About the Book
On the streets of England a hunter is on the loose.
‘There is a connection, Jack. Find it, or you’ll never find him.’
Police are baffled by several deaths, each unique and bizarre in their own way – and shockingly brutal. Scotland Yard sends in its crack DCI, the enigmatic Jack Hawksworth, who wastes no time in setting up Operation Mirror. His chief wants him to dismiss any plausibility of a serial killer before the media gets on the trail.
With his best investigative team around him, Jack resorts to some unconventional methods to disprove or find a link between the gruesome deaths. One involves a notorious serial killer from his past, and the other, a smart and seductive young journalist who’ll do anything to catch her big break.
Discovering he’s following the footsteps of a vigilante and in a race against time, Jack will do everything it takes to stop another killing – but at what personal cost for those he holds nearest and dearest?
By the bestselling author of Bye Bye Baby and Beautiful Death comes this heart-stopping new thriller that questions whether one life is worth more than another.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Books by Fiona McIntosh
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
For Nigelle-Ann Blaser, Lesley Thomas and a host of other lovely readers who never gave up hope over the last decade that DCI Jack Hawksworth would return in a new story.
This one’s for you.
PROLOGUE
BRISTOL, APRIL 1992
Colin looked at the four girls in his life: all beauties, in his opinion, from his 48-year-old wife to the sixteen-month-olds in the twin pushchair. Each of them shared a golden-headed colouring but his daughter, mother to the twins, was the prettiest of all and had a reddish quality to her hair that in the right light looked like a bronzed rose. This was his only child and she had made him proud from the first squishy kiss she’d planted on her daddy’s lips. A spirited child and independent from an early age, she’d impressed him with her decisive manner, taking responsibility for all her decisions, good or indifferent.
Her choice of husband – a slightly rumpled and distracted university lecturer, a decade her senior – had not been who he’d imagined would catch her heart, but he’d proven himself to be not only faithful for the years of their marriage but loving, too. Colin could wish no more for her in her private life. Professionally, he had hoped she would take all that bright intelligence from her double degree and pour it into a career that might reach the highest echelons. But she’d chosen a quieter, less visible life of motherhood, redirecting her interest in medicine into a Master of Psychology. Now she counselled battered women from violent homes and marriages. She hadn’t let him down; in fact, she was making him prouder, being one of those silent achievers who didn’t go for glory, status or money, but served her community diligently . . . and made a difference to people’s lives.
Colin felt blessed by the quartet of females who orbited him. His every waking moment was about them: providing for them, looking after them, offering advice and being the main male in their lives. His daughter was back from the brink of despair at losing the professor to an aggressive cancer, which had taken him to his grave within six months of them learning of its existence. It would be a blow for anyone, but being left behind with twin one-year-olds was daunting, even for his capable child.
He’d suggested she come to live with them for a while, but the offer had fallen on deaf ears. She’d smiled and reassured him that learning to go it alone was the way forward, and would set her girls up to be strong and independent too. She promised to visit often and would consider moving back up to London to be closer to them.
On that wintry day those four sunny smiles appeared all the more vivid for the moody sky, bare trees and threat of rain. They asked him to come but he had some work to get done. All rugged up with beanies and scarves and quilted coats, they looked like a roly-poly gang and he felt touched by the way they all turned to wave from the gate. His emotions swelled and he realised these were moments to cherish, not to avoid due to work commitments. To hell with those, he thought, in an uncharacteristic moment of selfishness.
‘Hang on, everyone. I think I will come,’ he said, laughing at the exaggerated sigh of his wife.
‘I told you,’ he heard her say to their daughter.
‘Oh, Dad! Hurry up,’ she said, laughing. ‘We want to beat the rain.’
He listened with a smile as his wife distracted the babies, singing about Incy-Wincy Spider and the rains coming down . . . the same rhyme they’d sung to their daughter. That time really didn’t feel that long ago. He struggled to pull on his wellies, muttering for his family to be patient as they yelled from the gate. Finally he stepped out, equally rugged up, into the wintry early evening for a stroll to tire the girls out so they’d sleep well tonight.
His wife linked her arm with his. ‘I love this smell just before the rain.’
‘Petrichor,’ he remarked.
His daughter cut him a wry glance. ‘Hear that, girls?’ she teased. ‘Grandpa tells us this smell of impending rain is called petrichor.’
‘You can make fun, but I can’t help but have an enquiring mind,’ he replied in a lofty tone to make his wife giggle. ‘It’s the ground moistening, releasing various organic compounds and producing that lovely earth scent to tangle in our minds.’
His daughter inhaled. ‘Well, I just know it smells like happy childhood.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely, dear,’ her mother said with a smiling sigh. ‘I hope our granddaughters will have happy memories to lean on.’
‘We’ll make sure of it,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘I’m glad they weren’t old enough to understand the hard bit of losing their father, but we’ll fill their lives with wonderful memories.’ He looked over at his daughter and felt suffused with affection on seeing her grinning nod of gratitude. She’d worked so hard to push her own grief down so her children wouldn’t feel her pain. ‘We’d better not go the long way. It will get dark soon,’ he continued absently. ‘And the temperature will drop rapidly.’
‘You held us up,’ his wife accused him, but not meanly.
The road narrowed as they began to skirt the lovely expanse of park they’d arrived at. He could see plenty of dog owners shared much the same idea and were hoping to give their pets a quick run before the impending rain.
‘Rather a lot of dogs around,’ he warned, noting two large animals gambolling about. Their owners were distracted, chatting. Meanwhile, another dog nearby was barking madly at them.
‘Dad, you’re always so cautious.’
‘You can’t be too careful. Don’t want to frighten our girls and have them terrified of dogs.’
‘All right, let’s keep to the pavement, then,’ his wife said. ‘We can track all the way around.’
He dropped back as the pavement narrowed, allowing his wife and daughter to walk ahead and pausing to study a magnificent rose garden that was now delivering its reward. He was aware of them looking back at him. ‘Don’t wait. I’ll catch up,’ he said, and they moved on and away from him.
He inhaled the scent of several blooms and, just as he was deciding life couldn’t be more blissful, he heard the screech of tyres.
It happened so fast, he couldn’t have reacted, couldn’t have done anything to change what occurred, or its outcome.
The four-wheel drive hit his wife at an angle first.
He straightened in horror to watch her loop into the air and hit a wall, coming to rest in a broken splay of limbs and oozing blood. Shocked at the scene that was like a clip from a B-grade movie and frozen where he stood, he looked back open-mouthed to where his daughter and grandchildren were supposed to be, but they were no longer there. Though it happened in a few heartbearts, he felt as though he were taking in events in horribly slowed-down motion. He could see the expensive French pushchair that had held the girls so safe lying crumpled and smashed fifty feet or so away. He could see the pompoms of their beanies poking out from the top where they were still strapped in, no longer safe but motionless, their baby faces rearranged by the scrape of tarmac. Further on, still driving a drunkenly woven path, was the beastly chunk of metal on wheels pulling his daughter beneath it like a rag doll, that rosy hair far redder than it should be, now matted with her blood.
As Colin took in the impossible scene, this same-sourced blood began to flow glacially slow and just as cold in his veins. He could see someone running to a telephone box, presumably to dial 999. They would find only corpses among Colin’s family – he didn’t need to touch any of them to know that they were dead. There was so much blood, and the four bodies remained inert. But he could see movement in the big car that had wrought this murder.
He began to run, heedless of cars and people but vaguely aware that the traffic had stopped to form a ghastly silence, into which poured the distant sound of sirens. He yanked open the door of the Land Rover and dragged the sobbing man out, pulling him with unimagined strength to flop like a landed fish on the tarmac.
He could smell the fumes of alcohol coming off the man and didn’t care what he was screaming – his apologies, or why he was so intoxicated that he had mounted the pavement and killed four magnificent females. He ignored the rough road scraping against the man’s limbs as he recklessly hauled the driver around the vehicle to where his daughter lay trickling blood.
Before Colin could force the blubbering man to stare at his broken child and his family’s stolen future, he could feel arms pulling him back, and his shocked gaze caught sight of the bottle green of a paramedic’s uniform.
‘Let me past, sir, please,’ one said – a man.
Another, a woman, gently pushed on his chest. ‘Let us do our job, sir.’
‘That’s my child underneath there,’ he yelled. ‘My grandchildren, in that pushchair. And over there’ — his voice broke on the words — ‘my wife.’
He heard gasps and sounds of sorrow but they were meaningless. His life was meaningless.
How would he ever give it meaning again?
1
LONDON, MAY 2006
Amy Clarke smiled at the two men on the other side of the bar. She’d not seen them around previously; most people who came into the pub were either locals or obvious travellers on their way through to somewhere else and this was simply a convenient stop. These two blokes looked like neither. One, a few years older than her, she reckoned, was wearing a military-coloured parka, which struck her as an oddity because it wasn’t so cold today; most customers had mentioned the delicious spring day. His companion had to be at least twenty years older; unshaven, a smoker, going by the tin of tobacco he slammed on the counter, and there was something shifty about his gaze, the way it scanned the room constantly. They ordered two pints of Carling, which she dutifully delivered with another smile, this time simply to be polite. They paid with coins, which was curious too. The younger one counted them out right down to pennies, not at all awkward about it either.
‘What’s your name, then, gorgeous?’ he asked, raising his remarkable eyes of a clear grey that demanded her attention.
She hated having to go through this dance, found the chat-up tedious but part of the job. ‘I’m Amy.’ She cut quickly back to business. ‘Will you be eating today, gents?’
‘What’s on?’ Grey Eyes asked with a lazy grin, his gaze brazenly roaming her body.
Amy deflected it, pointing to the chalkboard. ‘The Guinness pie is a specialty.’
‘Expensive,’ the older one drawled, looking up from his lager.
‘Does anything come with it?’ Grey Eyes asked, his tone loaded with innuendo.
‘Bit of salad,’ she replied, determined not to show any expression other than impatience.
‘We’ll have two sausage rolls, served with another of those big smiles of yours.’
She gave him a look that said she doubted he could afford the latter, but, not to be deterred, he gave her a wink. Amy wondered how they’d be paying for their lunch, given they were down to pennies, but it wasn’t her concern. She would mention it to the manager nearby though.
‘Can we pay after, luv? Might have another of these,’ the older one said, all but draining his glass, and she noted him leering at her breasts.
Prats! she thought.
As the good-looking barmaid moved away, Davey glanced back at Don and shrugged. ‘What?’
‘We’re supposed to be casing, not flirting.’
Davey swallowed a sizeable draught of his lager. ‘Great tits. Makes me horny.’
‘Don’t let your dick get in the way of business, son.’
‘Yeah, you’ve probably forgotten how to work it.’
‘Watch your mouth, kid.’ Don made a hissing sound through his teeth but seemed at ease with the gentle insult. ‘Besides, she’s way out of your punching range. Those tits were brought up around money. She’s not your usual choice of slag, Davey.’
‘I don’t date sluts,’ he replied. Don sneered otherwise. ‘Did you see how she smiled at me?’
‘She’s been trained to smile at punters.’
‘I guess, but some of us transcend the average punter.’
‘What’s that word?’ Don chuckled. ‘Trans-what?’
‘I heard it in a movie, looked it up. I like it. Means I rise above the average.’
‘You think so?’
‘I looked in the mirror this morning, Don. I’m in my prime. Got to take it whenever I can.’
That made Don laugh into his beer. ‘You’re an arse, Davey. Now focus, eh?’
‘I already have. No marks in here.’
Don nodded slowly. ‘Just old fogies, I agree. Bad time of day.’
‘What about the houses nearby – what’s it . . . Oak Walk?’ He jabbed a finger in the direction of the side door.
‘Nah, they’re too open, son. I think we should do a reccy of those big houses at Parkside that back onto the woodland. Much easier to hide; get in from the park. There’s got to be some easy pickings up there – jewellery, money, phones that we can lift. Won’t take much to snatch and easy to cart, convert.’
Davey nodded. It was well away from Enfield Shopping Centre, where all the action was, but if they were in a hurry, they could run through the park back down to the station and jump on any train. He sighed his agreement as Amy reappeared carrying plates to their end of the bar.
‘Careful, they’re hot,’ she warned.
‘You’re hot,’ Davey quipped.
She gave him a sidelong gaze of fake despair. ‘Don’t want you to burn your tongue.’
He grinned. ‘Depends where my tongue is.’
‘Hey, watch yourself,’ an older woman said, sidling up next to Amy. ‘None of that in h
ere.’
Davey held out his hands in a plea of defence. ‘I’m just kidding. No offence.’
Amy blushed, glancing at the older bartender. ‘None taken.’
‘You can head off now, Amy. Shift’s over.’
‘Bye, Amy,’ both men said in unison.
‘Ready to pay, lads?’ They won a glare from the middle-aged woman in charge. ‘See you tomorrow, luv,’ she called over her shoulder.
Except she didn’t.
Fate, predestination, the way the chips fall, destiny . . . or plain, horrible luck, Amy would never know what led the two strangers from the bar to turn up at her house a few hours later as the sun was slipping away from the day. She was not followed; she knew that because she stopped to chat to not just one but two of her neighbours from different streets, and she’d faced the hill the men would have had to walk down if they were following her.
So it was chance – random bad luck, she later decided – to have Davey Robbins and Donald Patchett cut through the woodland of Grove’s End Park to follow the fence lines of the houses in Parkside that backed onto it. The cover of bushes and trees was perfect for would-be thieves. Her parents were at work, her brother at school, but Gran was home with her. They were sharing a pot of tea as the light turned a deep golden in the conservatory that backed onto the large, open-plan kitchen that her parents had built onto just six months earlier.
‘It’s so lovely here,’ her grandmother remarked, sighing at her first sip of tea. ‘That breeze through those French doors is delicious.’
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