Strangers. Paul Finch

None of the victims were known or even suspected to be homosexuals. I know some men lead double lives, but four of them one after another without a hint of it in their background? Seemed progressively less likely the more we were able to put names to their emasculated corpses.’

      ‘So you’re now looking for a woman? Seriously?’

      ‘Shocking thought, eh? That there are girls out there as badly behaved as the boys.’

      ‘But this is correct, ma’am? You’re hunting a female sex murderer?’

      ‘We’re hunting a lunatic, PC Clayburn. The fact it’s a woman is no more a problem for me that if it was a man. Evil knows no gender.’

      ‘I get that, but it’d be a rarity … surely?’

      ‘First time for everything.’ Nehwal turned the iPad around. A grainy video was playing. ‘Couple of days ago, we recovered this CCTV footage from the slip road connecting a filling station outside Atherton to the A579.’

      At first, the moving picture wasn’t easily distinguishable. The camera was clearly located some distance from the slip-lane, but the image had been enhanced sufficiently to display a vehicle cruising down it, and slowing and stopping just before it reached the main drag. Here, a female figure – female because it had longish, fair hair under a beret-like hat, an hourglass shape and, by the looks of it, was wearing a tight skirt or dress, and high heels – approached from the verge, spoke to the driver through an open passenger window, and then climbed in. After that, the car sped away.

      ‘Lexus 430,’ Lucy observed.

      ‘Correct,’ Nehwal said. ‘Belonged to Ronald Ford, the last victim – the next time anyone saw him, apart from the murderer, he was lying dead with his skull bashed in and his dick and balls severed.’

      Lucy pondered that. It certainly matched the MO. So far, the APs had all been found in isolated locations but close to busy roads. In each case they had been beaten with a blunt instrument like a hammer, which was thought to have rendered them semi-conscious. They had then had their genitals cut away. Most had died from the subsequent blood loss, though one had also suffered a severely fractured skull, and might already have been dead when he was mutilated.

      Though these horrible eviscerations were widely known about inside the police, the taskforce had deliberately been vague with the press, publicising that in all cases death was caused in the same way: first, blows to the head to weaken the subject, and then knife-wounds to the lower abdomen to finish him off. That latter detail wasn’t untrue of course, but they’d withheld it that the sexual organs had been removed in order to weed out any serial confessors, of whom there had already been several since the news had broken that a new killer was on the loose.

      There were lots of questions here, though.

      ‘Gave the nice old lady who was out for an early morning walk with her poodle a turn that she’s never likely to recover from,’ Nehwal added conversationally.

      Lucy said nothing as she watched the video play through a second time and a third.

      ‘You look doubtful,’ Nehwal said.

      ‘It’s nothing, ma’am … just, wasn’t the second victim a big heavy bloke?’

      ‘That’s right. Larry Pupper, a lorry driver. Weighed in at about twenty-five stone. We found him just off the East Lancs, near Worsley.’

      ‘And yet I seem to remember reading that he’d been dragged something like a hundred yards before being dumped in some thickets.’

      ‘You’ve been following the case, PC Clayburn?’

      ‘You can’t get away from it. It’s all over social media.’

      ‘Well, wait till this story hits Facebook. Jill the Ripper, eh? You can’t beat a novelty, even where serial killers are concerned. Anyway, yes … that lorry driver thing was easier to understand when we thought we were looking for a bloke, but there are as many oddities in this case as there are theories.’

      ‘Could the killer be a cross-dresser maybe?’

      ‘Got a good figure if he is.’ Nehwal closed the iPad. ‘It isn’t a bloke, though. There’s been no semen found at any of the murder scenes. Okay, that isn’t uncommon with sex crimes these days given the public’s knowledge about DNA evidence. But killers are rarely as careful as they like to think they are. More telling is the footprint we identified.’

      ‘I didn’t realise we had,’ Lucy said.

      ‘We’re sitting on it,’ Nehwal replied. ‘For the time being at least. There was a whole mess of footprints in the area surrounding all the murder scenes. Most were boot or trainer prints. Hardly unusual given that they were on or near to public footpaths. But then we found the imprint of a high-heeled shoe close to Ronnie Ford’s body. That would be uncommon in a woodland area, which made it suspicious. However, it was only identified as a size seven, which meant that it most likely had been left by a woman rather than a man.’

      ‘If it’s a woman she’d have to be unusually strong.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘Or she’s got company …?’

      ‘We’ve considered that, but serial killers working team-handed are even rarer than go-it-alone women.’ Nehwal tapped her iPad. ‘And as we have to go where the evidence leads us, at present we’re only looking for one.’

      ‘So that little miss on the video is your prime suspect?’

      ‘I wouldn’t call her little. Even allowing for her heels, we estimate she stands about six feet. Plus she’s stacked, as you saw for yourself.’

      ‘Prozzie?’

      ‘Most likely.’ Nehwal sniffed. ‘Could be a hitcher, but a tight skirt and high heels … you ever known a hippy chick hit the road dressed like that?’

      ‘If nothing else, it should be easy enough tracing her.’

      ‘On the contrary …’ Nehwal cracked a cynical half-smile. ‘It’s proving anything but. Surprisingly so. And there are other complicating factors. Hammond, Pupper and now Ford were all killed in Greater Manchester, but Graham Cummins, the third victim was found in a ditch near Southport, which is in Merseyside, having apparently picked his murderer up – we think – just outside Preston, which is in Lancs. So before you ask, their lordships are about to announce Operation Clearway, a specialist taskforce comprising officers from all three forces.’

      Lucy nodded. ‘And, just out of interest … why are you telling me?’

      ‘It’s simple.’ Nehwal slid her iPad back into one of her apparently capacious pockets. ‘We need women, and lots of them. Younger women, preferably … but they’ll need at least a bit of experience.’ She eyed Lucy carefully. ‘You tick both those boxes.’

      ‘You’re aware, ma’am, that my last CID attachment was a bit of a disaster?’

      ‘Yeah, but that’s not an issue. You won’t have an investigative role.’

      ‘Okay, so let me see …’ Lucy’s brief thrill of interest rapidly deflated. She arched an eyebrow. ‘When you say you want young women, you mean you want secretaries to run the MIR?’

      ‘Erm … no.’ Nehwal cracked another smile, again minus humour. ‘The job you’ll be doing won’t be anything like as clean and safe as that.’

      ‘Decoys then? You want undercover decoy units?’

      ‘Well … you won’t be decoys as such. The killer’s not targeting women. But unfortunately, if you take this job it still means you’re going to be out there in your tarty gear, rubbing shoulders with the girls who work the roads.’

      ‘Covert enquiries?’

      ‘Basically. Hang around with them, talk to them, make friends. Collate as much intel as