Mike Delaney loved Chicago. It was one of his favourite American cities. Although he had been brought up in New York after his mother and father emigrated from Ireland when he was twelve, and although he loved the anonymity of the Big Apple, Chicago had something special.

Chicago was a good city to walk around and Delaney set himself a brisk pace through River North’s restaurant district, where he called into a few bars and sank a couple of Goose Island beers.

He crossed over the Chicago River heading for the James Thompson Center. He wasn’t following any particular route, just taking streets as they came. He was in a reflective mood but the clatter of the Elevated Railway, the El, helped to drown out his gloomier thoughts. But not completely.

He had no job, enough money to survive another few months, a partially burned out beach home near Monterey, a life experience in covert services, combat, investigation and undercover policing and that was about it.

He’d never made friends easily; he was too much of a loner. He’d met a lot of people when Maria was alive. She seemed to know everybody on the planet. Maybe this was why she had been such a fine and respected journalist. He had been happy to just drift along in the backwash of her energy. He took odd jobs and gained a reputation as a Tai Chi teacher with his daily beach classes. After a lifetime of regimentation, discipline and, ultimately, of despair when he was framed in Hong Kong along with Bob Messenger and they were both kicked out of their respective military service units with nothing other than ’retired’ on their records, he had relished the freedom.

Delaney liked the anonymity of cities and the push and shove of the myopic crowds. He sat at a sidewalk café, leaning back in his chair, legs splayed out. He ordered an industrial strength coffee and a cheeseburger and watched a couple of police officers strolling casually on the opposite sidewalk, hands on their firearms.

Delaney ate quickly, drained his coffee then paid the check and headed for the Magnificent Mile, threading his way impatiently through the hordes of retail therapy junkies hooked on window shopping. An old black guy in a doorway was playing an urban blues tune on a beat-up guitar. Delaney stopped and listened, oblivious of the surging shoppers peeling around him surprised that anyone would want to stop moving let alone listen to an old loser on the streets.

The twelve-bar riff matched his mood and acted as a relief valve. Delaney tossed five dollars into the bluesman’s cap and received a wrinkled wink in return.

Delaney reached the venue in exactly eight minutes and joined a stream of people entering through the glass revolving doors into a nondescript lobby where security checks were being carried out. Then he entered a large conference room laid out theatre style. At one end of the room was a large table with screens either side and behind it three people were seated, waiting patiently. There was Bob Messenger, looking a little heavier than Delaney remembered; Laura, his assistant, looking brisk and efficient and another man, whom Delaney took to be Messenger’s business partner or the technical guru sitting impassively by their side.

Soft music was playing in background; Delaney identified it as Dance Of The Knights by Prokofiev. He had always loved music and poetry, especially growing up in Ireland and with his father being such a great storyteller and singer of the old songs. As a child he used to dance like a wild thing at the regular ceilidhs and music sessions loving the sound of fiddles and bodhrans, flutes and pipes. But his father also loved the classics and brought this love of music with them to America.

He moved to the side of the room but didn’t sit. Instead, he sidled his way along until he was close to the front, flanked by a tight knot of delegates. Bob Messenger looked calm. He was wearing a neat tartan shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He had on pair of thin, black designer spectacles and flecks of grey were starting to appear in his short hair. He was gazing around the room, waiting until it was full and the presentation could get underway. His eyes moved to the right and he spotted Delaney leaning against the side wall in his grey slacks, sea island cotton shirt and creased linen jacket. He smiled and moved back slightly in his wheelchair.

Delaney smiled in return and gave a quick salute. He noticed that Messenger’s wheelchair had clearly been custom designed. There were control panels built into the arms and frame, a miniature screen and arrays of buttons and controls. Presumably it was a fully interactive machine. Delaney could only guess at its full capabilities.

Bob Messenger watched as the attendant closed the conference room doors. He cleared his throat and began his presentation in that slightly staccato delivery Delaney remembered so well.

He began by introducing Laura Moore, his right hand woman, who handled the administration and then John Farrell who was heading up the US operation under him. He said that, although he would be paying regular visits to Chicago and other operational offices, he would remain based in the UK. Bob Messenger then painted a picture of the history of confess-confess.com, how the idea first came to him, how he believed that there was a passionate need to try and build an outlet for.

He explained that the scope of the site had virtually run ordinary people to have some feeling of control and a platform for their outrage at injustice, crime, unfair treatment away with them, from personal investigations into bigamy, affairs, cheating companies, scams and divorce cases to really big crimes such as international drug smuggling, corrupt government departments, victimisation, organised crime, murders, child abuse cases and almost every crime you could think of. But the reason, he believed, why the concept of site had worked so well, was the army of anonymous amateur investigators that had signed up as volunteer sleuths each with their own individual code name.

This made confess-confess a true site of the people, driven by the people, he told his audience. He ended his introduction with typical Messenger understatement by saying that frankly the whole confess-confess team had been completely taken aback and blown away by the success of the site. And they still were.

He then handed over to John Farrell who spent some time keeping the computer junkies happy with slides and data about servers and security and the expectations they had of expanding the business and adding new elements to the mix.

At the end there was a long question and answer session that Delaney, much to his surprise, found unusually interesting. Finally, the launch drew to a close. Delaney walked towards the podium. Bob Messenger reversed his wheelchair, turned and headed down a ramp towards him.

"Mike, good to see you," he said.

"You too, Bob. Impressive presentation."

The two men shook hands.

"We’ll go back to my hotel," Messenger told Delaney. "I could have suggested meeting there to begin with but I wanted you to hear the presentation so that you have some background."

Laura came over and shook Delaney’s hand. They had met before. It was pretty clear to Delaney that she and Bob Messenger were a little more than just work colleagues. John Farrell was introduced but then said he was going out to lunch with a group of potential advertisers.

"We’re staying at the Hilton and Towers," Messenger said. "Laura, why don’t you take some time off and do some shopping. It’s a nice day, Mike, and the hotel is only down on South Michigan. Why don’t we walk down together and get some fresh air?"

Although Messenger’s wheelchair was fully motorised he was happy for Delaney to take control and push him out through a back entrance into a breezy East Wacker Drive, turn right and stroll along to the lights then right down South Michigan Avenue. For a long moment neither man spoke. Delaney found to his surprise that he was enjoying pushing Messenger along, smiling at pedestrians as they spread like waves parted by the prow of an ocean liner.

Finally, as they approached the Chicago Orchestra Hall, Messenger spoke.

"You’re looking good, Mike. All that meditation and spiritual mumbo-jumbo must be doing something for you."

"I’m just exploring my inner self, Bob. At least that’s what I think I’m doing. I had to get away and I couldn’t think of anywhere better to try to get my head together."

"I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this weird message," said Messenger. "The more I stare at it the more genuine it feels," he glanced up at the big man. "The police still have no clues?"

"Not one," Delaney replied. "He left no trace, not even a drop of sweat. The police may not be telling me everything, of course."

"Are you still a suspect?"

"I am as far as Maria’s friends and family are concerned. They just know she was murdered. They don’t know the details of how she was killed, the barbarity and the mutilation. I have an alibi for the time of her death but the police are not convinced. They’re just not sure about me. If they were I’d have been formally charged by now. So, what does this message say?"

They were strolling opposite Grant Park. The street wasn’t busy but Messenger still glanced around from force of habit.

"It’s partly in rhyme. There are some biblical quotations and then it replays Maria’s confessions and, well, describes things. Oh, and he calls himself the Priest."

Delaney’s pace increased involuntarily as his hands gripped the wheelchair handles more tightly.

Messenger continued. "Whoever wrote it seems to have some kind of religious fixation. It’s anti-female – as though he’s getting revenge on women in general – which makes him extremely dangerous. He also hinted that Maria wasn’t the first and won’t be the last but that she was a special case. When we get to the suite I’ll show it to you on my laptop." The two men were silent for a time. The watery sun was flickering through the branches of the oaks in Grant Park and in the distance Delaney could just see the rainbows sparkling around the central water fountain.

It had been a very different scene that night in Kowloon three years earlier. Delaney had been seconded from the highly secretive G-Force unit in the United States to the Police Training College and Messenger from the British Army’s crack SAS outfit to the Covert Intelligence Unit. Gradually they found themselves snarled up in assignments controlled by the operations wing, in particular the Police Tactical Unit and specifically the Special Duties Unit, or SDU, known as The Flying Tigers. This unit was based at the Police Tactical Unit headquarters in Fanling.

The unit had been set up in 1974 as a Government response to the escalating threat of international terrorism. The first Flying Tigers used existing weaponry and devised its own tactics until an appraisal of the unit by the British Special Air Service led to considerable changes in equipment and tactics.

It was his involvement with the SDU that led Delaney into his fiery and brief liaison with the wife of the operational superintendent.

The special assignment in Sham Shui Po had come straight from the superintendent’s office.

When it was over, Delaney found he had killed a serving officer in the Flying Tigers and was immediately summoned back to the United States and Bob Messenger, now paralysed from the waist down, was recalled to England.

He would never walk again.

The official investigation had swirled around Delaney, stage managed behind closed doors. He remained numb and helpless throughout amid the treachery and injustice of the whole affair. In the end, it was clear it was an official whitewash. A set-up. Nothing would appear on his record. No opportunity to challenge the events and reveal the truth would ever emerge. It was all sewn up with no redress. No risk of any future investigation.

No pension.

Only there was a third loser in the whole sickening business. There was a new widow in Hong Kong whose husband was just following orders and who had happened to run into an avenging Mike Delaney.

Bob Messenger had had the worst of it. He endured years of painful physiotherapy and counselling. He was unmarried and went back to England to live with his parents. He came through several attempts at suicide largely with their help. Since then, he and Delaney had not spoken about the events of that night in Hong Kong. Delaney knew he owed Messenger his life and Messenger, having adjusted to life as a paraplegic and come out the other side a success with his self-esteem restored, did not want to stir up the memories. But there was now a bond between them. No words were necessary.

     Delaney and Messenger reached the opulent entrance of the Hilton and Towers hotel. Ten minutes later they were sitting around Messenger’s laptop in his well-appointed ground floor suite complete with wheelchair access. Messenger opened a bottle of Sancerre and poured two glasses.

"Okay," said Messenger. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yes," said Delaney.

Messenger switched on the computer.