mirror with foam. )erek Armthwaite, his Chief, had the burning blue eyes of i visionary, but there was nothing revolutionary in what hey saw. He was a man who thought the Old Testament i more appropriate handbook for police officers than the 'olice And Criminal Evidence Act. He believed most nodern police methods were not only ineffective but also icretical.
In Derek Armthwaite's frequently aired opinion, wringing back the birch and the cat-o'-nine-tails would bear more effective in reducing crime figures than any lumber of social workers, sociologists and psychologists. f he'd had any idea of what Brandon had planned for that norning, he'd have had him transferred to Traffic, the present-day equivalent of Jonah being swallowed by a whale.
Before his depression could overwhelm his resolve. Bran- ion was startled by a banging on the bathroom door. Dad? " his elder daughter shouted.
"You going to be much onger?"
Brandon snatched up his razor, dunked it in the basin and scraped it down one cheek before replying.
"Five ninutes, Karen," he called.
"Sorry, love." In a house with hree teenagers and only one bathroom, there was seldom nuch opportunity for brooding.
Z;arol Jordan dumped her half-drunk coffee on the side of he washbasin and stumbled into the shower, nearly trip- )ing headlong over the black cat that wound himself round her ankles.
"In a minute.
Nelson," she muttered as she closed he door on his interrogative miaow.
"And don't waken vlichael."
Carol had imagined that promotion to detective in spec- or and the concomitant departure from the shift rota would have granted her the regular eight hours' sleep a night that had been her constant craving since the first week she joined the force, just her luck that the promotion had coincided with what her team were privately calling the Queer Killings. However much Superintendent Torn Cross might bluster to the press and in the squad room that there were no forensic connections between the killings, and nothing to suggest the presence of a serial killer in Bradfield, the murder teams thought differently.
As the hot water cascaded over Carol, turning her blonde hair mouse, she thought, not for the first time, that Cross's attitude, like that of the Chief Constable, served his prejudices rather than the community. The longer he denied that there was a serial killer attacking men whose respectable facade hid a secret gay life, the more gay men would die. If you couldn't get them off the streets any longer by arresting them, let a killer remove them. It didn't much matter whether he did it by murder or by fear.
It was a policy that made a nonsense of all the hours she and her colleagues were putting in on the investigation. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money that these enquiries were costing, particularly since Cross insisted each killing be treated as an entirely separate entity. Every time one of the three teams came up with some detail that seemed to link the killings, Torn Cross dismissed it with five points of dissimilarity.
It didn't matter that each time the links were different and the dissimilarities the same tired quintet. Cross was the boss. And the DCI had opted out of the strife completely, taking sick leave with his opportunistic bad back.
Carol rubbed the shampoo to a rich lather and felt herself gradually wake under the warm spray. Well, her corner of the investigation wasn't going to run aground on the rock of Popeye Cross's bigoted prejudice. Even if some of her junior officers were inclined to grasp at the boss's tunnel vision as an excuse for their own uninspired investigations, she wasn't going to stand for anything less than one him dred per cent committed action, and in the right direction. She'd worked her socks off for the best part of nine years, first to get a good degree and then to justify her place on the promotion fast track. She didn't intend her career to hit the buffers just because she'd made the mistake of opting for a force run by Neanderthals.
Her mind made up, Carol stepped out of the shower, shoulders straight, a defiant glint in her green eyes.
"Come on. Nelson," she said, shrugging into her dressing gown and scooping up the muscular bundle of black fur.
"Let's hit the red meat, boy."
Tony studied the overhead projection on the screen behind him for a final five seconds. Since the majority of his audience had expressed their lack of commitment to his lecture by pointedly not taking notes, he wanted at