Read The Advent Killer for Free Online

Opposite them, the analyst contingent consisted of six equally uninterested parties, perhaps in attendance only because it was their goal to suffuse every room in the building with the aroma of over-brewed coffee. Arriving in the remaining space were the three supplementary detective constables that Hawkins had been promised for the middle of last week.
    While the initial four days of lateness probably wasn’t their fault, Hawkins decided, the last six minutes of insouciance would cost them.
    ‘Right.’ She stood, talking loudly to subdue the mouthy uniform at the back. ‘I’ll open by welcoming anyone who isn’t familiar with this ritual I like to call the eight-thirty briefing. The clue’s in the name: a briefing given by me, to you, at eight thirty in the morning. Not eight thirty-one, not eight thirty-six, not bloody lunchtime, understood?’
    Silence.
    ‘Good.’ She waited a beat and then said, ‘Welcome to the new faces on the team. It’s good to have you here, and I know the others will be glad to get you up to speed as soon as possible.’ She smiled briefly at the nods of appreciation around the room, then got down to work.
    Hawkins moved around the desk to the whiteboard, where several pictures of the latest victim now flanked those of the previous two. ‘Thanks to the discovery of Jessica Anderton’s body, Operation Charter is already the biggest real-time serial homicide investigation since Sutcliffe. And it’s about to get bigger.’
    She explained the three murders, marking the scenes on a large map she’d had printed for the purpose, also adding the victims’ previous addresses and places of work. But the resulting configuration only reinforced the apparent lack of connection between them. They hadn’t worked, lived or even shopped in the same locations. Normally after three killings of this type, some sort of pattern would become obvious. Here, so far, there was none. Even the latest geo-mapping software, which compared and analysed people’s movements over specified periods, looking for event ‘hotspots’, hadn’t produced anything so far.
    Hawkins emphasized that, up to that point, they hadreleased to the media only the most basic details regarding the attacks. The press office had actively played down speculation that the two previous deaths were linked, and no information had been published about the horrific state in which the killer had left the second body.
    All that the outside world had known until that morning was that two women had been killed in London at similar times on consecutive Sunday mornings. But, true to form, the papers had made the most of even these scant facts: the past seven days’ press had been full of speculation about whether a third successive Sunday would yield a third successive victim.
    And now it had.
    Which blew a dirty big hole through what was left of the ‘freak incident’ hypothesis.
    Add the fact that the latest body also happened to belong to prominent politician’s wife and ex-model Jessica Anderton, and the story suddenly became
big
news.
    Once the relentless media machine released her name, Hawkins told the room, all of effing hell was going to break loose. From then on, the killer’s notoriety was assured: the remainder of Operation Charter would be conducted in full public view.
    Of course, those who lived near the victims needed no such encouragement. Jessica had been the focus of local gossip long before she was murdered, and even though her neighbours held wildly differing opinions of her personality, several had confirmed one thing: a young, Mediterranean-looking man had been seen leaving the Anderton residence on Sunday morning; a matter of hours after Jessica was murdered.
    Add in the fact that none of the witnesses knew who he was, and the fact that he still hadn’t come forward, he became the closest thing they had to a suspect. Even if he wasn’t the killer, he had to know
something
. Now it was just a case of finding him.
    She