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    â€˜But it’s risk,’ Stella agreed. ‘Hit-and-run is a risk: his victim might survive
and
remember.’ She paused. ‘And there’s another possibility.’
    Pete Harriman’s remark tailended Stella’s, as if he had been anticipating her. ‘The guy was enjoying it.’
    How long for her to die?
    As long as you like, that’s what Sam Burgess had told her
.
    â€˜Yes,’ Stella said, ‘that’s what I had in mind.’
    â€˜There’s another pattern,’ Maxine said. ‘Geography. They were all in west London.’
    Andy Greegan opened his mouth to speak and was ambushed by a sneeze. He turned his head aside and sneezed again.
    Stella said, ‘Don’t get sick.’
    â€˜I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Where’s the boyfriend?’
    â€˜Was in America. Now on his way back. We got to him through his office. He’ll call in as soon as he lands.’
    â€˜So he was in the States when she was killed?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Verifiable?’ Greegan asked.
    â€˜Absolutely.’
    â€˜This isn’t a domestic,’ Harriman said. ‘This is some bastard with a hammer, a garrotte and a fucked-up brain.’
    Ask coppers what they like least about the job and they’ll say paperwork. Everything has to be down on paper. Paper comes first and last. There’s a form for everything, and everything needs its report. Paper’s your back-up. Paper’s your fail-safe. Paper is the all-purpose, cover-your-arse proof-positive.
    Stella was hacking out a report when Sue Chapman came over with some more paper: a folder holding that day’s confessions. On average, there were four confessions a day.
    I did it. I killed her. Bitch deserved to die. How good it felt. You can contact me at the above address/phone number/email/try and find me fuckwit copper
.
    Sue had wild hair and a calm manner: methodical, organized, a coordinator’s brain. Stella could almost believe that Sue didn’t mind the paper; that maybe she had worked out some kind of a relationship with the paper. It gave a whole new meaning to the word ‘ream’. She put a note down on Stella’s desk.
    They were all followed up, the letters from crazies, the phone calls from crazies, most often by uniform because the local guys could check the usual names, the serial confessors, the eager inadequates. But they went to the SIO and the team leader first and the originals were all forensic-tested, copied for the handwriting experts and the profiler, then bagged in clear plastic folders. The note Sue had given to Stella was a copy, but she had the plastic-covered original in her hand. Stella looked first at the copy, then at the original.
    T-shirt… dark hair tied back in a pony-tail… I stripped heroff… I threw the rest away… strangled her… got my hands round ...
    It was signed: ‘Robert’. Robert: as if Stella ought to know who that was; as if they might be less than close friends but more than mere acquaintances.
    The papers had reported a body in the park and named it as Valerie Georgina Blake. They added that she had been strangled. There had been no physical description, nor any mention of the fact that she had been jogging or that she was found almost naked. The crank letters and calls used what they had to hand and invented the rest. Sue Chapman had read and logged them all: some of the inventions were pretty banal; some had turned her stomach.
    â€˜Hair colour,’ Sue said, ‘and the clothing.’
    Stella nodded. ‘This guy knows more than he should.’ She got up. ‘I’ll take it down to DI Sorley. In the meantime, copy and circulate, okay? Also, send a priority notification to every front office in the Met area. If this guy shows up at a nick, I don’t want some bored copper kicking his arse and showing him the door.’
    Sue nodded. She seemed a little