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  She knocked on the glass-fronted door and entered the office. One of the men came forward.

  “Hannah Nightingale?”

  “Yes.”

  “David Mallory.” He held out his hand. The handshake was firm, but the smile that came with it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Morning, Chief Superintendent.”

  “Morning. I’m the senior investigating officer for the Toybreaker special investigation team.” He nodded towards the other man. “And this is Detective Chief Inspector Falcon.”

  Another handshake, but no smile this time. Just a cool appraisal from eyes like flint.

  “We were told you’ve been assigned to the investigation as an offender profiler.” The anger in Mallory’s voice was barely below the surface.

  “And you don’t approve of profilers?”

  “Makes no difference. This is a direct order from on high. You are to be given everything. And just because I don’t . . .”

  “Guv,” Falcon interrupted before the chief superintendent could finish the sentence. “Perhaps we should have some coffee before we start the briefing.”

  Mallory grunted and walked over to the widow.

  “Miss Nightingale?” Falcon asked.

  “Yes, I’d like coffee, thank you.”

  Falcon busied himself around a coffee machine on top of one of the filing cabinets, and she took the chance to study the two men. Physically, they could have not been more different.

  Mallory was comfortably dressed in brown sports coat and cord trousers, with a check shirt and blue tie. He was tall, in his late forties, and had the broad shouldered athletic physique of a man who looked after his body. He had a mass of dark curly hair and a nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times. But it was his eyes that caught her attention. They were blue, like washed-out denim, and there was something hidden in them. Not cynicism, she decided. More a wariness towards the world. As if nothing could ever surprise him again.

  Falcon was young, late twenties at the most, with a skin of polished ebony. And he was dressed like a fashion model in a dark grey beautifully cut pinstriped suit, grey shirt and silver grey tie. Private resources, Hannah guessed, unless they were paying policemen a lot more than she thought these days. His head was shaven and his features finely chiselled.

  Falcon set three mugs of coffee on the table, together with a tray holding sachets of sugar, tiny cartons of cream and plastic spoons. The three of them sat down and Falcon passed one of the mugs to Hannah after she’d put her briefcase on the floor by her side.

  “Cream, sugar?” Falcon indicated the tray.

  She shook her head. “No thanks. Black will be fine.” She sipped the coffee. It was strong, but surprisingly good.

  When she looked up she saw that the two men were watching her. This was some kind of a test, and she realised that the moment was important.

  OK, she thought. You want to play macho games, we’ll play macho games.

  She put her coffee cup down and looked at Mallory, forcing herself to remain silent. For a long moment the chief superintendent returned her stare. Then he nodded to himself.

  “Miss Nightingale, we’ve been told to brief you on this investigation.”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t prepared to give him anything yet.

  “So,” Mallory seemed to acknowledge that they were both probing. “This investigation is being run by the Crime Management Task force and as I said, I’m the SIO.”

  “What system are you employing to manage the investigation?”

  Mallory nodded again, accepting her insider knowledge. “We’re using the force’s modification of HOLMES.”

  “That’s the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, isn’t it?” She knew very well what HOLMES was. She was just making a point.

  “Yes. Now if we can move on.” Either she’d passed the test, or he’d tired of playing games “How much do you know about the Toybreaker case?”

  But she wasn’t ready yet. She reached down and lifted the briefcase onto the table, opened it and took out a small tape recorder. “I hope you won’t mind if I record this briefing.” She smiled sweetly. “Just to make certain I don’t miss anything when I write up my notes later.”

  Mallory didn’t appear at all fazed. “I’ve no objection to what I say being recorded.”

  “Good.” Hannah switched the machine on. “Go ahead, Chief Superintendent.”

  “The Toybreaker is every parent’s nightmare. The worst of all evils. A serial kidnapper on the loose who snatches young children from their homes. And always in the night. A phantom that seems to come and go as it pleases.”

  “You identify the criminal as a serial kidnapper. How many children have been abducted so far?”

  “It started about six months ago, July the sixteenth to be exact, and to date five children have gone missing.”

  “Is it just abduction?”

  Mallory’s expression hardened. “We’ve been using the term kidnapper because there’s no evidence to indicate anything to the contrary. Yet.”

  “No bodies have been found?”

  “No, but on the other hand there haven’t been any ransom notes either. But more important, the children who’ve been abducted don’t come from the kind of families who could pay a ransom in the first place. No, the reason for these crimes is not financial gain. I’m certain of it. And so is the media. Which is why the city is so on edge.”

  “And the abductions? They’re always the same.”

  “They always follow a pattern, yes. All the children are between one and two years old from single-parent families living on their own. Just the mother and one child. No other children, and no partner.”

  Hannah nodded. “Social level?”

  “Again, all the same. Living on benefit in council flats.”

  “And the mothers? OK, they’ve all got a young child, all live without a partner, and all are on benefit. Maybe there’s a pattern there. But is there anything else that links them together?”

  “Nothing else we’ve been able to pick up. Two were white, two of mixed race, and one Afro-Caribbean. And they all lived in different parts of the city.”

  “Religion?”

  “No common factor there.”

  “So the women are linked by the type of lifestyle they lead, but nothing ties them together as individuals. Right?”

  “Not as far as we can tell. There’s not one solitary thread linking them together. And believe me, we’ve looked for connections. We’ve taken their lives apart until there’s nothing, and I mean nothing, we don’t know about these women.

  “What about the way the children were abducted?”

  “Again, they all follow the same pattern.”

  “Can you explain the pattern in detail, please?”

  “Each of the children was taken from their bed sometime in the night without their mothers knowing. I say sometime in the night because none of the mothers can be specific.”

  “Where were the mothers sleeping?”

  “In separate rooms. All of them.”

  “And the children were taken without any disturbance?”

  “It would seem so, yes.”

  “Isn’t that strange?”

  “On the face of it, yes. You’d expect kids to make some kind of noise if they’re woken in the night. But forensics found traces of chloroform on all of the pillows. Whoever did this made sure those kids stayed out of it. Same pattern each time. And then there were the calling cards, of course.”

  “This Toybreaker thing, you mean?”

  “Yes, that was what caught the imagination of the public.”

  “These calling cards, they were the same each time?”

  “Yes and no. A wooden toy, in the form of a brightly painted clown puppet was left behind each time. And it was always smashed into pieces. The only difference was that when we rebuilt the clowns, we found they increased in size with each crime.”

  “Interesting.” Hannah gazed away for a moment, then turned back
to Mallory. “Anything else about the clowns?”

  “Yes, they were all superbly carved. The work of a genuine artist apparently, although we can’t identify the woodcarver. We released photographs of the puppets to the papers, local and nationals, and they were shown on TV. Then we swept the net wider and asked all forces to check their areas for a craftsman that might have done the work. Took a long time, and in the end it yielded zilch.”

  “What about the paint that was used on the clowns?”

  “Another blank. It was the kind of enamel paint used for plastic models and it can be bought in any hobby shop and a lot of newsagents as well. There are over fifty outlets in Garton alone.”

  “When I asked if the calling cards were the same each time, you said ‘yes and no.’ You mean something else was left behind? In addition to the clowns, I mean?”

  “Yes, a lock of hair cut from the child’s head.”

  Hannah sat upright in her chair. “A lock of hair.” She repeated the words. “But this isn’t common knowledge. Why was it kept from the media?”

  “Because it gave us a quick way of filtering out any nutters who claimed to be the Toybreaker. But there was more to it than just leaving a lock of hair at the crime scene.”

  “How do you mean, more to it?”

  “In the first two incidents there was no hair left behind at all. It didn’t start until the third abduction when a lock of hair was left on the child’s pillow beside the broken clown. In the fourth, the lock was found on the floor by the bedroom door. And in the fifth, the last incident to date, the lock was sent to the mother by post later.”

  “Look, you said earlier that the city was on edge. How bad is it?”

  “There’s serious tension out there. And it’s building up day by day. If we’re not careful something might just snap soon. Vigilante gangs braying for blood. Lynch mobs on the prowl looking for paedophiles. It won’t take much to make it happen, believe me.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Worse. Because after all this time we don’t have a single suspect.”

  “What about the paedophiles? Whether the mobs go after them or not, they must be prime suspects, surely?”

  “For sure. They were the first people we considered. We’ve checked out every known and suspected paedophile in the entire country. Both on and off the Sex Offenders Register. And it got us exactly nowhere. We’ve also looked for similar abductions on the national databases, but there were no hits there, either. No, it won’t take much to ratchet up the tension to breaking point.”

  Hannah nodded. “Yes, I can see that.” She was beginning to appreciate how far the situation had drifted.

  Mallory looked at his watch. “Look, it’s half past twelve now. This afternoon we can start going over all the stuff we’ve got. Scene-of-the-crime reports and on-site videos, evidence files, interview tapes, photographs. Then DCI Falcon will take you through all the data we have on computer. But right now, I suggest we go for lunch. Somewhere away from this place. I need a break.”

  Hannah nodded. “I’d like that. Maybe we can talk off the record.”

  Mallory looked at the tape recorder. “You mean without that bloody thing listening in.”

  But at least he was smiling, Hannah noticed. The first sign he’d shown that he was human.

  CHAPTER 2

  The pub was at the end of a street of mean terraced houses somewhere at the back of the city centre.

  They left the car in a derelict litter-strewn space at the rear and went inside. There were men drinking at round plastic-topped tables scattered around the long room, and there was a lull in the background hum of conversation when the newcomers came in. Two women were standing behind the bar, and the older one watched the scene wearily.

  Mallory was leading, and as they passed one of the tables a youth stood up. He had a shaven head and was wearing a denim jacket cut away at the shoulders to reveal a mass of tattoos on his thick arms. He moved out and deliberately knocked into Mallory. The Chief Superintendent kept on walking but the youth grabbed his shoulder and spun him round. He started to mouth something, but one of the men sitting at the table thrust out a hand and jerked him back, muttering something into his ear. The youth glared at Mallory, but he didn’t get up again.

  “Morning, Mr Mallory.” The older woman behind the bar smiled warmly at him. She was in her mid-forties, with lacquered blond hair and thick make-up. “Haven’t seen you for a long time, what can I get you?”

  “A pint of bitter.” Mallory looked at Hannah and she said she’d have a glass of white wine, and then at Falcon, who settled for a half of bitter. “And a plate of your roast beef sandwiches, please,” Mallory said. “We’ll have them in the snug. Don’t want to disturb your regulars, do we?”

  “Who was that, Annie?” the girl asked as Mallory led the way into the back room.

  “Bit before your time, love. But that was David Mallory. Chief Inspector, as he was when he ran the streets round here, but he’s moved up the ladder since then.”

  “What was he like?”

  The woman thought for a moment. “He was a bloody hard man. A good thief-catcher, but not above a bit of the rough stuff at times. Still people said he was fair. And he was respected, I’ll say that for him.”

  “So what’s he doing around here now then?”

  The other woman laughed. “I don’t know, but it’s got some of them buggers worried.” She indicated the people at the tables. “You do the drinks and I’ll make the sandwiches. Fond of a good sandwich is Mr Mallory.”

  The snug was a small room, dimly lit by a dirty window with a steel mesh on the outer side. They sat down at a dark wooden table and the young girl from the bar brought the drinks through.

  Falcon took a sip of his drink and nodded appreciatively. “Good bitter.” Then he looked around the room. “But not exactly the Ritz, is it? So why bring us here?”

  “My territory, CID used this pub a lot in the old days.”

  Falcon looked surprised. “With all that low life drinking here?”

  “Neutral ground, respected by both sides. They drank in the bar, we drank in here. It was a useful arrangement that could work to the advantage of both sides sometimes.”

  Falcon shook his head. “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not.” Mallory grinned. “But a set-up like that wouldn’t be allowed nowadays, of course. Not under all the new codes of practice. But it was a different world then, and both sides knew where they stood.”

  “Excuse me, but this is definitely Dixon of Dock Green.”

  Hannah looked from one to the other. These were different people to the uptight officers who’d talked to her earlier. And she had a feeling that it was more than just relaxing over a drink. It was a kind of therapy. A therapy they both badly needed.

  “Chief Superintendent, have you worked with a profiler before?” she said.

  “No, can’t say I’ve ever worked with a shrink.” Mallory shook his head. “And the name’s David, by the way.”

  “OK, David. But I take it you’ve got no faith in shrinks?”

  He took a long pull at his pint. “I’ve been in court too many times when evil villains, and I do mean evil, have got away with ‘unfit to plead on the grounds of diminished responsibility’ because they’ve fooled well-meaning psychiatrists. And—”

  He was interrupted by the landlady as she came in carrying a metal tray with a platter of sandwiches, a large bowl of chips and various condiments. She left the tray at the end of the table and asked if anyone wanted more drinks. Mallory and Falcon ordered the same again, but Hannah settled for a tonic.

  For the next few minutes they concentrated on eating the food. As she reached over for another sandwich, Hannah smiled at Mallory. “These really are excellent. Perhaps the food was the reason you came here.”

  “I must admit it was good to know we could get a decent snack, the hours we used to work.”

  “What do you mean, used to?” Falcon growled.

&
nbsp; Hannah picked up the undercurrent. “This investigation’s getting to you, isn’t it?”

  He glanced quickly at Mallory. “You could say that. Yes, you definitely could say that.”

  “Look.” Mallory twisted his glass round in his hand. “The investigation has put pressure on both of us. Massive pressure. That’s par for the course. So what’s different this time? I’ll tell you what’s different. We’re no nearer to pinning down the Toybreaker than we were at the start of the investigation — six months ago. And take my word for it, that generates all kinds of pressure.”

  “I can understand that. But with all the facilities at your disposal you must have made some progress, surely?”

  “All the facilities at our disposal.’” Mallory considered the words. “Yes, we have all the facilities, no doubt about that. A first-class experienced team with every modern aid available to the police. We’ve got the best forensics, the best state-of-the-art data accessing and processing systems, the best expert IT advice. You want to go back to visit the crime scenes, we got videos of each one. You want data on a particular criminal sub-set, we got access to all the Home Office and National Criminal Intelligence Service databases. And the entire investigation is being carried out under a procedure designed to assess Performance Management, which means it’s continually under review. Everything transparent and upfront. Like working in a bloody goldfish bowl. And we’ve used all these facilities. But to answer your question.” He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say we’ve made much progress. That a fair assessment, Gary?”

  Falcon sighed. “I’d say very fair. Very fair, indeed. This Toybreaker’s not given us shit, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

  “He’s right,” Mallory agreed. “Apart from the smashed clowns and the locks of hair that were left there deliberately, the only two things of interest found at any of the scenes of crime were the traces of chloroform and a number of mystery fibres.”