Michael White - Equinox

'I was rather hoping you could do that, Mr Cunningham.'

Cunningham looked at the floor for a second and then fixed Monroe with a superior glare. 'Detective? Admiral. .?' He waved a hand in the air.

'Just a DCI, sir. That is, Detective Chief Inspector. . Monroe.'

'Well, DCI Monroe, I take it you have a warrant? The other guy. .'

'Inspector Rogers.'

'Yes, he waved a bit of paper under my nose before stomping all over my place.'

'Oh yes, Mr Cunningham, we do have a warrant. And I'm placing you under arrest. Taylor,' Monroe snapped, turning to the uniform standing over Cunningham. 'Take him in.'

The young man laughed unconvincingly while Monroe read him his rights. 'Terrible mistake you are making. Huge. I assume you know who my father is?'

'Fully aware of the facts, Mr Cunningham. Don't worry yourself about that. I'll be along in ten minutes, Taylor,' Monroe told the constable. 'See that Mr Cunningham is properly looked after.' And he turned back towards the corridor.

Croydon: 29 March, 2 p.m.

Charlie Tucker's funeral was a bleak, rainswept affair, steeped in suburban misery. The service was held in a concrete chapel built in the early 1980s a few miles outside Croydon, south of London. Fewer than a dozen people turned up. They dashed from their cars across the tarmac of the glistening car park with coats over their heads and umbrellas aloft. In the chapel there was a pervading smell of damp clothes mingled with ageing lilies.

For a short time after Charlie's body had been discovered the police had been working on the principle that he had committed suicide. But then CSI evidence from the scene proved conclusively that he could not have fired the weapon. The investigators began a murder inquiry.

Laura and Philip were the last to arrive and sat together at the back, listening in silence to the taped organ music, each submerged in their own thoughts.

Philip had hardly known Charlie. To him he'd been just another face at Oxford, a friend of Laura's. They had met at parties and had had the occasional argument about politics. Philip had been pretty, left-wing, which was more or less de rigueur for students in the 1980s, but Charlie, he recalled, had been rabidly Marxist.

Laura had grown used to the fact that Charlie was dead. Almost a week earlier, when the news had been thrust upon her so viciously, she had been shocked to the core of her being. This wasn't because she had been particularly close to Charlie. But he had been a part of her youth. Perhaps because she had hardly seen him in almost twenty years she still associated him with happy times, with college, freedom, a time just after the end of childhood, a time when, in memory at least, the world seemed to be a more innocent place. Now that he was dead, it felt like a part of herself had been consumed too.

Only later had come the terrible sense of dread that she now felt. The deaths, the slaughter and the violence had started to close in on her. Now Laura could not get it out of her mind that Charlie's death had to be linked in some way with her investigation.

Since returning to Oxford, she and Philip had made precious little progress. They had confirmed that the 1851 murders had been committed on exactly the nights when the relevant heavenly bodies had entered the sign of Cancer and that a five-body planetary conjunction had been expected on 20 July that year. The only difference between those murders and the current ones was that the killers had not started their series of crimes at the vernal equinox because the conjunction of planets had occurred at a quite different time of the year. All this was important, she knew, and it put her theory beyond reasonable doubt. But it still felt as though their search for clues to the identity of today's murderer was running out of steam — and the next killing was scheduled for the following evening, 30 March.

The funeral service was a dismal affair. The sound of a synthesised choir spilling gently from speakers in the ceiling carried the two hymns, and the best anyone in the congregation could muster was a barely audible mumble. As the second hymn petered out, the coffin bearing Charlie's body was lifted carefully by the pall-bearers and carried to a hearse outside. The mourners got up from their pews slowly and drifted towards the doors.

Outside, the hearse pulled away and the group followed, walking past a memorial garden, along a winding lane to an area with fewer graves where the soil had been freshly turned.

Walking back past the chapel, Laura and Philip had almost reached their car when they heard someone running up behind them. Turning, they saw a young woman in a long white dress, slowing to a stop. She looked about twenty-five, short, slim, with dark brown hair falling freely to her waist. She had huge blue eyes, a pixie's face, thin eyebrows and a shapely nose. Laura could see that she had been crying: she wore no make-up but her eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath her eyes looked bruised.

'You're Laura and Philip, yeah?' she asked.

Laura nodded.

'I, I was Charlie's, er, Charlie's girlfriend. My name's Sabrina.' She extended a hand and as she did so she looked around as if to check that no one was watching them. A middle-aged couple from the service walked past, and Sabrina waited until they were out of earshot.

'I was asked to give you this.' And she slipped a small cold metal object into Laura's hand.

It was a key.

'Put it in your pocket,' Sabrina said quietly but firmly.

'Who. .?'

'Charlie, of course. He knew he was in trouble. Please, just listen,' Sabrina whispered. 'Charlie was particularly fond of a biography of Newton. You'll find it in his apartment. Number 2, Chepstow Street, New Cross. You have to go there today. His brother is sorting out his possessions and settling his rent tomorrow morning. The key has a number on it. Now, I have to go. Good luck.' And with that, she turned on her heel and walked swiftly away.

Stunned for a moment, Laura and Philip simply let her go. Then, snapping out of her silence, Laura made as if to go after the girl. But Philip held her back.

'I think we should leave her be.'

Charlie had lived in a tiny two-roomed place in a narrow street off the main road in busy New Cross, South London. It was one of six apartments that made up what had probably once been a rather grand house. Laura and Philip had gone straight from the funeral and parked in Chepstow Street a few doors down from the house. They reached the apartment on the second floor via a dimly lit winding staircase.

The apartment was not as bad as Laura had expected. Charlie had done his best to disguise the crumbling plaster and the general tattiness of the place with a lick of paint and some tasteful framed prints. His furniture was cheap and old. It had probably come with the place when he moved in, but he had invested in a couple of rugs and cushions, which helped a little. The influence of a woman was obvious; Sabrina had smartened things up, Laura thought as she wandered around the main room. There was a rudimentary kitchen at one end and a TV and bookcases at the other. She peered into the small bedroom that led on to a minuscule bathroom. A strong smell of cigarettes and alcohol pervaded the entire apartment.

'God, I feel like we're trespassing,' Laura said quietly.

'Well, I suppose we are.' Philip grinned. 'Gives me the creeps.'

'Oh, come on. Sabrina made it clear that Charlie wanted us to come here. Don't feel guilty. He trusted you.'

'Yeah, and look what happened after he saw me.' Laura sat down heavily in a swivel chair in front of a small desk. On the desk was a computer and beside it a messy pile of papers and an ashtray filled with cigarette ends. 'The Newton biography.' Laura nodded towards a bookcase next to the TV. 'Do you want to try that one? There's another in the bedroom.'