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lot of pressure to get things done so the motorway can be reopened.’
    ‘I’m on it, guv.’
    ‘And tell the techies that I need a ballistics report on the bullets as soon as possible.’
    Temple then asked Matherson if he could determine the trajectory of the bullet from the wound in the woman’s chest.
    ‘Well, we know it came through the windscreen,’ Matherson said. ‘And there doesn’t seem to be a marked angle of entry, so I’d say that whoever fired the shot was ahead of the car up on the embankment to the left. How far away, though, would depend on the type of weapon used. The wounds on both victims would suggest a high-powered rifle so the killer could have been positioned hundreds of yards along the motorway facing into the westbound traffic.’
    The scale of the task facing them was immediately apparent to Temple: two murders; a motorway pile-up and a psycho killer with a rifle. It couldn’t get any more high profile.
    Turning to the police sergeant who had brought them there, he said, ‘What’s the situation with the other casualties? Has everyone been accounted for as far as you know?’
    The officer nodded. ‘So far we have three other fatalities. All suffered multiple injuries consistent with collision damage. The paramedics who attended them assure me they were not shot. Five other people are seriously hurt, but their injuries are also crash-related. No bullet wounds. Two of them are still trapped in their vehicles. The others are on their way to hospital. A further fifteen or so people have sustained minor injuries.’
    Temple’s heart was like lead and for a few moments he felt disoriented. The scene around him was still chaotic with theemergency personnel struggling to cope. He could hear people shouting and sobbing. Sirens wailed and the drone of helicopters throbbed constantly.
    He turned towards the embankment which rose steeply beyond the Honda. There were people on the grass in front of clumps of bushes, among them shocked and injured motorists who were being tended to by paramedics. At the top of the embankment there were woods and every now and then the light from one of the choppers would wash over the trees.
    Was that where the bastard had fired from? Was he still up there getting a perverted kick out of what he’d done? Or was he long gone by now, having left not a single clue in his wake?
    Temple reckoned it was safe to assume that the shooter was male. This wasn’t a woman’s crime. Rifles were almost always the weapon of choice for men.
    He was told that officers with the armed support team were already up there searching the woods, but he doubted that they would find anything. He decided to hang around on the motorway and talk to those motorists who had not been injured and were still here because their cars were either damaged or stuck in the jam. There was a faint chance that someone had spotted something – maybe a muzzle flash – as the shots were fired.
    He also wanted to pick the brains of the traffic cops and the collision investigation officers. Perhaps they could shed light on exactly how the drama had unfolded.
    The questions were already mounting up in his head.
    Which lanes were the gunshot victims in when the bullets struck?
    Was this stretch of the motorway covered by traffic cameras?
    How far away was the nearest road or country lane?
    Answers to these kind of questions would help them build up a picture of what had happened.
    Temple was also keen to brief the scene of crime team when they finally arrived. This was probably going to be the most difficult job they’d ever undertaken. They’d be working in extreme conditions; forensic evidence would be limited to the bullets – unless they managed to find out where the shots were fired from. And that was a big
if.
    He stepped away from the Honda on to the hard shoulder, leaving Matherson to examine the woman’s body in detail. He walked about halfway up the embankment to get a look at the scene from an