On the table between them were six photographs. Three of the pictures depicted females smiling, relaxed and vibrantly alive. The remainder showed the same women after they were dead – two of them with the life choked out of them, the other lying in a pool of blood that had poured from her innards. Although she was the junior officer, DI Petra Novak was directing the meeting because she had called it. She looked in turn at each of the two men sitting opposite and waited for them to say something. For the previous fifteen minutes she had spoken uninterrupted and had tried to persuade them that there was a good and urgent reason why they were there. Their silence and expressions told her they did not agree. Detective Chief Inspector James Brewster stood up and took off the jacket of his polyester suit. Sweat stains darkened his armpits and the shirt that had once been white was now starting to stick to his back. He opened the button of the too-tight collar and slackened the knot of his unremarkable tie.
