The media had caught on to the clock face, of course. The headlines had screamed out the question: Who will be the 40-minute victim? Is time running out for number 5? The Cambridge Observer had printed out a diagram plotting the crime spots radiating out from the red-light zone and, in heavy type, the number 8. It hadn’t taken much calculation to work out that west-southwest, ten miles distant and right under the number 8, lay the innocent, sleepy village of Foxfield. Sleepy no longer. The local inn was stuffed to the gunwales with press and police, tripping over each other in their fervid expectation of the next crime.

The watcher’s smile widened. Not much chance of an abduction given the level of surveillance. A smart bloke, the killer would no doubt call it a day and turn his attention to another town. Peterborough, perhaps? Lively scene up there, he’d heard. Unless an unmissable opportunity presented itself here. He glanced again at the two girls by the roadside and calculated the risks. Just how vulnerable were they? He noted the CCTV camera above his head. Trained on the girls. A hundred other cameras covered every inch of this street. And, on the tree-lined road parallel to and behind the main avenue there was a mobile police headquarters van parked on a patch of waste ground. Only a complete idiot would fall to the lure offered by these gaudy girls.

Decoy ducks. Police detectives, both. They weren’t risking much. Trained in unarmed combat, the pair of them. The watcher was a big, strong lad but he’d have thought twice about tangling with them. And the girls were secure in the knowledge that every shrub, every dumpster, and every corner had a police constable lurking behind it doing nothing but watch them. Overkill. Waste of time.