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what they have witnessed.
    ‘So whoever did this knew she would be here?’
    ‘If she’s who he was after, Sarge. We don’t know it wasn’t random.’
    ‘True. Do we have anything to that effect?’
    ‘Not yet. I’ve got a statement here from a Euan Leech who reckons the bloke pushed aside two other servers to get at her, but in all the confusion …’
    ‘And the other statements?’
    ‘Couldn’t say. Just saw a figure suddenly appear by the altar and the next thing he was hacking her down and it was all screams. It might become clearer when they have time to get their minds straight.’
    ‘Nothing from the patrols yet? No sign of him?’
    ‘Not a sausage. Too windy to get the chopper up, and too late now anyway. But with the amount of blood he’s covered in, somebody will have spotted him …’
    ‘OK,’ says McAvoy. He turns away from the girl’s body and looks into Tremberg’s face. She’s a very average-looking woman, compared to his Roisin, but she has a face that he reckons an artist would enjoy. Thin, elfin features sit in the centre of a round, broad head, like a gourmet meal in the middle of a large, plain plate. She’s tall and athletic, perhaps thirty years old, and dresses in an inoffensive, nondescript fashion that makes her neither a sex object to the male officers nor a threat to the more Machiavellian women. She’s funny, energetic and easy to get along with, and although there’s a slight tremble to her lips that betrays the adrenalin running through her body at the thought of being involved in the hunt for this killer, she is otherwise masking it with an aplomb McAvoy finds admirable.
    ‘The family,’ he says. ‘Were they here?’
    ‘No. They usually are. The verger said they were friends of the church, whatever you think that means. But no, she was here on her own. They dropped her off and she was going to make her own way back. That’s according to one of the other acolytes. An older lad. Wants to be a priest. Or a vicar. Don’t know the difference.’
    ‘But they’ve been informed, her parents. They know?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Family liaison have been contacted. I thought you’d want it to be our first port of call, soon as you got your faculties together.’
    McAvoy gives a thin smile. He’s pleased he is standing up. Were he sitting down, his legs would be jiggling up and down with a feeling that a less specific man would call excitement. McAvoy does not think of it as such. It is not even nervousness. It is a feeling he associates with the beginning of things. The potential of the blank page. He wants to know about Daphne Cotton. Wants to know who killed her, and why. Wants to know why he, Aector McAvoy, was spared the blade. Why there were tears in the man’s eyes. Wants to show that he can do this. That he’s more than the copper who brought down Doug Roper.
    He looks at his surroundings, at this majestic, aweinspiring place.
    Will it be the same? he wonders. Can the faithful sit in their pews and praise the Lord and not remember the time a killer leapt from the congregation and slaughtered one of the acolytes as she held her candle and attended the priest? He screws up his eyes. Rubs a palm over his features. When he opens them again he is staring at a great golden eagle, itswings folded in repose. He wonders at its significance. Why it stands here, on a tiled floor, at the top of the nave, facing the gothic stairs that lead to the lectern. Wonders who chose this bird, for this place. Feels his mind beginning to race. To analyse. This murder in a church, less than two weeks before Christmas. He contorts his features, as he remembers that moment, not yet two hours ago, when the song of the choir flooded across the square and warmed the hearts of those who heard it. Thinks of how Daphne Cotton must have felt in those awful moments, when the protective embrace of her faith, of her congregation, was punctured by a blade.
    ‘The car’s outside, Sarge,’ says Tremberg