Sophie Collins was by far the smallest person she had ever used her paralysing drug on. Matthews had only been able to estimate the correct dose for a child.

Sophie was still fully immobilized and Matthews worked quickly, laying her down on the stainless-steel table and fixing a series of stick-on monitors to her heart and head in order to check her vital signs. The drugs were dangerous in large doses and could easily stop the heart or prevent the lungs from filling up with air. It would be tragic if that were to happen with Sophie, she thought. Where would the fun be in that?

Sophie watched the woman move about in the room, examining various pieces of equipment, occasionally glancing at her. The woman had no idea that she was starting to get feeling back in her legs and arms. She had even been blinking. She waited until the woman had turned her back and was in the furthest part of the room before she slipped off the table, pulling the monitors from her body, and bolted for the door.

She had managed only a few steps when she felt something tighten around her throat. To her shock, she realized she was being choked. She twisted around and saw the woman with a piece of yellow nylon rope in her hand. The rope was knotted; she was tightening it to cut off Sophie’s air supply. The woman’s eyes were penetrating, cold-blooded steel.

Sophie struggled to breathe, pulling at the rope and asking the woman what she was doing. The woman was apparently determined to finish the job: she pulled Sophie down to her knees and increased the pressure against her neck, getting better leverage so the rope could not slip from her grasp. She was strong, but Sophie was fighting for her life; this knowledge gave her a shot of adrenalin that helped her to resist being placed in a more vulnerable position.

Determined to try anything that might help, Sophie kicked her attacker and attempted to ease the pressure of the rope, but this woman seemed to know what she was doing. In addition, she was strong, despite her size. She managed to avoid being thrown off and regained her advantage, never letting go of the rope. Using her full weight, she pulled and pulled.

Sophie did not give up easily. She dragged them both across the floor, trying to find something with which to hit out against this woman, but the rope was doing its work; everything around her started to go black. She passed out.

The girl had proved far more feisty and resourceful than she had imagined. She was truly her mother’s daughter. But Matthews had still managed to prevail. She had never been concerned that the girl might actually escape but she had not been fully prepared for the attempt. However, if anything, the little escapade had added to the general excitement of what was going on that evening. Sophie’s death would be an event like no other. It could eclipse everything that she had done up until now. Even Gilbert, her first. Even O’Neill.

Killing O’Neill had brought her a thrill like nothing she had ever known. She realized it was his very innocence that had proved such a boost to the sensations – the fact that he did not deserve to die.

And what could be more innocent than a child, a little child? Untouched, unsullied by the world. The thrill of taking the life of a child would, she imagined, be the greatest thrill of all. Killing without justification, without reason, without a care in the world. What could be better than that?

26

They knew who the killer was. They knew who her next victim was going to be. They knew in terrible detail exactly how she was going to die. A newly installed countdown clock on the wall of the incident room meant they knew exactly when she was going to die. The one thing they did not yet know was where on earth Jessica Matthews had taken Sophie Collins and just where she was planning to carry out her next murder.

Collins was feeling sick with worry and guilt and grief. The prophetic words of Tony Woods were now ringing in her ears. So far as Matthews was concerned, her campaign of violence had started out for noble reasons, but now, now that she had begun to run out of legitimate targets, she had widened her net. Now, in her eyes, everyone and anyone was guilty of something. No one was safe. Even little Sophie.

At some point in the past Collins and Matthews might have occupied the same moral high ground, but Matthews had since fallen from grace. The simple truth was that she liked killing for the sake of it. There was nothing more to it than that. And now that she had a real taste for it, nothing in the world was going to stop her. The only hope Collins had of getting her daughter back alive was to track her down. And fast. The clock was ticking and Sophie would be dead in less than sixteen hours.

The background research Collins had done showed that at the age of twenty-one Matthews had gained access to a sizeable trust fund, which was now all but depleted. As Matthews had always lived a relatively modest existence, the betting was that she had spent it on property. But where? They were back to looking for a needle in a haystack.

All around her the incident room was buzzing with activity as every last officer attached to the case followed up leads and reviewed case papers in a desperate effort to find a fresh lead.

Part of Collins felt it was wrong to be stuck inside – that she should be out and about, searching for her daughter. But where to start? The truth was, as awkward as it felt, the incident room was the best place for her to be. It was the best place to start looking for her daughter.

She shut her eyes against the increasing level of background noise in the room but immediately opened them again. The image that had burned itself into her mind at the beginning of the inquiry, the first time she had seen Chadwick’s body, had returned with a vengeance.

But the headless, handless body, the gaping hole in its chest, its internal organs ripped out, the marbled flesh clinging to the ribs – now it all belonged to Sophie. Knowing the fate that awaited her and not being there to help was the worst part of it. Her sweet darling little girl was going to be brutalized, reduced to something less than human. Turned from an adorable creature into a shocking carcass.

And then the same thought she had experienced when she first saw the bodies came flooding back to her: that they all looked so much like animal carcasses. And that’s when it hit her.

She opened up a web browser on her computer and typed a few words into a search engine. It took several more attempts, with various combinations of words, before she finally found what she had been looking for.

The video was small and grainy but it took only a few minutes of viewing for Collins to begin to feel that her theory might have some validity. Everything was starting to fall into place; a possibility was slowly beginning to reveal itself.

‘Tony, come here for a minute,’ she called out. ‘I need you to look at something.’

When Woods appeared and perched on the edge of her desk, she ran the video again.

‘What is this?’ asked Woods.

‘Just watch it and tell me if it reminds you of anything.’

The first few seconds were completely black. Then a logo for a well-known animal rights group appeared on the screen. Woods raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Guv …’

‘Just wait, Tony. I really need you to see this.’

The logo faded and the screen was filled with the image of a man, wearing bright yellow dungarees, white Wellington boots, a long white apron and a white hat, walking towards the back of a large, brightly lit room. There was no sound.

The tiles were the colour of sand and the walls seemed to be made of stainless steel. At the back of the room stood a huge metal contraption. The camera followed the man as he moved to one side of this contraption, where the head of a cow stuck out through a hole. He reached to one side and picked up a device that resembled a gun but for the fact it was connected by a flexible metal pipe to a machine on the wall. The man held the barrel of the gun against the forehead of the cow and pulled the trigger. The cow shook visibly.