Read The Advent Killer for Free Online Page A

covered her anxiety with a dramatic pause, glancing around at her subordinates. She was a general, impressing on her troops the solemnity of war. As someone who desperately wanted the job into which she was seconded, Hawkins knew the outcome of this case would decide her future, regardless of anything she might previously have done. Usually, when the Met started taking a proverbial kicking for its inability to stop an incumbent perpetrator, someone got fired – or unseconded – pretty damn fast.
    Was there a record for the length of time between a temporarily promoted DCI being given a case, and then being taken off it again? Fifteen days would take some beating.
    She moved on, listing the individuals they most needed to trace, including Gary Ward, the first victim’s less than desirable stepson, currently elusive. Then she doled out initial responsibilities, prioritizing four lines of enquiry: why the killer struck repeatedly at such a specific time on one particular day of the week, the significance of each MO, how and where he had obtained the Taser, and if the victims weren’t connected, how they were being selected.
    She concluded with, ‘Any questions?’
    A couple of uniforms raised issues about overtime rates, but everybody seemed to have received the message about the case itself, so Hawkins thanked everyone fortheir work thus far, made a statement about expecting continuing full commitment from everyone, and left.
    She strode along the corridor, head still full of the case.
    The two earlier murders hadn’t necessarily denoted a regular sequence to come. Deaths on three consecutive Sundays, however, meant this killer, whoever he was, had a plan.
    Regardless of whether it was by design or coincidence, next Sunday was Christmas Day, and the Sunday after that was New Year’s; the two days of the year when most people were off work, all scratching around for a subject they could broach with the in-laws.
    Unless the case was resolved in the next week, Hawkins thought grimly, come Christmas Day it would at least be uniting disparate relatives across the country.
    She reached the end of the corridor, looking back as she turned the corner to see uniforms and analysts exiting the briefing room. Her core team weren’t among them, which meant they were probably waiting for the others to leave so they could discuss the case.
    She knew three of them well enough to imagine how the conversation would go.
    Frank Todd would be first in, with hard Northern censure:
Did you see that? Little Miss Promotion was brickin’ it. Told you she wasn’t up to command.
    Amala Yasir might counter:
You’re too harsh, Frank; the chief’s doing a good job.
    Barclay, still on trainee’s best behaviour, would abstain.
    Which left Connor, the new recruit, as deciding voter. Hawkins was well aware of his significance: somehow she had to keep him out of the
No
camp. But that wasn’tgoing to be easy; plenty of officers had listened to Frank Todd over the years. What really worried her was that he could be right.
    What if she wasn’t up to this?
    In reality, this sort of case was incredibly rare, despite what people might be excused for thinking given the consistency with which Hollywood churned out comparable scenarios.
    Most murder cases not associated with terrorism or war were simple, isolated incidents, the results of overwhelming desperation or rage that usually burned themselves out within moments, leaving the killer either sated or contrite.
    The difference between someone responsible for a crime of passion, and an individual who planned and committed compound homicidal acts over a protracted period, was immense. The latter demanded an almost inhuman state of mind. But it looked increasingly like that was what they were dealing with.

7.
     
    ‘
Antonia, it’s your mother. Tuesday morning. Your father says you’ve requested Christmas vouchers for that business-clothing store again. He’d be devastated if he knew I’d said