Page 35 of First Blood

But calling her colleagues names like that was not going to help her to fit in.

‘Look, I didn’t mean…’

‘Forget it. Your opinion doesn’t matter to me anyway,’ he said, grabbing his jacket and leaving without another word.

Stacey shook her head. That guy had some serious issues.

She turned her attention back to work. The boss had told her to get cracking on phone records and CCTV.

A terse return email from the mobile phone provider had confirmed they were working on her requests, and she guessed that hassling them every few minutes was not going to get the results any quicker.

She pulled up the crime scene photos and grabbed a notepad.

As a constable, she’d always been encouraged to see the bigger picture, explore all the information available, dig as deep as you could. It was that need to go further that had driven her to want to be a detective, to find clues, to look at things from every angle, hold things up to the light and think outside the box.

The photos no longer filled her with the horror they had the previous day. This morning she wasn’t looking at a man, a human who had been brutally murdered. She wasn’t feeling the pain or fear of the victim as the knife had sliced across the flesh.

She was looking at the artistry of the kill. The skill, the cunning, the planning.

The killer had taken their victim to a secluded area in the Clent Hills, late at night, a spot where he’d known he wouldn’t be disturbed.

He’d taken something heavy to render the victim unconscious. He’d taken nails to secure the victim to the ground. He had cut the man’s throat and then taken the time to mutilate the genitals and totally sever the head.

Stacey remembered a time when she was thirteen and a group of girls had dared her to pinch some pick ’n’ mix from WHSmith in Dudley town. They’d said she could go to the cinema with them if she did it and so she had.

But she remembered the feeling of fear. She’d walked in, her heart thumping, the blood pounding in her ears. She had grabbed a handful and walked quickly back out of the shop.

She hadn’t hung around, after the deed was done.

She looked again at both the killer’s planning and execution. He’d been in no rush to leave the scene once Luke Fenton was dead.

She prepared to start looking at the CCTV in the area of Clent, but she really hoped they were going to get the details from Wolverhampton soon, because everything she’d ever learned about the anatomy of a murder told her that this wasn’t their murderer’s first kill.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dawson sat in his car for just a moment before starting the engine.

Despite the cold sunshine there was a fucking rain cloud that had been following him from the moment he’d woken up.

His plan had gone swimmingly. He’d made it to the restaurant with just minutes to spare.

Filled with the triumph of having got one over on the boss he’d eaten a good meal, had a few drinks and enjoyed himself in the company of a gorgeous woman.

Two hours later he’d been in Lou’s flat and in her bed. And all it had taken was a few false promises.

He’d fallen asleep content.

And yet when he’d woken up, turned and seen Lou sleeping peacefully beside him, that contentment had gone and left behind nothing more than a sour taste in his mouth. He had showered quickly and left before she’d even woken up.

He couldn’t put a name to this shadow that was following him, but he did know that he was now thinking of Ally more than ever.

He had tried to cheer himself up by having a little fun at Bryant’s expense. Just banter. But the boss had stopped him dead. Banter was not allowed. Noted.

And then his other colleague had called him an arsehole. Timid, smiley little Stacey had called him an arsehole.

Fuck ’em, he thought, starting the engine. He didn’t give a shit what any of them thought of him.

He could out-police them all without even breaking a sweat and that’s what he fully intended to do.