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eighteen months in Winchester for handling stolen property. We also know you’re on
the game, so the chances are that the animal responsible was one of your customers. Now, we’re not interested in how you make your money. We’re only interested in stopping this bastard
doing the same thing to some other poor girl. Will you help us?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘But he could kill next time. Do you want that on your conscience? All we need is a description.’
    A faint laugh croaked in her throat. ‘Do me a favour, love.’
    ‘You’ve got two fractured cheekbones, severe bruising of the throat and larynx, a dislocated wrist, and internal bleeding from having a hairbrush rammed up your back
passage,’ said the policewoman brutally. ‘You’re lucky to be alive. The next woman he attacks may not be so lucky.’
    ‘Too right. It’ll be yours bloody truly if I open my mouth. He swore he’d come back.’ She closed her eyes. ‘The hospital shouldn’t have called
you. I never gave them leave, and I’m not pressing no charges.’
    ‘Will you think about it at least?’
    ‘No point. You’ll never pin it on him and I’m not running scared for the rest of my life.’
    ‘Why won’t we pin it on him?’
    She gave another croak of laughter. ‘Because it’ll be my word against his, love, and I’m a fat old slag and he’s little Lord Fauntleroy.’
    Thursday, 23 June, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 3.30 a.m.
    As he did every night at about this time, the security guard emerged from the front door of the Nightingale Clinic and strolled towards a bench on the moonlit lawn. It was a little
treat he gave himself halfway through his shift, a quiet smoke away from the nagging lectures of the nursing staff. He wiped the seat with a large handkerchief then lowered himself with a sigh of
contentment. As he fished his cigarettes from his jacket pocket he had the distinct impression that someone was behind him. Startled, he glanced round, then lumbered awkwardly to his feet and went
to investigate the trees bordering the driveway. There was no one there, but he couldn’t rid himself of a sense that he was being watched.
    He was a phlegmatic man, and put the experience down to the cheese he’d eaten at supper. As his wife always said: Too much cheese isn’t good for anyone. But he
didn’t linger over his smoke that night.

    Jane Kingsley was floating in dark water, eyes open, straining for the sunlight that dappled the surface above her. She wanted to swim, but the desire was all in her mind and she
was too weary to make it happen. A terrible hand was upon her, pulling her down to the weeds below – insistent, persuasive, compelling – she opened her mouth to let death in . . .
    She burst out of sleep in a threshing frenzy, sweat pouring down her back. She was drowning . . . Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus, somebody help her! The moon beamed through a gap in
her curtains, lighting a path through the room. Where was she? She didn’t know this place. She stared in terror from one dark shadow to the other until she saw the lilies beside her,
gleaming white and pure against the black of the carnations. Memory returned. Jane was her mother . . . she was Jinx . . . Jane was her mother . . . she was Jinx . . .
    With shaking fingers, she switched on her bedside light and looked on things she recognized. The door to the bathroom, television in the corner, mirror against the wall, armchair,
flowers – but it was a long time before the thudding of her heart slowed. She slid slowly down between the sheets again, as rigid and as wide-eyed as a painted wooden doll, and tried to stem
the fear that grew inside her. But it was a vain attempt because she couldn’t put a name to what she was afraid of.
    Two miles away, in another hospital bed, her terror had its haunting echo in the battered face of a prostitute who had supped with the devil.



 

    Chapter Five
    Thursday, 23 June, Canning Road Police Station, Salisbury – 9.00