Dedicated, intuitive, and utterly obsessive, DCI James Langton is ruthless in his pursuit of a gang of illegal immigrants, the murderers of a young prostitute. When one of them nearly kills him, Anna Travis nurses his wounds and bears the brunt of his frustrations, putting her own life and career on hold. But then one of Anna's own cases -- the seemingly motiveless murder of a quiet, studious woman -- turns out to be linked with Langton's, and Anna becomes the gang's next target. As USA Today wrote of La Plante's Above Suspicion , "There is no sugarcoating on this 100-proof police procedural." La Plante's growing legions of fans will not be disappointed. Lynda La Plante is the author of nine bestselling novels including the Prime Suspect series. She runs her own television production company and lives in London. Clean Cut An Anna Travis Mystery By Lynda La Plante Touchstone Copyright © 2008 Lynda La Plante All right reserved. ISBN: 9781416586678 1 DAY ONE Anna was in a foul mood. He had not turned up for dinner. Work commitments sometimes took precedence, obviously -- she knew that -- but he only had to call and she would understand. In actual fact, she had put understanding of their profession right at the top of the pluses on her list. It was a Friday and she had a long weekend due; they had planned to drive out to the country and stay overnight at a lovely inn. It was unusual for them both to have time off, so it made it even more annoying that he had not phoned. She had left messages on his mobile but did not like to overkill, as it was possible he was on a call out; however, she knew that he was meant to be winding down the long and tedious inquiry he had been on for months. Anna scraped the dried food off the plate into the bin. Tonight had not been the first time by any means and as she sat, tapping her teeth with a pencil, she tried to calculate just how often he had missed dinner. Sometimes he had not even turned up at all, but had gone to stay at his own flat. Although they did, to all intents and purposes, live together, he still kept his place in Kilburn; when he was on a particularly pressing case and working round the clock, he used it rather than disturb her. It was not a bone of contention; sometimes she had even been relieved, although she never admitted it. He also liked to spend quality time there with Kitty, his stepdaughter from his second marriage. All this she could take in her stride, especially if she was also up against it on a case of her own. They did not work together; they had not, since they became an item. This was partly due to the Met's once unspoken rule that officers were not to fraternize, especially if assigned to the same case. It had bothered Langton more than Anna, but she had understood his reservations and was quietly relieved that, since the Red Dahlia case, they had been allocated to different inquiries. They had a tacit agreement not to bring work home to each other; she adhered to it, but Langton was often in such a fury that he started swearing and cursing as soon as the front door opened. She had never brought this up, but it had become very one-sided. As he ranted and railed about his team, about the press, about the CPS -- about anything that had got under his skin that day -- he rarely, if ever, asked what her day had been like. This went onto the list of minuses. Anna went to stack the dishwasher; God forbid he ever considered moving his cereal bowl from the sink to the dishwasher. He was often in such a rush to get out in the morning that she would find coffee cups in the bedroom, the bathroom, as well as something she had grown to really detest: cigarette butts. If there wasn't an ashtray within arm's reach, he would stub his cigarettes out in his saucer or even in his cereal bowl; to her knowledge, he had never, since they had been together, ever emptied an ashtray. He had never taken the rubbish out to the bins either, or washed a milk bottle and put it out; in fact, he almost used her Maida Vale flat like a hotel. She was the one who sent the linen to the laundry, collected it and made up the beds with fresh sheets; then there was the washing and the ironing. He would leave their bedroom like a war zone: socks, underpants, shirts and pajama bottoms strewn around the room, dropped where he had stepped out of them. There was also the slew of wet towels left on the floor in the bathroom after his morning shower, not to mention the toothpaste without its cap. She had brought up a few of these things and he apologized, promising he would mend his ways, but nothing had changed. Anna poured herself a glass of wine. The list of minuses was now two sheets long; the pluses just a couple of lines. Now she got onto bills. He would, when she asked, open his wallet and pass over a couple of hundred pounds, but then often borrowed it back before the end of the week! It wasn't, she concluded, that he was tight-fisted; far from it. It was j