‘I don’t want Maxen thinking too highly of me – especially after all the time and trouble I’ve taken to make myself appear incompetent in public. You of all people should understand what I’m saying, Anna. Think about it.’
Anna nodded, the penny dropping at last.
‘You’re keeping up the whole pretence of running a shoddy operation,’ she said. ‘If Maxen really is the Santa killer, then by now he’s going to be more convinced than ever that you and your team aren’t up to the job of stopping him.’
‘His self-confidence should be sky-high by now. Let’s hope he gets cocky enough to start making some serious mistakes.’
‘Are you going to let him go?’
‘We’ll have to. We can’t charge him, we’ve got bugger all hard evidence to link him to the crimes, no DNA or forensics, and his solicitor will have him back out in the street by breakfast time, I can assure you of that. But it wasn’t my intention to keep him locked up. If we held him here, he’d clam up – and if he is Santa, then all we’d be doing is dooming Sharon Steiner to a lonely, wretched death wherever he’s stashed her. But now that we’ve had him in here and shown him just how desperate our investigation has become, he’ll resume his “Twelve Days of Christmas” games with renewed enthusiasm, convinced he’s already got away with it for another year. And if I’ve calculated correctly, he’ll over-reach himself. That’s my big hope, that his overconfidence will lead him to make a fatal mistake, and then we’ll get the chance to grab him red-handed and find Sharon Steiner before she ends up like all those others before her.’
‘Unless, of course, you’re focusing on the wrong man.’
‘We are following other lines of enquiry, Anna, not just him,’ Jim assured her. ‘But, at the moment, Maxen’s top of our list.’
‘What happens now?’
‘Well, there’s no point you hanging around the police station all night. But you can’t go back to your flat, it’s too risky. I’ll have a car posted outside your place to keep watch on the place, just in case he shows. But as for you, Anna, is there anywhere else you could stay for tonight and maybe the next few nights? Somewhere safe?’
At once, instinctively, Anna thought of Miles. She always felt safe with Miles. And she had an open invitation to swing by any time she liked – even, perhaps, at three in the morning, uninvited and fleeing from a serial killer.
‘Yes, I know a place I can go,’ she said.
‘Very well, then. I’ll get one of the uniformed boys to drive you there. Here, take my number and contact details, and be so kind as to give me yours. We need to keep in close contact. You have to keep me fully informed if anything at all happens, okay? And you must also understand that you won’t be able to write about any of this. What happens on this case is strictly confidential.’
‘I understand perfectly. Writing’s the last thing that’s on my mind at the moment. All I’m concerned with is finding Sharon Steiner before it’s too late.’
A patrol car carried Anna across town to Hampstead. En route, she called Miles’s number. He picked up almost at once. Anna guessed at once that he was struggling to sleep. Even now, nearly three years after his inexplicable trauma, he was still pacing around at three in the morning.
‘Sorry to spring this on you, Miles, but I need a place for the night. Right now. Something’s happened.’
‘Oh God, are you okay? Where are you?’
‘I’m fine. I’m in a police car heading towards you. Can you put me up?’
‘I’ll put the kettle on at once!’ Miles said, and he spoke with such seriousness that Anna could not help but burst out laughing, despite everything. Perhaps it was nerves as much as anything else.
The uniformed officer driving the patrol car shot her a glance, but Anna ignored it.
‘Miles, you truly are an angel of mercy,’ she said. ‘I’ll explain everything when I get to you.’
When they reached Miles’s Hampstead townhouse, all the downstairs lights were blazing in the deep, cold darkness of the December night. The uniformed officer watched from the car as Anna hurried along the front drive and rang the bell. He didn’t pull away again until Miles had opened the door and taken her inside.
As promised, the kettle was indeed on. Miles moved about the kitchen making them both coffee, his mop of dark hair as chaotic and unruly as ever, but now flecked with grey. There were dark lines under his eyes, brought about by stress and chronic insomnia, but despite all that there was still an air of boyishness lingering about him, an indomitable spirit of life and humour that had not been crushed out of him by his ordeal and which Anna believed was the life-support system which kept him going even in his darkest moments.
‘So – what’s the mess you’ve got yourself into?’ Miles asked, passing her a steaming mug of coffee. ‘Tell Uncle Miles all about it – from the beginning.’
‘I can’t quite get my head around it myself! It’s all happened so suddenly.’
‘Is it something to do with that awful Sharon Steiner business?’
‘God, Miles, how did you know?’
Miles shrugged: ‘An educated guess. When you rang me earlier you were railing about CID having a serial killer on their hands that they were too incompetent to catch. I’m guessing the killer you were referring to is Santa. He’s struck again, hasn’t he? I don’t get out much but I still keep a close eye on the news.’
‘Yes, it’s Santa. Do you know anything about him?’
‘I remember he was one of the unsolved cases I was looking into years ago. But I didn’t get the chance to go too deeply into it, my attention was on a number of other cases at that time. Santa’s been operating for … oh, let me think, it must be at least ten years by now.’
‘Twelve. He’s been getting away with it for twelve years.’
‘And you’ve set your sights on seeing that he doesn’t get away with it for another twelve years, I take it,’ said Miles. ‘But something’s not gone according to plan – hence your sudden, though not at all unwelcome, arrival in a police car at three in the morning.’
‘I’ve attracted his attention,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve shown up on his radar.’
‘Shown up on whose radar?’
‘Santa’s. He knows about me, Miles. He knows where I live. And a few hours ago, he came to my flat.’
Miles jolted, spilling his coffee half over the table and half over himself. Anna at once grabbed some paper towels and set about mopping him up, like a mother with a clumsy child.
‘Sorry about that,’ Miles apologised, his voice sounding tighter and edgier than before. ‘The thought of that monster getting close to you … it really upset me.’
‘Well, I’m fine,’ Anna said emphatically. ‘Well, I say fine, what I mean is that nobody hurt me. But I did receive a present.’
‘A present? A present from Santa? Wh … What sort of present?’
In her mind’s eye, Anna could vividly see herself tearing away the wrapping paper, unlatching the clasps on the plastic box, opening the lid and being hit by that stomach-churning stink of putrefying flesh …
She shook her head to clear it, then said: ‘Something awful. Blood. Bits. A present from a serial killer.’
‘And you rang the police