Author's note: All characters belong to the BBC and Elizabeth George.

INTERVIEW: STUART LAFFERTY

Royal Surrey Hospital

19:15 2 July

"Stuart, my name is Katerina Draysat a psychologist specialising in trauma. It is standard practice now to counsel officers after witnessing traumatic deaths or events and The Met want us to have a chat to see how you are and what support you might need." She had been rushed to Guildford to talk to the survivors as soon as they had finished their health assessments at the hospital.

"Thanks, but I'm okay. I just need some sleep." Lafferty had little patience for psychologists. He would come to terms with it in his own time over a few pints of Guinness.

"That's understandable Stuart but first I'd just like to talk through the incident and how you feel."

Stuart sighed; the quicker he answered her questions the quicker he could get to that pint that he knew was waiting for him at the bar. "What do you want to know?"

"Were you hurt at all?"

"No. I dived to the ground out of the way."

"You're a pathologist am I correct?"

"Yes."

"So why were you with the team?"

"We have been involved closely for five weeks trying to catch him. I insisted on coming along."

"And DI Lynley allowed it. I see." Katerina made some notes on her pad.

"No, you don't see. You're not going to pin this on Lynley. We all agreed what to do, we were all wearing vests in case Spencer had a gun and Lynley had an armed response team on standby at the base of the hill but we had agreed that the team should try to capture him first. No one could have foreseen what Spencer would do."

Katerina sensed Lafferty was being defensive and backed off slightly. "This is not an investigation Stuart. I'm not looking to blame anyone. I just need to find out how you feel. Do you blame Inspector Lynley?"

"No. He saved the last man. We thought he was mad but he was so insistent. Only Barbara believed him. They're like that. They have complete faith in each other. It was strange to watch but she convinced us too. The raid on Spencer's house missed him but someone traced his car to Margravine Gardens. The car was abandoned near some of the old graves. No one thinks of it as a cemetery really; it ceased accepting burials about sixty years ago. Lynley had a hunch though and insisted on digging up a grave that he thought had been tampered with. Inside was a man in a rough wooden coffin, barely alive, his fingers bloodied and raw from his attempts to claw his way to freedom. We were stunned but it made us more determined to catch Spencer."

"How awful. How did he know?"

"He noticed that the concrete on a grave was cracked and tilted up. It makes sense now but at the time we thought he was wasting time. You see when graves crack they fall down. It was a simple thing but something only Lynley would notice. He has a unique sense sometimes."

"Perhaps you could tell me what happened next?" she asked softly.

"Lynley thought that Spencer was hiding in the cabin. I forget how they found it. We didn't think he was armed but we were being cautious. No one spoke as we walked slowly up the hill. I was on the end of the line at the right next to Andrea. She seemed nervous; I think it was her first time on this sort of thing. Lynley was walking purposefully on the other side of her next to Barbara who seemed calm and determined. Winston was on the left closest to the drop off down to the creek. His job was to check to see if Spencer was sneaking away."

"So Andrea was new to the team?"

"Yes her first case as a detective. Winston was funny with her." Lafferty smiled softly as he remembered Winston fussing over Andrea. "He took it on himself to mentor her. I think he will take her death harder than the rest of us."

Katerina scribbled more notes furiously on her pad. "So what happened?"

"All his other crimes had been personal. He had needed to touch the victim. This was completely the opposite so it was totally unexpected. We were about fifty yards from the edge of the woods when flames shot out from the trees. It started on the other side near Winston and then swept around towards me. I looked quickly at the others; they were all shocked. Hollywood makes you think flamethrowers are short range weapons but they're not really. The military ones with napalm can shoot flames out well over fifty yards. It was surreal - just this sudden blazing fury that swept in an arc past us. I dived to the ground but I could see Andrea caught in the path. I think she tried to run forward. I watched as she burned alive; it was an appalling sight. Lynley seemed to be rooted to the spot. I think he was transfixed by the sight of the Andrea's flailing arms. Barbara pulled him to the ground as the flamethrower's swept back towards him. The flames just died but Andrea was still burning. Her screams were piercing but I could hear gunshots from the cabin."

"Was Spencer shooting at you?'

"No, it was the response team. They shot him."

"When did you know it was safe?"

"I heard someone yelling that it was all clear."

"Were you afraid?"

"No, I thought it was a picnic!" Lafferty retorted and then swore, "Of course I was afraid. Who wouldn't be?"

"It is perfectly normal. How did you feel about that?"

"Fine. I'm quite comfortable being human thanks Doc."

"What was the worst part?"

Lafferty shifted in his seat as he remembered the agonised screams that tore through his head. "The smell I think. They say it's like barbequed pork but it's not really. It's a sweeter, fattier, meatier smell mixed with the acrid scent of burning hair. Did you know women stay alight longer because they have a higher fat content than men?"

Katerina shook her head. "Do you feel guilty that you survived?"

"No, I feel grateful."

"That's good because often people feel guilty they survived when someone else didn't." Stuart nodded at her. "How are you colleagues?"

"Barbara is okay I think and but Lynley and Winston are taking it hard."

"Well you said Winston was closer to her. Was Lynley upset because he was in charge?"

"That and the traumas he has seen. His wife was killed in front of him and he was there when Barbara was shot a few years ago."

"That's hard. How did he take that?"

Stuart did not want to be drawn on Lynley's reactions. He was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve but was incapable of talking about anything. He had fallen into a deep melancholy after Helen had died, one from which Stuart was surprised he had ever returned. "You should ask him."

"Understood. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

"No, thanks."

Katerina smiled sympathetically, worried that he was not taking it as well as he portrayed. "Well if you need to talk we are here for you Stuart. Would you send DC Nkata in please?"

INTERVIEW: WINSTON NKATA

Royal Surrey Hospital

19:50 2 July

"Winston, my name is Katerina Draysat a psychologist specialising in trauma. It is standard practice now to counsel officers after witnessing traumatic deaths or events and The Met want us to have a chat to see how you are and what support you might need."

"Okay, thanks."

"I'd just like to talk through the incident and how you feel. I understand you and the victim were close."

"Not really. She had just started with us. I was trying to help her a bit like Barbara helped me."

"Why don't you start by telling me what happened?"

"What today or leading up to it?"

"However you want to tell me."

"Well it goes back a few weeks to when we realised it was a serial killer. Well Barbara recognised it first; she's got good instincts like that. There had been no apparent connection between the first two victims and completely different MO's but Barbara believed they were linked. There was something about the cruelty that alarmed her and she was sure he would not stop until we caught him. When the head of the third victim, a young male university student from Istanbul, was found impaled on a pike under Marble Arch, we started to agree we were looking for one murderer. The rest of the body had been found in sections, the torso beside the statue of Churchill, one leg at Kew gardens, another in Greenwich and the arms under pews in St Pauls and Westminster Abbey. There was probably some sort of message in it but even the DI couldn't work that one out. We had been no forensic clues at any of the scenes and no links between the victims but we knew Barbara was right."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Determined I guess. We needed a breakthrough. We'd been unable to find anything despite trolling patiently through hours of CCTV footage. Then he made a mistake. He left a hat at the scene of his fifth victim, a man in his fifties who had been pierced with hundreds of steel meat skewers." Nkata smiled wryly. "Lynley yelled at Stuart for referring to the guy as Kebab Man. He thought it was disrespectful, I mean we hadn't even been able to identify him. The victim had obviously struggled and had managed to grab the hat as he died. His hand had locked and the scrape marks the killer had made trying to retrieve his hat were clearly visible on the fingers."

Draysat winced. "So that was your clue?"

"Yes, Constable Rankin…Andrea, found a man wearing a fedora at the scene of three of the crimes and we started to hope it was a meaningful lead. Andrea and I traced the hat across London in the hours before the crimes and eventually found footage of the man approaching a car. He checked to see if anyone was watching then opened it and drove away. The car was registered to Robert Spencer who lived near Wormwood Scrubs Prison. He had a long record of violent assaults. We thought we had him at last."

"So how did you end up at the cabin?"

"A stroke of luck really. A neighbour remembered that Spencer used the old gamekeeper's lodge as a base for fishing trips. So we drove down here as fast as we could. The cabin was at the top of the hill. The armed response unit went around the back through the woods and we approached from the front. We moved as swiftly but silently as we could. I think we were all hopeful he would be there and that we could end his killing spree but we didn't know he would have a flamethrower. I mean who has a flamethrower right? Anyway I heard this whoosh and then the sky lit up. A huge orange and yellow flame shot out in front of Barbara and moved away from me. I watched briefly, I thought the DI was going to be incinerated but Andrea made a run for it, straight into the path of the flames. It was horrible. She just lit up like a torch in one of those old movies. Her arms were swinging about wildly and she screamed for a bit. Barbara grabbed the DI and I dived down the hill and just rolled over and over away from the inferno and the noise until I got to the bank near the creek. I was trying to get away from the sound and the sight more than the flames."

"Were you afraid?"

"Shocked more than afraid. And then I just wanted to stop watching her burn. It was sickening to see. Poor Andrea, she was just a kid starting out."

"It's okay to be afraid Winston. It's a normal reaction."

"Yeah, I know but I was more afraid of the sight than of the flamethrower."

"Do you feel guilty for surviving?"

"Yeah but I feel worse thinking that if it had to be someone I'm glad it wasn't the DI, or Barbara or Stuart."

"Are you close?"

"Yeah, especially to Barbara but not as close as she and the DI are. They've been together for years."

"Yes, I understand he was there when she was shot?"

"Yeah and she was there when his wife was killed. They have a special sort of bond which is hard to explain. That's why there was no way she would have left him standing there like that. She just pulled him out of the way."

"Did she?" Katerina made some notes.

"Yeah she ran over to him and pulled him down." Winston did not add that they had held each other until the all clear and Winston could have sworn they had been kissing. He must have seen things; they would not have been doing that in the middle of everything.

"Is there anything else you want to talk about Winston?"

"Not really. I guess we will have a few sessions when we get back?"

"Yes, this is just one to let you talk about anything you need to but often it takes more time to come to terms with things or have questions."

"Okay thanks."

"Would you ask Sergeant Havers to come in please?"

"Sure thing."