Michael White - Equinox

'Near the house, close to where the punt had been moored.' Langham handed Monroe some black-and-white prints of the impression just discernible in the mud. As Monroe studied them, Langham walked around the table to a workbench. The pressed-steel top was spotless. On the surface and against the wall stood a row of machines, all digital displays and clean plastic lines. In front of these were two Petri dishes.

'We found these inside the print.' Langham plucked a fragment from the dish with a pair of tweezers. 'Leather, high-quality, new'

'And what's this?'

Langham picked up a similar-sized piece of green material from the other dish. 'Plastic. A variant on polypropylene, to be precise. But this is top-end stuff too, an expensive cross-polymer, extremely lightweight but very strong.'

'And it was in the print?'

Langham nodded. 'And in microscopic quantities along a trail leading from the first-floor bedroom in the house to the mooring at the back of the ground floor.'

'Can you get anything more on this plastic? How special is it?' Monroe asked.

'Unfortunately, it's not that unusual, and there're no markings on the fragments we've found so far. A nice piece an inch square with a manufacturer's mark on it would be good.'

'Yeah, and your wife's going to beg you for sex tonight.'

Langham laughed and took a step back to the first Petri dish. 'We may have more luck with this. You won't find too many handmade shoes using this type of leather in Woolworths.'

Monroe took the tweezers and lifted the scrap of leather up to the light. It looked completely unremarkable, a brown sliver no more than a couple of millimetres long.

'I'll check out the database and send someone round the cobblers in town. You reckon these shoes are new?'

'This leather is and the print is remarkably clean. It's possible that the shoes were recently resoled, I suppose.'

Monroe handed the tweezers back to Langham. 'Let's not get our hopes up about this. And. . keep it quiet for the moment, OK?' He strode past him back to the door. 'Good work, Mark,' he said without turning round.

The Acolyte had waited patiently in the car for almost six hours, rarely taking his gaze from the terraced house at 268 Princes Street. He had watched as those who lived there and their friends came and went. At 6.04 p.m. the two students who shared the house with Samantha's boyfriend, Simon Welding, arrived. They were followed twenty-seven minutes later by two girls, third-year Oxford Brookes University students Kim Rivedon and Claudia Meacher. They all stayed in the house for a further twenty-one minutes and all four left together at 6.52. The Acolyte knew from his surveillance and from his contacts that the two students who lived with Simon Welding at number 268, Dan Smith and Evelyn Rose, and the two girls were not expected home until at least eleven. Simon Welding pulled up outside the house in his battered ten-year-old Mazda at 7.32 p.m. He would not leave the house alive.

At two minutes before nine, the Acolyte stepped — out of the car. He was wearing plastic covers over his shoes and in his left hand he carried a featureless metal box. It had sturdy latches at the front and it was twelve inches long, ten wide and ten deep, a temperature-controlled organ-carrier, one of five that he had commissioned, each made to his personal specifications by a specialist in Austria. In his right hand he carried a small black plastic bag, its zip fastened and locked. He looked each way along the street. At the far end of the street stood a noisy pub, and running perpendicular to Princes Street was the busy Cowley Road, a main artery into the city from the east and London. These features were hidden from view by a bend in the road, making this end quieter and darker. He entered the garden through the wooden gate and moved quickly to the side entrance that led to a passage running along the side of the house and on to the rear garden.

It was very dark in the narrow passage; clouds were obscuring the moon and the steely glow from the nearest street lights made little impact here. Two-thirds of the way along, the Acolyte stopped. He was hidden from the street. He put the box and the bag on the ground, unlocked and opened the zipper of the bag and carefully removed a clear plastic over-suit, gloves, a perspex visor and a hood from inside. With great care he pulled on the suit and pressed together Velcro fasteners around his neck, wrists, ankles and waist so that every inch of his body was covered. He checked his watch through the plastic. It was 9.04.

At the back of the house the garden was unkempt and overgrown. The Acolyte stepped carefully, silently towards the door of the kitchen that led directly from the garden. He stopped there to listen for any sounds from inside the house. He could hear nothing except distant strains of music that seemed to be coming from upstairs.

He moved through the kitchen and into the hall and took the stairs with slow, deliberate steps. All his senses were heightened — he was ready for anything. After reaching the landing he checked each of the rooms to make sure he was alone with his prey and then he moved towards the front bedroom. He could make out the music now — the Allegro of Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, one of his favourites. At the door he stood listening for any human sounds over the music. He could just detect heavy breathing, the occasional moan. Easing the door open, he could see into the room.

Samantha was on top, her back arched, face to the ceiling. Simon, his hands at her small firm breasts, was gazing at her expression of ecstasy. The Acolyte shivered almost imperceptibly, feeling a wash of emotions — jealousy, disgust, fascination. Together they produced a rush of sexual energy that shivered down his spine. He felt himself stiffen. Then, knowing he could not wait a moment longer, he lowered the metal case to the floor, removed a scalpel from his pocket, unsheathed it and took three rapid steps forward, reaching the end of the bed before either Simon or Samantha were aware of his existence.

In one deft movement, he pulled Samantha's head back and slit her throat with a single slash of his scalpel. He cut through her jugular, sending blood spouting across the room, before pushing the blade down further, slicing her larynx muscles. The emerging scream was silenced immediately and the girl fell to the floor clutching her throat, blood gushing between her fingers. She looked up at the Acolyte, her eyes huge, trying unsuccessfully to understand.

Simon was paralysed by shock and the Acolyte took advantage of the second or two this gave him. He slashed at the young man's throat with such force that he almost decapitated him, cutting through his neck from ear to ear. Blood hit the Acolyte's visor and he wiped it away. Simon Welding's body convulsed and dark blood spewed from his mouth, covering his face in a red liquid mask.

Leaving him to writhe on the soaked sheets, the Acolyte leaped from the bed and crouched down beside Samantha. She was still alive. The Acolyte could not spare a second. He placed a hand on her forehead and another under her neck, and with a single twist he snapped her spine between her top two vertebrae, C-l and C-2. She went limp instantly.

He retrieved the metal carrier and placed it at his side. Then he rolled Samantha onto her front. In two simple movements he opened her body, making nine-inch incisions either side of her spine. Pulling apart the flesh, he could see her ribcage. Removing a battery-powered surgical saw from a zippered pouch in his plastic suit, he cut through the bones in seconds. Prising apart the ribs, he then used his scalpel to carefully sever the vessels and tubes leading to the left and right kidneys.

Opening the organ transporter, the Acolyte felt the cold on his hands. He could see the freezing air spill over the sides of the box. He heard a loud gurgling sound from the bed and then silence as Simon Welding shuddered and died.