Prologue

Alex sighed as she stared at the man now only partly visible through the half closed blinds of his office door. When did Gene ever close those blinds? She could count on one hand the number of times she had been left out in the cold, forbidden access to the lion's lair. Others, sure, but no matter what the situation, she'd always been there by his side. She'd hurt him, badly.

Looking around the rest of CID, the atmosphere was as thick as she'd ever known it. Even after Chris had betrayed them, the mood had been better than this. No one seemed to so much as want to look at her, and any essential conversation was kept to a bare minimum, with a clear, bitter undercurrent. It wasn't that they hated her, no one ever wanted to get involved, but as far as they were concerned, she'd upset their idol, their surrogate father, their God, and anyone who did that was met with bitterness. They were just being loyal, a quality she'd always admired in the team - she'd be selfish and hypocritical to expect anything else of them now.

Chris put the phone down and looked around the room before standing up and approaching Alex, as though he wasn't sure that he should. When nobody responded, he walked over anyway. "Ma'am. Um... Lucille drew £30 from her bank account 3 days ago from a cash machine in Southend". The entire time Chris spoke to her, he never once looked her in the eyes – never at her face even. "I just got off the phone to the bank who confirmed it" he added, as though he was being tested.

"Right, thanks, Chris". Alex smiled a desperate attempt to raise the moral to a level she could function on. "Just the kind of lead we've been hoping for".

"Not that it bloody matters now" Ray said, through almost gritted teeth.

"Why would it not matter?"

"She's dead. They all end up dead.".

Alex opened her mouth to protest, but promptly thought better of it, given the circumstances. She couldn't afford to cause yet another argument and anyway, as much as hated to admit it even to herself, he was probably right.

Lucille was a member of a dance group who, for whatever reason, appeared to be targeted by a yet to be traced man. Now, 6 of the 8 girls were dead in the space of 3 weeks, all killed in exactly the same way. Alex cringed at the thought of the bodies: the photos alone had given her nightmares, and she often prided herself on being unshockable. This man was the only lead they had, and yet they knew next to nothing about him. They were working on the assumption that this was the same man who had been banned from the club after he became 'obsessed' with the first girl to be killed, Jodie, but no explanation could be found as to why he'd then gone after the other girls. Perhaps a jealous rage, a vendetta against whoever had reported him to the club managers? Even Alex was drawing blanks, and that worried her.

Whatever the motive, wherever Lucillewas, she was almost certain to have suffered the same fate as her friends: butchered – the only way it could be explained.

As Alex headed towards the door, a sudden silence fell over the room. She spun round to see Gene emerging from his office, white as a sheet with a look of pure disgust on his face.

"As many of you are already aware," Gene eventually began, his voice still shaking slightly, "the body of Regina Cunningham was found this morning." He paused again as looked over at Alex. A look that told her that it wasn't illegal, and if he wasn't a cop, he'd kill her on the spot. "Same method so, we're again to assume, same killer."

Regina being the eighth, and final, of the girls. The youngest, prettiest and the girl that Gene himself seemed to have a thing for. To the extent that it was Alex's blind jealousy has almost certainly lead to her death. It was times like this when Alex hoped with every fibre of her being that this world was all in her head, a bad dream.