THE SUDDEN BANAL chatter of a radio presenter dragged Lambert from an alcohol-heavy sleep. He blinked and stared at the radio alarm. Seven o’clock, on the dot. His brain was fuzzy as he struggled to recall recent events. So much had happened in such a short space of time. And he couldn’t even remember setting the alarm the previous night. Following the discussion at the Cockett Inn, he had returned to his own local in the Mumbles area and continued boozing until closing time, which he now regretted, especially as he needed to continue the investigation, Sunday or not.

He groaned as he swung himself out of bed, and then slipped into his dressing gown before going into the bathroom and turning on the bath taps. While it was running he made himself strong fresh coffee, returned to the bathroom to turn off the taps, and went into the living room.

For days now he hadn’t checked the emails on his laptop, which lay sleek and anachronistic on top of the late-1940s heavy oak dining table in a flat furnished by a landlord with a taste for post-war austerity.

While he switched on the laptop and waited for it to boot up, he sipped his coffee and tried to focus his thoughts on the investigation, hoping that – as sometimes happened – a troubled sleep and a bombardment of ideas would pay dividends. But all he felt this morning was a muddled, washed-out feeling, and he almost wished he’d never chosen policing as a career.

He clicked on to Internet Explorer and saw there were ten emails waiting to be read. He opened them up and there was one which immediately caught his eye. It was from his sister’s husband in Australia. The message had been sent five hours ago, about lunchtime that side of the world. There was an attachment, but first he clicked open the message and read:

Lambert stared at the screen, his mind numb and unmoved by the message, which was about a woman he had never known; a total stranger. His thoughts were clouded by something so nebulous that he could feel nothing but a distant sadness for the brother-in-law he had barely known.

After closing down his laptop, he took his mug of coffee with him to finish in the bath. As he lay trying to soak off the dirty, unwashed feeling from a restless night and investigating mind-blowing crimes, he thought about Angela, knowing the truth about his sister would forever elude him. It pained him to think about it and he screwed his eyes closed. The warmth of the bath water brought him little comfort as he thought about her, wondering if she might have confided to her husband about the past and her relationship with their father. But he knew he would never get in touch. All he and Gary had in common was his sister. And now she was gone. There would be no point in contacting him. Ever.

As soon as he arrived at the road in Cowbridge in which Mark Yalding lived, Lambert took great care to park a little way away from his house. The houses in the street were only on one side, and where Lambert was parked on the opposite side was a wire fence bordering allotments. On the far side of the allotment, Lambert could see a man in khaki shorts and a blue vest digging with a fork. He didn’t get out of the car immediately, but sat watching and waiting, just in case there were reporters still keeping an eye on the place. But all seemed to be quiet.

He switched off the engine and watched the house for a moment. About ten or fifteen yards in front of him was a parked Honda Civic, and in front of that was a Land Rover Freelander, parked diagonally opposite Yalding’s house. The road sloped, giving Lambert’s Mercedes more height, so that he could observe the Land Rover over the height of the Honda; but he couldn’t make out if anyone was inside it, mainly because of the height of the four-by-four and its spare tyre on the back. But something, maybe it was a gut feeling, told him to sit tight and wait.

It was another cloudless day, and now that he’d switched the engine off along with the air conditioning, the sun’s rays burnt through the glass and the temperature began to rise rapidly. He clicked the ignition key forward and let the window down.

His thoughts on the drive over to Cowbridge had been mainly about Angela and his father, so he had given little consideration as to how he intended to interview Yalding. Now he thought about it, he realized that if the TV researcher had all along protested his innocence, however far fetched and unlikely his story was, he would in all probability be open to talking about his dilemma.

Still no sign of life from the Land Rover. Perhaps it belonged to someone from one of the other cottages. Lambert moved to open the door.

He froze, hoping whoever was getting out of the Land Rover didn’t look back and see him. And then she emerged, walking hesitantly towards Yalding’s cottage.

She was blonde, and he guessed she could have been in her late forties or early fifties maybe. She was what Lambert would describe as petite, with beautifully slim legs in tight blue jeans that looked brand new, and she wore a light blue T-shirt with some sort of design on the front, but she was too far away for him to see the motif clearly. He couldn’t see the colour of her eyes, but her bright red lipstick seemed to accentuate a pale skin. Even from a distance, Lambert could see she was attractive.

She stopped at Yalding’s gate and looked around tentatively before deciding to approach his front door along the short, narrow path. With more determination now, she raised the brass knocker and knocked twice.

Lambert heard the clacking sound and watched as she stepped back away from the door and looked expectantly at the windows, also craning her neck back to look at the upstairs windows.

After waiting for less than a minute, she knocked twice again, but still no one answered. He saw her delve into her jeans pocket and bring out a mobile phone, and watched her scrolling for a number. She put the phone to her ear and listened for a minute. He watched carefully to see if her lips moved, but she abandoned the call without leaving a message and tucked the mobile back into her pocket.

Taking one last, and clearly hopeful, look back at the cottage, she crossed the road and got back into her Land Rover. Then she did a three-point turn in the road and drove back past Lambert’s Mercedes. He ducked out of sight.

As soon as she had driven away, Lambert got out of the car and hurried towards Yalding’s cottage. There didn’t seem much point in knocking on the door the same as Yalding’s visitor had, so he went straight to the side gate and tried it. It wasn’t locked, and he swung it open quickly and hurried around the back.

He stopped at the back door, wondering whether or not he should try entering. He thought he could smell alcohol, and his attention was drawn to some broken glass that looked like a broken whisky bottle that had been dropped near the door.

A tremor of shallow breath rippled in his chest as excitement and fear surged through his body. He thought about entering but stood frozen to the spot, staring at the back door, almost as if he expected it to open of its own accord. His mouth felt dry and he was fearful of what he almost certainly knew he would find, although a slightly more optimistic voice in his head told him he could be wrong.

But first he went back to his car and fetched a pair of latex gloves which he kept in the glove compartment. When he returned to the rear of the cottage he didn’t hesitate. After putting on the gloves, he turned the doorknob on the back door and pushed. It wasn’t locked. He eased it open and entered the kitchen.

He took a deep breath, hoping to overcome his fear, which was uncoiling in his stomach like a spring. He crossed the kitchen, his eyes quickly scanning the work surface with its clutter of utensils, but not really taking it in as he stared at the open door leading to the living room, dreading the horror of what he knew he was about to face. As he walked cautiously towards the open door, he could almost imagine he was being beckoned by a malignant force, and his leg movements felt unreal, as if they belonged to someone else. But this time he felt no nausea; no waves of panic. In spite of the bloody mess on the carpet, and the naked body trussed up in the chair, genitals mutilated, and brains spilling out from the battered head, he felt he could cope this time.

He knew he’d have to call headquarters soon and get the crime scene people out here. But first he needed to get details of that last telephone call before someone else rang. He avoided looking directly at the corpse, and his eyes darted around the room, focusing on a cordless phone, fitted to its cradle, on a mahogany occasional table under the window.

It was a small room, and the phone was within easy reach. Avoiding the pool of blood on the carpet, he walked over, grabbed the phone and dialled 1-4-7-1. Right away the automatic female voice told him the last call was made the previous evening at 17.00 hours and the caller had withheld the number. Either someone had called via a company switchboard or the number had been deliberately withheld. Perhaps it was the former, another reporter trying to contact Yalding from a newspaper office.

Lambert replaced the phone in its cradle and thought about the woman who had visited a few minutes ago. She must either have been calling someone else or ringing him on his mobile.

Then the image suddenly struck him. His brain must have automatically registered it when he entered, and he dashed back into the kitchen. There was the victim’s mobile phone, lying on the surface near the inbuilt hob, surrounded by a corkscrew, half-empty bottle of red wine, a tray of melted ice cubes and the screw-top from the whisky bottle.

He picked the phone up, pressed the main menu button, went to the log and missed calls section and clicked the button. The last call was from someone called Rhi, timed at less than ten minutes ago.

He took out his pen and a small notebook from his breast pocket and copied the name and number. Then he clicked off the mobile and left it where he’d found it.

Breathing deeply to calm himself, he went out into the garden for some fresh air, and called headquarters with details of the crime. Pretty soon this quiet area would be swarming with police, and not long after it would be the focus of the entire UK.

Lambert thought back to Friday lunchtime, when he received Marden’s call, followed by three brutal murder scenes in less than forty-eight hours. It had to be some sort of record.