Simon Kernick - Deadline

The SOCO nearest to Bolt, who was kneeling down beside the body taking photographs, heard the question and looked up.

'Looks like a single stab wound to the heart,' he said, his voice muffled by his face mask. 'No other obvious injuries on her.'

He gently lifted her right arm with his free hand and touched a thin tear in her T-shirt at roughly the level of her third and fourth ribs. A small dark patch on the T-shirt, not much bigger than two fifty-pence pieces, marked the spot. The fact that there was so little blood, either on the body or anywhere else in the room, suggested to Bolt that she'd died quickly.

'How was she found?' he asked.

'Like this,' answered the SOCO, 'but with the duvet covering her.'

'It's an unusual position to be in for someone who's just been stabbed. I'd have thought she'd be more sprawled out.'

'It looks like she was stabbed, then placed in this position almost immediately. You can see from the lividity that this is where she's been lying most of the time since death.' He pointed to her underside which was darker than the rest of the body where the blood had slowly collected there.

Bolt nodded, and looked around the room. There were no signs of a struggle. The two lamps on either side of the bed were still upright, as were the handful of framed photos and the pot plant on the chest of drawers against one wall. Bolt didn't look at the photos. He didn't want to see what Marie Aniewicz had been like in life.

'Looks like a professional job,' he said when he and Mo were back outside on the pavement, breathing in the comparatively fresh air, glad to be out of the stifling tomb that was the young cleaner's bedroom.

'No one heard a thing, and there's no sign of forced entry, either to the house itself or her bedsit. And it's been difficult to get hold of witnesses. The other ground-floor bedsit's empty, and the rest of the people in the house are apparently illegals, so they've made themselves scarce. The local cops got an anonymous call reporting a nasty smell coming from her room about six o'clock this evening.'

'Does Barry know? And Tina?'

'I got hold of Barry, and he told me to get you down here. He's at some charity function tonight. He wants a full update in the meeting tomorrow morning. I couldn't get hold of Tina. She left before I found out about this, and now she's not answering her phone.'

Bolt exhaled air through his nostrils. 'This puts a whole new perspective on things, doesn't it?'

'Well, there's no way it's unconnected. We haven't got an exact time of death yet, but according to the doctor who examined the body she's been dead somewhere between three and five days. About the time of the kidnapping.'

'There's only one motive for killing the cleaner, then: they found out the alarm code from her and got access to Andrea's house. Which is how they would have placed the trip switch on the front door and found out what Emma was planning on Tuesday. So it's not an inside job.'

'And Phelan's probably not involved.'

'Almost certainly not. Killing the cleaner was a risk. You'd only do that if you had to.'

'So, either they've got Phelan as well as Emma…'

'Or he's dead.' Bolt thought of Andrea, wondered how much more bad news she could take. 'They've already killed two people that we know about. There's no reason why they won't have made it three.' Or four, whispered an uninvited voice at the back of Bolt's mind. The fact that the kidnappers could plan to murder a cleaner just to get access to a house meant that it was highly unlikely they'd lose too much sleep over the prospect of killing Emma.

Bolt wiped a hand across his brow. The night was unseasonably warm for September, and he was conscious that he was sweating again.

'These guys really mean business, Mo. '

Mo nodded slowly, his dark eyes full of sympathy. 'I know. But as you've said, they took a risk killing the cleaner. Someone somewhere might have seen something. Sooner or later they're going to make a mistake. Remember that, boss. No one's luck lasts for ever.'

It was close to midnight by the time Bolt walked through his apartment door for the second time that day. He and Mo had stayed at the crime scene for a further half an hour to talk to the senior investigating officer from Tufnell Park CID. They shared what information they could, but were deliberately vague about most of it because of the secrecy of their own op. Bolt had been apologetic about this but it hadn't prevented the senior investigating officer from getting seriously pissed off and threatening to talk to the head of SOCA to get further details if he had to.

After saying his goodbyes to Mo, he'd found a taxi on Junction Road to take him home. On the way back he'd tried Tina's number to bring her up to date with developments but again she wasn't answering, and he decided to leave speaking to her until the morning. He hoped she hadn't suffered any ill effects from her earlier ordeal, and it struck him that maybe he should have done more to check she was OK. At the Glasshouse earlier she'd been quieter than usual, and they'd hardly had a chance to speak. But Tina was a tough cookie. She'd be all right. And at the moment he had enough on his plate without worrying about her.

The first thing he did when he got back inside the apartment was gulp down a large glass of water in an effort to rehydrate himself and get the taste of stale beer off his breath. The remainder of his glass of red wine was on the kitchen top and he was tempted to finish it off, but quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, he threw off his clothes and jumped in the shower, trying hard to relax himself. He was still tense but less so than he had been, even given what he'd just seen. Perhaps he was simply getting more used to it.

It occurred to him as he towelled himself dry that this had possibly been the worst day of his life, and there'd certainly been a fair share of contenders for that accolade over the years. Mainly because it had been so totally and utterly unexpected, and he'd had so little time to react to the speed and ferocity of events as they'd buffeted him again and again.

He was also aware that tomorrow could turn out to be even worse.

Bolt tossed and turned all night, his sleep a series of fitful dozes. In those rare times when he did go under, the dreams came, unwelcome and unnerving. In one of them he and Mikaela were living in Andrea's house with two young children of their own. But the children were nameless, faceless wraiths. He wasn't even sure if they were boys or girls, only that he loved them with an intensity he didn't realize he was capable of. Yet every time he went to hold one of them, they would float out of his grip, leaving him feeling progressively more angry and frustrated. He tried to talk about this to Mikaela but she didn't seem to understand. 'They're our children,' was all she said, and she was smiling as she spoke, because Mikaela had always wanted children. It was he who hadn't…

Some time later, in the grey time before dawn, he'd found himself slipping into another dream, this one far clearer and more violent. He was back at the Lewisham robbery – the gunfight that in reality had lasted a matter of seconds, but which had remained etched on his mind for ever. Only this time the robbers were unarmed. They were standing in a line and trying to surrender, hands in the air, their balaclavas removed, all but one of their faces blurred. The one Bolt could see properly was Dean Hayes, a scraggy-faced youth with a hook nose that had been broken more than once, and dyed blond hair. His eyes were wide with fear and he was trying to say something. But in the dream, Bolt was filled with a ferocious rage. These were the bastards responsible for kidnapping his daughter – all of them. The rage made the gun quiver and twitch in his hands, but that didn't stop him from opening fire, the shock of the retorts echoing in his head. Dean Hayes bucked crazily as he was hit repeatedly, until finally he fell sprawling to the pavement. Then Bolt moved the gun in a slow, careful arc, pulling the trigger again and again, experiencing a burst of elation as one after another they went down, hardly hearing the shouts of his colleagues as they tried to get him to stop shooting.