The hunter has become the prey …

The headless corpses of three men are found in a London side street. Their mutilated torsos are witness to an unspeakably agonizing death. It becomes chillingly clear that this discovery is a horrific message to the Metropolitan Police - and to one officer in particular.

DI Stacey Collins finds herself on the hunt for a psychopathic killer. But it would seem that this is no ordinary homicide … all the victims had themselves been predators, terrorizing the innocent. Is this a twisted vigilante mission, or something far more sinister?

Meanwhile, Collins must battle her own demons as the MET's Internal Affairs department investigate her past and her connections to London's underworld.

Collins faces her toughest challenge yet - torn between justice and revenge...

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Prologue

At first he thought he must be dreaming. Then, as the fog clouding his mind began to lift, he started to feel uneasy. Finally, with the full reality of his situation slowly becoming clear, Raymond Chadwick started to panic.

The brightly lit room he had woken up in was eerily quiet and smelled of antiseptic. He had no idea of where he was or how he had got there. The only thing he knew for sure was that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The overhead lights were dazzling, like staring directly into the sun, but when Chadwick tried to shut his eyes and turn away nothing happened. He couldn’t move. For some reason his whole body seemed to have stopped working. His arms, legs, fingers, toes, lips, tongue – they were all useless. He couldn’t even blink.

What on earth was going on? The last thing he could remember was sitting in the passenger seat of a fast-moving car. After that, everything had suddenly gone blank. And now he had woken up in . . . a hospital? That was the only thing that made sense. There must have been a crash, some kind of accident. How badly hurt was he? Was he going to be paralysed for the rest of his life? Please God, no! Anything but that. Chadwick forced himself to calm down, to concentrate, to slow down his racing heart and take in as much as possible about his situation. He knew he was lying on his back, naked from the waist upwards – he could feel the cold air against his skin – but nothing hurt, he wasn’t in any kind of pain at all. His fuddled brain searched desperately for an explanation. He still felt as though he was waking up
from a deep sleep so perhaps he had just undergone an operation and was coming out of the anaesthesia. That too seemed to fit the facts. But if that was the case, why was there no one here with him? Why had he been left all alone?

Then another thought came into his mind and terror started to rise within him. What if the operation had not yet started? What if he remained awake during the whole procedure? He had read about cases like that and they had become the stuff of his nightmares.

Then, from somewhere off to his right, came the sound of footsteps. Solid shoes against a tiled floor. A steady clip, clip, clip, coming closer and closer. The footsteps clipped their way around the room, moving to one side, pausing for a few seconds, then moving back. A few moments later came the sound of a voice, a gentle, slightly muffled voice repeating his name over and over, assuring him that everything was going to be all right, that there was nothing to worry about.

A sense of ease slowly washed over him. The physical presence of another human being in the room was all the proof Chadwick needed that he had not been forgotten, that he was being cared for. And there was more. The fact that the doctor was talking to him meant they knew he was conscious. Also, the fact that he was being reassured meant he was surely over the worst and on the road to recovery.

As he began to calm down he focused on the voice. There was something familiar about it. Chadwick knew he had heard it before but struggled to place it. Just then something appeared at the bottom of his field of vision. A head, covered in a tight-fitting green cap, was leaning over his torso, examining him. As the head moved along his body he could see the edge of a surgical mask covering the lower part of the face, leaving only the eyes visible.

For a brief moment the eyes looked directly into his. They were cold, detached. He could sense no emotion in them as the head vanished out of view. A clatter of metal against metal was followed by the return of the head and a warm sensation on Chadwick’s chest as a soft palm pressed down on to the space between his nipples.

The muffled voice spoke again. ‘Don’t worry, Raymond. It’s all going to be okay. I’m going to make it all okay.’

The fingers were spread wide and felt good against his cold skin. A thumb started to slide back and forth across his sternum, pushing his chest hair aside. Slowly the hand began to press more firmly until it was forcing his shoulder blades flat against the bed beneath him.

Then a new sound. A muffled giggle. A laugh. The tone of the voice changed, becoming harsher, rising with excitement. ‘You really thought you were going to get away with it didn’t you?’ the voice said. ‘You truly believed that no one was ever going to find out. But you were wrong, Raymond. So wrong. You can’t go around treating people like that. You just can’t. Now you’re going to have to pay. You know what I’m going to have to do to you, don’t you?’

Chadwick’s heart began to race. He tried to move but found himself still paralysed. He stared back at the eyes, which were now wide with excitement, and he could sense a smile beneath the mask.

Then came something new. Something awful. It was at once white-hot and ice cold, a pin prick of intense pressure that seemed to pierce downwards, moving deep inside him, becoming more and more agonizing by the second. The pain was like nothing he had ever known. He felt his skin tearing, his muscles ripping, as the razor-sharp surgical scalpel sliced into him. He felt the fountains of warm blood spilling out over his sides, the pinch of cold air against his exposed internal organs. Chadwick tried to open his mouth and scream, but no sound came out. The hands were deep inside him now, pulling, twisting and wrenching his organs apart. It couldn’t be happening, but it was. He was being cut open by someone who was only too well aware that he was still awake. This was no mistake, this was no innocent error. He was witnessing his own cold-blooded murder.

The voice that had once gently called his name was now breathless with excitement. The sound of euphoric laughter was still ringing in Chadwick’s ears as the life seeped out of him and the bright lights slowly faded into absolute, eternal darkness.