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decrepit old armchair. It was the photograph of a pale and bloody body lying dead in some rich folks’ apartment.
    Harper opened his eyes quickly and saw the glaring reflections on his window from the street below. The city was a mosaic of shadow and light. Once upon a time, city lights excited him, but he didn’t like the promises any more. He reached for his backpack and pulled out his notebook. Each dog-eared page was beautifully illustrated with quick sketches of various birds. Dates, times, locations and notes surrounded each sketch.
    He picked up his pen and sucked the end until he tasted ink on his tongue. He drew the faint outline of the warbler from memory. He wrote the date, stared at it and then looked again to the window. His mind wouldn’t settle.
    Across the room, his cell phone chimed a cheap tune. Harper jumped up and grabbed it. He’d not once given up on Lisa. He was endlessly optimistic that one day she’d want to come back. And he would forgive her - no question. He put the cell close to his ear. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Didn’t disturb you, did I?’ Harper’s heart sank. Not her voice. A man’s voice. Captain Lafayette.
    ‘You don’t give up, do you?’
    ‘Blue Team have just left the crime scene. Don’t know much about the victim yet. But she looks the same type and the injuries are similar. Like we feared, we think it’s the same unsub.’
    ‘Sorry to hear that.’
    ‘They found her on Ward’s Island. She was left out on the rocks in the water. Probably died late last night. The body’ll be there another hour or so.’
    Harper sat down. ‘What’s the MO?’
    ‘She’s been strangled. Same ritual - torture cuts, left naked. She was also posed.’
    ‘Posed how?’ said Harper, pen in hand, tracing the outline of a rock on his notebook.
    ‘Like she’s praying.’
    ‘Hands tied together?’
    ‘Yeah, with copper wire.’ Lafayette paused. ‘I want you to take a look before they take the body. No commitment. Just give us something, Tom. Anything. For God’s sake.’
    ‘I’m not ready to go back, Captain.’
    ‘How about you just take a look at this girl, tell me what you can? Maybe what you see will help us nail this bastard. Call it a leaving gift.’
    Harper was silent. The figure of a girl with her hands in prayer appeared in black ink on the page in front of him.
    ‘I’m in a black Impala outside your apartment. I’ll wait ten minutes. If it’s a no, then whatever you go on to do, Harper, good luck and all that. You were a first-rate cop, the best. Don’t ever forget that while you’re down there in Vegas hunting slot-machine fixers.’

Chapter Four
    Ward’s Island
November 15, 7.18 p.m.
     
    D arkness was holding fast over Ward’s Island. Only the distant lights of Kirby Psychiatric Hospital and the near glow of the crime scene were visible from across Hell Gate Bridge. The whole area was still being scoured by Crime Scene Unit detectives.
    The east wind had blustered all day and now raced across the island, whipping up the surface of the water and making it dance against the black rocks. Across the river, Manhattan’s teeming grid of coloured lights reflected in the dark water like a street-level rainbow promising wealth and fulfilment. But there on Ward’s Island, on the rough grass against the rocks, lay a naked body lapped by the shallow surf. Her guts were torn open and a couple of seagulls had stayed around after dark to take what they could.
    The icy wind was also freezing the four officers standing in a half-circle above the corpse, their bomber jackets zipped chin high, their eyes streaming and their faces pale as pig skin. In silence, they stared down at the mutilated body. Officer James Cob was stamping his feet and playing around with his flashlight.
    ‘Hey, Hernandez, did you eat already?’ he said.
    ‘No,’ said Hernandez. ‘How the fuck could I eat out here?’
    ‘Here, you like fresh meat?’ Cob shone his torch on to the corpse.
    ‘Serious, Cob,