Touching Evil

DI Dave Creegan is shot and, whilst unconscious, has a near-death experience that leaves him with the ability to sense criminals upon recovery. Joining the Organized and Serial Crime Unit with inspector Susan Taylor, Creegan learns from his friend Cyril, a self-proclaimed psychic, that two recently abducted boys have been murdered 'in the clouds'. In both cases, a daffodil has been left at the scene of the abduction, a fact reminiscent of similar crimes in Stuttgart some years earlier. A car at the last crime scene is traced to pharmaceutical chemist professor Ronald ...

Although Hinks is released Creegan is convinced of his guilt and arranges another interview wherein he gives Hinks a nose-bleed. He uses the tissue that was used to clean up the blood and shows it to Hinks' dog, who then leads him to an abandoned building and the three boys abducted by Hinks. Creegan goes to Hinks' house to kill him but on arrival gets a surprise.

Three patients in an Intensive Care Unit die after being injected with digoxin, a drug that had not been prescribed. Each had a faint tattoo on their arm reading 'Let Me Go', implying voluntary euthanasia was involved, though one of the tattoos actually read 'Let Me go Back.' The chief suspects are Dr Elizabeth Walker, an advocate of euthanasia and Carl Burgess, an obsessive ward orderly who behaves oddly.

Burgess confesses to the murders but it is only to protect Dr Walker, whom he believes is the real killer, and on release commits suicide. Creegan is convinced that all the victims were brought to the brink of death and then resuscitated to tell the perpetrator what life on the other side is like. Using his own near death experience he flushes out the murderer who threatens to kill more patients if Creegan fails to satisfy. He must prevent this from happening.

A simultaneous attack on horses on the same night on three separate continents baffles the police until a Japanese student confesses that the assaults were occasioned by a perverse fantasy web-site called 'Amathus',exhorting people who wanted to belong to it to commit willful acts from attacking horses to murder.

When a local student is reported missing and is later found dead Creegan and the OSC's investigations lead them to a group of sixth-formers who are addicted to 'Amathus'. The pattern of the killings seems to echo the manner in which Justine Barber, a prostitute, killed seven pimps fifteen years earlier,for which she is now serving a life sentence. Creegan discovers that the 'Amathus' web-master Leonard Stoker, is obsessed with Justine and arranges for her to be released from prison to help him trap Stoker - though he also has to stop his colleague D.S. Kreitman from ...