The Wire in the Blood. Val McDermid

The photostat joined four similar previous overnight despatches in a folder that lived in her briefcase when it wasn’t sitting on her desk. Five, she decided, was critical mass. Time for action. She glanced at her watch. But not quite yet.

      The only other item that cluttered the desk now was a lengthy memo from the Home Office. In the dry civil service language that could render Tarantino dull, it announced the formal launch of the National Offender Profiling Task Force. ‘Under the supervision of Commander Paul Bishop, the task force will be led by Home Office clinical psychologist and Senior Profiler Dr Tony Hill. Initially, the task force will consist of a further six experienced detectives seconded to work with Dr Hill and Commander Bishop under Home Office guidelines.’

      Carol sighed. ‘It could have been me. Oh yeah, it could have been me,’ she sang softly. She hadn’t been formally invited. But she knew all she’d have had to do was ask. Tony Hill had wanted her on the squad. He’d seen her work at close quarters and he’d told her more than once that she had the right cast of mind to help him make the new task force effective. But it wasn’t that simple. The one case they’d worked together had been personally devastating as well as difficult for both of them. And her feelings for Tony Hill were still too complicated for her to relish the prospect of becoming his right-hand woman in other cases that might become as emotionally draining and intellectually challenging as their first encounter.

      Nevertheless, she’d been tempted. Then this had come along. Early promotion in a newly created force wasn’t an opportunity she felt she could afford to miss. The irony was that this chance had emerged from the same serial killer hunt. John Brandon had been the Assistant Chief Constable at Bradfield who’d had the nerve to bring in Tony Hill and to appoint Carol liaison officer. And when he was promoted to Chief Constable of the new force, he wanted her on board. His timing couldn’t have been better, she thought, a faint pang of regret surfacing in spite of herself. She stood up and took the three steps that were all she needed to cross her office and stare down at the docks below where people moved around purposefully doing she knew not what.

      Carol had learned the Job first with the Met in London and then with Bradfield Metropolitan Police, both leviathans fuelled by the perpetual adrenaline high of inner city crime. But now she was out on the edge of England with East Yorkshire Police where, as her brother Michael had wryly pointed out, the force’s acronym was almost identical to the traditional Yorkshire yokel greeting of ‘Ey-up’. Here, the DCI’s job didn’t involve juggling murder inquiries, drive-by shootings, gang wars, armed robberies and high-profile drug deals.

      In the towns and villages of East Yorkshire, there wasn’t any shortage of crime. But it was all low-level stuff. Her inspectors and sergeants were more than capable of dealing with it, even in the small cities of Holm and Traskham and the North Sea port of Seaford where she was based. Her junior officers didn’t want her running around on their tails. After all, what did a city girl like her know about sheep rustling? Or counterfeit cargo lading bills? Besides which, they all knew perfectly well that when the new DCI turned up on the job, she wasn’t so much interested in finding out what was going down as she was in sussing out who was up to scratch and who was busking it, who might be on the sauce and who might be on the take. And they were right. It was taking longer than she’d anticipated, but she was gradually assembling a picture of what her team was like and who was capable of what.

      Carol sighed again, rumpling her shaggy blonde hair with the fingers of one hand. It was an uphill struggle, not least because most of the blunt Yorkshiremen she was working with were fighting a lifetime’s conditioning to take a woman guv’nor seriously. Not for the first time, she wondered if ambition had shoved her into a drastic mistake and backed her flourishing career into a cul-de-sac.

      She shrugged and turned away from the window, then pulled out the file from her briefcase again. She might have opted to turn her back on the profiling task force, but working with Tony Hill had already taught her a few tricks. She knew what a serial offender’s signature looked like. She just hoped she didn’t need a team of specialists to track one down.

      One half of the double doors swung open momentarily ahead of the other. A woman with a face instantly recognizable in 78 per cent of UK homes (according to the latest audience survey) and high heels that shouted the praises of legs which could have modelled pantyhose strode into the make-up department, glancing over her shoulder and saying, ‘… which gives me nothing to work off, so tell Trevor to swap two and four on the running order, OK?’

      Betsy Thorne followed her, nodding calmly. She looked far too wholesome to be anything in TV, dark hair with irregular strands of silver swept back in a blue velvet Alice band from a face that was somehow quintessentially English; the intelligent eyes of a sheepdog, the bones of a thoroughbred racehorse and the complexion of a Cox’s Orange Pippin. ‘No problem,’ she said, her voice every degree as warm and caressing as her companion’s. She made a note on the clipboard she was carrying.

      Micky Morgan, presenter and only permissible star of Midday with Morgan, the flagship two-hour lunchtime news magazine programme of the independent networks, carried straight ahead to what was clearly her usual chair. She settled in, pushed her honey blonde hair back and gave her face a quick critical scrutiny in the glass as the make-up artist swathed her in a protective gown. ‘Marla, you’re back!’ Micky exclaimed, delight in her voice and eyes in equal measure. ‘Thank God. I’m praying you’ve been out of the country so you didn’t have to look at what they do to me when you’re not here. I absolutely forbid you to go on holiday again!’

      Marla smiled. ‘Still full of shit, Micky.’

      ‘It’s what they pay her for,’ Betsy said, perching on the counter by the mirror.

      ‘Can’t get the staff these days,’ Micky said through stiff lips as Marla started to smooth foundation over her skin. ‘Zit coming up on the right temple,’ she added.

      ‘Premenstrual?’ Marla asked.

      ‘I thought I was the only one who could spot that a mile off,’ Betsy drawled.

      ‘It’s the skin. The elasticity changes,’ Marla said absently, completely absorbed in her task.

      ‘Talking Point,’ Micky said. ‘Run it past me again, Bets.’ She closed her eyes to concentrate and Marla seized the chance to work on her eyelids.

      Betsy consulted her clipboard. ‘In the wake of the latest revelations that yet another junior minister has been caught in the wrong bed by the tabloids, we ask, “What makes a woman want to be a mistress?”’ She ran through the guests for the item while Micky listened attentively. Betsy came to the final interviewee and smiled. ‘You’ll enjoy this: Dorien Simmonds, your favourite novelist. The professional mistress, putting the case that actually being a mistress is not only marvellous fun but a positive social service to all those put-upon wives who have to endure marital sex long after he bores them senseless.’

      Micky chuckled. ‘Brilliant. Good old Dorien. Is there anything, do you suppose, that Dorien wouldn’t do to sell a book?’

      ‘She’s just jealous,’ Marla said. ‘Lips, please, Micky.’

      ‘Jealous?’ Betsy asked mildly.

      ‘If Dorien Simmonds had a husband like Micky’s, she wouldn’t be flying the flag for mistresses,’ Marla said firmly. ‘She’s just pig sick that she’ll never land a catch like Jacko. Mind you, who isn’t?’

      ‘Mmmm,’ Micky purred.

      ‘Mmmm,’ Betsy agreed.

      It had taken years for the publicity machine to carve the pairing of Micky Morgan and Jacko Vance as firmly into the nation’s consciousness as fish and chips or Lennon and McCartney. The celebrity marriage made in ratings heaven, it could never be dissolved. Even the gossip columnists had given up trying.

      The irony was that it had been fear of newspaper gossip that had brought them together in the first place. Meeting Betsy had turned Micky’s life on its head at a time when her career had started curving towards the heights. To climb as far and as fast as Micky meant collecting an interesting selection of enemies ranging from