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filming Adrienne’s vain struggle to free herself from the bonds that kept her firmly in place. Beneath the gag, her muffled cries of fear grew steadily more desperate and her eyes widened and bulged as if the fear in them was a living thing trying to squeeze its way out.
    The cameraman stopped moving and focused in on her face so that it filled the screen entirely with a pleading expression Tina found hard to bear because she knew exactly what was about to happen to this pretty young woman who, until a few hours before this, had lived a generally happy, ordinary life with family and friends who cared for her. Tina had been at the murder scene. She had stood in that bedroom, looking down at the unrecognizable face in a mask of coagulated blood; the thick splatters on the bed linen and the walls; the long smear only just visible on the teak headboard . . .
    The camera panned out and the screen suddenly went black. Tina’s mouth was dry and she was conscious that she was rubbing her hands together with such force that it was almost painful. She needed a drink. More than she’d needed one in ages. A bottle of good Rioja with a couple of vodka chasers. Anything just to forget about all this.
    The screen lit up again, and this time the camera had been placed in a fixed position about three feet away from Adrienne’s head, and slightly above it – most likely on a bedside table. Tina couldn’t remember if Adrienne had had a bedside table or not. Her head swung from side to side, the moans loud beneath the gag. There was music playing in the background. ‘Beautiful Day’ by U2. Only just audible. Tina would never be able to listen to that song again without being reminded of Adrienne Menzies’ bloody murder.
    The hammer came out of nowhere, striking Adrienne full in the face, only the head and the top of the handle visible.
    Tina flinched and turned away. She’d seen some terrible things in her career, including a young woman being shot dead in front of her, but this was somehow worse, because it felt sickeningly voyeuristic, almost as if she was giving the killer her tacit support by watching.
    She could hear the crunching sound of the hammer as it struck Adrienne again and again, but it wasn’t that sound that Tina would remember. It was the rasping, gurgling wail of pain and terror that Adrienne made in time with her tortured but surprisingly deep breathing as she lay dying.
    Tina forced herself to turn back, knowing that it was part of her job to view the evidence. She kept her eyes rigidly on the screen, her world reduced to this laptop and the savagery being played out on it.
    It seemed to last for an interminably long time, although she found out later that the film was only seven minutes and twenty seconds long, and it involved the killer doing other things to his victim, terrible sexual things that she recalled from the autopsy reports. And throughout it all there was not a single glimpse of him, not even a gloved hand at the end of the hammer. Even in the midst of his bloodlust he was being careful and controlled in his actions, and when he’d finished, and what was left of Adrienne Menzies was no longer moving, the camera shut off abruptly. Just like that.
    Tina swallowed hard, and for a number of seconds continued to stare at the blank screen, conscious of how hard and fast her heart was beating – a thought that made her feel ashamed. Beside her, she could hear DCI MacLeod’s laboured breathing. Then he stepped forward and shut the laptop’s lid, as if by doing so he could shut out the horror they’d just witnessed.
    ‘Good God,’ he said quietly. ‘What drives some people?’
    There was no answer to this. All Tina knew for sure was that she’d met far too many of them in her police career, and the crimes they committed never got any easier to handle. More than once in recent months, her parents and brother, still reeling from the fact that she’d killed a man in the line of duty, and even more