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things properly, especially at this early stage. If we don’t then everything falls down here and you don’t want that. Not if we do have a multiple killer on our hands.’

He let out a breath. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ She was right. They had to take it step by step and get each stage right. They couldn’t afford for there to be any more women murdered by this guy. He was brutal. They had to stop him and that meant being meticulous.

The removal of the body was slow going. Dominic stayed for the whole period. For some reason he didn’t want to leave her. The cold in the woods seeped into his bones the whole time he stood there, making him ache for a warm room and a glass of whiskey. But he stayed and gave the woman the respect she deserved.

His team was busy getting statements from the witnesses who had found the woman and starting to collect CCTV from around the area. But again, as with the last victim, Julie Carver, there was none in the immediate vicinity.

As soil was brushed away from the body and as the woman was moved her injuries became more visible. She had the necklace of bruises around her throat and the remains of a smear of lipstick across her mouth. Her abdomen was a mess after spending time in the soil and with animals having got to her. Dominic swallowed his fury and clenched his fists at his side. How was he supposed to tell her family what had happened to their loved one? It was too horrific. These women had suffered. He would channel his anger into the investigation and work to bring the killer to justice.

Eventually she was loaded into a body bag and taken away. Some of the wildlife that had used her as a temporary home had now been housed in tubs and tubes to dissect later.

The lipstick was excavated and examined. It was House of Maven, Velvet Berry.

They were definitely looking for the same man. And it looked as though he had a definitive MO.

Chapter 25

Dominic

The couple who had found the victim admitted they’d been looking for a remote spot for a bit of outdoor sex and had got a lot more than they’d expected. Dominic informed his team that the couple would need investigating but he didn’t expect anything to come of it. Nothing had come of the old guy who had walked his dog and found Julie Carver. He figured again that this would be the same scenario. These were an innocent pair who had unfortunately stumbled upon a scene that they would now have to live with for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t something you could easily forget and throw off as one of those things that happened. She was a dead body. A real person who had once been living and breathing and having sex herself.

The next line of inquiry would be to identify the woman. Someone was at home wondering where she was, hoping she would walk through the door again. She would be loved and cared for. Or she could be a single woman with no family. No one to report her missing. But if she had a job Dominic hoped someone somewhere had put a report in. No one deserved to die in this way and not have anyone notice.

Back at the station he trawled through the missing persons files himself as his team were busy on other tasks. Normally one of the other Major Crime teams would have gone out to the body this morning as their team already had a case running. Because she resembled their case so closely Kapoor had decided they would pick it up. That meant the workload had doubled and they were stretched. Kapoor would have to make an application for more staff, secondments from uniform and other departments.

He didn’t have a timeframe for the woman’s death yet so trawling through the missing persons files was slow going. He had no idea how long she had been in the ground. She could even have been murdered before Julie.

That was something they hadn’t considered.

Approximately 200,000 people went missing every year. That was a lot of people. They took a huge amount of resources. Many of those returned. You got your regular teenage runaways. Those that left for the night, a couple of nights. Those in care homes that hated it and rebelled. They were all counted. They all had to be searched for even if the likelihood was they’d be found or come back of their own accord.

But some people, they simply disappeared and never returned. How many of those were buried, dumped out at sea, destroyed somehow? Dominic hated to think about it. The families who were left at home with no answers. Always wondering if their loved one would one day walk back through the door with a bunch of flowers and an apology for being away so long and worrying them. All would be forgiven because they were so pleased to see them back. But that day would never come because a stranger, or even someone close to the family, had destroyed their hope and hidden the evidence and it was never to be found.

Today one family had an answer. It wasn’t one they wanted, but in comparison to years of unanswered hope it was . . . the better option? Dominic clicked through to the next missing person file. Could this be the one? She was forty-five-year-old Madeleine Chapman. Something about the photograph looked familiar. He checked the file. A toothbrush had been seized by uniformed officers attending the scene. They could do a DNA match to see if she was Chapman. She was reported missing by her mother a week and a half ago.

Dominic picked up the phone and made the request to get the toothbrush sent to Forensics and