The TV Detective by Simon Hall

homeless, without being caught and began to grow arrogant with it. Bonham taunted the police with a series of letters, boasting that he was too clever and would never be captured. The story became one of the biggest in Britain at the time.
    Eventually he was arrested, as is so often the case, by a combination of luck and good policing. Dozens of extra officers were patrolling the streets. He was seen by a beat constable, talking to a beggar in a subway on the outskirts of Plymouth city centre. Bonham panicked and ran when he was questioned, but, after a chase, he was captured. Under interrogation, and with DNA evidence from previous crime scenes against him, Bonham admitted he had been planning to kill the man to add to the tally of his victims.
    He was put on trial, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. It was one of the rare cases where life would actually mean life. And there was one particularly important reason for that.
    Bonham showed no remorse. Indeed he appeared to struggle to understand what was wrong with what he had done. But there was a lingering suspicion he may have had more victims than the five murdersof which he was convicted.
    Hundreds of people go missing in Devon every year, and many are never traced. It’s difficult to be accurate, but statisticians estimate that in the whole of the country perhaps two hundred thousand people disappear annually.
    Bonham was by no means forthcoming or helpful during his interrogations, and an obvious question was raised about his sanity. But he did sometimes burble names. Jim and Jack were the two most common males ones, Maria, Emma and Linda his three favourite females.
    Records were checked and investigations carried out. Bonham’s lifestyle and movements were analysed, but no evidence was found, nothing was proved.
    At his trial, when Bonham was convicted, the judge addressed him in the dock. He told the man he might hold out some hope of being released from prison – albeit in many long years time – if he told the police whether he had indeed killed others, and now confessed who they were and where their bodies had been hidden.
    Bonham stood in silence, staring straight ahead, then quietly asked for a piece of paper. The packed courtroom, lawyers, police, journalists and public all watched as, behind the plate glass of the secure dock he scribbled hard. It was the purest of dramas. The wait for what the killer would write. His last secret finally revealed.
    The sheet was then passed back to the judge.
    On it was scrawled;
    992 619U
    They were driving north, out of the city centre, towards Crownhill, part of the conurbation that is modern-day Plymouth, a mix of housing estates and offices. It was where Bray’s company was based, and, Dan reminded himself, where Kerry lived.
    He wondered where they would go for their date. A restaurant would be the classical choice, but he wasn’t at all keen on dininglike that, preferring the informality of pubs to uncomfortably high backed chairs and customers spending much of their time watching each other. Maybe a gastro pub would be a good compromise, except that the city hardly boasted much of a choice.
    He sighed. Romance was such trouble. It was odd that whenever he was in a relationship he tended to want to be out, and whenever out, then to be in. Perhaps that was just human nature.
    Dan slowed the car for a pedestrian crossing, a couple of older ladies were bumbling along carrying a myriad of multicoloured shopping bags. Both wore thick coats, hats and scarves, despite the day being mild on the winter’s scale.
    He’d ended up driving. ‘If I’m stuck with you, I might at least make use of it,’ Adam had said charmingly, then lapsed into a silence as he studied some of the notes contained in a folder Suzanne had given him.
    Dan’s happy flare of excitement at the prospect had quickly been extinguished. He’d hoped for a police car, the enjoyment of watching other