say that he was married.’

Collins understood instantly. There were countless married men she had come across over the years who were habitually unfaithful but had no intention of ending their marriages. They went from one fling to another – usually with younger, easily manipulated women – but would never allow any relationship to get serious. The fact that they had a wife at home who would take them to the cleaners in the event of a divorce was always the perfect excuse. The affair would continue until the other woman finally accepted she was on a hiding to nothing and walked away. The man would then move on to his next victim. He would, in essence, have the best of both worlds.

‘Was he seeing someone else?’

‘He was always on the lookout. I wasn’t his type any more.’

‘You told my colleague that you thought he was trying to replace you with a younger model.’

Miller snorted with laughter. ‘He was trying to. Bars, clubs, lonely hearts. Even those contact magazines.’

Collins sat back and took a good look at Sandra Miller. Although her hair was in need of a wash and she was dressed shabbily and seemed tired, her skin was like porcelain. Her hands were also flawless and wrinkle-free. She was slim, toned and petite. Scrubbed up, Collins reckoned she could easily pass for a student.

‘You’re not exactly old yourself.’

‘Too old for him,’ she said quietly.

‘How old is that?’

‘I’m thirty-two.’

Collins frowned as she did the calculation in her head. Miller guessed what she was up to and gave her the answer she was searching for. ‘We got married just after my eighteenth birthday. He was thirty-two.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘My mother was horrified.’

‘That’s quite some age gap.’

Miller suddenly sat forward. ‘When we first got married, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We had some amazing times back then.’

‘So you think Edward wanted to re-create those early days by finding himself a younger woman, someone who reminded him of the way you used to be when he first met you?’

Miller began shaking her head furiously. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. I always looked very young for my age. Always. Up until three years ago I still had to show ID before I could get served in the pub. People who didn’t know us, they thought I was his daughter. That’s how young I looked. And he loved it. He absolutely loved it. That was the point. The whole point. I was so naive back then that I couldn’t see it myself, not for years and years. You see, he never wanted to be with a woman. He wanted to be with a girl. A little girl.’

8

DCI Anderson felt as though his whole investigation had arrived at a fork in the road and that he had absolutely no idea which way to turn.

Within the Metropolitan Police there was always great reluctance to label any murder the work of a serial killer until it was absolutely necessary. Most serial killers went after a particular social group – prostitutes, the homeless and so on. In cases where there seemed to be no link between the victims, news of a potential killer on the loose would do nothing but spread panic.

There was also the issue of feeding the fantasy of the killer. Many such psychopaths were known to get a thrill from seeing details of their handiwork reported in the press or on television. The oxygen of publicity could easily encourage the murderer to strike again.

On the other hand, failing to warn the public of the potential threat could lead to complaints and even legal action. All it would take was for the family of one victim to claim that he or she would never have left their house on that fateful night had a proper warning been issued. Then there would be more than enough shit flying around to ensure some of it would stick to everyone involved in the case.

Anderson needed to know exactly what he was dealing with, and that meant talking to an expert. A profiler. Michelle Rivers, the usual first choice for many senior MIT officers, was on secondment in America, so instead he had asked Dr Jacques Bernard, a Canadian professor of forensic psychology who was teaching at King’s College, to come in. The professor had been highly recommended by officers in both the UK and US who had used him in the past.

Rather than briefing the whole team, Anderson decided it would be better for him to first have a quiet word with Dr Bernard in order to help him decide on his next move. Tall and distinguished looking with dark brown hair flecked with grey at the temples and a heavy moustache, Dr Bernard looked more like a film star than a university professor. All female eyes in the room drank in his features as he made his way across the office floor. As the guest made himself comfortable in the corner of the DCI’s office, Anderson gave strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed for the foreseeable future.

‘Well,’ said Anderson as he sat behind his desk opposite Dr Bernard. ‘What do you think?’

‘I can honestly say I have never seen anything like this before in my life,’ he said, his accent a perfect blend of Canadian French and English. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the copies of the files that Anderson had sent him earlier in the day. ‘There have been cases before where several mutilated bodies have turned up at one time, particularly when it comes to battles between rival gangs of bikers back home. But this, this is different. What you have here is not just someone who wants recognition for their work, but someone who wants to be identified as a leading serial killer right from the word go. As I’m sure you already know, the classic FBI definition of a serial killer is a person who kills at least three times with a cooling-off period in between murders.

‘The reality is that most of the time serial killers can get away with what they do because we don’t even know they are out there. You have three bodies from three different time periods. Had the killer not dumped them in plain view, it’s unlikely that anyone would ever have known for sure that they had been killed.’