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someone over to Clapham to get all the details they have on the Melissa case. While we wait for anything to come in from the lab, we start work.’
    He pinned up Melissa Stephens’s photograph. Then he picked up a black marker-pen and ringed the number ‘7′ twice.
    ‘We know she left her boyfriend at half past eleven and headed towards Oxford Circus tube station.’
    Langton instructed his team to cover every route from Covent Garden to Oxford Circus. They were to hound the strip-club joints; often they were kitted out with hidden cameras for their own security.
    ‘Check out any CCTV footage used in clubs, pubs, car parks, in all the various routes. Get what you can. After four weeks, I suspect most of it will have been destroyed. I want to know the exact route Melissa Stephens walked that night. A witness has come forward, a waiter. He was sure he saw Melissa talking to someone in a car, the make he can’t remember, or the colour — in fact he can’t even be sure it was her - but I want that tape of the reconstruction, I want that driver, I want that car. Because -’ Langton gestured to his wall of death - ‘we have a serial killer. I am hoping to Christ that Melissa’s death was his first and last big mistake. Let’s get moving.’
    While the officers grouped to divide up the orders, Anna remained sitting at her desk, feeling like a spare part. No one had acknowledged her, or spoken to her yet. As the room thinned out, she stood up and approached Langton.
    ‘Am I still attached to the case, sir?’
    For a moment Langton looked as if he couldn’t recall who she was, then he tapped his desk with his finger. ‘Go out with DS Lewis, he’s picking up the TV reconstruction.’
    ‘I think he’s already gone,’ she said, looking around nervously.
    ‘Then stay with me. I’ve asked for Melissa’s boyfriend to be brought in. You can come to the interview. You had lunch?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Go and get some in the canteen. Be back at quarter past one.’
    ‘Thank you.’ She headed back to her desk, then turned. ‘I didn’t think forensic had brought in a report yet. Did we get evidence in last night that tied Melissa to our case?’
    Langton gave her a strange, cold stare. ‘No.’
    Anna couldn’t hold his piercing gaze; she went to her desk, where she didn’t look up, afraid she might find he was still glaring. She walked over to the filing cabinets to replace the Kathleen Keegan file. She was certain he was watching her, which turned her cheeks vermilion red. It made her angry, to feel so inadequate. She couldn’t wait to get out of the incident room.
    The canteen on the top floor was small in comparison to the Met stations she’d worked in before. Almost every table in the room had been taken.
    Balancing a tray in one hand and her briefcase in the other, she headed towards the far side of the canteen, where some uniformed officers were leaving a table. She pushed the dirty plates aside and opened her yogurt, turning her back unintentionally on the next table where DCI Hedges and two of his team were sitting.
    ‘All I am saying is, who the fuck does he think he is?’ DCI Hedges continued loudly. ‘That was my case. You tell me how he gets away with saying his six victims, his six ancient hookers, have the same MO? It’s bullshit and he’s the biggest fucking bullshitter I’ve ever come across!’
    Anna half turned, in time to see DCI Hedges jabbing his fish and chips with his fork. ‘No fucking way. So her hands were tied? So fucking what? He didn’t have any forensic evidence, no postmortem report, and he gets the full fucking Monty and we are left out of it, like pricks. No way are his old tarts connected to the murder of that little girl. It’s bullshit. Unless he is getting it across with the commander. She was on his side before we even started!’
    There was the clatter of their cutlery during a pause while they ate their lunch, but soon Hedges was at it again. ‘He’s going to get all the