The eighth book in the William Monk series, 1997

John Evan stood shivering as the January wind whipped down the alley.

P.C. Shotts held his bull's-eye lantern high so they could see both the bodies at once. They lay crumpled and bloody, about seven feet apart on the icy, cobbled alleyway.

"Does anybody know what happened?" Evan asked, his teeth chattering.

"No, sir," Shotts replied bleakly. "Woman found them and oP Briggs came an' told me.”

Evan was surprised. "In this area?" He glanced around at the grimy walls, the open gutter and the few windows blacked with dirt. The doors he could see were narrow, straight onto the street, and stained with years of damp and soot. The only lamppost was twenty yards away, gleaming balefully like a lost moon. He was unpleasantly aware of movement just beyond the perimeter of light, of hunched figures watching and waiting, the myriad beggars, thieves and unfortunates who lived in this slum of St. Giles, only a stone's throw from Regent Street in the heart of London.

Shotts shrugged, looking down at the bodies. "Well, they obviously in't drunk or starved or freezin'. All that blood, I reckon as she likely screamed, then were afraid someone 'carder an' she din't wanter get blamed, so she went on screamin', an' other folk came." He shook his head. "They ain't always bad about lookin' arter their own around 'ere. I dare say as she'd 'a kept walkin' if she'd 'ad the nerve, an' thought of it quick enough.”

Evan bent down to the body nearer to him. Shotts lowered the light a little so it showed the head and upper torso more clearly. He was a man Evan guessed to be in his middle fifties.