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of an elephant above her right buttock, is it?’
    â€˜Perhaps not; but it’s accurate.’
    â€˜Could he be guessing? From press reports, or something – creative thinking?’
    â€˜Just possible. There’s an outside chance that he could be lucky. Some of these nuts like to give detail in the hope that they’ll hit the jackpot. We had a confession letter once that mentioned a tattoo on the victim’s right shoulder.’
    â€˜And she had one.’
    â€˜She did.’
    â€˜And this was the killer.’
    â€˜No, this was a quadriplegic with a voice-activated software programme and a dream of mayhem. The killer was the husband, as we so often find.’
    â€˜Or the wife.’
    â€˜Or the wife. Poor woman.’
    Delaney laughed and moved away to the worktop to open some bag-salad.
    â€˜It’s an identification thing,’ Stella said. ‘He wants us to know that it really was him. Wants us to believe.’
    â€˜Then why doesn’t he turn up in person?’
    â€˜He could. The letter might be one step in a sequence. First step.’
    â€˜Other steps being?’
    â€˜More letters. Phone calls.’
    â€˜Why not just keep quiet about it? Why the need to talk?’
    â€˜It’s a big thing, killing someone. Big thing to keep to yourself.’
    Delaney heard the catch in her voice. Stella had killed a man. She hadn’t meant to, but when he’d attacked her she’d lashed out with a wheel-nut crank and taken him in the neck. He’d been wearing a new pair of sneakers, bright white, and Stella had always thought of him as Nike Man. When the crank had connected, he’d gone down hard and she had been grateful for that, because another man had been closing fast, intent on hurting her badly.
    It was the vagus nerve, she learned later: she wasn’t sure of its function, but its location in the neck, apparently, gave it a direct route to the heart. The incident had taken place on the Harefield Estate, a place where you could get scag, flesh and guns; a place where you could get slammed, knifed and shot. Stella had grown up on the estate, but she was no longer at home there.
    She had hit the first guy, then run from the second. By the time she found out that her attacker had died, Harefield had taken care of its own: the body had been bagged up, shipped out and rendered down. No fuss. Stella had neverreported the incident. Only Delaney knew it had happened.
    In the corner of his eye, he saw her empty her glass and look round for a refill. Bad memories bring on bad habits.
    They ate the chicken and salad, talking, touching hands now and then; afterwards, they went straight to bed: it was still that fresh between them, still that urgent. It wasn’t late, but, after a while, Delaney fell asleep.
    The sounds from the street were yells, sirens, parties relocating, the rev and roll of traffic. Stella dozed, slipping in and out of a dream in which Nike Man waved at her from one of the high, bleak walkways on Harefield. He was saying something, but the wind took his words.
    Phone me, she shouted up to him. Phone me. I need to speak to you.
    Her mobile rang and she picked it up, still carrying the dream in her head. It was Mike Sorley. He said, ‘Robert’s come to visit.’

6
    Robert said his full name was Robert Adrian Kimber. He wasn’t eager to give an address, but he was very eager to tell Stella and Harriman and Sorley exactly how it had felt to kill Valerie Blake. It had felt good. It had felt thrilling. In fact, it had felt so special that he wished he could do it all over again.
    He smiled when he said this and the smile seemed genuine and open. Stella could see how he would be attractive to women: mid thirties, fair hair parted to flop on the side, a longish face but with regular features, green-grey eyes; perhaps the lips were a little too feminine, pink with a slight pout. No one else was in the squad room at that time,