The postcards are still coming. Book three contains postcards seven, eight and nine.

Here’s another extract for you:

Forty-five minutes later they arrived back at the nick, with a well overdue lunch.

Isabel played with the items on her desk top while she ate. It wasn’t as untidy as it sometimes was, but she needed a place to put the zebra she’d bought several days ago. Finally she cleared a space and pulled the stuffed toy from the bag. “There you go,” she told it. “You can sit there and guard all my pens and pencils.”

Zander shook his head at her. “I’d forgotten about them.”

“I hadn’t.” Isabel tossed Zander the iguana. “There you go. She can sit on your desk.”

“And where do I put it?”

“Her,” she corrected. “Put her. And you have masses of space on your desk, seeing as how you’re such a neat freak. Simply find a small corner so she can watch you quietly.” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe we should put cameras in them. Use them as nanny-cam type things. See who really dumps letters from the serial killer on my desk.”

“Overkill.” Zander pointing to the wall mounted cameras. “Got those already so we don’t need anymore. Especially ones on our desks spying on our every move.”

DI Holmes strode across the squad room, pausing by their desks. “You’re back. Dane and I are going to interview Zander’s grandfather… What are those?”

Isabel glanced at the sandwich. “It’s tuna and sweet corn. Zander’s is a BLT. We promise not to get crumbs and grease on the files.”

“No. Those.” He pointed to the stuffed animals.

Isabel grinned. “This is Zander the Zebra and Isabel the Iguana.”

DI Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

She nodded. “I called mine Zander as a joke and he retaliated.”

“Hmmm. How did it go at the doctor’s?”

Isabel frowned. “Who told you I had an appointment?”

Zander smirked. “I did. No secrets between partners, remember?”

Isabel threw a pen lid at him. “He’s my boss, not my partner.” Then she turned to the Guv. “It went.”

Zander chuckled. “She sulked like a two-year-old all the way back from the chemist. The meds for her ultra-high blood pressure mean she can’t have grapefruit anymore.”

“It’s so unfair,” Isabel muttered. “I love grapefruit.”

“You’ll live,” DI Holmes told her. He glanced back at DS Philips. “Dane, I’ll wait by the car for you. See the rest of you later.”

As the Guv headed out, Isabel turned her attention to her in-box. “I swear, I may as well have all my mail sent here in future.” She smiled at Zander the zebra. She really would get a tiny camera installed inside him. She could sit him facing the inbox and he’d record everything. Only she wouldn’t tell anyone she’d done it.

She picked up a white envelope and shook it. It jingled. “What’s this?”

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question, or am I really meant to know?” Zander asked.

“And there I was thinking you were psychic,” she quipped.

Austin laughed as he crossed the room. “Psychotic, maybe. So, we got the labs back on your notebook, you remember the one you managed to lose.”

“I didn’t lose it,” she said. “How many times do I have to say this?”

“Notebook and your flat,” Austin continued. “Want to guess whose prints we found?”

Isabel tossed the white envelope back to her in-tray, no longer caring what it contained. “Mine and Zander’s, I imagine,” she muttered. “Just like on every postcard the Slayer has sent and every single envelope.”

 

If my story had a musical theme song it would be  The Prayer by Andrea Bocelli and Katharine Mcphee