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means you weren’t looking over my shoulder. Anyway, I was just checking I was clean. I wouldn’t want to blow a perfectly good SOCA safe-house.’ He followed her into the office, unable to stop himself admiring her legs. Button often wore jeans or other trousers so they were rarely on display. She had very good ones, he decided. Firm and shapely, the ankles smaller than his wrists.
    ‘I’ve got a meeting at SOCA headquarters this afternoon,’ she said, ‘and flashing a bit of skin tends to cut me a lot of slack.’
    ‘If my legs were as good as yours, I’d be flashing them too,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘Why, thank you, kind sir.’
    The office was lined with filing cabinets and volumes on tax law. There were four desks, one in each corner of the room, and a door. Button went through it and sat on a high-backed executive chair behind a large oak desk. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
    Shepherd took one of the two wooden chairs on his side of the desk. ‘Raring to go,’ he said.
    ‘I’m glad your hair’s growing back because we’ll be making use of your roguish good looks,’ she said, as she opened a manila file and passed a photograph across the table.
    ‘You are joking, I hope,’ said Shepherd, as he scrutinised the photograph. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, ten inches by eight, of a woman in her mid-thirties with shoulder-length wavy red hair and freckles across her nose. She was laughing and there was a sparkle in her green eyes. ‘Elaine Carter,’ said Button.
    ‘Pretty,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘Possible serial killer,’ said Button.
    ‘Ah,’said Shepherd. ‘I thought serial killers were all middle-aged white males.’
    ‘That’s if you believe in profiling,’ said Button. ‘Elaine here is a special case.’ She passed over another photograph, of a man lying face down on a terracotta tiled floor, a pool of blood around his head. ‘Her husband was Robbie Carter, an RUC Special Branch officer. An inspector.’
    Shepherd looked at the photograph. The hair at the back of the man’s head was matted with blood. ‘She killed her husband?’ he asked.
    ‘Spider, your psychic skills leave a lot to be desired. We’ll get on a lot quicker if you let me tell you what we know and you make the occasional grunt.’
    Shepherd looked more closely at the photograph of the dead man. There were smaller pools of blood around his knees.
    ‘Robbie Carter was shot by an IRA execution squad in nineteen ninety-six,’ continued Button. ‘They gunned him down in front of his wife and young son.’ She slid five photographs out of the file and spread them in front of Shepherd, like a poker player displaying a winning hand. She tapped the photograph on the far left. ‘Adrian Dunne. He was caught fleeing a punishment shooting a year after Carter was killed. He’d used the same gun as he had for the Carter killing and was sent down for life. Released under the Good Friday Agreement.’ She took another photograph and placed it on top of the first. It was a crime-scene shot. The body in it was naked and lying face down. There were gunshot wounds to the man’s head and knees. ‘Dunne was killed two weeks ago.’
    She ran a red-painted fingernail down the photograph next to the one of Dunne. This man was the oldest of the five, with thinning grey hair and the ruddy cheeks of someone who had spent a lot of time outdoors. ‘Joseph McFee. Left the Provos once the Peace Process got rolling and is thought to have joined the Real IRA. He didn’t actually shoot Carter, and no evidence was presented that suggested he was carrying a gun, but he got life as well, plus additional life sentences for killing two British soldiers and three other policemen. He was released two months after Dunne.’
    ‘Is it just me or is the world going crazy?’ asked Shepherd. ‘He murders two soldiers and four coppers and we let him out?’
    ‘It was part of the Peace Process,’ said Button. ‘That was the deal.’
    ‘Then the deal sucks,