The Bird Yard
by
Wallis Martin


Also by J Wallis Martin

A Likeness in Stone

The Bird Yard

J Wallis Martin

NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY Hodder and Stoughton

Copyright 1998 J Wallis Martin

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC First published in paperback in 1999
by Hodder and Stoughton

The right of J Wallis Martin to be identified as the Author of the Work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A New English Library Paperback 10 9876543

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the
publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 0 340 68929 3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham,
Kent

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

For my son

PROLOGUE

November, 1997

The vast metal ball hung from the jib, held still by its own dead
weight.  He felt the weight of that ball as if it were an extension of
himself, a responsibility that kept him in the cab for hours on end.

Operating cranes of this nature was a vocation of sorts.  It kept men
like him apart from the rest of humanity, his work mates bringing the
occasional offering of tea or cigarettes.  He took their gifts as a god
might take any sacrifice, mindful that their lives were in his hands
and aware that the slightest sign from him could send them running for
cover.

Below him, on ground that glittered with frost, two workmen came out of
a house.  Victorian and four storeys high, it stood at the end of a
row, its down pipes lurching from crumbling walls like badly broken
limbs.  It stood as testimony to the days when properties such as these
were inhabited by people whose families could not be considered old or
connected; people made cruel by the fear of family scandal or the
sudden loss of their comparatively insignificant wealth.  They
clustered together, away from the terraced slums that had spread to the
north.  The slums were gone now; only these houses remained, the
downward spiral from flats to squats having led some years before to an
order that condemned them.

His work mates gave the all clear, then retreated to waste ground that
stood between these and a second row of properties.

He watched them retreat and noted where they stood.  There were
twenty-odd men on this job and he could have told you where each of
them was at any given moment.  Their lives depended on his knowing, and
he kept his eye on them all, watching the patterns they made as they
drifted apart then came back together like flotsam.

Positioning the crane came automatically.  Fifteen years on the job and
you stopped having to think about it.  All he thought of was safety,
because some of the casual labourers could get a little careless.  It
wasn't the threat of masonry falling down around them that he worried
about.  No one would be stupid enough to stand close to a building that
was about to be brought down, but the less experienced among them
didn't appreciate that dust could be a killer, that thin shards of
brick could blind them, that splinters of wood could pierce like a
bullet and scar or maim a man.

They were standing well back, safety helmets on, their mouths covered
by masks, their eyes protected by goggles.  Some were leaning against a
fence of corrugated iron that marked the boundary to what had once been
vast garden.  But it was no longer a garden not what he would have
called a garden at any rate.

Mesh fixed to the fence swept up to the roof of the house.  At first,
he took this to be some bizarre attempt at security, but as the crane
rumbled past, the birds contained by the mesh began to swarm, and it
was then that he recognized the garden for what it was: an aviary of
gigantic proportions.  He slowed the crane and watched as some of the
birds made for trees planted within it.  Others made directly for the
house, where they darted through open windows, and the oddness of it,
the mere fact that the house was clearly an extension of the aviary,
pulled his mind from the job for a moment.  But only for a moment.
Safety was everything, and he dragged his attention back to the task of
checking his work mates positions: they were still where he'd seen them
seconds ago, well away from danger, and mindful of his approach.

He turned the crane away from the aviary, the noise of the engine
deafening, and as he lumbered across the waste ground towards the
property he was about to demolish, he reminded himself that the birds
were none of his business.  The area had long since attracted the more
dysfunctional elements of society, and if somebody had wanted to build
a gigantic aviary, that was their affair; just so long as they
understood that he had his job to do, that ultimately the crane would
move in and the birds would have to go.

At moments like these, he felt all-powerful; as though, if he wanted
to, he could bring down the entire world with that large metal ball,
and as he pulled a lever that felt surprisingly light in his hand, the
ball began to swing, gathering momentum, blotting out a sun the colour
of ice.

There was a real skill to demolition.  People didn't know that, he
thought.  People didn't appreciate that you couldn't just go smashing
into a building, not even a relatively small building such as this.
There was a certain satisfaction in knowing, almost instinctively,
where the weak spot was, positioning the ball just so, giving the wall
what seemed like the gentlest of taps, then sitting back and watching
it come down.

But it didn't come down.  That was the thing.  It didn't come down at
all.  The side of the house bowed but withstood the contact whereas the
wall at the front shuddered and imploded.

He knew what had happened: the side wall had been re pointed or perhaps
even rebuilt at some stage, whereas the mortar that held the brick at
the front had disintegrated on impact.  The masonry it was meant to
hold had collapsed to reveal the rooms within, and something within
those interior rooms was drawing his work mates towards them.

They moved slowly, faces raised to the sky, skin made pale by a film of
dust from mortar reduced to a powder, and as he watched them, some
removed their goggles, others their masks.  He shouted out to keep them
back, to tell them the house was unsafe, but none of them acknowledged
his cry of warning.

Exasperated, he jumped from the cab and stormed towards them, dust
raining down from the still, cold air.  Then he saw what they were
looking at and stopped, mid-stride, appalled.

The implosion had revealed a pair of alcoves.  The one nearest the road
had been sealed over at some stage, but as the wall caved in,
plasterboard had fallen away to reveal a bundle of rags.

There was something about those rags, thought the driver, something
that spoke to some primeval fear within, for he saw, almost
immediately, that they weren't rags at all, that in fact, they were
clothes that loosely concealed ash ape which made him recoil.

He spoke to the foreman.  "Jacko," he said, 'where's your mobile?"  The
foreman reached into the pocket of a duffel coat pulled out his phone
and said, "Who do you want me to call?"

For a moment, the driver wasn't sure.  Who did you contact first the
boss or the authorities?

He pulled the goggles from his face, as if by doing so he could also
rip the image from his eyes, but the image remained: a birdlike neck,
and lips peeling back from the teeth.

A sound he recognized, a sound that sometimes wove its way through his
dreams, forewarned him of danger.  "Police," he said, and the house, as
if deeply offended, hurled bricks from the rooms above as the men
started running for cover.

Fourteen years with Greater Manchester Police had given Detective
Superintendent Parker sufficient experience to know that the victim had
been walled up alive.  No one had arranged the body like that, and no
one had closed the eyes, which were so finely skinned that the iris
could be seen beneath the lids.  In life, that bundle of rags had
clawed at the walls, had cried,

had screamed out for mercy, and his cries had gone unheard.  Parker
considered the possibility that he had suffocated, but thought it more
likely that the cause of death would prove to be dehydration.  Then
again, thought Parker, perhaps not.  Perhaps the fact of his
incarceration, the certainty that he'd been left to die had done the
trick.

He studied the small coiled form, the fingers to the mouth and, because
he could imagine only too well what the victim had suffered, found he
couldn't stand to dwell on what he might have gone through prior to
death, so he forced himself to concentrate on the room where he had
been found.

The alcove was divided from its twin by a cast-iron fireplace, paper
hanging from the chimney breast like strips of shredded skin.  There
had once been some pattern to it, some border where in other houses
picture rails were fixed.

Behind him the strobe-like effect of a flashing blue light blinked
against his surroundings, and as he turned to signal a uniform to
switch the bloody thing off, he saw bricks, rubble, debris, all of it
covered by frost.  Even the workmen looked frozen, cold and shock
having turned their faces the colour of powdered stone.

He stared across waste ground to the houses opposite.  These, too, were
properties that had once been owned by the professional classes, but
Parker had only ever known the area as a drug dealers' paradise.  Now,
not even the junkies remained, rotten floors and biting cold having
driven them away.  The entire row was unoccupied, with the exception of
the house with its makeshift aviary.  As he made his way towards it,
finches swarmed like schools of tropical fish towards the trees.  Some
flew into the house; others found holes in the mesh and escaped, only
to return, for although the yard was far removed from the habitats that
had allowed their various species to evolve, it represented security
and they were loath to leave it.

Eventually, the aviary and the house from which it protruded would be
razed to the ground.  Parker didn't know when, and he didn't much care.
He only knew that his prime suspect was in there, watching him, and he
caught the movement when Roly stepped back from a window.  He melted
into the shadows and remained there, but not before Parker had seen
him, and not before Roly saw Parker make his way to Roly's Yard.

CHAPTER ONE

October, 1997

Along with the office that went with his rank, Parker had inherited a
photograph.  In it, bobbies wore the type of uniform most members of
the public would still recognize today, although their faces were
adorned by sideburns of extraordinary proportions.  They had stood in
three rigid lines awaiting the flash from a camera, and if, for many of
them, it had been the only time in their lives that they had been
photographed, there was no indication in their oddly solemn expressions
that they felt any sense of occasion.

They were standing to attention in front of a building that no longer
existed, a building that had been demolished in the sixties to make way
for the station that Parker was based at now.  The surrounding
buildings were in keeping with this brighter, newer building, but its
window looked out on a city that his forebears would have had little
difficulty recognizing.

As he looked out on to landmarks by which he had first learned to
navigate as a boy, it struck him that he knew every square inch of
Manchester.  He felt he belonged there, and saw nothing remotely
unadventurous in bringing his own kids up a mere stone's throw from
where he himself had been born.  Their friends were the sons and
daughters of people Parker had known all his life, and there was
nothing wrong with that, he thought, nothing wrong with continuity, and
the feeling of security that could be derived from it.

Detective Inspector Warrender broke into his thoughts by knocking on
the door, then walking in.  "Sir?"  he said, and Parker turned from the
window.

Warrender, ten years younger than Parker, was sharp, good at his job,
and even better at knowing instinctively when to take something
straight to a senior officer.  "We've got a missing kid."

Parker wondered whether Warrender had any idea of the extent to which
those words could turn him cold.  Some time ago he had come to the
conclusion that it was something to do with having had kids of his own.
Warrender, still unmarried, still 'playing the field', as he put it,
couldn't possibly know that the news of a child having gone missing or
come to harm always had a greater impact on parents.  "How old?"  he
said.

"Twelve."

Twelve, thought Parker.  His youngest boy was twelve, his eldest
fifteen and driving him up the wall with bands like Oasis, Blur, and
the Verve.

"When was he last seen?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"Runaway?"

"Maybe.  His home life could be better, and he's been known to play
truant from school."

Already, Parker was assessing the situation.  Twelve was a bit young to
be buggering off on a whim, though you never knew hormones could kick
in with a vengeance even at that age, though some kids took off over
minor problems that seemed insurmountable to the emotionally
immature.

"Something else," said Warrender.  "He vanished about a hundred yards
from where Joseph Coyne disappeared."

That was enough for Parker.  "Let's go," he said.

CHAPTER TWO

Half an hour later, Parker knocked at the door to a semi on a council
estate that had the distinction of being one of the largest in Europe.
"Mrs.  Maudsley?"  he said, showing his ID.  The elderly woman who had
answered the door led him through to a room where other officers were
already present.  They stood when Parker walked in, and stayed standing
even though he acknowledged their deference.

She was nervous, this elderly woman, aware that Parker was something
very senior to the uniforms who had taken details relating to her
grandson's disappearance, and also superior to Detective Inspector
Warrender who had followed in their wake.  Parker picked up on her
nervousness and reassured her swiftly.  "This is routine, Mrs.
Maudsley.  Gary's only twelve, so we want to find him quickly, don't
we?"  He smiled, and it didn't wash.  "You don't think something's
happened to him?"  Under normal circumstances, Parker would have
replied that youngsters disappeared every day of the week.  Most
trailed home in a day or so, the argument, fear or sheer curiosity that
had led them to try their wings having paled to insignificance by
comparison with the discomfort of spending a couple of nights on the
streets.  Some, however, didn't come home of their own accord, and when
that happened, the police started a search, logged their name on the
missing persons index and hoped for the best.  "The odds are against
it," he said, and that was true enough in that, statistically, most
kids who did a disappearing act were found safe.

"All he did was nip to the shop, and that was it, I haven't seen him
since."

She might just as easily have been describing the way in which Joseph
Coyne disappeared, thought Parker, and Mrs.  Maudsley added, "Just like
that lad from Adelphe Road."

"We don't want to go jumping to conclusions," said Parker,
comfortingly, but she wasn't listening.

"Nobody's ever found him.  I see his mother from time to time.  She's
not the same person."

Parker, who still kept in regular contact with Joseph Coyne's mother,
was only too aware that she wasn't the same person, just as he knew
that, of late, she'd been putting rather more faith into what
clairvoyants and mediums had to say than in anything the police might
come up with.  Part of him didn't blame her in that the police had very
little to go on, and even less to say by way of explanation or comfort.
Consequently, her "Where do you think he is?"  was invariably met with
some platitude, and it must have come as a relief to find someone
prepared to commit themselves one way or another.  He only hoped she
wouldn't come up against someone who would take advantage of her
vulnerability and encourage her to part with what little money she had
in order to receive 'advice' from the other side.

The last time he'd seen her, he'd promised that the investigation into
Joseph's disappearance would never be wound down, and she'd interrupted
as if telling him something he didn't already know: "It's been five
years, Mr.  Parker.  Chances are, he's dead."

Mrs.  Maudsley added, "One of your lads found our Gary's watch," and
Parker, turning to Warrender for confirmation, was told that it had
been discovered at the top of the road.  He was also told that
Warrender had seen a boy of roughly Gary's age hanging around.
Warrender had approached him with, "Are you a friend of Gary's?"  but
the boy had replied that he wasn't, that he'd just seen some coppers
pickin' up the watch and he'd wondered what was goin' on, that's all.

Warrender had said, "What's your name, son?"  but the lad had edged
away, and Warrender had asked a female officer to see if she could get
anything out of him.  She'd returned a short time later and had told
him the boy's name was Nathan, that he lived locally, that he went to
school with Gary, but that he wasn't particularly friendly with him,
and Warrender, who was more interested in the watch than in Nathan, had
left it at that.

"Strap was broke," said Mrs.  Maudsley, and then she fell silent, as if
afraid to suggest that it had been wrenched from Gary's wrist.

"Straps break all the time," said Warrender, 'especially flimsy,
plastic straps," but she wasn't daft.  She gave him a look with pale
grey eyes that were cloudy with age, but astute.

"Do you have a picture of Gary?"  said Parker, and Mrs.  Maudsley
nodded towards a school photo standing on the mantelpiece.

Parker studied it as if lifting the image of Gary Maudsley clean off
the photographic paper and imprinting it on to the fabric of his own
memory.  Gary was a fresh-faced kid, the hair light brown, his grin
more of a smirk, the tie of his school uniform imaginatively knotted.
Cheeky little bugger, thought Parker, but something lay behind that
grin, something that spoke of his life as having been hard.  "What was
he wearing yesterday?"

"Bomber jacket and jeans," said Mrs.  Maudsley.

Mentally, Parker stripped the photograph of its school uniform and, in
his mind's eye, redressed the boy.  It made a difference: Gary seemed
older, a little more streetwise perhaps.

"Where's his mother?"  said Parker.

"Morocco," said Mrs.  Maudsley.  "She writes from time to time."

Say no more, thought Parker.  "What about his dad?"

"Sheffield.  He married again after Frances tipped and left."

In those two brief comments, Parker had Gary's life in a nutshell.  His
mother had buggered off, and his dad had left Gran to bring up a kid
who didn't fit into the new life he'd made for himself.  It happened
all the time.  "Well," he said, 'a lot of kids take off for a day or
so, and then they turn up safe."

That alone was a greater reassurance to Mrs.  Maudsley than anything
else he could have said.  Maybe Gary was out there, somewhere,
perfectly all right, in which case she'd kill him when she got her
hands on him.  She smiled a fraction.

"Can I see his room?"  asked Parker, and she took him upstairs to
where, already, a couple of officers were searching through Gary's
belongings.  They acknowledged Parker but carried on, and Parker stood
by the door, watching them work.

The room overlooked the back of the house where the strip of lawn that
passed for a garden was divided from identical strips of lawn by hedges
that were high and untidy.

"This is it," she said, and Parker nodded.  As rooms went, it was
typical for a lad of twelve, the posters on the walls mainly relating
to bands Parker's kids listened to Blur, Oasis.  No surprises there.

There was a bird-cage by the bed, minus the usual mirror, and
cuttlefish shell that Parker associated with the hobby of keeping
cage-birds, and, indicating it, he said, "Gary kept a bird."

"It died," said Mrs.  Maudsley.  "He'd only had it a week or so.  Found
it dead one mornin'."

Unusual, thought Parker.  He wasn't an expert on cage-birds, but he was
under the impression that, sensibly cared for, they lived for a good
few years.

His eye passed over a plastic cassette case and settled on muddy
clothes hanging out of a bin.  A badge on the side of the shorts
informed him that this was Gary's PE kit and, lightly, he said, "He
left you a bit of washing, then?"  She smiled a little shakily, and
Parker continued, "Better get it clean you never

know when he'll need it.  I was a great one for giving a filthy kit to
my mam the morning of a game."

"You think he's all right, then?"

Parker didn't reply.  Maybe that strap had caught on something, or
maybe it had been wrenched from Gary's wrist he didn't know, but the
very fact of it worried him, just as it had worried Warrender.

"Where the hell is he?"  she said suddenly, emotion she'd held in check
spilling over into words that sounded as if they'd been spoken in
anger.

He couldn't look into those pale grey eyes, afraid that his own might
betray a fear every bit as great as that which had her in its grip.
"We'll find him," he said, but he didn't add that he'd promised much
the same to Joseph's mother or that, to date, he had failed to keep
that promise.

CHAPTER THREE

Within twenty-four hours of Gary's disappearance, the whereabouts of
every paedophile known to be living in the Greater Manchester area had
been spewed from a computer, but the name that leapt out at Parker was
that of Douglas Byrne.

Parker, who knew him of old, had questioned him when Joseph Coyne went
missing, and now, as he stood in front of the shop where Byrne ran his
business, Parker was reminded of nothing so much as the corner-shops of
his childhood.  In places such as this, he'd bought fags in ones and
twos, had dipped his hand into plastic trays to pull out sweets that
were dusty, had gazed up at shelves where meat was tinned and stacked
beside bottles of Tizer.  The thought of the sticky red liquid brought
the taste to mind, and with it the slightly damp smell of countless
slovenly women, the sheer weight of their body-mass crushing the backs
of their slippers to squalid flatness.

Shops like these, shops that were as integral a part of his childhood
as the sight of a woman sweeping the pavement in front of her own front
door, were gone now, and the businesses that replaced them were of the
here-today-gone-tomorrow variety.  In that regard, the shop had lasted
longer than most in that video shops as small, ill-situated and badly
stocked as this were failing by the dozen.  But Parker wasn't there to
look at the books or to question how Byrne paid his bills.

The shop was a front for under-the-counter stuff.  That much Parker
knew.

He and Warrender walked into the chaos of videos crammed into makeshift
shelving without thought to genre or condition.  Their covers spoke of
the film industry having stopped dead somewhere around the
mid-seventies, odd images half obscured by yellowing, dog-chewed
plastic.

There was a counter of sorts, and Byrne, with his immaculately kept
finger-nails and hair that was receding before its time, was standing
behind it.

The minute he saw Parker, he appeared to shrink a fraction in a way
that suggested resignation as much as nervousness.  "Dougie," said
Parker.

Byrne replied, "I'm not talking to you without a solicitor present."

"This isn't about Joey," said Parker.

Byrne slipped out from behind the counter, locked the door to the shop,
then turned to Parker, saying, "So what's it about?"

Nodding in the direction of the upper rooms, Parker said, "Upstairs."

Byrne led them through to the back, then up a flight of stairs that led
to a bed sit  It wasn't the first time Parker had seen the room, and if
it was small and dark, at least it was clean and functional more than
Byrne deserved, in Parker's view.

Byrne indicated the only available chair, as if inviting him to use it,
but Parker preferred to stand, as did Warrender, who positioned himself
by the door.  Although the proximity of the man and his belongings made
Parker feel like scrubbing himself down, he attempted to sound
non-judge mental as he said, "Local lad's gone missing."  He produced a
photograph of Gary Maudsley and passed it to Byrne, adding, "Know
him?"

Byrne slumped on to the bed, holding the photo in hands that were white
and soft.  He looked at it for a good few seconds, then handed it back
to Parker.  "No."

"Not even by sight?"

"Should I?"

"He lives locally I thought he might have come into the shop at some
point."

"Well, he didn't."

Parker replied: "I'd hate to find out down the road that he ever was in
this shop.  It wouldn't look good for you."  Byrne made no comment, and
he added, "Think carefully, Dougie.  You've never even bumped into him
on the street, maybe?"

"Not that I can remember."

"You said you'd never laid eyes on Joseph Coyne, but it transpired that
you'd been seen talking to him the morning he disappeared."

Byrne stood up, agitated, and went to the window where he gazed out on
the street below.  He said, "I told you, he walked up to me, asked me
the time," and Parker, who had always felt vaguely insulted by the lack
of imagination that had prompted Byrne's feeble explanation of his
conversation with the missing boy, let it go, for once.  Turning from
the dismal outlook to face Parker, Byrne added, "There's countless
blokes done worse than me.  How come you're goin' at me?"

"Joseph lived less than a mile from this shop.  You were seen talking
to him the morning he disappeared, and now another lad's gone missing,
one who also just happens to live about a hundred yards away from
here."  Byrne looked shaken as Parker added, "You see my point, Dougie.
I'd be bloody daft not to question you, wouldn't I?"

"When is it going to stop?  That's all.  When do I get the chance to
shake off the legacy of one stupid mistake?"

His voice had become a whine, and Parker, who hated him all the more
for it, said, "Some legacies are bequeathed for life, Dougie.  You
can't molest a kid and expect society to forget."

Byrne looked up sharply, beads of sweat breaking out on a forehead that
reminded Parker of nothing so much as a slab of lard.  "I know how the
police think you can't have been done for molesting a kid and not know
how they think so I know what you're thinkin', Mr.  Parker '

"Smarter than me, then," said Parker.  "Half the time, I haven't a clue
what I'm thinkin', Dougie too bloody busy with paperwork."

' I'm a soft target.  Pin it on me, and suddenly your life gets a lot
easier.  It stands to reason I'm gonna be accused."

"Calm down, Dougie.  Nobody's accusing you of anything."

"And anyway, how do you know that anyone's responsible for anything?
For all you know, he might just have fucked off with a mate.1'

He was right, Parker had to give him that, but he was far from
finished.  "Where were you, yesterday?"

"Here."

Parker didn't react to it.  He just watched the soft white fingers as
they fondled the flabby white palms.  "Can anyone confirm that?"

"It was quiet.  Hardly anybody in there never is in the afternoons.
I'll have to have a think ..."

Parker smiled down at the man, wanting nothing more than to pick him
up, pin him against the wall, and push him through the brick.  He
allowed his tone of voice to do the job for him as he said, "You do
that, Dougie, you have a think, and when you've thought, give your
solicitor a bell.  Tell him to cancel any holiday arrangements he might
have in mind chances are, you're going to need him shortly."

They left him and walked out on to the street where the air seemed
sweeter somehow, then made their way round the side of the property to
a pair of large wooden gates.

Parker opened them to reveal the area that stood at the back of the
shop.  There had once been a lawn of sorts, but now there was only
soil, the earth impacted and rutted by the wheels of Byrne's
mini-van.

Up against one wall stood a concrete bunker, and looking at it now,
Parker could recollect a time when coal men had lugged hessian sacks
into his own backyard, emptying them into one that was similar.  Those
days were gone, along with the smog that had hung over houses like
these, but in properties where owners were too idle to rid themselves
of these unsightly reminder of the past, the bunkers remained.

He walked over to it, lifted the lid, and found it empty, the interior
wet with damp, the sides stained black with coal.  Five years ago, it
had stood several feet to the left of where it was now positioned,
because during his initial investigation into Byrne, Parker had ordered
his men to shift it and dig out the ground it covered.  His men had dug
to a depth of several feet, but they hadn't found Joseph's body.  What
they had found, was a metal flyte case that had been buried quite close
to the surface.  They had lifted it out from the soil.

Once back at the station, Parker had invited Byrne to open it, but the
man had denied that the case was his.  He had then been obliged to
watch as one of Parker's men had jammed a chisel under the lock and
wrenched it apart.  He had seemed infuriatingly satisfied when Parker
had seemed bewildered by its contents, but that lack of comprehension
had been momentary: the flyte case hadn't contained pornographic
videos, photographs, address books, or any of the items Parker had
hoped to find, but clothing catalogues.

It hadn't made sense to Parker, not until he'd nicked through them and
had found substantial sections devoted to children's wear.  Most of the
garments had been modelled by six to nine year olds, their faces bright
with happiness, their smiles devoid of guile.  The knowledge that Byrne
had used these images for his own gratification had made Parker want to
vomit.  Worse than that, it had made him want to succumb to the
temptation to beat the shit out of the man.  He had turned to one of
his officers, his voice shaking, "Get him out of here," and Byrne had
been led back to the safety of his cell.

In thinking back to those catalogues with their images of children in
fireproof pyjamas, Parker realized that you couldn't make any child
fireproof, not with men like Byrne on the street, predators who were
waiting their chance to grab them.

Is that what had happened to Gary?  thought Parker.  He hoped to God he
was wrong.

"What now?"  said Warrender.

Parker closed the lid of the bunker.  "We get a warrant to search the
place, and we watch him.  Put him under surveillance."

He looked up and found that Byrne was staring down at them, his face
pale, his mouth sullen, as if he were being picked on, for reasons he
couldn't quite fathom.

CHAPTER FOUR

Twelve-year-old Brogan Healey gazed up at the glass-domed roof.  Rain
had washed away the worst of the dirt and a dim, uncertain light fell
like a blanket over the units below.  Most were temporary; mere stalls
set up in what had once been a fish market.  Others, like Moranti's
Emporium, were more permanent fixtures.  Its bowed window was filled
with ornate, bamboo cages; some were large, some were small, but each
contained a brightly coloured finch.

The last time he'd peered through the window he had seen a cheetah's
head, a stuffed fox, a snowy owl in a glass case, and a bell-jar of
foliage that was running riot.  Now, these things were gone, but new
and equally interesting items replaced them: an array of antique and
collectable perfume bottles, pre-war Ovaltine tins, and lengths of silk
concealed the plain plaster wall at the back of the shop.

He walked in to find Moranti, elderly and dishevelled, sitting on the
type of wicker basket into which pheasants were loaded after as hoot
His clothes had a certain cut to them, particularly the gabardine coat
with the wide lapels: its size seemed to draw attention to his lack of
height, his roundness.

"Got any jobs?"  said Brogan.

Moranti was accustomed to receiving a steady stream of potential
employees, most of them lads who thought a job at his curiosity shop
would be preferable to a paper round.  Without exception, they were
often big for their age, and they handled the birds as if they were
rats, crushing the delicate frames in overlarge hands.  Consequently,
he glanced at the boy's hands rather than at his face.  They were
small.  "What kind of job?"  "A Saturday job."

Moranti eased himself away from the wicker basket and walked over to
him.  "What use would you be to me?"  "How do you mean?"

"I mean, what would you know about finches?"  A Blue Monarch fixed him
with eyes both black and still.  "A bit," lied Brogan.

Moranti reached down and pulled a cloth from one of the bamboo cages to
reveal a sudden splash of colour.  "What do you make of that?"  he
said, but Brogan didn't reply.  The bird was dead, that was as much as
he knew.

"It's a Gouldian finch," said Moranti, and it seemed incredible to
Brogan that this purple-throated bird, its underbelly gold, had ever
lived and flown.

"Some of these birds are expensive," said Moranti.  "Rare, do you
see?"

tJrogan saw.

"And one of the things you never do is hold them like this."  He
clenched his fist with the thumb uppermost to illustrate the way the
majority of people attempted to hold a finch.

"Is that what killed it?"  said Brogan, and Moranti looked up at the
glass-domed roof, a slice of grey paler than the rest where a pane had
fractured to let in the cold morning air.

"I left it in a draught," he admitted.  "That's something else you
never do."  Unexpectedly, he smiled, making them conspirators.  "But
that's for me and you to know, eh?"  "I won't tell no one," said
Brogan.

Moranti reached into the cage, scooped the body from the litter, and
handed it to Brogan.  "Now," he said, 'when you pick up a bird, you
make your hands a cage, like this, see.  And you leave a little space
for its head let it see out if it wants."

The bird lay limp and cold in Brogan's hands, but he tried to imagine
what it might feel like if the feathers were warm.  "Good, good," said
Moranti.  "Now, give it to me."  As he took the bird and covered it in
a handkerchief, it seemed to Brogan that there was something of the
magician's trick about his movements, as if, at any moment, he might
whip away the cloth to reveal that the bird had gone, but Moranti
rolled up the handkerchief and put the bird in his pocket.  "Now," he
said, 'try this one."  He scooped a Banaquit out of a cage, appearing
to catch it mid-flight, and placed it in Brogan's hands with a
flourish.

Softly, and with more confidence than he felt, Brogan cupped the bird
so that its head was free to move although the body was contained.  It
struggled and napped but he didn't tighten his grip, reasoning that it
would be better to let it escape than to kill it.

"Good, yes, you've got it," said Moranti, and, as if realizing that
Brogan had indeed got it, the bird settled.  "You like it?"  "Yeah,"
said Brogan.  "It's great."

Moranti said nothing for a moment.  His last boy had been small and
delicate, much like one of the birds.  To date, he hadn't replaced him,
although since he'd disappeared, boys had walked into the shop week in,
week out, asking for jobs.  None had seemed suitable for his purposes,
somehow, not until now, and he said, "Supposing I say yes.  When could
you start?"  Brogan wasn't sure he'd heard him right "Start?"  "I
thought you wanted a Saturday job," said Moranti.  Brogan held out his
hands and Moranti cupped them, the boy transferring the bird in as
expert a manner as anyone could have hoped for, considering it was the
first time he'd attempted it with something alive and flapping.  "Now,
if y' like."  "I don't pay much," Moranti warned.  "Three pounds a
day."

I'd do it for that," said Brogan, and this was true.  He'd have done it
for less, for nothing perhaps, if only because a job of any description
would give him something concrete to do with the time he spent out of
the house, wandering the streets, looking for one good reason why he
should ever go back home.

"In that case, we give it a try.  Your first job you come with me."

He followed Moranti out of the unit, the floor gritty under his shoes.
Sand on concrete, a safety precaution, a leftover from a time when the
floor was awash with blood and offal and ice.

Brogan knew the market well enough, but had never before had cause to
leave it via the back entrance.  It gave out on to a square of hardcore
where stall-holders' vehicles were parked up tight.  Moranti made for a
van.  "Seat-belt," he said, reversing out

D O

even as Brogan got in.

He backed into a road that Brogan had walked down with his mother, when
he was still small enough for her to insist that he held her hand.  The
recollection brought not so much a lump to his throat as a gaping hole
to his stomach.  A part of him was empty, and the fact of it was
brought home to him in the simple things a scrap of fabric from a dress
she had made which he found at the back of a cupboard, the shoulder bag
that hung on a peg in the hall.  Among its contents were treasured
fragments of his first few years of life a wooden button, the charm
from a rattle, a plastic toy that had tumbled out of a cracker.

Two years on, the implications of her death registered in ways that
made him ashamed.  In walking into the kitchen to find unwashed clothes
spilling from a laundry basket, he would think of her, just as he would
think of her when the sight of his unmade bed took him by surprise.

Of late, it had begun to register in the silence that was enveloping
the house a silence so powerful it could drown the blare from the
television, the phone ringing, and he ate his i O &

meals in that silence, a plate on his knee, chewing each mouthful as if
what he found on the fork were some foreign language.

It registered now, as Moranti drove past the shop where his mother had
bought some wool, because knitting him a jumper was one of the last
things she'd done.  Sometimes he held up o r the front section, stood
in front of a mirror and imagined her pinning the shoulders, checking
it for size.  Soon, his arms would be far too long for the sleeves.  It
didn't matter.  The hobbled and cabled jumper with its centrepiece that
depicted the tree of life would never be stitched.

"Where are we going?"  said Brogan, and Mr.  Moranti patted the corpse
in the pocket of his coat.

"I want my money back," he said.  "We're going to Roly's Yard."

The inner city fell away to be replaced by the shell of a factory
surrounded by walls that bore notices warning people off.  Brogan read
the words UNSAFE and PROSECUTION, then turned his attention to houses
awaiting demolition.  They were unlike any they had passed so far,
standing tall and square, a flight of steps leading to boarded-up
doors; tiles missing from the roofs, the gutters and metalwork stripped
for scrap.

A strip of waste ground divided them from a row of similar properties,
their massive gardens overgrown, the boundaries that denned them having
long since fallen away.

Someone had made some attempt at redefining one of the boundaries with
a fence of corrugated iron, a pair of makeshift gates the only access,
and mesh swept up from the fence to the roof of the house itself to
form a cage.  He'd seen something like it dangling from a Christmas
tree in a store, his mother stopping to wait as he examined it with
hands that were minute by comparison with her own.  "What is it,
Mummy?"

"A toy," she'd replied, and Brogan had imagined an entire town of
similar houses, some of them with carefully painted people peering out
of the carefully painted windows.

Moranti struggled with the gates, tearing at the chain that held them
closed.  It fell to the ground at Brogan's feet, and Moranti left it
there, pushing at the gates until they opened, their jagged edges
scraping on the ground.

Brogan followed him through and walked straight into a nylon net that
draped from the mesh above.  It touched his face in a way that reminded
him of the entrance to a ghost train, and he staggered back as finches
of every description took fright and panicked.  Some made for trees
that had been planted around the aviary.  Others flew skyward, their
progress halted by the mesh.  They clung to the wire with slender
claws, their bodies upside down, keeping the strangers in view by
twisting their heads into impossible angles.

Many appeared to fall as they freed themselves from the wire, only to
turn mid-flight and head towards the house, entering via open windows.
A bird the size of a plum flew past, its tail as long as Brogan's arm,
wafting in flight like a long, thin reed, turquoise turning to green.
And then it was gone, and Brogan looked the length of the yard to find
that it was much as he imagined the surface of the moon to be.

What had once been a grassed area was now nothing more than bare earth.
At some point, an attempt had been made to concrete it, but the
concrete had sunk before hardening, and small craters had been left
where rain had settled into pools.  Most were no more than inches deep,
husks of seed floating on the water, ebbing towards the edges, sitting
there like scum.

A bright red bird, its back dusted with a smattering of stars, swooped
down and landed gently in a pool.  It dipped a nervous beak into the
water, then rose up, as if it had made some inspection of the boy and
had returned to the trees to report back.  "It's only a boy, a very
small boy, like the others who've been here before him."

Roly stood in the yard, a boy-child of a man.  Small and dark, his
movements timid, as if, like a deer, he might at any moment take fright
and run.  He dipped his hand in a polythene bag, pulled out a fistful
of seed, and scattered it on z6

the ground as Moranti called from the gate, "That Gouldian you sold
me."

The hand to the bag, the seed to the ground, a Zebra darting to Roly's
feet, the back of its wing speckled like the coat of a fawn.  It seemed
an effort for Roly to form the words as he shouted back to Moranti,
"Wh-what about it?"

"Dead," said Moranti.

"You sh-should care for them better."

"You telling me I don't know how to keep my birds?"

Roly pinched the corners of the bag between his index fingers and
thumbs, flipped it a couple of times and tied the ends.  It was
reminiscent of the way in which Brogan's mother had tied his sandwiches
for school, and the emptiness returned to punch him hard in the gut.
"There's a high mor-mortality rate to keeping finches."

"It's even higher when people sell you diseased birds."

"I sold you a healthy bird."

"So healthy it's dead," said Moranti.

Roly's speech impediment worsened as he took offence at the comment.
"What do you w-want?"

"A refund."

A cardboard box stood by a nesting shed, the damp lid having collapsed
inwards to reveal the remains of finches.  They were Scarlets, mostly,
their feathers red as though each had been pierced through the
throat.

"How do I know it's d-dead?"

Moranti dipped his hand into a pocket of the gabardine coat, brought
out the bird and handed it to Roly, who studied it as if by doing so he
could determine the cause of death.  He turned it in his hands, the
fingers deft, the tiny stiffening form so feather light he could flip
it over with a finger and thumb.

"I s-sold you a bl-black-headed Gouldian.  This is r-red."

"You sold me a red," said Moranti.

"Black," said Roly, but he reached into a back pocket and drew out some
money.  He peeled a fifty-pound note from a bundle, handed it to
Moranti, then tossed the corpse into the box with the Scarlets.  Then
he approached Brogan and smiled a little nervously, as if expecting the
boy to turn his back.  Brogan noticed a slight imperfection to his lip,
something that wasn't noticeable unless you got up close.

"You'll like finches?"

"Don't know," said Brogan, shyly.  "I don't know much about them."

"Well," said Roly, a little more confidently, 'what-whatever you do,
don't listen to Mr.  Moranti, Every time I s-sell him a bird, it comes
back wrap-wrapped in a r-rag."

It wasn't a comment Moranti cared to hear.  "Come on, let's go."  But
as he made for the gate, Roly raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

Instantly, the birds became unsettled.  They didn't simply dart away
but began to swarm round the yard.  Round and round they went, like a
plague of terrible insects, and Brogan covered his eyes as one of them
smacked against his face.

Moranti stood at the gate.  "Brogan," he shouted, but Brogan couldn't
move, afraid to take his hands from his eyes.

Roly continued to snap his fingers, whipping the birds to a frenzy, and
then he lashed out, lowered his hand and opened his palm a fraction.
The birds appeared to settle, and Brogan took his hands from his face
to find a bird on Roly's outstretched palm.  It cowered there, too
stunned to move, unaware that it was free, that it could hop from
Roly's palm and flutter to the ground or fly to the trees.  "Y-yours,"
said Roly.  "If you w-want,"

Brogan took it from him, cupped it in his hand and felt its heart
hammering under the plumage.

"A T-Tiger finch," said Roly, and although it was plain and brown, the
feathers dull by comparison with many other finches, it seemed to
Brogan a beautiful thing, a soft and terrified thing.  He wanted the
bird to know that he couldn't have liked it more not even if it had
been the plum-coloured bird with the fabulous turquoise tail.

Moranti had left the yard, and, finding himself alone, Brogan panicked
and ran towards the net, but as he ducked beneath it, Roly called after
him, "Y-you can come back, if you like."

"What for?"  said Brogan.

"To see the birds."

Brogan looked unsure about that and, hurriedly, Roly added, "I'll give
you another b-bird."

Brogan could hear Moranti revving the van.  "All right," said Brogan.

And then he was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

Searching Byrne's property had proved a waste of time.  Deep down,
Parker had known that would be the case, but he'd had to go through the
motions as a matter of procedure, and you never knew your luck: Byrne
might have made a mistake, might have left something somewhere to
indicate that Gary had been to the shop, to his bed sit to some small
part of the property to leave a clue as to what had become of him.  But
there was nothing.

Parker, who hadn't allowed himself to hope for too much, had reminded
himself throughout that if Byrne was in any way responsible for Gary's
disappearance he wouldn't have been stupid enough to keep anything
incriminating on the premises.  Even if he were innocent (and Parker
doubted that), he would have disposed of anything relating to children
the minute he learned that a local lad had disappeared, and the media
interest was such that Byrne would have known within hours that Gary
had gone missing.

Notwithstanding this, Parker had obtained a warrant and he and his men
had gone through the house like a double dose of salts.  "Don't forget
the roof," Parker had said, and after searching obvious hiding places
such as the water tank and the space between the floorboards and the
ceiling of Byrne's bed sit his men had obliged by yanking the
insulation from the eaves and lifting slates.

Then Parker had ordered the bunker to be moved as before, and yet again
the ground that it had been standing on had been dug to a depth of
several feet.  He had anticipated that nothing would be found, and
nothing had been found, but he had ensured that his men then examined
the rest of the area to the back of the shop to try to ascertain
whether the soil had been disturbed.  It hadn't.  "Rock solid,"
Warrender had said.  "So where do we go from here?"

Parker, who had fewer options than he would have liked, had now spoken
to both Gary's parents and had decided to arrange for the Maudsley
family to make an appeal through the media.  He didn't for one minute
suspect that any of them was concealing information, but he had to
cover all the angles, and he intended to take advantage of a form of
psychological profiling that had rarely been used five years earlier
when Joseph Coyne had vanished: the appeal would be watched repeatedly,
not only by every man on the team but by psychologists who would try to
determine whether any member of the family knew more about Gary's
disappearance than they were admitting.

The Maudsleys hadn't been comfortable with the prospect of facing
television cameras, and Parker had done his best to reassure them;
"It's nothing to worry about.  Nobody's out to make you look stupid, or
responsible for what's happened.  It's simply a way of letting the
entire country know that Gary's disappeared.  You never know, somebody
might come forward with information as a result, so it has to be worth
it, doesn't it?"

The Maudsleys had agreed with that, but the idea of those cameras still
worried them, and Gary's dad had said, "What do we have to do?"

"You'll be sitting behind a long table in a large room," said Parker.
There'll be microphones on the table, and there'll be cameras, and
there'll be reporters, but I'll be right there, looking after you, so
if anyone asks a question that you don't know how to answer, give me
the nod and I'll do the talking for you."

Reassured, they'd agreed, and the appeal had been made.  It had been
broadcast during the six o'clock news the evening before, and now
Parker had gathered together his team to watch a recording of it.

The room where they were watching it was within the station and, if not
for the fact that it was unusually small, Parker and his team might
have been forgiven for thinking they'd been plucked out of the incident
room and dropped into a cinema.  They sat in semi-circular rows with
the lighting dimmed, and there was an air of anticipation, as if they
were about to be granted a preview of some major cinematic production,
but the image on screen before them was no work of fiction.

Gary Maudsley's dad looked nervous, but Parker tried not to read too
much into it, reminding himself that nerves were only to be expected in
the circumstances: not only was his son missing but sitting directly in
front of him were press photographers, reporters and camera crews, all
recording his every word.  As if that wasn't enough for him to contend
with, his ex-wife was beside him, and despite the effort they made to
appear united in front of the press, it was easy to pick up that their
relationship was anything but amicable.

From time to time throughout the broadcast Frances Maudsley glanced at
her ex-husband, with a sly, venomous look that laid the blame for their
son's disappearance firmly at his door.  Not that she thought he'd done
anything to Gary Parker knew that much from the brief, bitter
why-ask-me-I-was-in-bloody-Morocco interview that had taken place in
his office within hours of her arrival at Heathrow it was more that she
feared being branded by the press as a lousy mother, which was why she
was trying to deflect attention from herself by saying that Gary's dad
could have done a lot more for their son than he ever had.

Parker had refrained from pointing out that at least Gary's dad had
stayed in the same country, he hadn't buggered off to live with someone
he'd met on holiday.  He'd also refrained from asking her how she'd
managed to come by the thick gold Rolex and Parker knew the genuine
item when he saw it clipped around her wrist.  "Do you work in
Morocco?"  he'd said.

She'd replied that she couldn't get a permit and that, in any case, her
boyfriend was well off so she didn't need to.  Parker's deliberate
silence had prompted her to gaze out of his office window to a view of
the city beyond.

For some days now, a steady rain had deepened the grey of the
buildings, and it was obvious to Parker that whatever architectural
strength and beauty there was to some of Manchester's better-known
landmarks, it was all lost on her.  She'd said, "Don't you ever want to
just ... get on a plane and go?"

"Go where?"  said Parker.

Her voice had almost softened.  "Somewhere warm," she'd said.
"Somewhere where it doesn't bloody rain."

Parker had followed her line of vision to clouds that seemed so low it
was almost as though a blanket of smoke had settled on the city.  But
for him this was home, and no amount of sun would coax him to leave it
for anything other than a fortnight's holiday somewhere
pronounceable.

"I'd have taken him with me, if I could," she said, 'but I couldn't.
You know what it's like with blokes and other people's kids they don't
want to know."

"Some do," said Parker, but he didn't doubt that her boyfriend wasn't
among them.  He wouldn't have wanted a woman with baggage any more than
Gary's stepmother had wanted his dad with a twelve-year-old lad in tow.
"I love our Gary," Frances had added.  "If anyone says I don't, they're
a bloody liar."

No one had disputed her word, but Parker thought back to a card that
had been shown to him by Gary Maudsley's gran.  Happy Birthday, Gazz.
Missing you always.  Mum!

On seeing that card, Parker had tried to imagine how he might have felt
if his own mother had been absent on his twelfth birthday, and from
that had come the realization that some kids learned from necessity the
art of dissociation.

As he looked at the image on screen, it seemed to Parker that it was
Gary's mum who was dissociating herself from the reality of her
situation.  Her son was missing and yet she sat there, her face blank,
fiddling with her cuticles, pushing them back from highly polished
nails, the Rolex catching the light from a flash-bulb and looking like
a fake.

During the appeal, Gary's father had spoken for the family, his voice
picked up by a microphone and amplified for the benefit of reporters.

There had been some difficulty in editing the film, and his lips
appeared to move before his words were heard.  The effect was
unnerving, particularly when his voice broke as he said: "If anyone's
seen our Gary, or knows where he might be, please ... tell the
police."

He had looked at his elderly mother, as if hoping she might come out
with something more original, something that would prompt some member
of the general public to go forward with information they might
otherwise have withheld, but Gary's gran said nothing.  She stared at
the people in front of her, people who, with pencils poised, awaited a
comment that she would never make, then lowered her eyes.  "He's only
twelve," said Gary's dad, and then, as if it had only just occurred to
him that his son might be watching, he had added, "Gary, if you're
listening, you're not in any trouble ... Just come home."

Just come home, thought Parker.  If only it were that simple.

He signalled the officer operating the equipment and, as the lights
came up, Parker scanned the faces of people he knew well, people he
worked with, socialized with, held together as a team.  He knew their
backgrounds, their dreams, their aspirations, and knew also that most
of them, male and female, had kids of their own.  Like him, they were
one hundred per cent committed to finding Gary alive.  Like him, they
had a suspicion that Gary was already dead.

CHAPTER SIX

Roger Hardman had spent his life on the land, and although this
particular job was new to him, the land, as such, was not.  It was a
different county, that's all, one that was unfamiliar, the shape of the
trees as new to him as the shape of the people he found himself thrust
among.

His new employer, the National Trust, had told him to open up rights of
way on an estate situated to the south of Manchester, recently
bequeathed by someone called Fenwick.  By all accounts (and Hardman was
only going by what people had told him), Fenwick had amassed a fortune
in business and had retired to Colbourne House, where he had devoted
the remainder of his life to keeping himself to himself.

Hardman didn't blame him for that, but he did blame him for blocking
off all known rights of way throughout the estate, and now, as he
fought his way down a bridlepath that had been all but obliterated, it
struck him as obscene that, in this day and age, one individual could
amass sufficient fortune to buy a thousand acres and prevent anyone
else from enjoying its considerable beauty.  It seemed odd, too, that
someone should go to such lengths in life to keep people off their land
then bequeath it to the type of trust that would open it up to the
public.  Perhaps, thought Hardman, Fenwick had suffered a stab of guilt
towards the end and had tried to alleviate it by altering his will, or
perhaps he had simply wanted to keep his land out of the grasp of
distant and not-much-liked relatives.

Whatever the case, when alive, Fenwick had let most of his land to
neighbouring farmers, but pockets such as this woodland had been left
to their own devices.  It was surprising what became of neglected
woodland: Hardman knew better than anyone how impenetrable it could
become.  Trees could be choked by undergrowth, and paths such as this
one became barely negotiable in no time.  It had once linked villages
to either side of the estate, but that was generations ago.  Nowadays,
the villages no longer existed, and the path led nowhere as such.

The wood itself was of no particular interest, thought Hardman.  No
pond to fish, no magnificent view, just forestry that had grown so
dense, it might have been nightfall in there.  Winter was almost upon
them, but many of the trees still held their ragged leaves, and it
seemed to Hardman that they conspired to block what light there was
from a mournful sky.  He canned a scythe and hacked with it, his
progress slow, his sixty years telling on him now, but he swung it in
slow, easy strokes, an old hand, and far too canny to catch himself
unawares.  He knew what the long, curved blade could do to the calf of
a man's leg; knew he wouldn't be the first to catch an artery and die
in less than two minutes.  No one would find him, or at least not for a
while, and certainly not in time.  They might find the spot where he'd
cut through the wire to get to the path in the first place.  They'd
also find where he'd sliced his way through the undergrowth and, by
charting his progress, they'd come across his body.  He didn't much
fancy that.

He put the scythe down for a moment, wiped his brow with the back of
his hand and looked up.  The position of the sun told him it was
lunch-time, just as it told him that the path wound east, which meant
he'd reached half-way.  If he could find a spot to sit a moment, have a
bite to eat ... but there was nowhere suitable, just trees, darkness
and a treehouse of sorts, well off the path to his left.

He felt the ground, found that it was damp, and reasoned that in an
hour or so, with luck, he'd have the job finished.  Lunch could wait,
he decided, so he lifted the scythe and continued, stopping only when
curiosity caused him to wonder who might have built the treehouse.

Kids, he decided, but Fenwick had died without issue, so it must have
been built by the children of a family that had once owned the estate.
Colbourne House was prestigious enough for minor gentry, and it had no
doubt accommodated more than its share in its two-hundred-year history.
Still, to build a treehouse so far from the gardens struck him as
strange, and he tried to picture the children who had built it, seeing
them in breeches and those odd buttoned boots, a snatch of lace or
velvet at their pale, slender throats.  He wouldn't have wanted to be a
child a hundred years ago, privileged or not, and if he had been, he
wouldn't have built a treehouse in a wood where the trees were gnarled
into shapes that could seem almost demonic to a child's eyes.

In leaving the path to take a closer look, he realized he'd been wrong.
Whatever it was, this thing, it wasn't a treehouse.  Its shape and
proportions were difficult to discern, ivy having distorted it and made
it part of the background so effectively that he might not have seen it
at all if he hadn't just happened to glance at it from a particular
angle.

It was supported on poles that had been stripped of bark, planed
smooth, and driven into the ground to form a rectangular construction.
It looked like some kind of scaffold or the frame to a four-poster bed,
but the base, instead of being at a level that would make it possible
for a person to climb in, was at shoulder height.  Ivy had smothered
the base with a mattress of green; the leaves moving softly, a bird
dipping down and swooping its length, then fluttering into the trees,
and on the soft, still wind, he caught the sound of a dog's single bark
from many miles away.

He stretched out the hand that still held the scythe and used the arc
of steel to touch the ivy.  The tip of it lifted a tentacle of green,
and in a nervous, jerking movement, he whipped it away to reveal what
it concealed.

He knew, of course, that what he'd found were bones, and he wasn't a
stranger to death, so it wasn't of death itself that he was afraid.
What he feared was the fact that he had reached out, and had revealed
with his scythe, a thing that was touched by evil, and he threw the
scythe to the ground.  He would never retrieve it again, feeling it to
be tainted, unlucky, and all the more likely to carve through his flesh
and bring about his own untimely demise.

Poor young bugger, he thought, for even as he stepped back and away
from the scaffold he knew the remains were small.  Boy or girl, he
didn't know, but this had been a child.

He turned now, and ran, stumbling down the path, feeling the trees
closing in, feeling that he was in danger.  Death had been to this
place, had visited a child there, had left its remains to the birds,
and he ran as if that thing on the scaffold might lift itself from the
bed and beckon him back, the teeth grinning, the voice child-like:
You'll never forget me you know.  Every day for the rest of your life,
you'll remember the way you found me, and it will haunt you, Roger
Hardman, that I promise ...

CHAPTER SEVEN

Parker stood at the entrance to Colbourne Wood.  It had been taped off
at the point where Hardman had ait through the wire, and uniformed men
were standing around, miserable in the rain.

It was growing dark, and Parker anticipated that they had less than an
hour before the team would have to rig up lights.  Ideally, they ought
to see the remains and get the lie of the land before cluttering the
scene with equipment, and he wished the pathologist would arrive so
that they could get on.

The news of what had been found had reached his ears within an hour,
Hardman having fled from the wood in search of the nearest phone.  He'd
called the police, and first on the scene had been a patrol from one of
Greater Manchester's sub-divisions.  Uniforms had asked Hardman to show
them the exact location of the remains, but nothing they could say or
do had persuaded him to set foot back in that wood.  "Follow the path,"
he'd said.  "You can't miss it ..."  and they'd done precisely that
until they'd reached the structure that Hardman had described as ... a
scaffold.  One of them had lifted the ivy a fraction, had seen the
remains and had returned to the patrol to radio Headquarters.

The information had gone straight to the incident room, and the man who
had received it had placed his hand over the receiver before calling to
Warrender.  "Neil, the remains of a kid have been found."

"Where?"

"Colbourne Wood."

"I'll get the guvnor."

Parker had been found and had gone to the incident room where he'd
almost grabbed the receiver from the man holding the call.  His brief,
pertinent questions had elicited the information that the remains were
skeletal, and he had ordered the uniforms to secure the scene before he
ended with the words, "I'm on my way."  He had then arranged for
scene-of-crime officers to meet him at the wood along with Sherringham,
the pathologist.

As he and Warrender left the station together, Warrender had said, "It
can't be Gary, guy.  Assuming he's dead, there's no way his body could
have decomposed so fast."

Parker had been aware of that, just as he had been aware that Warrender
hadn't added what each of them was thinking: the remains could well be
those of Joseph Coyne.

They had walked out of the building and into the kind of rain that had
reminded Parker of Frances Maudsley's words: "Don't you ever feel like
going somewhere warm, somewhere where it doesn't bloody rain?"  and
now, as Parker looked at his immediate surroundings, he was able to
relate to her desire.  Wherever that warm place might be, it wasn't
Colbourne Wood, where the branches of the tightly packed trees entwined
as if to keep intruders out of their space.

A couple of vans were parked up alongside the fence, the scene-of-crime
officers sitting in them, waiting for Parker to give the order for them
to enter the wood.  All wore waterproofs over their dark blue overalls,
and all seemed grimly subdued.  There was no doubt about what had been
found in that wood.  Those uniforms from the sub-division had confirmed
it.  Therefore, in a very short space of time, they would be confronted
by a skeleton, and though none of them was exactly spooked by the
prospect, the fact that it had been described as that of a child put a
different complexion on things.

Hardman was leaning on a rotting post, staring into the wood.  The sky
was heavy with the type of cloud that dispensed rain in sheets, but he
took no notice and kept his eyes fixed on the trees as Parker walked up
to him.  "Mr.  Hardman?"

He gave a nod

"Must have been as hock for you.  How are you feeling?"

Hardman looked him full in the face.  "Cold," he replied.  "Otherwise,
all right, all things considered."

"Can you tell me how you came to find the remains?"  said Parker, and
Hardman gave him the details.

Parker asked, "Would you be prepared to show us where they are?"

Hardman seemed to shrink away, as if the mere suggestion of going back
into that wood was out of the question, and Parker left it, not wanting
to do anything that might result in the man keeling over on him.  You
never knew with elderly people and, in Parker's view, one body a day
was plenty.  You want to get yourself indoors," he said.  "Do you live
near?"

"Rented house in the village," said Hardman.

"How about one of my men giving you a lift?"  said Parker, but Hardman
returned to his former pastime of staring into the trees.

"I'm all right," he said.

A car drew up, one that Parker recognized as belonging to the
pathologist.  He walked over to it, and as Sherringham wound down the
window Parker peered in to see him dressed for the weather in an
oilskin jacket, his black trousers stuffed into Wellington boots.
"Where's the body?"  asked Sherringham, getting straight to the
point.

Parker replied, "I'm told it's off a bridlepath, about three-quarters
of the way into the wood."

"You haven't seen it, then?"

"Not yet," said Parker.  "We've only just arrived."  He indicated the
men in the vans.  "We're all set if you are."

Right, then," said Sherringham, pulling a black leather bag from the
passenger seat and climbing out of the car.

As Parker led the way towards the cordon, the scene-of-crime officers
piled out of the vehicles and pulled their hoods against what was now a
torrential downpour.  They were joined by Warrender who climbed from
Parker's saloon, and the group followed Parker towards the point where
Hardman had cut through wire.

Once there, Parker paused and looked along the length of the path as
far as he could see.  Bramble and thorn were strewn on the ferns that
lay to either side of it, and up ahead it disappeared into darkness. It
was almost as though the trees were closing ranks, thought Parker,
shutting them out, and he scanned the trunks for some sign of light
between them.  There was none.  Just darkness leading to darkness, and
the certainty that if they left the path, they'd soon be lost to that
darkness.

"Not a pleasant place," said Warrender, and Parker wondered whether
that was precisely what the National Trust had felt on inspecting the
land so recently bequeathed to it along with the house.  Someone senior
had probably taken a look at the wood and come to the conclusion that
it was high time something was done to make it accessible, to lighten
it up, to rid it of its malevolent, watchful air.  To be responsible
for a wood like this was a bit like being responsible for the type of
pond that children couldn't resist the type of pond that sat there,
half hidden by reeds, just waiting for a tiny foot to tread too close
to the bank.

He stopped himself.  He wasn't a man to let his imagination get the
better of him, and thoughts like that belonged to children, not to
full-grown men.  But as they walked through the cordon, Parker looked
back to Hardman, still leaning on that post, watching them go, and read
in his expression the expectation that none of them would ever be seen
again.

They took the path in single file, treading with care for fear of
trampling some due as to how the remains had come to be where they
were.  It sounded as though they had been there for some time, in which
case, there was little hope of finding clues, fresh or otherwise, but
the precaution had to be taken.

Earlier, Warrender had asked Hardman how big the wood was, and Hardman
had replied that it covered a good forty acres, but that meant nothing
to Parker.  He was a city boy, born and bred, and he couldn't have
marked out an acre if his life depended on it.  All he knew was, the
wood was old, and, for the most part, it consisted of good
old-fashioned English trees, the type he'd climbed as a kid.  None of
this pine nonsense that Parker tended to think of as vaguely foreign.
These trees meant business, and over hundreds of years, their trunks
had not only thickened but had contorted into shapes that gave them
twisted limbs, screaming mouths, watchful, vengeful eyes.

The afternoon light was fading fast and visibility decreasing by the
minute, yet Parker didn't want his men to use torches until it became
absolutely necessary: something within him felt that it was important
to see his surroundings as the child might have seen them before its
death.  You never knew, thought Parker; that might prove important, and
he wanted his first impression to be accurate.

There was, of course, always the possibility that the child had been
taken to the wood at night, just as there was the possibility that
Hardman was mistaken.  This may not be the body of a child at all: in a
wood as old as this, there was no telling how long the remains had been
there, and it was conceivable that what had been found were the remains
of an adult murdered at a time when people were smaller than they were
today.  Not likely, he admitted to himself, but it was just possible,
and in strange, remote little villages such as had existed as recently
as a hundred years ago, a form of rough justice was sometimes meted out
in the cruel lest and strangest of ways.

He reminded himself that, at this stage, nobody knew whether they were
dealing with murder, though he had to concede that the likelihood was
remote of a person taking themselves into a wood, building a scaffold,
lying on it and waiting to die of exposure or starvation.  Therefore,
for the moment, Parker was of the opinion that they were about to find
the remains of a person child or adult who had been murdered.  The
question of when that person had been murdered was one that only a
pathologist would be able to answer.  Sherringham might conclude that
the remains had been there for a century or more, in which case,
Parker's men would be relieved to learn that house-to-house enquiries
would not comprise a major part of the investigation.  On the other
hand, Sherringham just might say that the flesh had only recently
fallen away from the bones, in which case ... Odd, thought Parker, the
way in which the remains of murder victims invariably came to light.
He'd seen it many times: walls crumbled, riverbeds ran dry and trees
fell to the ground, their roots unearthing bones that were instantly
recognizable as not being those of an animal.

At the same time, he realized that the fact of the matter was, it was
incredibly difficult to dispose of a body.  England was small.  It was
also overpopulated, and people from towns and cities seemed to be
driven, in ever-increasinp numbers, into

the country.  They went in search of peace.  And what they found was
death: secrets kept for many years by soil, and rocks, and trees.

These particular trees were doing their best to keep whatever secrets
they could by ensuring that he and his men were unable to see where
they were going, but the path that Hardman had cut was almost as good
as a thread leading them to the scene.

No sooner had Parker thought this than the path stopped, abruptly.  He
scanned the ground for some sign of the ferns having been flattened,
found the trail he was looking for, and peered into the darkness in the
hope of seeing what it was that had first caught Hardman's attention.
He could see nothing untoward, just woodland so dense that the light
had been shut out completely.  Then he picked out the shape of two
trees standing side by side.  Between them, as if forming a bridge,
there appeared to be something fitting the description of the scaffold,
and as he approached it, he saw the scythe that Hardman had flung to
the ground.

He moved towards it, the men behind him, and stopped in front of the
scaffold.  The ivy that the uniforms had lifted had fallen back into
place and Parker could see nothing of what lay beneath it.  He lifted a
tentacle of green, felt it cool in his hand, then had the strangest
sensation as if the plant were entwining itself round his fingers.

He crushed a stem, an unnecessary act, but one born of a desire to
reassure himself that this was merely a plant and that he could pull it
out of the ground by its roots if he chose to do so.  And yet he also
had the feeling that, if he were to do so, it would quickly take root
again and grow back stronger than ever.  He drew it away from the
platform, and saw a skull in which the teeth were perfect.  A garment
had been fastened around the throat, but whatever it once was, it was
now all but rags like the body, there wasn't much left of it, and the
ribs, the pelvic girdle, the skull itself all were small, the bones
having about them a newly minted quality, as if they might be plastic,
rather too white to be real.  Hardman hadn't been mistaken, thought
Parker.  These were the bones of a child.

He let the ivy go, and turned to face his men, but it seemed suddenly
to Parker that they were melting into the darkness.  He could see the
whites of their eyes, could hear them breathing softly, but nobody
spoke, and nobody moved.  He felt completely alone.  If this is Joey,
he thought.  If this is down to Byrne ... He looked again at the
scaffold, the bones now wet with rain, as if the skull was weeping, as
if he could hear a childish voice that said, You found me, then.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It had been a good day for Brogan.  Not only had he found himself a
job, but he'd been given a bird.

He'd left the yard at a run, and as he'd dived into the van, he'd shown
the bird to Moranti.  "I'm gonna call him Tiger."

Moranti reached into the back and produced a small oblong box, four
inches long, and two inches in diameter.  Brogan passed him Tiger, too
nervous to try to put him into the box himself.

Moranti took the bird from him and eased it in, then handed it to
Brogan to hold.  There were holes punched into the cardboard, and
Brogan tried to imagine what it might be like for the bird, crouching
down in there.  It would be dark, he decided, and Tiger would see
pinpricks of light, like stars.  He'd be warm, because he was holding
the box so close and under his coat, and he'd feel secure because every
time Moranti took a corner, he adjusted the position of the box to
prevent the bird from being thrown around.

Periodically, he felt the vibration of Tiger's claws as he scrabbled to
gain some purchase on the smooth, cardboard interior, but for the most
part, he stayed still.  He was the first pet that Brogan had ever had,
and he spoke to him softly through the holes punched into the
cardboard, aware that Moranti was watching him, bemused.

Once they were back at the Emporium, Brogan had wanted to put the bird
in a cage, but Moranti said it would be better to leave him to
settle.

"He hasn't got no food."

"He wouldn't eat any even if you gave him some, not until he's
settled," said Moranti.  "You leave him for the moment, yes?"  and he
passed a tin to Brogan.  "Polish the counter," he said.

By lunch-time, Brogan had polished not only the counter, but the case
that housed the stuffed fox and the cut-glass perfume bottles.

The lengths of silk that covered the back wall had been straightened,
and the velvet seat of the carved wooden chair had been brushed clean.
Then he made a start on the finches, lifting them out and putting them
into a holding cage while he cleaned out the litter, replaced the seed
and refilled the water feeders.

Some of the birds were so scared they sat and trembled in his hands.
Others pecked in anger, the point of their beaks like tiny pricks from
a needle, but none escaped and none was hurt, and all were returned to
their cages without so much as a feather out of place.

"You're a good boy, Brogan ... a good boy."

Lunch had come in the form of baps bought from the delicatessen. They'd
sat on the wicker basket to eat them, Moranti watching his customers
but leaving them to browse.  Most were women, some with children, their
fingers sticky on the surfaces that Brogan had already polished.  After
lunch, he took a rag and started to polish again, but all the while, he
looked at the box that held his Tiger finch, and because he was pleased
with the boy, Moranti relented and produced a bamboo cage from the back
of the shop.  He inspected it to see if it was sound, then handed it to
Brogan.  "A few loose bars," he said, 'but we can soon sort that," and
he showed him how to weave the raffia so that it bound the bars,
tucking the ends away so they were neat as well as secure.

Brogan scrubbed it down with a solution that Moranti assured him would
keep the bamboo from cracking as well as disinfect it, and after he'd
done all he could with it, Moranti said, "Now for Tiger."

The box containing the finch stood on the counter, next to the till,
and Brogan, who had spent the entire morning wanting to pick it up, to
shake it gently, to talk to the bird inside, now hesitated.  He bent
towards the box, resting his ear on the cardboard, and heard nothing.
He didn't know what he would do if Tiger was dead, and it seemed
possible to him that he might have died of fright in there, shaken out
of his senses, walled up in the dark.

"Come here," said Moranti, and he plucked the box from the counter,
opened the lid and tipped the panicking finch into one of his hands.
"Nothing to it," he said.

His fingers had closed on the bird to conceal it completely, and now he
opened the bamboo cage, put his hand inside and opened the palm.

The bird was gone.

Brogan looked into the cage, but he couldn't see it.  He looked at
Moranti's hands.  They were empty.

Frantically, he grabbed the box and tipped it upside down.  He'd seen
the bird in Moranti's hand.  It couldn't be lodged in the box.  And yet
he peered in to make sure, finding that, as he suspected, the bird
wasn't there.  "Where is he?"  said Brogan.  "What have you done with
Tiger?"

Moranti, seeming bewildered, looked up at the glass-domed roof as if
expecting to see the Tiger finch flapping against the fractured pane of
glass.  Then he looked at Brogan's face and saw that the boy was on the
verge of tears.

"He's gone," said Brogan, who couldn't quite believe it, and then he
saw Moranti smile and he looked in the cage again.  The Tiger finch was
there, and yet a moment ago the cage had been empty.  He knew it was a
trick, but didn't know how Moranti had done it, or why.  He knew only
that, for one brief moment, he had felt a sense of loss that was every
bit as great as the loss he'd felt at his mother's death.  Strange how
that loss could come to him out of nowhere, sparked by events that
couldn't compare with the greater loss of her death yet seeming somehow
magnified by the fact of it.  "You shouldn't have done that," he said,
and he walked away from the cage.

"Brogan," said Moranti, 'what about your bird?"

But the boy had picked up the rag and was rubbing at the counter in
small defiant movements, his back to Moranti.  "You could have hurt
him," he said.

"I know what I'm doing."

"Tiger's mine."

"Brogan ... I'm sorry."  For the rest of the day, Moranti caught him
glancing over at the cage as if expecting the bird to be gone.  This is
a child who has lost many things, thought Moranti, and he decided never
to play the trick again.  It seemed to him a terrible thing that now
the boy wouldn't look at the bird.  "Don't you want him?"

"No."

"Shall I sell him give you the money?"

"Do what you like."

"Don't you want to work for me no more?"

There was the briefest of hesitations.  "I didn't say that."

"I don't want no boys who don't look after a bird that relies on them,
Brogan."

"Tiger doesn't rely on me."

"Who else is there to feed him?"

"You can feed him."

"He's your bird.  Why should I look after him?"

Brogan turned from the counter.  "You could have killed him," he
said.

So that was it, thought Moranti the ultimate loss.  Better not to want
something, to love something, than to lose it in the end.  "I have
gentle hands," he said.  "I can handle the birds."  Now Brogan went to
the cage and looked in on the finch.

He found that it was cowering on the litter, its wings slightly fanned,
its breath coming sharp and quick.  "You've hurt him," said Brogan,
simply.

"Not me," said Moranti.  I never hurt the birds."  But Brogan thought
back to that splash of colour lying dead in a cage.  Moranti had left
the Gouldian in a draught.  Moranti couldn't be trusted.  "Where will
you keep him?"  said Moranti.

"In my bedroom."

"Your parents won't mind?"

"No," said Brogan, who wondered what his mother might have said.
Initially, she'd have told him he couldn't keep it, that she'd be the
one who would end up cleaning the cage.  Then she'd have told him he'd
have to ask his father, and Brogan's protests would have enabled her to
anticipate what his father's reaction might be, so she and Brogan would
have conspired to keep the bird a secret.  "Keep it in your room,"
she'd have said.  "And don't let your father know."

The covered market was shutting down for the night.  Already, the
mock-Victorian gas lamps had been dimmed.  Stallholders were pulling
down the shutters and Brogan, whose work was finished for the day,
added, "I've got to get home."

"Here," said Moranti, dipping a hand in the till.  He pulled out five
pounds and Brogan, who recalled that they'd settled on three, said, "I
haven't got no change."

Moranti, who still felt guilty, replied, "Keep it.  You've earned it,"
and after he'd taken the money, Brogan picked up the cage.  The Tiger
finch was still lying flat on the litter, its wings extended.  "I think
he's hurt."

"He's fine," said Moranti, but as Brogan made for the door, the Diamond
Firetail flapped lazily at the bars of his own bamboo cage, its various
levels filled with devices that Moranti had slipped in for the bird's
amusement.  For the most part, it ignored them, seemed, in fact, to
avoid them, and Brogan wondered whether there was any point in giving
finches toys to play with.  For all he knew, the devices might even
upset the birds in some way, and it confirmed his suspicion that

Moranti didn't really know much about them.  To him, they were just an
addition to the many curious objects that littered the Emporium, and
when they died, as the Gouldian had, he wasn't concerned that he'd lost
them.  All he cared about was getting his money back.

He wondered whether to take his bird to a vet, just to be sure, but he
didn't know any vets, and even if he had the money to pay one, he
wasn't sure that a vet would look at a finch.  He hovered in the
doorway, watching as Moranti emptied the till into a small drawstring
bag.  It was navy blue and a miniature of a bag that Brogan's mother
had bought for his PE kit when he was still at primary school, and he
felt that familiar stab as he said, "Got any books?"

"What kind of books?"

"Books about finches."

"No," said Moranti.  "What would you want with a book?"

"I just want to know about finches, that's all."

"Try down the library," said Moranti.

"Now?"

"It'll be closed.  Try Monday, after school' He produced a cloth and
walked up to Brogan, draped it over the cage that held his finch, and
said, "To keep him warm, to stop him getting scared."

Brogan adjusted the cloth, and was about to walk out of the Emporium
when Moranti added, "Roly knows all about finches."  He pulled the
string on the navy blue bag, shutting the money up tight.  "You got a
problem with Tiger, you go ask Roly."

He left the covered market and walked the two miles home to a suburb
where it seemed, at times, as though someone had turned back the clock.
Most of the roads were tarmacked now, but these were streets where
terraced houses stood in rows, and some were still cobbled, the stones
smooth, the pavements narrow and cracked.

He stopped in front of a house in the middle of a row, and found that,
as was usual for a Saturday, a box had been left on the doorstep.  A
couple of weeks back, the lid of a similar box had been opened, but
nothing had been touched, and Brogan had imagined some passer-by
finding it, opening it and discovering that it contained nothing more
than groceries.  The fact that they'd left it alone had made him
realize that the potential thief had felt a stab of pity for whoever
the food might be meant for, and ever since then he had hated to find a
box on the step.

He left it where it was and walked into the house carrying the cage,
which he took straight up to his bedroom.  Then he went back down for
the groceries, kicking the front door closed as he struggled into the
house with the box.  He took it through to a kitchen where cheap pine
units fought for space along a wall that had once been occupied by a
Welsh dresser, left to his mother by grandparents Brogan had never
known.  There had been something sad about his mother's insistence on
keeping it polished, as though she hadn't quite come to terms with the
fact that she was housed in the middle of a terrace, that the cottage
she might have dreamed of would never become a reality, that this was
all she amounted to, all she would ever own.

The dresser had been sold, and Brogan hadn't known why, though he
remembered, vaguely, that at the time, his father had been out of work
and other items of furniture had also been sold.  There had been a
walnut cabinet crammed with china, tiny cups and saucers edged with
gold, minute, fragile animals, a duck, a dog, a foal.

Now there was a sideboard where the cabinet had been, its top drawer
filled with bills, receipts, photographs, the paraphernalia of everyday
life.  Its lower drawers held oddments, the sort of rubbish cleared
from the house of every person who dies leaving others to sort through
their belongings and wonder why this or that had been kept.

It was here, in the kitchen, that he remembered his mother best.  If he
kept his back to the door, he could almost imagine that nothing had
changed, that she was in the next room, just out of sight and behind a
lightweight ironing board.  He had grown so good at this that he could
almost catch the smell of the hot, damp clothes, which seemed to
permeate the house, though neither he nor his father had ironed
anything since her death.

There was another smell, less than welcoming, the smell that creeps
into a house when cleaning becomes superficial and corners, crevices,
surfaces and soft furnishings are not attended to.  There was only so
much Brogan could do, and he did his best because she would have wanted
it that way.

He put down the box of groceries on a unit, pulled bread, cheese and
salad cream out of it, and made a sandwich of sorts.  His mother would
have insisted that he got a proper meal, and at this time a couple of
years back, he'd have walked in to find her peeling vegetables,
braising meat or pulling a pie from the oven.  Not that she was any
great shakes as a cook.  A plain cook, his father had called her, but
there had been nothing plain about watching the expert way that her
hands whisked sugar and butter into a filling for the cake that
sometimes appeared for 'people who managed their cabbage' "Oy, you
little monkey, get your fingers out of that bowl."  but he always got
the fork with the thick, creamy substance clinging to the prongs.

He took the sandwich up to his room, where the matching wallpaper,
curtains and duvet cover depicted a design more suitable for a very
young child.  It didn't strike him as inappropriate: he had never known
it to have been decorated in any other way, though a photo of him
peering from a cot had made him realize that there had once been a time
when the walls were powder blue.

There was a cheap vanity unit in one corner, more suitable for a girl
than a boy, the laminated surface pink, the mirror oval, a crude design
of flowers painted on the wood and protected by scratched glass.  It
was flimsy, and old, its drawer crammed with wrappers from sweets,
cuttings from comics, legacies from a time when, for lack of more
conventional toys, he had cut figures from the Dandy, had pasted them
on to the cardboard back of a cereal packet and made up stories to
amuse himself for hours at a time.

He sat on the bed, the cage at his feet, the sandwich to his mouth, and
as he chewed, he rocked, quietly, not knowing he was doing it, not
knowing what he was looking at as he stared out through the window to
the houses opposite, with their blank, square windows and nets that
were all the yellows and greys of a world unwashed.

He reached down and drew the cloth from the cage.  Tiger still sat on
the litter, too scared to sit on the rod that served as a perch.  His
small bright eyes looked up in fearful expectation, and Brogan
struggled to think of a way of comforting the bird.  "You'll be all
right," he said.  "I'll get a book, and if it doesn't tell me what to
do, I'll take you to Roly."

He spoke through a mouthful of food, the word nothing more than a
mumble, the houses opposite fading to become a gigantic aviary, a
heavenly chaos of colour.  "Roly," he repeated.

CHAPTER NINE

At seven a.m. the following morning, Parker called in at the station to
be briefed by the men who had worked through the night, most of whom
were monitoring as best they could the practical problems associated
with a major investigation.

Julie Coyne had already phoned in and Parker knew that, before the day
was out, she'd be down at the station.  "If she turns up, try to
persuade her to go home.  If she won't, put her in one of the interview
rooms and tell her I'll see her as soon as I get back."  He added, as
an afterthought, "Though don't ask me when that'll be."

He turned to the morning papers, which had been brought in, and scanned
them, not out of curiosity but necessity: the police, ever wary of the
possibility that at any point in any investigation one of their
officers might be persuaded to sell information, liked to keep an eye
on what the press had managed to find out with a view to discovering
how they'd come by the facts.

Much as he had anticipated, the story was being carried on the front
page of every national paper, but the press had precious little
information other than that the bones of a child had been found and
they had embellished what few details they had with rumours that the
child may have been the victim of a cult.

It was an interesting speculation, and since the thought had also
occurred to Parker, he didn't blame them for latching on to the
possibility.  It certainly appeared to be the type of case in which the
ritual of the kill appeared to have been as important as the fact of
it, which wasn't a happy thought, in Parker's view.

His eye was drawn to paragraphs picked out in fluorescent ink by
members of the team, but Parker found nothing that caused him undue
concern.  The press had discovered that the remains were skeletal, and
knew also that they lay on a scaffold, but this was information they
had probably got from Hardman.  It was too much to hope that they
wouldn't have harangued whoever had discovered the remains into
divulging what little they knew.

Warrender came on duty and Parker told him to stay at the station.  He
didn't seem put out; nor did he seem to feel that he was missing out on
the action.  Parker wondered whether,

like himself, he wasn't all that keen to return to Colbourne Wood. He'd
seen what there was to see, and it was something he wouldn't forget in
a hurry.

But Parker couldn't afford the luxury of not returning to Colbourne,
and a short while later he left the station, to find that, already, the
M6z looked more like the Mz.  She sat in the traffic, which moved at a
steady fifteen miles an hour, and turned off the motorway to find that
the roads that led towards the wood were jammed with vehicles. Uniforms
were blocking the road, turning people back, and as Parker pulled up
within yards of the cordon he realized he had a serious problem: news
of what had been found had spread.  There were hundreds of people at
the scene.  Even as he climbed out of the car, some were breaking the
fence and running across the land that surrounded the wood.  Someone
had had the foresight to call in for back-up, and uniformed men were
there in far greater numbers than Parker would normally have placed at
the scene of a crime.  Mounted police had also been brought in, and
they positioned themselves at strategic points, covering the wood from
every angle, ensuring that nobody got to the trees and gained access to
the scene.

Hardman was leaning against the rotting post as if he'd been there all
night.  Parker walked up to him, told him his scythe had been found and
that he'd get it back in due course, but Hardman wasn't having any of
it.  "Don't want it," he said.  "Keep the bloody thing bury it.  Better
still, chuck it on a fire."

A man in his mid to late fifties was standing next to

Hardman, his clothes casual, slightly shabby.  There was something
about him that made Parker want to take a closer look at him, and the
man turned as if sensing that someone was watching him.  There was
something in his expression, Parker thought, a look that went beyond
curiosity: he seemed genuinely upset, as if what had been found had
some particular meaning for him.

Parker had half a mind to talk to him, find out who he was, how far
he'd come, but as if anticipating it the man moved off, and Parker's
attention was taken by the press who had homed in on Hardman.

For the most part, Hardman ignored them, or made monosyllabic
responses, his eyes still fixed on the wood.  Some photographer would
get an award-winning shot of that leathery face, Parker thought. Enough
of them were trying, but Hardman seemed not to notice.  All he saw was
the wood, and some private horror that had him in its grip.

Parker, who had gone to supervise the removal of the remains, entered
the wood to be greeted by a different team from the men who had arrived
with him the afternoon before.  They didn't need him to organize them.
They knew their job, and Parker was careful not to get in their way.

Sherringham wanted not only the bones but the platform on which they
lay, and Parker watched as this, along with a fair proportion of the
ivy that covered it, was freed from the poles.

Once the structure was dismantled, the site lost some of its horror and
he wondered what the press would say when they got the chance to see
it.  They would find it hard to equate the spot with the picture they'd
drawn of the place.  For the most part, it would look like any other
area of the wood, the trees dense, the foliage thick, and if not for
the men who were combing the ground, there would be little to indicate
why it had aroused such emotion in those who had seen the scaffold.

The scene-of-crime officers lowered the platform on to a lightweight
support.  Four feet wide and six feet long, it took the weight, and had
handles that enabled them to get a decent grip.  It was covered by a
plastic sheet, the whole thing secured by tape, and at a nod from
Parker, the men got into position, lifted the support, then carried it
like a stretcher down the path.

Parker followed them silently and, as they reached the cordon, saw the
men pause when they were faced by the enormity of the crowd.

The sight of the platform prompted those closest to it to surge
forward, but before Parker could bark an order, uniforms linked arms to
form a solid line and Parker realized that there was some advantage to
having in the area one of the best football teams in the country: crowd
control was almost second nature to these men.

Horses appeared to back up the uniforms, and kept the crowd contained,
but getting the remains to the unmarked van was a slow and difficult
process.  At every step of the way, people pressed forward repeatedly,
and at one point, the men carrying the platform were rocked by a gang
of lads who'd broken through the line of uniformed men.

The last thing Parker wanted to see was the remains of a child spilled
into the road, and he shouted a comment that stopped them in their
tracks: "This is a kid, for God's sake."

A silence came over the crowd.  They stood back as the platform was
eased into the van, and even after the doors were closed, the silence
remained for some time.

There was nothing further he could do there so he headed towards his
car with the intention of returning to the station.  Much of what he
would do in the future depended on what Sherringham could tell him
about the remains, but whatever else the pathologist might say, one
thing was for certain: these were not the remains of Gary Maudsley.
Therefore, Gary was out there, somewhere ... and Parker intended to
find him.

CHAPTER TEN

Parker didn't need a medium to tell him that when he got back to the
station Joseph Coyne's mother would be there, waiting for him, and he
wasn't surprised when Warrender greeted him with the words, "You've got
a visitor.  Mrs.  Coyne.  I've left her in one of the interview rooms
with a WPC."

"Thanks," said Parker.  "I'll go and have a word."  The interview room
was pleasant enough in that the walls were lined with hessian and the
furnishings, although sparse, were comfortable.  Its only shortcoming
was the lack of radiator, and it was cold in there.  Julie had kept her
coat on, something long, beige and lined with a yellowing fleece.  It
was a far cry from the type of coat she might have worn some years ago,
thought Parker, but come to think of it, she didn't flash her body
parts around the way she used to.  Everything about her seemed subdued,
sombre, more thoughtful, as if she were saying, "Let me have him back,
and I'll be good."

And maybe she would be, thought Parker, though God only knew, she'd
learned in the harshest way possible that her child was precious and
that she had had a responsibility to set him a standard, to fulfill her
duties as a parent.  He wouldn't wish that kind of lesson on anyone
and, in any event, she'd long since paid her dues: she had aged out of
all recognition since her son's disappearance and looked a good deal
older than a woman in her early thirties.  But it wasn't just her
appearance that had changed; her attitude to life had undergone a
transformation, and it was difficult to equate this softly spoken
person with the loud, sometimes aggressive woman who had reported her
son missing five years ago.

The first time Parker had interviewed her, he had sat in the sitting
room of her tiny, two-bed roomed flat, and she'd chain-smoked as she
answered questions he'd asked for the sole purpose of trying to build
up a picture of Joey's home life.

"How long have you and your husband lived here, Mrs.  Coyne?"

"Two years, and he isn't my husband."

"What's his name?"

"Chris."

"Chris what?"

"Hill."

"Where is he?"

"Out."

"Where?"

"You tell me."

She'd shaken a mane of hair that was bleached to breaking point, its
volume almost drowning a small neat face.  The gesture seemed mildly
threatening somehow: there'd been something of the animal about it, the
female of some species warning off a predator.  "Why are you asking me
all this?"

"I need to know," said Parker.  "We want to find him, don't we?"

She'd calmed down, but she hadn't softened.

"Is your partner Joey's father?"

"No."

"So where's his father?"

"Saudi."

It had taken Parker the best part of three days to discover that by
"Saudi' she had meant prison, and when he'd challenged her for wasting
his time, she'd turned wide, innocent eyes on him and had claimed that
everyone knew what "Saudi' meant, and what kind of copper was he, what
chance did he have of finding her boy, if he wasn't even well up on
local slang?

"Saudi' was a new one on Parker, who was in fact well up not only on
local slang but on women like her, women who convinced themselves that
the 'gifts' from boyfriends they saw from time to time didn't count as
payment for sexual favours: women who wouldn't have classified
themselves as occasional prostitutes, women who saw their kids as a
bind, women who entered into relationships with men like Christopher
Hill, men who would ultimately drag them even further into a life that
would prove harder tomorrow than it had been today.

Initially, Hill had been questioned at length by Parker, but once
Byrne's existence had come to light, Parker had laid off him.  The fact
that he'd been eliminated from Parker's enquiries had no doubt come as
a relief to Hill, but the damage done to his relationship with Julie
had proved irreparable: that he had been questioned at all had left her
with doubts she couldn't quite dispel.  He'd walked out, but it was no
great loss, thought Parker.  Christopher Hill, terminally unemployed, a
petty thief, more of a nuisance than a cause for concern to the police,
wasn't as bad as some of the men she might have picked up.  At least he
hadn't knocked her around or stolen what money she'd had, but he hadn't
been much use to her, either.

Now, as he walked into the interview room, he found her, as he had
known he would, staring into a cup of tea that had grown cold.  He
spoke to the female officer who was sitting with her.  "Maureen, how
about a fresh cup?"  and pulled up a chair, adding, "Make that two."

Julie Coyne looked up at him, her hair shorter now and a light brown,
its true colour.  She hadn't slept the night before.  Parker could see
it in the heaviness of her movements as she reached out, touched his
hand and said, "Is it Joey?"

"I don't know," said Parker.  "I'm waiting for the pathologist to '

"I do," she said.  "It fits ..."

She'd lost him.  "Fits with what?"

"A few months back, I went to see a woman at the spiritualist church.
She's genuine," she added, hurriedly.  "She's worked with the
police."

Parker could imagine the ad at the back of some local paper.  It would
refer to this woman, whoever she was, as having worked with the police
at some stage and that would inspire confidence in people who, for the
most part, couldn't afford to part with the twenty-odd quid it would
cost for a sitting.

"She said that he was happy now, at peace."

Parker swallowed the euphemism for death with something approaching
fury.  He wanted nothing more than to tell her that nobody, nobody, had
the right to imply her son was dead.

"She said he'd been in pain but that was over."

She was on the verge of tears, and Parker didn't know if he could stand
it.  "Julie," he said, holding her hand a little tighter, wishing to
God that Maureen would come back with that hot, sweet tea.

"She said he was thinking of me when he died, and that he watches over
me."

Parker fought the urge to snatch away his hand and slam his fist on the
table.  She felt the tension ripple through him and drew her hand from
fingers that had frozen with fury.  "What did I say?"

"She told you all this," said Parker, 'but she didn't happen to mention
where we might find his body?"

He had expected the comment to bring her to her senses, but her face
lit up at the memory of something the woman had said.  "Oh, yes," she
said.  "She told me he was staring up at trees, that there were birds
..."

"But she didn't give a location?"  said Parker, and the ice in his
voice had melted to be replaced by something akin to profound
sadness.

"She couldn't," said Julie Coyne.  "Those on the other side aren't
allowed to give information like that."

Pity, thought Parker.  Life would be so much easier if they were. Anger
made him blunter than he had intended to be, and he said, "If the
remains are Joey's, we'll soon know."

Notwithstanding that she'd told him only seconds ago that she believed
Joey was dead, she started to cry.  "Tell me he isn't dead, Mr. Parker.
 Tell me it isn't him!'

Maureen walked in carrying a tray, and Parker felt himself a coward as
he stood up, indicated the chair he had just vacated and said, "Take
care of her, Maureen.  Then get a patrol to take her home."

He walked out into a corridor, stood beneath a vent that blasted cool,
dry air into his face and breathed deeply.  The truth was, he was torn.
Part of him wanted the ID to be positive in that five years was a long
time and he wanted the lead that might help him prevent another death,
but at the same time, nothing would have overjoyed him more than to see
Joseph Coyne, now seventeen, saunter into his mother's flat and say,
"Mum, I'm home."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In some respects, the room where Sherringham was examining the remains
was similar to an operating theatre.  The table in the centre was
stainless steel, the lamps above of a type that could be manoeuvred
into a variety of positions.  Right now, they were shining down on the
platform, which overlapped the table by several inches.

Sherringham had ordered that as much as possible of the ivy should be
left in situ and his reasons for this were twofold: in places, the ivy
was binding the bones together, and it was also binding the skeleton to
the platform.  By leaving the ivy intact, he had succeeded in ensuring
that the skeleton had not been much disturbed, and that what he was
seeing now was pretty well what Hardman had seen when he found it.

Over the years, the ivy had wrapped, vine-like, under and over the
bones, had twisted its way into every crevice and crack.  Now the ribs
were a cavity filled with withering leaves, their surface wax-like
underneath the glare of the overhead lamps.

Some of the plant had been pulled out by the roots to which clods of
earth were clinging, and tendrils draped from the platform to the floor
of the lab.  It was as if they were searching for purchase on the
sterile, shining floor, thought Sherringham.  He touched the ivy and
found it cold, like the hand of a corpse, and although there were few
things that Sherringham felt uneasy about touching, he didn't like the
feel of it, and he drew his hand away.

The skeleton had been photographed at the scene, but now that he had
got it to the lab, Sherringham photographed it again from every angle.
The shots would be compared at a later date to determine how much, if
at all, the remains had shifted when the platform was disturbed, but he
knew even now that the ivy had done its job.

He moved to the head of the table and looked at the skull.  It was easy
to see where the bones had knitted in infancy.  Dental records would
confirm the child's age, and they would also confirm whether these were
the remains of Joseph Coyne.

He walked round the side of the table, and began to remove the ivy,
clipping it away with a tool that looked like miniature pruning shears.
It fell to the floor at his feet, and lay in great swathes round green
rubber boots that trod it underfoot.  At one point, an assistant swept
it away, leaving him free to work, to pick and pluck at the leaves that
had grown inside the ribcage and were smothering the spine.

It was a long, slow process, Sherringham wanting the skeleton free of
everything that could conceal any part of it from his acutely observant
eyes, yet unwilling to disturb it if he could help it.  A lesser man
might have whipped away the ivy in a few swift strokes, but Sherringham
took his time, using tweezers where necessary, clearing the bones as
effectively as the teeth of a predator might.

And then he was done, and the bones lay before him, gleaming white
beneath the lights that shone down from above.  He measured it,
examined it, and recorded his observations via a microphone fixed to
the lapel of his green overalls.

He concentrated his attention on the garment that had been fastened at
the neck, found that it was held with a strip of Velcro, and undid it
before his assistants lifted the skeleton and moved it to an adjoining
table, leaving the garment behind.

Sherringham picked it up and studied it.  It was a small cotton cloak
of some sort, the strip of Velcro roughly stitched, the hem uneven in
places.

He spread it out, and photographed it, then cut a tiny section from the
hem.  This he sealed in a sterile polythene bag and labelled for the
lab.  Ultimately, it would be analysed and it would be possible to
confirm what the material was and possibly even where it had come from.
It may once have been black that was something the lab would tell him
when they'd analysed the dye but it was now various shades of grey, and
something about the way in which the body had decomposed had caused the
dye to fade leaving an impression of the spine and ribs, as if the
garment were some sort of Turin Shroud.

He recorded these findings too, and made some written notes, then
turned his attention to the platform.  An impression of death had been
left here, too, in that the area on which the body had lain was
discoloured, the wood that had supported it having been shaded from the
sun by flesh and bones.  The resulting effect was bizarre, as if a
shadow of the body still remained, and as if the area that surrounded
it had been bleached to form a contrast.

Sherringham took slivers of wood from each individual piece that made
up the platform, bagged them all and labelled them, again for the lab.
He was fairly sure that the platform was made of railway sleepers
sliced length ways into thirds, but it was just as well to have the
lab's view of the type of wood, its age, and from where it may have
originated.

He turned his attention back to the remains.  Without soft tissue,
there was little to give any pointer with regard to how the child might
have died; lungs would have told him whether the child had been
asphyxiated, orfier organs would have enabled him to take samples in
order to determine whether drugs or poisons had been used.

He didn't relish the thought of having to tell Parker there was too
little to go on to establish the cause of death.  The possibilities
were endless, and he would list them in the hope that one or more might
fit with something Parker discovered in the course of his enquiries. Of
all these, one had sprung to mind the instant he had clipped the ivy
from the bones only to find that the limbs fell away from the torso.
Perhaps, thought Sherringham, the child had bled to death.

Parker would want to know what had made him venture that theory, and
Sherringham now looked again at the skeletal remains.  Without the
tangle of green, the limbs lay flat on the platform, severed at the
major joints.

The body had been dismembered.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Roly left the market, crossed the road to an old arcade and walked into
a bookshop where he saw Byrne.  This was their usual rendezvous.  The
first Tuesday of every month they met without the need to confirm the
arrangement, and if either didn't show, the other assumed that
something had come up.

Byrne was at the usual spot, standing in front of a section where books
of a type that interested him were shelved.  Biography, autobiography
works of non-fiction from which he derived comfort when he discovered
that others had lived lives sadder than his own.

Roly walked up to him, plucked a book from the shelves, and let the
pages fall open where they would.  Byrne kept his voice very low as he
said, "I've had a visitor.  Parker.  Wanted to know if I'd ever spoken
to Gary."

"What did you t-tell him."

That I'd never set eyes on him."

Roly flipped a page.

"I need to get out of Manchester for a while, but it costs," said
Byrne.  "I need a deposit for a flat, rent, food ... I can't afford
it."

Roly shut the book, plucked out another and, again, let the pages fall
open.  "I was hopin' you might help me out," said Byrne.

"C-can't," said Roly.  "I haven't got no money."

"You must have," argued Byrne.

"If I had, w-would I be living somewhere like M-Mousade Road?"

Roly had him there.  For the life of him, Byrne couldn't imagine why
Roly would want to live as he did if he had the money to live
elsewhere.

"I can't go through it again," said Byrne, and now he sounded
desperate.  "I got questioned when Joey went missing.  I know what to
expect.  Parker will go at me for months."

"C-can't," said Roly.

They were joined by a third party, a woman with a boy that Roly judged
to be five, perhaps six.  The child stood by his mother for a moment,
then slipped away to play at a computer in a corner of the shop that
was stacked with children's books.  He sat beneath a bulb set into the
ceiling, some silver-backed thing that shone directly down on a head of
gold.  It gave him an almost ethereal quality, as if he'd been dropped
from the heavens, and he manoeuvred the mouse with a confidence that
Roly could only admire.

"You've got to help me," said Byrne.

Roly snapped the book shut, the sound like the breaking of a bone, and
as he put it back on the shelf, Byrne raised his voice a fraction:
"People like us should help one another out."

"C-can't help you," said Roly.  "No one can help you, Dougie not if
P-Parker's determined."

Byrne cast his mind back a couple of years.  There'd been someone he
knew who'd been released from prison having served a sentence for child
molestation.  Greater Manchester Police hadn't wanted him on their
patch: they'd paid his expenses and shipped him off to another part of
the country, made him somebody else's problem.  Byrne, who knew what it
was to be persecuted, had formerly been determined to remain on his
home turf.  He hadn't intended to oblige anyone by moving away, and he
had long ago decided that, if it came to it, he wouldn't be persuaded
to leave Manchester against his will.  But Parker hadn't tried to
persuade him to leave.  On the contrary, Parker had made it clear that
he wanted Byrne where he could see him.  One day, Parker hoped to get
the evidence he needed to charge him with the murder of Joseph Coyne,
and Byrne suspected that Parker sensed that day was drawing close.

He felt much as he imagined an impala might feel in the dead of night,
blind to what was going on around him but certain that a predator was
crouching in the grass a mere few feet away.  He woke in the night,
certain that he could smell Parker in the room, feel Parker's breath on
his face.  For the first time ever, he envied the man who'd been
shipped to another county, wished, in fact, that he'd been shipped off
with him, and the panic these feelings induced in Byrne gave him
courage of a kind.  "I'll come to the yard," he threatened.  "Parker'll
follow me there."  But the threat seemed to make no impression and,
short of grabbing Roly by the throat and making it clear that he meant
it even though it would arouse the curiosity of those browsing around
him, Byrne felt helpless to do anything about it.  He stormed out of
the shop.

After he'd gone, Roly turned his attention to the child who sat at the
computer, his mother having gravitated to shelves where volumes were
dedicated to astrology, cookery and sex.  Her son sat alone, clicking a
mouse against apples, owls and garden gates to make a story progress in
the manner that he wished to see it progress, and as Roly watched him,
it occurred to him that anyone could have drawn the child away without
his mother's knowledge.  Anyone could have lured him to the door,
slipped him out into the street and into a waiting car.  He knew how
easily these things were done, how careless parents unwittingly were,
and how easy it was to take advantage of a stupidity that almost
amounted to complicity.

An apple fell from the tree and smashed, blood red, to the ground.  A
pale horse appeared on the far green hills, and the child drew it to
the apple as if coaxing it to feed.  A

worm writhed from the apple.  The pale horse shifted shape and became a
reptile.  The child drew away from the game, and Roly drew away from
the child, aware, even as he did so, that cameras installed for
security purposes monitored his movements.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Parker stood in the incident room, in which photographs of the scaffold
dominated notice boards fixed to every wall, and briefed his team.  The
men keeping Byrne under surveillance had reported back after following
him to a covered market where he had bought duck-liver pate, black
olives, a creamy cheese spiced with peppers Parker was put in mind of
prisoners who'd gone into jail incapable of putting a meal together
only to emerge as amateur chefs, food one of their few pleasures in
life.

His men had followed Byrne to a bookshop where Parker suspected that he
had met a contact.  During their conversation, Byrne had seemed to grow
agitated, and he'd left the shop abruptly, but after he'd walked out,
his contact had remained, had appeared to be watching a child who was
playing at a computer.

Parker's men had split, one following Byrne, the other sticking with
his contact.  Byrne had been followed home, but his contact had entered
a nearby covered market where Parker's man had lost him in the crowd.
The detective had returned to the bookshop where he requested footage
from security cameras that monitored the customers.  It was made
available, and Parker and his team had studied it intently.

Although the quality was poor, it was possible to determine that
Byrne's contact had been white and in his early to mid thirties.  He'd
been of medium height and medium build, and his hair was short and
dark.

Great, thought Parker.  Why these people couldn't oblige by making
themselves conspicuous was a constant source of misery to him.  There
had to be countless men who fitted such a description, but life was
never easy in Parker's line of work.

There was one clear shot of the contact's face, but it didn't ring any
bells with Parker, who had come to know by sight a number of
paedophiles living in and around his patch.

That meant nothing, thought Parker.  There were paedophiles all over
the globe and most of them would live and die without coming to the
notice of the police.  One thing was sure, though: he hadn't wanted to
be seen talking to Byrne.  It was just possible that he was an innocent
individual who was nervous of being seen with a convicted child
molester in case he was tarred with the same brush.  But even as he
thought it, Parker didn't believe it.  Child molesters set themselves
apart.  Decent people didn't associate with them.  Therefore, any
suspicion that fell on Byrne's contact was probably justified, and it
troubled him that he didn't know who the man was.  He had been under
the impression that he had Byrne taped, that he knew where he went and
with whom he tended to associate.  Clearly, that wasn't the case but,
then, if he had the resources to watch men like Byrne twenty-four hours
a day from the moment they were released from prison to the moment they
died, it was far less likely that kids like Joey and Gary would have
gone missing in the first place.

"I want to know who he is," he said to the team, 'if Byrne is seen
talking to him again, the minute they part company, I want him brought
in."

His briefing was interrupted by a call from Sherringham.  "We've got an
ID.  The dental records have confirmed the remains to be those of
Joseph Coyne."

It was an odd thing, thought Parker, but from the minute he'd first set
eyes on the bones, he had somehow suspected that the match would be
positive, but to have it confirmed came nevertheless as as hock

Sherringham hadn't known what to expect by way of reaction, but it
hadn't been the sadness that lay behind Parker's voice as he replied,
"That's terrible news for Julie."

"There's worse," said Sherringham.  "He was dismembered, possibly prior
to death."

Aware that he was being watched by his men, Parker also knew that his
reaction to the news had given him away.  Certain members of the team
had seen him deal with cases so bad that even the press had declined to
report the full details, and would have grasped that what he was about
to tell them now was news of the worst possible kind.

After Parker ended the call, he confirmed their suspicions, then
returned to his office having left complete silence in his wake.  He
needed some time on his own, a space in which to think uninterrupted,
and as he looked out on the city, he thought about Byrne.  He'd
misjudged him.  He'd had him down as responsible for the abduction of
Joseph Coyne, but he hadn't imagined him to have been capable of
committing a crime so horrific.  His first reaction was to bring Byrne
in and go at him until he confessed what he'd done.  There had once
been a time when Parker might have got away with it.  Trouble was,
times had changed.  People like Byrne had rights.  If Parker were to
break him down by methods now considered unacceptable, his case against
Byrne would be thrown out of court on the grounds that his confession
was unsafe.  In the light of there being only circumstantial evidence
against him, Parker needed a confession, and if he couldn't get it one
way, he'd get it another.  Question was, how?

He knew that to stand a chance of trapping Byrne, he needed a greater
understanding of how his mind worked, where his weaknesses lay.  He
recalled once having read an article in the Police Review.  It had
centred on a criminal psychologist who had contributed to the
compilation of a database of offender profiles.  He'd recently
published a paper on the type of murder in which the ritual of the kill
appeared to have been as important as the fact of it, Parker felt he
had nothing to lose by talking to the man.

He left his office, went down to the police library three floors below,
and looked up the article in the relevant issue, A telephone number was
given, but even as Parker wrote it down, he wondered whether he was
clutching at straws: he'd heard conflicting reports about the
usefulness of criminal psychologists.  Some seemed to compile fairly
accurate profiles of the person the police eventually found was
responsible for a particular type of crime, but others had been known
to throw an investigation right off track by encouraging them to focus
their attention on the wrong type of suspect altogether.  It was just
possible that a criminal psychologist might take one look at Byrne and
tell Parker he was on to the wrong man.  But then Parker considered
what he knew about Byrne.  It was all superficial.  A criminal
psychologist might just show him what Byrne's true weaknesses were, and
once they were revealed to him, Parker would use them against Byrne to
break him down.

He left the library and made for the incident room where he spoke to
Warrender.  "Phone this number.  Ask for Murray Hanson."

The name meant nothing to Warrender, but the words 'criminal
psychologist', scribbled beside it, brought a wry smile to his lips. He
didn't know a great deal about the ins and outs of offender profiling
other than that the idea had taken root in America; the FBI had given
credibility to what he, personally, felt was a hit-and-miss
pseudo-science.  On those grounds alone, he decided that he wouldn't be
holding his breath, but Parker wasn't a man to whom he cared to put
this view, and all he said by way of response was, "Sir."

Hanson had been about to leave the clinic when his secretary buzzed him
to tell him that a Detective Superintendent Parker was on the line.

Although it had only just gone four, the Friday-night traffic that
filed through this suburb of London was already nose-to-tail, and
Hanson knew he'd be caught in it whether he took the call or not.  He
leant against one of the radiators in an office he shared with another
senior psychologist, feeling the warmth seep through the fabric of his
coat.  In buildings as old and inconvenient as this, the archaic
central-heating system made little impact, and it was only by pressing
up against the radiators that anyone could tell if it was actually on.
"Put him through," said Hanson.

"Mr.  Hanson?"  said Parker.

"Speaking," said Hanson.

"I'm a Detective Superintendent with Greater Manchester.  I got your
name from the Police Review."

"I've contributed a couple of articles," Hanson confirmed.

Parker put a face to the voice and judged Hanson to be a man in his mid
to late thirties.  That was relatively young for someone who was
obviously successful in his field, so Hanson was clearly bright, and
dedicated with it.  He detected a slight Mancunian accent from the
inflexion, and because it served to make him feel that he was talking
to someone from his own patch, he sounded slightly less formal than he
might have done as he added, "I hope I haven't caught you at an
inconvenient time."

"I can talk for a moment," said Hanson, and then, in a move that Parker
felt was astute, he added, "What was the subject of the article?"

"It mentioned that you'd been instrumental in setting up a database of
offender profiles."

Hanson recalled that article, and recalled also that it had generated
correspondence: certain senior police officers appeared to hold the
view that the type of crime committed in America differed vastly from
that committed in the UK.  They had therefore let it be known that, in
their view, a database of offender profiles was little more than an
interesting curiosity, a fad that would have its day and then be
forgotten.  Parker added, "It also referred to a paper you recently
published the one about incidences of human sacrifice."

"I'm just one of many who've made a similar study," said Hanson.

Parker, who wouldn't have thought that that type of murder was
commonplace enough to warrant extensive study by a number of
individuals, replied, "That may be so, but yours is the only name I've
got at the moment so I wondered if we could meet?"

Hanson said nothing, so Parker added, "You've probably heard what was
found at Colboume yesterday."

"I read this morning's papers," Hanson confirmed.

"I'm heading up the investigation."

Hanson, who had guessed as much the minute he discovered who Parker
was, said, "I could send you a copy of the paper I recently published
if you think it might be of help."

"I was rather hoping you'd '

"But other than that ..."

Parker began to wonder whether it was his imagination or whether Hanson
genuinely sounded defensive.  "I wondered if you'd like to take a look
at what we've got give an opinion."

"You're in Manchester," said Hanson.

It wasn't imagination, Parker decided, and his tone hardened as he
said, "It's a three-hour journey by train, surely '

"I don't have any plans to visit Manchester."

"Maybe not, but in the circumstances '

"I'm sorry, but I'm working to an incredibly tight schedule at the
moment and I really don't have time '

"Now wait a minute said Parker, but Hanson cut across him with the
words, "If you hold, I'll find the name of someone in your area.  There
are plenty of people who '

"You're said to be an expert," said Parker.  "Or have I been
misinformed?"

Hanson wasn't about to fall for that.  If Parker could get him to admit
that he was regarded as an authority in this

O J

particular field, it would be difficult for him to fob him off with a
colleague who might not be held in such high regard.  "As I said, I'm
busy."

"So am I," said Parker.

"You have my sympathy," said Hanson.

Parker took stock of the conversation.  For some reason and he couldn't
for the life of him think why they were arguing.  He had half a mind to
slam down the receiver, but a mixture of professionalism, curiosity and
determination to get his way prevented him from succumbing to the
luxury.  He forced himself to sound civilized as he said, "Save your
sympathy, Mr.  Hanson.  Save it for the relatives of Gary Maudsley."

"Who's Gary Maudsley?"

"Twelve-year-old lad who went missing a couple of weeks back.  I think
there's a fairly good chance we'll find his remains on a similar
scaffold, given time."

"Mr.  Parker," said Hanson, 'the fact is, I don't '

"Hard to say how many other lads will go missing before we '

"I said, I don't have any intention of coming to Manchester."

Parker was sure he couldn't have heard him right.

Hanson added, "You'll have to ask somebody else."

"I don't want somebody else."

"I'm willing to give you a list of names."

"I don't want somebody else," Parker repeated.

Hanson, tiring of the conversation, decided to end it abruptly.  "In
that case," he said, "I can't help you."  And then he cut the call.

Parker sat in the incident room staring at the receiver, which he still
held in his hand.

"What's up?"  said Warrender.

"I've just spoken to Hanson."

"Solved it for us, did he?"  said Warrender.  "When do we pick up the
killer?  Or is he having a word with him to get him to give himself up
and save us the petrol?"

Initially Parker had been stunned.  Now he was angry.  He slammed down
the receiver, stood up and turned to Warrender, saying, "Phone the
clinic back.  Ask for the fax number."

As the order was carried out, and the number placed on his desk, Parker
pulled a chair up to one of the computers and wrote to Hanson.  He took
the letter to one of two fax machines in the incident room, dialled the
number, and watched as it went through.

Warrender knew well enough when to ask Parker questions and when to
keep his mouth shut; he kept his distance.  He didn't know what Parker
had written in that fax: he was merely glad it wasn't addressed to
him.

Hanson was leaving the building when his secretary called from the
doorway to her office, "I've just got a fax from Greater '

"Put it on my desk."

The secretary had worked at the clinic long enough to have seen any
number of psychologists come and go, and she wasn't overawed by any of
them.  "It's from the police and it's marked urgent," she pointed
out.

Hanson hesitated, but only for a moment.  There were plenty of other
people who were qualified, and willing, to help with Parker's
enquiries.  Hanson was qualified but he wasn't willing.  He wasn't
going to Manchester, and that was the end of the matter.  "Hold on," he
said, and retraced his steps, heading for the office he'd just left.

"Don't you want the fax?"

"No."

He disappeared into his office and emerged some moments later with a
list.  He took it into his secretary's office and handed it to her,
saying, "Fax him back with a copy of this.  I've marked a cross against
a couple of names.  That should keep him happy."

Hanson's secretary took the list and looked at it.  "What about the
fax?"

"File it," said Hanson, and then he was gone.

After he had left the office, his secretary reread Parker's fax.  She
had been told to file it, and she obeyed, but she would have preferred
to have left it on Hanson's desk.  Parker had made comments that she
felt he ought to see, if only because it sounded to her as though
Parker intended to take the matter further if he didn't respond.  Also,
Parker had clearly misjudged Hanson in that he wasn't arrogant,
obstructive or self-opinionated, and she wondered what had been said
between them to prompt such remarks.

The car park flanked her office and she caught sight of Hanson as he
crossed it, then climbed into a battered C-reg Saab.  He was too young
for her by a good twenty years, and the only emotions he aroused in her
were maternal: a good-looking man like that ought to be raising a
family, not chasing round town after girls who were probably totally
unsuitable.

And then she stopped herself as she realized that, although she'd
worked for him for a good while now, she knew little about him.  Women
never phoned him at the clinic, and if ever she asked whether he'd done
anything interesting over the weekend, he merely replied, "Nothing
much."  In short, if someone like Parker had asked her for a profile of
Murray Hanson, she'd have found herself hard pushed to tell him
anything, other than that he was quiet, that he kept himself to himself
and that, generally, he was well liked by his colleagues and the junior
members of staff.  It sounded so like the profile of a serial killer
that the thought of it made her smile: she'd have to tell him that he'd
probably laugh.

Warrender picked up the fax that had come through from the clinic and
took it to Parker, who had left the incident room and gone into his
office.

He was standing at the window, a habit of his, and Warrender wondered
what he was thinking about.  The scaffold, maybe, or Byrne.  More
likely, he was thinking about his brush with this guy Hanson.

He stood there, deep in thought, and Warrender had half a mind to leave
him in peace.  Then Parker turned and saw him.  "What is it?"

"This just came in."

Parker took the fax and read it.  It hadn't been written by Hanson but
by a secretary acting on his behalf.  It was nothing more than a
covering note to accompany a list of people who might be better placed
to help with Parker's enquiry.  There was neither reference nor
response to the comments Parker had made, and Parker got the distinct
impression that Hanson either hadn't read the fax he'd sent, or didn't
deem his comments important enough to warrant a response.

The psychologist's attitude seemed the height of insolence to Parker,
and the anger that had subsided in the moments since he'd left the
incident room resurfaced with a vengeance.

"Phone the clinic.  Get him on the line."

Warrender left Parker's office, and moments later, the phone on
Parker's desk began to ring.  Parker whisked the receiver to his ear,
prepared to hear Hanson.  What he got was the secretary, who apologized
and told him Hanson had left the clinic.  She sounded middle-aged.  She
also sounded cautious.  She, at least, had read the fax, thought
Parker.  "Do you have his home telephone number?"

"Yes," she confirmed, 'but I can't '

"Give it to me."

"I'm afraid I '

"Now," said Parker.

He waited while she got the number, then wrote it down as she dictated
it, and asked, "Does he have a fax at home?"

"Yes," said the secretary, and she gave the number with no further
prompting from Parker.

"Thank you," said Parker.  He hung up, left his office and returned to
the incident room, where he went to the notice board and pulled down
photos of Joseph Coyne and Gary Maudsley.  He took them to Warrender
saying, "Get a computer printout of these photographs something I can
put through a fax then put them on my desk."

If Hanson thought he was in for a quiet Friday night, he was much
mistaken, Parker thought.

He would have preferred to hit him with what he had to say the instant
Hanson walked through the door to his home, but before he did so, he
had a duty to tell Julie Coyne that they'd found what was left of her
son.  It wasn't a task he was particularly looking forward to, and on
those grounds alone, he wanted to get it over with as quickly as
possible.  But there was another, pressing reason why it had to be done
straight away: if he were to leave it until morning and the press
somehow got hold of the news before he'd had the chance to break it to
her, he'd never forgive himself.

He left the incident room and went in search of the female officer who
had sat with her in the interview room the day before.  At least,
thought Parker, Maureen, with all her years of experience, would know
what to expect when the news was finally broken.

Outside, Julie Coyne's flat looked much the same as ever, a maisonette
on a sprawling estate that was less than a couple of miles from Gary's
home.

Inside it had undergone a total transformation much like Julie, thought
Parker, grimly.  It wasn't just the lick of paint, the fresh wallpaper,
the flowers on a table set for the meal she would make for herself
alone; the drab velvet curtains had been replaced by light, floating
cotton ones, the carpet was new and this one, unlike the old one,
didn't have cigarette burns on it or the imprint of an iron that had
fallen as she pressed a blouse in front of the electric fire.  Even
that was gone: she'd had central heating put in.  At one time, he'd
have asked her where she got the money.  Not any more.  He knew where
she worked, knew that she'd been promoted and was out of the typing
pool.  He was glad for her.  And sad for her.  So incredibly sad, he
didn't know how to say it, but it turned out he didn't have to.

"It's him, isn't it."  she said.

"Julie ..."  said Parker.

He'd never been much good at this.  He didn't know anybody who was, if
he were honest.  Maureen seemed to lead him, rather than her, to the
chair, to sit him down, to place her hand on his arm.  But Julie Coyne
stayed standing.

"I knew anyway," she said, lightly.  "The woman at the church ..."

How long, thought Parker.  How long will it be before it hits her?

"He's happy now," said Julie, her face illuminated by the light that
filtered through those floating curtains.  "At peace."

He couldn't help thinking of Gary Maudsley's gran.  She wasn't at
peace.  Right now, she was standing at the window as Julie Coyne had
for the best part of the last five years, waiting for a lad who hadn't
come home.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Murray Hanson was living with a radiographer, which wasn't entirely
unusual for a clinical psychologist.  Their hours had been equally
unsociable at one point in their respective careers, and they had been
thrust together by circumstance as much as by mutual attraction.

Right now, she was standing with her back to a kitchen window that gave
out on to a garden.  Situated, as they were, within a half-hour drive
of central London, they were lucky to have a garden.  He earned the
kind of money that normally wouldn't have stretched to a house with a
garden in one of London's more desirable suburbs, but he'd looked
around until he'd found a two-bed cottage of sorts.  Small though it
was, the mortgage was crippling, partly because he insisted on paying
all the bills himself, but the house, like the garden, was his, and he
wanted to keep it that way.

Much of the garden was paved, and in what passed for a rockery, a toad
had taken up residence.  He fed it wood lice when he could find them,
flicking them towards it and watching with fascination the speed with
which the tongue flicked out to catch them.

If ever he sold the house, it would be on the understanding that the
toad had a life interest in the property, and that was what Jan wanted,
a life interest in the property a life interest in his life, in fact.
She'd been dropping hints of late, and he didn't blame her.  Two years
into a live-in relationship, most women would do the same.  She was
thirty and, although she hadn't said so in case it scared him off, she
wanted children, security, the knowledge that the roof over their heads
belonged to her as much as to him; the knowledge that he intended to
stick around.

He'd made the usual excuses, had referred to his first disastrous
marriage, but knew it wasn't fair to string her along.  The time had
come for decisions.  He would either have to take the plunge or tell
her he couldn't commit to more than he was already giving.

Relationship problems were common enough he dealt with them every day,
along with the agoraphobics, the juvenile delinquents, and the sexual
deviants that had first brought his work to the attention of the
police, but right now, she wasn't talking about 'where their
relationship is going'.  She was standing at the window, her pale hair
loose and falling on to a sweatshirt that he seemed to recall having
bought for himself some months ago.  He hadn't worn it yet.  He hadn't
had the chance.  Every time he looked for it, he found it in the wash,
or in the bag she took to the gym, or draped round those delicate
shoulders.  He liked the way it drowned her with its sheer size, liked
the very smallness of her, the doll-like, fragile build.

"You're not listening," she told him.  "Someone called Parker phoned
just before you came in.  Police, I think.  I said you'd be back any
minute."  She saw the look on Hanson's face and added, "What's
wrong?"

Even as she spoke, Hanson heard the phone begin to ring.  He turned and
walked out of the kitchen and into what had once been a large utility
room.  The units that had lined its walls when Hanson bought the
cottage had been stripped out, the walls replastered and ragged, the
tiled floor covered by two brightly coloured rugs.

He flicked a switch on the wall but it was the lamp on the desk that
lit, its glow softening the harsher lines of a computer that was wired
up to the web.  That computer was his link with criminal psychologists
the world over; there would come a day when the database was global.

Beside it, a phone that was also a fax was flickering into life, the
ringing tone having been replaced by the whir as a fax began to come
through.

Hanson left it a moment, then lifted the edge of the paper and saw the
letterhead of Greater Manchester Police.  He whisked it out and read
it, aware that Jan was watching him, aware also that his expression was
giving him away.

"What is it?"  she repeated.

He made no reply, but put the fax, face down, on his desk, and watched
as two further pages were printed out.  He picked them up and studied
them.

The first was the picture of a boy, and although it hadn't come out
well enough for Hanson to determine the colour of his hair or school
uniform, it did at least depict the smirk of a kid who'd been full of
life.

Not any more, thought Hanson.  Not if he'd fallen victim to the person
responsible for reducing the boy in the second photo to bones on a
wooden scaffold.

Jan walked up and looked at both the photos.  "Why are you so angry?"

Hanson was silent.  The murder of a child was enough to make anyone
angry, but if he were honest, his anger was due, in no small part, to
the way in which Parker had invaded his privacy.

Jan turned with the intention of leaving Hanson's study, but as she did
so the phone that was linked to his computer began to ring.

For a moment, Hanson was tempted to leave it.  He had guessed who it
would be, and his position hadn't changed: he'd sent a list of names;
Parker could take his pick.

The answer phone kicked in as Jan reached the door, and she recognized
the voice as belonging to Parker.

"Hanson," said Parker, 'if you're there, pick up the phone."

It was less a request than an order.

"Aren't you going to answer it?"  said Jan.

Hanson snatched up the receiver.  "What do you want?"

"I take it you've read my fax."

"Just," said Hanson.

"There, now," said Parker, softly.  "That can't have been too hard."

Jan walked out of the study, closing the door behind her.

"How did you get my number?"

"Your secretary gave it."

"She had no right."

"She had no choice," said Parker.

Hanson wondered how best to end the conversation and whether he could
counter Parker's threats with a few of his own.  "You have no right to
invade my privacy like this, no right to use bullying tactics."

"Mr.  Hanson," said Parker, and he suddenly sounded weary, "I'd have
phoned you earlier, but I was with the mother of Joseph Coyne.  I've
just had to tell her that what we found on the scaffold is all that was
left of her son, and it wasn't a pleasant experience to watch her fall
apart."

"Mr.  Parker, I '

"So you're coming to Manchester if I have to get you picked up and
brought down here for questioning."

"You can't do that."

"Watch me," said Parker, adding, "I could bring you in, make no mistake
'

"You've got no grounds."

"I'd find some."

"You're out of order '

"Maybe," said Parker, 'but you might say I'm desperate."

He didn't sound desperate so much as determined, thought Hanson.  "I
have no plans to go to Manchester."

"So you said."

"That's why I sent you a list of people who '

"I'm not interested in them.  I want you."

"Why me?"

"You're the expert."

"Any one of my colleagues could '

"I want you," repeated Parker, 'and either you come, or first thing
tomorrow I contact the governing body of whatever association happens
to monitor your profession and tell them you've behaved in an
unprofessional manner."

"So you said in your fax."

"I meant it," said Parker.  "So what's it going to be?"

Hanson walked into the kitchen to find that Jan was folding his
sweatshirt and putting it into the hold-all she used for the gym. "What
did the police want?"

"Parker investigated the disappearance of a boy whose remains have been
found in Colbourne Wood.  He's got another missing lad and he wants me
to go and talk to him."

"Are you going?"

He watched her fastening the Velcro straps, slinging the bag across
shoulders that looked too tiny to bear its weight.  "I don't think I
have much choice."

"Where do you have to go?"

"Manchester."

She froze a momentary thing, but it didn't escape him.

"When?"

"First thing."

She unfroze, but she didn't relax.  Hers were the movements of a woman
who was making a conscious effort to make herself appear untroubled by
a situation she found deeply threatening.

She wouldn't ask whether he had any intention of making contact with
his ex-wife while he was there, he knew that.  In all the time that
they'd lived together, she'd never once lowered herself to ask whether
he still loved her, and she never would.  Just as well, thought Hanson,
because if she knew the answer to that one, he doubted she'd be able to
handle it.

"Manchester's a long way away," she said, lightly, and instantly, he
got to the subtext of the comment, substituting time for distance, the
past for the present.  Lorna was yesterday.  Jan was today, but she,
who wasn't confident of his commitment to her, was confident of one
thing: even now, after all these years, the wife who'd left him for
somebody else would just have to snap her fingers ... and that would be
that.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Hanson hadn't wanted to give in to Parker, but he had come to the
conclusion that it would be easier to do what he wanted than to explain
himself to a powerful governing body.  He had also come to another
conclusion, one that had been creeping up on him for a while.  It was
about time he took some of the type of advice that he was always doling
out to other people: deal with the past, get it into perspective, then
get on with your life.

With that in mind, he packed a few clothes, put them, along with his
briefcase, into the car, and drove up to Manchester, both to oblige
Parker and to deal with a past that had become an emotional constraint
that dragged him back each time he tried to plan for the future.

The route he chose took him past the grammar school he had attended,
and he recalled that, as a boy of fourteen, he had sat in one of those
classrooms, trying to absorb the finer points of some mathematical
equation.  It hadn't been easy.  Outside, playing fields stretched into
the distance as far as the eye could see, and on that long, hot
afternoon, the click of wood on willow had filtered into the room to be
ignored by him despite his love of the game, for he had known even then
that he was fortunate, had known that for a lad of his background to
have been given the gigantic step up and out of what amounted to poor
circumstances was privilege enough for a lifetime.  Consequently, while
most of his classmates, their faces shining from the heat, had dreamed
at desks arranged with almost military precision in horizontal rows, he
had kept his head down and worked.

He had been a favourite with one of the masters, Parris, whose
unassuming movements had been dramatized by a scholarly gown that
seemed rather too large for his frame.  He had taken Hanson, along with
a couple of other boys, for extra tuition, not minding that their
parents couldn't pay, their academic achievements reward enough for the
hours he

spent coaching them after school.  The boys had known little about him,
but it seemed there was little to know: his wife was a local
magistrate, his sons lived abroad.  Devoted to his garden, he seemed to
them to be a man who had certain standards, a man who lived by those
standards and expected his pupils to do likewise.  He was unremarkable.
So unremarkable that he wasn't even a figure of fun.  He was just
Parris.

But on that day in June, he became something other than just Parris. He
became a legend.  He assumed a larger-than-life status and ensured that
long after the names of other masters had been forgotten by every boy
in the school his would be remembered.

Outside, a sixth-form batsman stared dismally into the eyes of a boy
who would ultimately become a county-level bowler.  Inside, Parris
stared dismally into the eyes of a classful of boys who were due to
take an end-of-term exam.  Minutes into the lesson, the headmaster
walked into the classroom and guided Parris into the corridor where two
men were waiting by the door.  They had glanced in at the boys in a
manner that suggested that any one of them might, at some stage, come
to their attention and ought, therefore, to be made note of now.  The
boys had glanced back as Parris merely acknowledged them with that
quiet, almost deferential way he had, and followed them down the
corridor.

Hanson had heard their footsteps recede on a floor so highly polished,
they would have seen the soles of their feet reflected in the shine.
Then there had been the solitary sound of the headmaster's footfalls
when he had returned, alone, some moments later to take the class for
the remainder of the period.  He had been pale, strained, and somehow
less of a man than Parris whom Hanson had held in awe.  To Hanson,
Parris would always be "Sir', notwithstanding that ultimately he had
served twelve of a fifteen-year sentence for taking tea to his wife in
their terribly English garden, then smashing her head with a hammer as
she lifted the cup to her lips.

He never explained why he did it, and from the moment that he had
witnessed him being arrested, Hanson had been seized by the desire to
learn what motivated people to kill.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The headquarters of Greater Manchester Police was much as Hanson
remembered it, an award-winning concrete block several storeys high. He
left the car in an area designated for visitors, was checked through
Security, and waited at the front desk for Parker to come and get
him.

When he materialized, he proved much as Hanson had imagined him, an
intelligent-looking man in his early forties.  There was the suggestion
of a sense of humour behind that solemn exterior, but there had been
nothing humorous about the threat Parker had made on the phone, and on
the whole Hanson wasn't feeling over-friendly.

"Good journey?"  said Parker, extending his hand.

As they shook, Hanson tried to prevent the reluctance he felt at being
there from showing in any way.  He just wanted to get the whole thing
over with so that he could leave.  "Not bad," he replied.

They weighed one another up, each knowing that Parker had won this one,
and that Hanson was at a disadvantage, not only on that score but
because he was on Parker's territory.  Then Parker led him deeper into
the station.

Hanson had grown accustomed to the interior of a number of police
stations over recent years and was unimpressed.  The building had been
designed to cater for the needs of a force that covered a massive area.
It was vast, functional and plain, its corridors leading off to rooms
that varied in size but were similar in design and furnishing.

He followed Parker into a lift that ejected them on the fourth floor,
then down a corridor where breeze-block walls were painted a dour
off-grey.  It might have been leading to cells, but one of the doors
off it opened into an incident room, where Parker's team were working,
its walls smothered with photos that showed the scaffold from every
conceivable angle.  It was as if the walls were a carpet of green,
thought Hanson, an advert for a luxurious woodland retreat.

As he looked at the photographs, Parker studied him, hoping that his
expression would give some clue to what he might be thinking, but there
was nothing.  In more ways than one, Hanson seemed a bit of a closed
book.

In the knowledge that Parker was watching for a reaction, Hanson turned
away from the photographs.  He had no intention of voicing his thoughts
just yet, but there was nothing he could do to prevent those thoughts
from ringing an alarm: the killer had built that scaffold in
preparation for a crime he had known he would commit, and that did not
bode well.

"What do you think?"  said Parker.

"Bizarre, but not unique."

The comment intrigued Parker, and Hanson elaborated, "Tibetans and
certain tribes of Native Americans buried their dead in a similar
way."

"Well, we don't get many Tibetans round here," said Parker, bluntly,
'and I can't say we've had much bother with any Apaches."

Hanson followed him into an office that led off the incident room.  He
took in the details at a glance, the photograph of uniformed men by the
cabinet, the neatness, the sparseness of the furnishings.  Parker was
either extremely well organized or he had an army of people taking care
of the paperwork.  Having considered the little he knew of the man,
Hanson decided it was the former.

"Let me take you through what we've got," he said, and Hanson sat down
and listened to the details, much of which he knew from what had been
reported in the press.  He broke in at one point to clarify some facts:
"You say that Joseph Coyne disappeared from a local estate?"

"Five years ago, and with all the hallmarks of an abduction," Parker
confirmed.  "Gary Maudsley went missing from the same estate, just less
than two weeks ago."

"Do you have a suspect?"

"Douglas Byrne," said Parker.  "A paedophile.  I questioned him
extensively when Joseph disappeared, but came nowhere near close to
pinning him down."

"You think he abducted him, though."

&

"Yes," said Parker.  "I do."

"It's no simple matter to abduct a person.  It requires planning,
organizational skills, a certain degree of intelligence to pull it off
successfully."  He noticed that Parker was thinking that through, and
added, "Would you have said that Byrne had the necessary skills?"

"It's difficult to say.  He left school at sixteen then almost
immediately committed a minor sexual offence against a child of eight.
That led to a custodial sentence, the first part of which was served in
a juvenile detention centre.  After he came out, he was limited to
certain types of job owing to the nature of his conviction."

"So what's he doing now?"

"He runs a video shop."

Parker paused to see what reaction these words would produce, and saw
it in the smile of resignation on Hanson's lips.

Parker slapped a file on the table, the words Property of the Chief
Constable stamped on its dark blue cover.  "By the time you've read
this, you'll have as much information about Byrne as I do."

"What drew your attention to him rather than to some other suspect?"
said Hanson, who didn't doubt that Parker would have been spoiled for
choice in a city the size of Manchester.

"He was seen talking to Joseph the morning he disappeared.  He denied
having spoken to him.  He also denied having committed the offence for
which he was ultimately convicted until the evidence proved so
overwhelming there was no point in continuing to deny it.
Unfortunately, in this case, we don't have any evidence, and he's not
about to admit anything."

Aware that Byrne's home and workplace would have been searched as a
matter of course, Hanson said, "What did the searches produce?"

"A few fairly innocent photos of children, nothing pornographic."

To the majority of paedophiles, the most innocent of images would
suffice, thought Hanson, as Parker went on, "We found nothing to link
him with Joseph, and I can't afford to repeat what amounted to a futile
exercise.  This time, I have to get him."

Hanson picked up the file, flicked through it and found it flimsier
than he would have expected, in view of Parker's having had his eye on
Byrne for years.  "I take it this is the abridged version?"

"You'll find what you need in there.  If there's anything further you
want, you have only to ask," said Parker.  "Where are you staying, by
the way?"

"Guesthouse, out towards Bury."

Parker reached into the filing cabinet and drew out a cassette.  "Do
you have access to a video and television?"

"I've no idea, but I can probably get my hands on one.  Why?"

"Take a look at this," said Parker, handing him the cassette.  "It's a
copy of an appeal made by Gary's relatives."

Hanson, who knew what he was expected to look for, also knew that
Parker would have run it past other psychologists.  He knew, too, there
was no point in asking what conclusions any of his colleagues might
have drawn: Parker would expect him to form and express his own opinion
with regard to the likelihood of any of the relatives having had
anything to do with Gary's disappearance.  "I'll take a look," he said.
"How long before your men will have finished searching that wood?"

"It runs to a good forty acres," said Parker.  "Then there's the rest
of the estate to consider another thousand, give or take."

That alone told Hanson all he needed to know.  He could imagine the
painstaking search, the sheer manpower it would involve, the technology
that would be employed, the time it would take.  Another lad was
missing, and if there was one

thing the police didn't have it was time.

He put the video cassette in his briefcase along with the file on
Byrne.  "There's a favour you could do me, if you would."

"Oh?"

"There's someone I'd like to look up, if possible.  He lived in Greater
Manchester when I was at school."

Parker didn't respond, and Hanson could imagine that, in all
probability, he was working out some way of pointing out that he had
enough to do without supplying Hanson with the address of some former
acquaintance.  "His surname was Parris," said Hanson.  "His Christian
name was Mallory."

He realized immediately that the name meant something to Parker, and
wasn't surprised.  Parris's crime had aroused such local interest that
it would have been odd if Parker hadn't known of him.

Parker replied, "The crime was committed a long time ago.  It's highly
unlikely that we would hold a current address on file."

Odd, thought Hanson.  It didn't seem so very long ago since he had been
sitting in that classroom, but Parker was right: the likelihood of the
police or prison authorities being able to supply a current address was
somewhat remote.  "I take it your interest is professional?"  added
Parker.

"Not entirely," Hanson admitted.  "He taught me maths."

"Then I take it you passed your exams?"  said Parker, drily.

"You might say I wouldn't be where I am today if not for him."

"I'll see what I can do."

Hanson knew by Parker's body language more than by the silence that
followed that this was as much as Parker wanted at this stage, and he
rose to go.  Parker got up, too, made it clear that he'd guide him down
the labyrinth of corridors and back to Reception where Security would
sign him out.

They walked through the incident room, larger and lighter than many
Hanson had come across, in which additional phones and manpower added
to the atmosphere of frenetic activity.  Calls were coming in from the
general public, and even as he passed a desk, he heard a uniform taking
details from somebody who believed they'd seen Gary on a flight to
Southern Ireland.  The officer hung up, giving Parker a wry smile and
saying, "That's the fourth flight he's been seen to catch since he went
missing."

Par for the course, thought Hanson.  He turned to Parker and said,
"What do you want most out of this?"

"How do you mean?"

"Do you want him stopped, convicted, held up as an example to everyone
else who thinks they can commit a crime of this nature and get away
with it?  Or does a promotion hang on it?"

The word promotion seemed to appal Parker.  "Nothing hangs on it except
the safety of other kids.  I've got two lads of my own I know how I'd
feel if one of them disappeared."

"You want him off the streets," said Hanson.

"More than that, I want Gary Maudsley back, alive and well."

Wordlessly, Hanson turned back to the photographs.  Instantly, Parker
was on to him, and he said, "You think he's dead."

Hanson, who had seen the scaffold and knew, perhaps better than Parker,
what they were dealing with, merely said, "I need more information."

"Where would you like to start?"

"The wood," said Hanson.  "Show me where you found the body.  Let me
see the scene."

In walking back through the wood, Parker recalled having woken the
night before to stretch out his hand before him having dreamed that he
held a scythe in a fist clenched in fear.

In his dreams, he had followed the path that Hardman had cut, and he
had been alone.  Now, he had Hanson for company, and all around them
uniforms were searching among the trees.  There were two hundred men,
in total, not all of them here: others had been allotted acres of
woodland on other parts of the estate where the undergrowth was equally
thick and progress equally slow, the thorn and bramble in places up to
their thighs.

On open land, they would have attempted to move forward in a long,
unbroken line, but here they stumbled, fell, and made their way as best
they could, the occasional expletive reaching Parker's ears as thorns
pierced clothing, tore it and embedded themselves in flesh.

Hanson looked up, his eyes scouring the treetops just as those of the
men around him were searching the ground.  "Where does the bridlepath
lead?"

"Nowhere," said Parker.  "There were villages at either side of the
estate at one time, but we're talking a hundred years or so ago."

"What happened to them?"

"The family who owned it had the locals evicted.  Their cottages were
demolished."

"Any particular reason?"

"I think they just got tired of the local peasants tramping across
their land."

They wouldn't get away with it today, thought Hanson, yet he couldn't
help drawing a parallel between that and the lack of power that
prevented protesters from stopping a road being built straight across
their gardens.  Nothing changed, he reminded himself.  The weak, the
vulnerable, the powerless were invariably victimized, stripped of human
dignity, treated as commodities he looked around him were murdered.

"Over there," said Parker, leading the way to a rectangle of tape that
cordoned off the poles that had supported the wooden platform.

The platform and the remains had been removed, but Hanson could imagine
that the ribcage had ultimately proved as great an asset to the ivy as
the poles that had enabled it to get an initial purchase.  An evil
thing, ivy, he thought.  A keeper of secrets that refused to be
confined to the soil, a demonic plant that reached up to the heavens by
whatever means it could.

"Can I touch it?"  he said.

"Go ahead," said Parker, and as Hanson reached out to one of the poles
Parker had the feeling that they were being watched.  He knew that was
absurd in that they were surrounded by his men.  At any given time, one
or more of those men could and did appear among the trees, and all of
them had better things to do than to watch Parker and Hanson.  And yet
the feeling persisted.  It was something to do with the place itself,
he decided, the darkness induced by the foliage, the dimness of the
light.  It also had something no to do with the fact that Parker felt
more at home in town.  Places such as this were alien to him; they
stirred in him some primeval fear of being hunted down, of being taken
by surprise by a lethal foe.

Hanson sensed his unease, and attributed it to the fact that Parker
would be subconsciously aware that the danger to any child of his own
couldn't be negated until the murderer was caught.  It was a stress
that every parent among his men would grapple with, and that fascinated
him.  On one level, assuming that they recognized this fear, they would
rationalize it by telling themselves that the killer didn't even know
their children existed: on the other, they wouldn't be able to shake
the fear that their child might be next.  He said, "You mentioned
something about the boy being dressed in a particular garment."

"A cloak," said Parker.  "It was fastened round his neck with a strip
of Velcro."

"Anything else of interest found at the scene?"

Parker cast his mind back to some of the points Hanson had made in the
article published in the Review.  "You mean signs painted on trees, the
presence of some kind of icon?"

"Anything you can think of," said Hanson.

"Nothing."

"Just the scaffold."

"You say that as though it isn't remarkable in itself."

"It's remarkable," Hanson admitted, 'but, like I said, it isn't
unique."

The feeling of being watched increased and Parker, who had been
fighting the urge to spin round and look, now succumbed and found
himself gazing at a civilian.  That the man had got past his officers
didn't please Parker, but this was nothing by comparison with the fact
that he recognized him as the person he'd seen standing beside Hardman
the day that the scaffold was taken from the scene.  He started towards
him, and watched him melt away deep into the trees.

in

"Wait there," said Parker, and followed.  He caught him easily,
grabbing him by the arm.

As Parker had noticed the first time he saw him, the man was in his mid
to late fifties.  He wore the same slightly shabby casual clothes, but
he seemed troubled rather than aggressive.  Parker eased his grip.
"This is the scene of a crime," he said.

"I'm only looking," he said.

"You were here yesterday."

"I live near here."

"Where?"

He gave his name as Gifford and an address which, as he had said, was
local enough, in that it was a short drive from the town of
Colbourne.

Parker escorted him personally from the scene, and watched as Gifford
made for a small pick-up truck.  Noting the registration was second
nature to him and, after deciding to make sure that Gifford's address
checked out, he returned to Hanson, who was waiting where he'd left
him.

"Problem?"  said Hanson.

"Not sure," said Parker.  "Someone I saw here yesterday.  We'll check
our records, find out whether he's more than just curious."

Hanson, who knew better than most people how places of macabre interest
could draw members of the public, wondered whether what had been found
in those trees would ever fade from public memory.  There was every
chance that the grandchildren of people who had been at the scene when
the remains were removed would warn children of their own not to go
there and the usual suburban myths would develop in relation to the
place.  In many respects, thought Hanson, it might be no bad thing if
the wood were to be buried under concrete, or if a motorway were to
obliterate all trace of what had been found there.

"So," said Parker, 'what do you think?"

Hanson turned his attention back to the scene before him.  "There's
nothing to suggest idolatry, or Satanic worship," he said.  "Therefore
I'd say there's a chance you could be right.  It's the work of an
individual.  The motivation is most likely to have been sexual, which,
in view of the boy's age would indicate that the killer was a
paedophile."

"Byrne," said Parker.

"Let me read the file.  Then let me talk to him.  If Byrne is your man,
I'll know."

Even as he spoke, Hanson saw a series of images of the way in which the
scaffold might have been constructed and realized that Joseph might
have helped his killer to build it.  He tried to block a flood of
dialogue from his mind.

Hold this for me, Joey that's right, good lad.

What are we making?

A treehouse it'll be our own secret hideaway from the world.

I won't tell no one.

And then had come the ivy, that green and malignant thing, its cool and
searching tentacles reaching up, growing across the body like a
blanket.  There now, Hanson imagined it saying.  All safe and warm. All
tucked tip for the night!

He stooped and picked up a feather, the tip of it the kind of metallic
green he had always associated with dragonflies.  Amazing, thought
Hanson, that birds of the British Isles could be so colourful; you'd
never think it.  From a distance, the sparrows, although cleaner than
their city cousins, still looked brown, and although he knew that
chaffinches and tits could swoop out of nowhere in a flash of
unexpected colour, he wouldn't have thought any of them could lay claim
to this vibrant turquoise blue.

"What have you found?"  said Parker.

He let the feather go and it fell to the ground like the seed from a
sycamore tree.  He watched it spin, its progress as slow as that of the
men around them, but infinitely more graceful.  It belonged there, he
decided.  Ultimately, it would

"3

become a part of the ground to be covered by leaves, to be picked up,
come spring, and used in the construction of a nest that would,
perhaps, be built by a bird of the same species.  "Nothing," he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Parker had suggested that, instead of returning to the station, they
find a pub and get a bite to eat, but the journey from London, the
briefing, and the drive out to the scene had left Hanson feeling that
the only thing he wanted right now was to head for the guesthouse in
Bury.

Parker had asked him where he intended to stay, and Hanson had told
him, but he hadn't added that he and his former wife had once owned the
property, or that the people to whom they had sold it had taken
advantage of the spacious rooms by offering bed and breakfast to
passing trade.  Parker was hardly likely to be interested, thought
Hanson, though he might find it odd that he should want to return to
his former home.  He found it odd himself, and didn't intend to mention
it to Jan, who would find it threatening.

Bury was a twenty-minute drive from the station, which made it
convenient for Hanson in that he anticipated that Parker might call him
in every time there was a major development.  He was prepared for that,
but what he wasn't prepared for was that the minute he pulled up
outside the house memories he'd blocked from his mind came flooding
back to catch him unawares.

Considering it was almost twelve years since they'd moved in, he was
surprised by the detail he could recall, the V-necked

"5

sweater his wife had worn, the ivory blouse, the navy skirt, and the
gold button earrings inherited from her mother.

He thought he had hauled those memories out, dealt with them and put
them away for good, but now they surfaced with a vengeance, and he
wished he hadn't come.

The front of the house hadn't changed, he thought, the hedges that
surrounded it blocking out the light from the lower rooms.  The gates
were missing.  He and his wife had kept them closed.  He couldn't
remember why.  The new owners had taken them off the hinges, and had
put a notice on the stone pillar that had supported them.  Vacancies.

He drove round to the back, parked where he'd always parked, and walked
to the front of the property, catching himself as he reached into his
pocket for the key and pressing the bell instead.

He wondered whether he'd be recognized as the former owner, but eight
years was a long time, and he and the Judds had met only once.  It had
been Lorna who had dealt with the details of the sale, agreeing prices
on carpets, curtains, and the large gold mirror fixed to the wall in
what he assumed would now be used as a dining room.  The new owners
wouldn't remember him, he decided, and it certainly seemed to be the
case when Mrs.  Judd opened the door, and gave absolutely no indication
that she remembered him.

He recognized her.  Now that it came to it, he realized he would have
known her anywhere, but this had less to do with her penchant for grey,
overlarge track suits than the distaste he'd felt for the thought of
someone like her occupying the home that he had renovated for a woman
of Lorna's elegance.

At the time of the sale, he had pictured Mrs.  Judd cluttering the
hardwood sills with tasteless figurines.  The impression she had made
on him had remained, and, in looking at the house, he found it
justified.

When booking the room by phone, he had given the name Franklin and had
described himself as a conference organizer.

He had also stipulated that he wanted a room that looked out on to the
road, but as she led him up the stairs, she told him, "The back rooms
are quieter."

"I'd prefer a room at the front," he insisted, but when she gave in and
he walked into what had once been his and Lorna's bedroom, he wondered
whether he'd been wise.  It was almost as if he could picture Lorna
sitting on the bed that had once been their own, the particular look
she wore when she was about to initiate sex.  How many other couples
had slept in that bed since the house was sold?  How many people had
brought back strangers as Lorna had, in the end?  He imagined an
endless procession of people picked up in bars, in clubs, or at the
type of convention he had told Mrs.  Judd he organized; people who
sought consolation in the type of one-night-stand that Lorna had used
to end their marriage.

During the division of their possessions, she had suggested that he
should have the bed on the grounds that it was far too big for her
flat, and he'd told her to sell it to the Judds for whatever she could
get.  They'd bought it, and now, here it was a memorial to his failure
as a man.

He looked past it, taking in the details of the room.  Odd that it
looked much the same, even though its furnishings were unfamiliar.  The
dressing table was no longer there, but the fitted wardrobes remained,
and he recalled that the day Lorna had walked out, he had come home to
find her makeup gone.  That was all.  Such a simple thing, yet he'd
known, and it was enough to make him open the door to the wardrobe now
and stare at its interior as if willing her clothes to appear.

Cold anger; that had been his initial reaction.  The pain had come
later, and if he had chosen to dull it by launching himself into his
work, well, that was nothing unusual.  Most men would have done the
same.

"Breakfast is served till nine thirty," said Mrs.  Judd.  "After that,
we clear the tables."

"I'll be down by eight," he assured her.

"How long are you staying?"

"It's difficult to say at this stage.  A few days, perhaps longer."

He doubted she needed the room.  There might be passing trade in the
form of sales reps, and the surrounding hills drew their fair share of
ramblers, but there were no holiday-makers as such, and businessmen
tended to stay in hotels closer to the city.

A kettle stood on a tray alongside a cup, a saucer and a sugar bowl
stuffed with tea-bags.  "Help yourself to tea," she said, and he
noticed that the outside of the kettle was dulled by lime scale the
crockery coarse and off-white.

Noticing the absence of a television, he said, "I need to watch a video
something to do with my work.  I don't suppose you could arrange for me
to have a TV and video in my room?"

"There's a TV and video in the sitting room."

"This is something of a confidential nature," said Hanson, and he saw a
flicker of suspicion cross her face.  She thinks it's pornography,
thought Hanson, and he wondered what her reaction might be if she knew
just how much pornography he was sometimes required to watch to
research a particular deviation.

He came to the point.  "It's nothing I wouldn't watch in company," he
said, 'but, for reasons I'd rather not go into I'd prefer to watch it
in private."

Her suspicion deepened.  "People have the use of the sitting room until
eleven," she said.  "After that, we prefer that our guests retire to
their rooms."

She'd latched on to something about him.  Maybe his face rang a bell,
or something about him didn't ring true.  It was possible that, when
giving his name and occupation, he had sent out a signal that she'd
picked up on subconsciously.  Whatever it was, she now clearly felt
uncomfortable with him for reasons she couldn't quite pinpoint.  He saw
it in her body language, and heard it in her voice as she added, "Will
there be anything else?"

"Nothing, thanks," he said.

After she left him to it, he took ash ower in what had long ago been a
dressing room but was now an en suite bathroom.  He'd built it himself,
had splashed his face with ice-cold water in it the evening that he'd
come home to find Lorna gone.

Now, the water was more a trickle than a gush, lime scale blocking the
showerhead.  Hanson adjusted the temperature but gave up in the end and
stood beneath a dribble that ran lukewarm, then cold.

After he'd dried off and changed, he left his room and went downstairs
to the hall, taking the briefcase with him, and never taking his eyes
off it as he used the public payphone under the stairs.  He dialled his
own home number and, when Jan answered, thought his voice sounded
strange as he said, "Hi."

Her voice had an edge.  "Hi," she replied.  "Good journey?"

"Not bad," he replied, in an echo of the reply that he'd given to
Parker.

"I was worried," she said.  "I'd hoped you might phone as soon as you
arrived," and Hanson was aware that she was trying not to allow herself
to sound critical but that his lack of consideration had hurt her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I should have thought ..."

"It doesn't matter."

It did and, like the silence that followed, it spoke volumes.

"Where are you staying?"

"A guesthouse in Bury."

"Give me the number," said Jan.  "I'll phone you back."

This had been his house, the home he had shared with Lorna.  He didn't
want to give her the number to his past,

notwithstanding the fact that the number had changed.  "It doesn't
accept incoming calls."

"So where can I reach you?"

Nowhere, at the moment, thought Hanson.  "It's difficult right now, but
I'll give you a ring tomorrow."

"How long are you staying?"

"Hard to say."

"Did your meeting go well?"

"Fine, but I can't talk."

He knew he sounded wooden, and hoped she'd attribute it to his fearing
that their conversation might be overheard.  "Sorry," he said.

"What about?"

, Everything, thought Hanson.  Sorry I can't commit.  Sorry p I'm
screwing up.  Sorry I told you I loved you, and meant it, but can't
seem to get it together.

In what he took to be an effort on her part to reach out to him, she
suddenly said, "The house feels empty without you," and he could relate
to that.  This guesthouse, with its cheap figurines, its tacky
furniture and the paintwork that had yellowed since he'd applied it
eight years before, felt empty without Lorna.  He'd known that it
couldn't possibly be or feel the same without her, and yet he had
allowed himself to imagine that he would be able to handle it, that by
coming here he could lay the ghost of their relationship.  "I'm running
out of change," he said, and Jan said nothing at all.

He wished he could put a note of warmth in his voice and say something
to bridge the gulf that had opened up between them, but he couldn't
think of anything, and then they were cut off.

He stood there for a moment, the case at his feet, the receiver warm in
his hand, and tried to visualize what she might be doing, how she was
reacting.  It was as if he were staring in at the window of the home
they had shared for the past two years and watching a stranger walking
from the kitchen to the living room, then crumpling into an armchair to
work out what was going on between them.  Maybe she'd come up with some
answers.  If so, she'd be doing better than him.  Right now, despite
his profession, he found himself incapable of analysing what he was
doing here, why he had come.  He wondered whether, if not for the case
that had brought him back to Manchester, he would have felt the need to
come back at all.

"A problem, Mr.  Franklin?"

He turned to find Mrs.  Judd observing him from the doorway to the
living room.  No, he thought, not the living room: the dining room, the
small square tables having given the room where he and Lorna had spent
the greater part of their time together a totally fresh identity.

He replaced the receiver.  "Cut off," he said.  "I'll try again,
later."

She melted into the room, and he had the feeling she was watching him.
He'd lost count of the number of patients who'd come to him exhibiting
all the characteristics of paranoia.  People watch me, suspect me of
things, and his comforting reply was predictable enough: Lots of people
feel that, it's not necessarily true ... In this case, it was most
definitely true.  He couldn't see her, but he could sense she was there
standing behind the door and trawling her mind for details that
would enable her to place where she'd seen him before.

He picked up the briefcase and walked into the sitting room.  Finding
it empty, he closed the door behind him and sat in one of the chairs
that faced the TV.  He pulled the case on to his knee, turned the
combination locks and pressed the clasps, which unlocked with an almost
silent snick.

Almost immediately, Mrs.  Judd opened the door and walked in.  Hanson
pressed the clasps back into place.  She didn't speak, but left it to
him to say, "You did mention that I could use the sitting room."

"I wanted to make sure you knew how to operate the video."

Hanson considered the equipment, which was basic if not archaic.  "I'm
sure I'll manage," he said, but she walked towards the television,
turned it on, and held out a hand, saying, "If you give me the video,
I'll put it in for you, make sure you don't have any problems."

Hanson opened the briefcase, pulled out the cassette, and saw that
there was nothing on the casing to give any indication of what it might
be.  He handed it to her and she drew it from the cover, slotted it
into the machine and pressed the button marked Play.  The screen became
a snowstorm, largely because Hanson activated the remote, flicking the
television to a dead channel.

Mrs.  Judd moved towards the door, her voice deadpan as she said, "How
long did you say you intended to stay?"

"I didn't," said Hanson.  "Depends how long I'm needed."

As she opened the door and walked out, it occurred to Hanson that life
would be a great deal easier if he were to explain himself, but he was
having enough difficulty explaining himself to himself and he didn't
feel like baring his soul to this woman.

He got up and went to the door to close it tight behind her, then used
the remote to find the channel that tuned into the video.

He watched the tape a number of times, noting the way in which Gary's
dad held on to his composure.  He felt that, in all honesty, it was
virtually impossible for him to assess whether the man was hiding
something with regard to his son's disappearance.  To make comparisons
relating to body language he needed to talk to him in an environment
where he felt un threatened  Then he could get some idea of how the man
responded when at ease and when under stress.  This would give him some
idea as to whether he was as near devastated as he now appeared to be.
One thing was clear, though, thought Hanson.  Gary Maudsley's dad was
no fool.  His son had gone missing from within a hundred yards of where
Joseph Coyne was believed to have been abducted.  At the time when the
appeal had been made he'd been gone for almost a week.  There was no
trace of him, bar the watch ripped from his wrist.  It didn't look
good.

He listened again to the tone of voice, the choice of words when Gary's
dad had pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.  He could
almost imagine Parker's "What do you think?"

Hanson knew what he thought Gary's dad was out of the frame.  Parker
would be relieved.  He had Byrne down as Gary's abductor and didn't
want the issue clouded by some psychologist suggesting he should work
on the boy's father, just in case.

Hanson turned off the television, rewound the tape, and returned it to
the briefcase, which he locked.  A cursory glance at his watch informed
him that it was gone nine o'clock his stomach had been telling him that
for the past three hours at least.  Time to get a bite to eat and call
it a day, thought Hanson.

He left the sitting room, and as he walked out of the door, Mrs.  Judd
appeared at the foot of the stairs.  "Going out, Mr.  Franklin?"

Hanson, aware that her attention was focused on the briefcase as much
as on him, tightened his grip on its handle.  "Just a brief stroll,
Mrs.  Judd."

"We lock the doors at eleven."

"I'll be back by then," he assured her, and walked out of the house,
stepped on to a path that had once been flanked with shrubs, and headed
for a parade of shops where he and Lorna had sometimes grabbed a take
away on evenings when neither could be bothered to cook.

He tried to refrain from looking back but found himself unable to
resist the temptation.  He saw what he'd suspected he would see: the
figure of Mrs.  Judd staring after him from a downstairs window.  He
could understand her reservations: she obviously had a better memory
for faces than he had given her credit for.  As for his reluctance to
go anywhere without his briefcase, he knew he couldn't afford to let it
out of his sight.  If the file it held were stolen, the police wouldn't
trust him a second time with sensitive information, and he, for one,
wouldn't blame them.

Hanson sat in the Saab, tucked down a side street and well away from
the nearest street-light.  Up ahead, a block of up market flats blotted
out a night that was cloudless, and r o on the seventh floor, Lorna
passed periodically in front of one of the windows.  She was too far
away for him to be able to distinguish her features clearly, but that
didn't matter.  The woman, with her dusky skin, her soft, dark hair,
was Lorna.  No mistake.

He'd often wanted to see where she was living, had been able to
visualize it from a set of plans obtained from the local authority. The
flat was bigger than he'd imagined, a twenty-foot living room, two
double bedrooms and a kitchen fifteen by twelve.  It looked too big for
one person, and he knew she was living alone, but he also knew that she
entertained a lot, that people stayed over, that she liked her space.

He'd mentioned that to Jan, who had remarked that he seemed to know an
incredible amount about his ex-wife, considering he hadn't set eyes on
her for years, and Hanson had replied that they had mutual friends,
that he couldn't help it if, from time to time, they happened to
mention how she was, what she was doing, who she was seeing.  "I'm
interested, that's all."

"Interested?"  said Jan.  "I'd have said obsessed."

"You know nothing about obsession," said Hanson, meaning it as a joke.
"That's my province."

"Yes," she'd said softly.  "I'm beginning to realize that," and now, as
he sat watching Lorna, Hanson had to admit that to an outsider, his
behaviour might appear obsessive.  But it wasn't.  He knew the
difference, and he could say with total confidence that it wasn't.  He
should know: he'd lost count of the number of times he'd tried to
explain to his patients that it was important to recognize and
acknowledge their own obsessive behaviour if they hoped to free
themselves of it.  He was just curious, that's all.

He wondered about the flat and whether she felt safe.  Security was
reasonable but not what he would have called good: an intercom from
each flat to the entrance door plus a neighbourhood-watch scheme being
less than useless against a professional burglar.  Even Hanson could
have got in if he'd wanted, and he recalled a comment made by one of
his patients: "I only wanted to talk to her, but she wouldn't talk to
me.  I'd never had the chance to tell her what she'd done to me ... how
much I'd suffered."

Few of us act out our fantasies, thought Hanson.  Most of us are too
afraid of where they might lead.  He had considered this in the light
of what his patient had subsequently done.  I didn't mean to hurt her.
And now, as he sat watching Lorna, Hanson could relate to his patient's
desire to break in, to shake his ex-wife by the throat, to get it
across to her somehow that what she had done was something that had
destroyed the very fabric of his self-esteem.  I'd like to kill her, he
thought.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As Byrne walked into the yard, birds swirled round like mosquitoes, and
Roly came out of the nesting shed to see who'd walked in.  The minute
he saw it was Byrne, he disappeared back into the shed, and Byrne
walked up to the doorway.

In looking into its depths, he saw that row upon row of cages lined its
walls, a different species of finch in every compartment.  There had to
be half a dozen varieties in there, some of them not fully fledged,
others ready to try their wings or to be sold, never knowing what it
was to fly.  He wondered what it was about them that Roly was so
obsessed with.  To Byrne, they were just birds, neither beautiful nor
ugly.  "Roly," he said.

"I t-told you never to come here."

"I had no choice."

Roly lifted a Banaquit out of a cage and cupped it in one hand.  With
the other, he plucked a pipette from a mug, glutinous liquid glistening
from the end as he dripped it into the bird's beckoning beak.

"We need to talk."

"I'm b-busy."

He returned the Banaquit to the cage and reached into another to lift
out a couple of fledglings.  He placed them in one of several small
cardboard boxes kept stacked by the door, then pushed past Byrne who
followed him to the house.

Here, in the kitchen every surface, from the mottled green units to the
thick wooden pelmets that ran above the window-frames, was encrusted
with filth.  The smell of it caught at the back of Byrne's throat, and
he gagged at the unexpected stench.  "Jesus Christ, Roly!"

He watched, in something approaching fascination, as Roly placed the
fledglings in a cupboard over the cooker.  "What are you doing?"

"B-breakfast."

For a minute, Byrne took this to mean he was going to eat those scraps
of life with their barely discernible cries, and, frankly, it wouldn't
have surprised him if he had.

"The heat from the cooker k-keeps the cupboard k-keeps them warm," said
Roly, but Byrne had lingering doubts.  There was something about the
man, something of the predator: he could almost imagine him catching
the birds mid-flight, his mouth a gaping cavern, the birds swallowed
live.  He pushed the image away.  Of late, his imagination had been
running riot enough on account of Parker without him letting Roly get
to him.

Roly lit one of the rings, the flames leaping up with a popping sound
that Byrne hadn't heard for years.  He had forgotten that sound, and
the smell of gas.  It came to him now, briefly, and with it the
recollection of himself as a child, watching his father light a similar
cooker with an instrument that resembled a pen.  Try as he might, he'd
never been able to flick it into life, the flint that ignited the
device having worn to the metal, but his father had had the knack: he'd
been the only person in the house who'd been able to crack it, "The
other day, in the bookshop," he said.

"What a-bout it?"

"I was saying that Parker '

"You were saying you w-wanted some m-money," said Roly.

"Okay, so I want some money.  Give me some and I'll g -'

Roly shut the cupboard door and indicated the kitchen,

the yard, the general filth and decay.  "C-can't.  G-got none."

"You must have," Byrne argued.

Roly pulled a pan from under a unit, set it on the gas and watched fat
that had solidified from an earlier meal melt and liquefy.  "W-want
some?"  he said, but Byrne, who wasn't altogether sure he could stomach
food cooked in that pan, didn't reply.  A short while later, he left
Roly and wandered into the back room.  He had lived in some squats in
his time and he wasn't a stranger to squalor but, nevertheless, he
paused in the doorway, appalled by the filth and the smell.

Clouds of finches beat at the window with fragile wings.  At times, it
was hard to discern which were in the aviary and which in the room. The
window, in any event, was slightly open, and the birds could choose to
enter and leave at will.

He took great gulps of air, settled into an armchair, and had the
strangest feeling, as if he were in a large glass aquarium rather than
in what amounted to an extension of the aviary.  He felt as if he were
somehow on display, as if people in the outside world might be pressing
their faces against the fence and looking in on the spectacle of two
unnatural men displayed in an unnatural habitat, for he knew that this
was how the outside world, in all its ignorance and insensitivity,
perceived men such as they.

He thought back to some of the things that had been said to him by the
police after he was arrested for caressing a child and complimenting
him on his beauty that was all it had been, a compliment, and yet the
police had sullied that compliment, had made him feel dirty, and Byrne
had found himself incapable of making them understand that he cared for
the boy.  He'd wanted to make him feel welcome, that was all.  Besides,
the boy had wanted to be with him, had wanted to be touched, had
enjoyed it, for God's sake.

Byrne had bought him a compendium of games something that had turned up
in court and was referred to as an exhibit.  There'd been another
exhibit, which the prosecution had described as unsuitable viewing for
a child.  This man is a danger to young children.  Those words had
haunted Byrne down the years.  How the police could say such a thing
was a mystery to him.  He'd fed the boy, had clothed him, had been
there for him, and contrary to what the police had said, Byrne had gone
out of his way to keep him safe, had walked him home at night through
streets that were dark to a home where no one noticed where he was half
the time.  And yet the police had referred to him as a monster, a view
shared by one of the lifers who got him in the lavatory and rammed a
piece of piping up his backside.  How does it feel, Dougie, you wicked
bastard?

To have a lifer call him wicked had struck Byrne as bizarre, and he'd
laughed, until a combination of pain, shock, and terror curdled the
laughter so that it had turned to screams of agony.  A warder had
sauntered by, eyes fixed dead ahead, ears shut off to the sound of a
child molester getting his due, and after he'd been returned from the
prison hospital, Byrne had found the pipe lying giftwrapped on the
floor of his cell.  There'd been a tag attached to the wrapping, one
that had been signed by every prisoner in the block, and he'd been kept
in solitary after that, housed, for his own protection, in a cell
where, periodically, he'd been tempted to smear his own excreta on the
wall by way of protest.  He'd never done it.  To have succumbed to that
temptation would have been to give them the evidence they needed that
he was an animal, when they were the animals, not him: he was a lover
of children, and he had no intention of allowing anyone to rob him of
his dignity in the face of such a fact,

A bird flew down from a pelmet and landed by his feet.  He was
surprised at how tame it was, how tame the majority were.  Some flew on
to the arm of the chair, hopped on to his hand, walked up his arm and
pecked at the pale, freckled skin as if the liver spots might be grain.
On finding him of little interest, they flew off to view him from the
picture rail, or to lift their tails and deposit a dropping on or
beside him.

Such filth wasn't merely squalor, it was a statement, Byrne decided. In
prison, he had wanted to smear his excreta on the walls but hadn't
succumbed to temptation.  Perhaps, by allowing the birds to do the job
for him, Roly was making some kind of protest against a world he felt
had rejected him.  Byrne didn't know: he'd never been much cop at
working out what made people tick.  All he knew was, Roly was as weird
a bloke as any he'd ever come across.  Chances were, if ever he ended
up in the nick he'd be transferred to some equivalent of his house and
aviary, the new surroundings more sterile, but the faces peering in on
his world more of a reality than the fantasy spectators that Byrne had
imagined to be staring in from outside.

Roly appeared with a fry-up and handed a plate to Byrne, who stared at
the food.  The bacon, sausages, and mushrooms looked reasonable enough,
but the egg didn't look like any he'd seen before.  It wasn't the egg
of a chicken, he knew that much, but it couldn't be a finch's egg
because it was too big.

He stabbed at the yolk, a deep, almost blood-red yellow that turned his
stomach cold.  It ran into the grease like serum, and, unable to face
it, he lowered his knife.  "The egg," said Byrne.  "What is it?"

"S-swan."

Byrne had a vision of Roly wading into water, a great white ghostlike
shape rising up at him as he reached out to raid its nest.  You weird,
weird bastard, thought Byrne, but for fear of offending him he spread
some of the yolk on to the bread, and cut it into slivers.  He put a
piece into his mouth, and found that it tasted rich and not unpleasant.
It had a stronger flavour than that of a chicken's egg, a creamier
texture, a taste that stayed in the mouth long after the rest of the
food was eaten.

He finished the meal, regardless that each mouthful was more difficult
to chew than the last, the grease like lead in his stomach, the
aftertaste making him retch, and put the plate on the floor, vaguely
disgusted that a couple of finches seemed interested in what was left
of the egg.  It seemed cannibalistic to him, the way they pecked at the
slivers of yolk, and in the end he couldn't watch.

Roly stood up and took the plates through to the kitchen, Byrne padding
after him, whining at his heels.  "What do you say, Roly?"  But Roly,
engrossed with his fledglings, appeared not to hear.

As a charm of finches flew through the door, Byrne was suddenly
unnerved.  It wasn't just the meal, the filth, or the faint suggestion
that something wasn't right: it was the way in which those birds came
in and out.  He beat at them with his soft white hands and said, "What
if somebody were to tell Parker that Gary and Joseph came down the yard
regular?"

"Is that a th-threat?"

"You're leaving me no option.  If it'd get Parker off my back, I'd tell
him those two lads came down here."

He could sense the way in which Roly was thinking it through, weighing
up the likelihood of Byrne spilling his guts to save his skin.

"This m-money," said Roly.  "How much do you n-need?"

"Thousand, maybe more."

"A th-thousand?"

"I need a room there'll be a deposit and then there's food, electricity
..."

"Th-thousand quid," said Roly.  "That's a lot of m-money, Dougie."

"You can afford it."

"Mmaybe I can, but I can't just p-pull it out of nowhere.  Y-you have
to give me time."

"How long?"

"A couple of d-days," said Roly.

"Tonight," said Byrne.  "I want it by tonight."

He took a last incredulous look around the kitchen, then left, Roly
watching from the window as he hurried across the yard and out through
the gates.

Warrender found Parker in the police canteen and, much though he hated
to interrupt his cooked breakfast, pulled up a chair, sat down and
said, "Byrne's just been followed to a house in Mousade Road."

Parker knew the area, had spent more than his fair share of time
policing it in the days when the houses were occupied by tenants.  "Do
we know why he went there?"

"No, but we know the house is occupied by a squatter."

"I didn't realize: anybody had stuck around."

"Well, somebody has," said Warrender.

"Do we have a name?"  said Parker.

"Barnes," said Warrender.  "Roland Barnes."

"How did you come by that?"

"I phoned the council," said Warrender, 'asked them whether they knew
of any squatters living on Mousade Road.  They've been trying to get
him out for the past few years."

Good luck to them, thought Parker.

"Chances are he'll have to shift in a week or so, whether he wants to
go or not."

"Why's that?"

"Houses are coming down."

Parker could visualize the way in which council officials, armed with
an eviction order, would knock on the door to the squat, get no answer
so break in and remove Roland Barnes, even if they had to carry him
out.  After that, they would give a demolition team the go-ahead to
move in with the type of heavy machinery that could leave a row of
houses looking like a war zone.  All that would be left of the former
squat was a pile of rubble, valuables having been plucked out, sold for
scrap or to dealers who fancied they knew a bargain when they saw one.
Fair enough, thought Parker.  Most of them did, and houses in roads
like Roumelia and Mousade could no doubt produce their fair share of
marble hearths and brass fittings.

"What do you want to do?"  said Warrender.

There were two options, Parker decided: he could bring Dougie in and
question him, or he could pay Barnes a visit, find out something about
him and question Dougie on the back of what he knew about Barnes.  He
stabbed at an anaemic yolk and watched it congeal on a plate that was
cold to the touch.  "I'll check it out," he said.

"Want me along?"

"No, let's keep it casual I'll take a look-see, and then we'll take it
from there."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It had been some years since Brogan had last used the library, and yet
he recognized instantly the corner of the room set aside for children,
its lowish table dwarfed by mahogany bookshelves.

In turning away he saw again his mother at the counter, her raincoat
stained, her boots in need of a. polish, the cardboard library ticket
seeming bulky in her hand.

A slow and painful process of elimination, born of ignorance as to how
books were categorized, ensured that it took him some time to find
volumes devoted to cage-birds, and of these, the majority related to
members of the parakeet family.  All contained full-colour sections
illustrating the various species, and here he found African Greys,
South American Greens, Australian Macaws with feathers afire.  Yet none
of the birds depicted touched a chord, and it was only a simple wash
drawing in Finches of the World that made him draw breath and hold it
deep for a moment.

He took it to the counter, and spoke to a middle-aged woman better
suited to a sweet shop than to this quiet and intimidating place, "Can
I take this out?"

"Are you a member?"

He felt the colour flood to his cheeks, and although he wanted to tell
her that he thought he probably was, that his mother might have made
him a member at some point, he couldn't bring himself to attempt the
explanation, certain the words would come out wrong, certain she
wouldn't believe him.

He turned away but the librarian called him back and waved a form.
"Take this home and get one of your parents to sign it."  He took it
from her as she indicated the book and added, "Want me to put it
aside?"

He mumbled an embarrassed thanks, and recalled that the last time he'd
been here, life had been less complex.  What he wanted, he had asked
for, pointing pudgy fingers up to brightly coloured books and saying,
"Mine!"

"What's your name, love?"

"Healey," said Brogan, and as she wrote it down, he fled, not even
knowing whether he'd pluck up the nerve to go back for it.

Elaine opened the door to her three-bed semi, her two young children
behind her, and Brogan was hit, almost physically, by the sheer
strength of the perfume she had splashed down the front of her dress.
He'd seen her do it open the bottle and slosh on the eau-de-Cologne
that she bought cheap from the market.

She didn't look like a singer but that was what his dad, who backed her
on keyboards, insisted she was.  Brogan had once seen her dressed for
the job, a long black skirt slit to the hips, the spangled top, its
straps digging deep into broad, fleshy shoulders.  They talked about
the Labour Club as if she were making a debut at the Royal Albert Hall,
and his dad had once made some reference to knowin' a bloke who could
get her on a show called A Star Is Born.

Now, as she stood at the doorway, her hair damp, one cheekbone slightly
glossy, she didn't look much like a star, born or otherwise.  The
makeup she wore was thicker than usual, and yet it failed to conceal
that she was past her best, that she'd never see forty again or that
her skin, like her figure, was thickening.  Something else the makeup
failed to conceal was a bruise that was fading to yellow.  From its
colour, Brogan could determine roughly when she'd taken the belting
that had produced it.

As a child, he'd felt his mother flinch as he reached up to touch the
evidence of his father's temper.  Most of the bruises appeared before
an item of furniture was sold, and he had come to associate the sight
of them with an impending loss.

As he wondered what might have been in the house that Elaine had
recently lost, an image flashed into his mind: the hugeness of his
father's hand as it crushed a cardboard mobile that his mother had
painted with care.  That hand could come out of nowhere at times, a
hand capable of sending him spinning across the room and into another
universe, a world where stars exploded behind his eyes until he felt as
if he were trapped in some bizarre and crude animation.  Only the Toms
and Jerries of this world saw stars like those, but they got up and
carried on within moments of being sent spinning.  Brogan, like his
mother, usually took to his bed until the sickness that invariably
followed had subsided.

In the past, his mother had appeared by his bedside, her hand cool on
his head, her voice barely a whisper, "Shush, love, your dad'll hear
you," and Brogan would shut up, the dread of making his father even
angrier more terrifying to him than lying in the small dark room had
ever proved to be, for the company of the imaginary ghouls that
clustered around his bed was infinitely preferable to the threat of his
father coming at him again with, "What's the fuckin' racket?"

"Dad I wasn't cryin' .. ."

His mother would never come again to tell him to cry quietly, but there
was some consolation to be had in the fact that now it was Elaine who
had the problem of keeping his father's temper under control.  He
wondered how she was managing, looked again at the bruise to her cheek,
and came to the conclusion that she wasn't.

"Is he in?"  said Brogan.

"I'll get him."

She walked back into the house, leaving the door half open to a hall
that was papered from ceiling to floor in sunflowers.  He'd once seen
something like them on a school

trip, a coach-load of kids all gawping up at these flowers in a vase.
He'd forgotten it until he saw the wallpaper, but now it came flooding
back, the way he'd got home and his mother had said, "What did you see
that you liked?"

He didn't like them any more, not now he'd seen them as wallpaper in
the hall of Elaine's house.  It cheapened them, somehow, made them look
like plastic instead of like the flowers he'd sometimes seen in his
dreams.

His father came to the door, his eyes half shut in a way that suggested
he and Elaine had been working the night before.  He wondered what
they'd earned.  Twenty, forty quid cash up front and the DSS none the
wiser.

Brogan held out a couple of brown, official-looking envelopes.  His
father took them with indifference and dipped into a pocket for the
roll of notes that seemed always to be there.  He peeled off a tenner,
handed it to Brogan, and said, "Did you get the food I left?"

Brogan took the note.  "Yeah.  Thanks."

"Managin' okay?"

"Yeah."

As he pocketed the money, Brogan's fingers touched the form from the
library.  He pulled it out.  "Will you sign this for us?"

His father took it from him, fished for a pen and leant the form
against the sunflower walls.  He signed his name, the slow and
deliberate signature of a man for whom the words on the page had no
meaning, the letters mere shapes that he'd learned to form from
necessity, and handed it back,

saying, "Might drop by in a day or so, see how you're doin', eh?"

Brogan folded the form.  Over and over he folded it, crease for crease,
making it small, making it safe.  Finches of the World.

As Brogan walked down Roumelia Road, sounds he couldn't identify
mingled with a wind that whistled through the houses, circled their
dismal rooms and left through cracks and crevices in glass and brick
and stone.

The cage swung softly beside him, the Tiger finch still lying flat on
the litter, its wings out spanned  The book had been a mine of
information to Brogan, who now knew more about the country of Tiger's
origin than any geography teacher could ever have hoped to teach him in
a term of intensive tuition.  He knew what he should be eating, where
he would like to nest, what supplements he needed, but he didn't know
how to heal him, and Tiger was clearly hurt.

Moranti had told him that Roly knew all about finches, and Brogan, in
sheer desperation, had brought his bird in the hope that Moranti was
right.

There were vehicles parked up on the waste ground a dumper truck and a
van that gave the name of a local firm.  Two men holding clipboards
were standing in front of the houses, making notes, commenting, but
neither looked at him as he rattled on the gates to Roly's Yard.  He
pulled at the chain that held them, heard its rattle magnified as it
bounced off the back of the houses.  The sound of the chain unnerved
him, but because he didn't know how else to make his presence known, he
shook it again and, moments later, saw it whip free from the gates.

The gates opened, but only a fraction, and Brogan held up the cage.
"Tiger's hurt."

Roly opened the gates wider, took the cage from him, and led the way
down the yard to the nesting shed.  The odour of the birds was strong,
but it was an odour to which Brogan was already accustomed, something
he'd breathed all Saturday down at the Emporium.  At Moranti's it
mingled with other scents: the perfume from the scent bottles, the
cloying, mousy smell of the stuffed fox, the thick, sweetish varnish on
the lid of a lacquered box.

"H-how did he get hurt?"

"Moranti squashed him."

Roly put the cage on a chair and reached inside.  The bird made no
protest as he picked it up, lifted it out and inspected it.

"Is he badly hurt?"  said Brogan.

"N-not really sure," said Roly.  He turned the bird in his fingers in
much the way that he'd turned the corpse of the Gouldian.  "W-when did
he last eat?"

"I dunno."

Still with the finch in his hand, Roly reached up to ash elf and pulled
a pipette from a mug.  He laid it down on the counter and used his free
hand to lift a bottle down from a cabinet resting against one wall.  He
unscrewed the lid and dipped the pipette into the liquid.  "What's
that?"  said Brogan.

"Glucose," said Roly.

He fed the bird with tiny drops of fluid.

"Will he die?"

"M-maybe," said Roly.  "He'd better stay w-with me for now."

The thought of leaving his finch behind was what had prevented Brogan
from bringing Tiger sooner.  Somehow he'd had a feeling that Roly might
take the bird away from him, on the grounds that he obviously hadn't
taken good enough care of him.  "It wasn't me," he said.  "It was Mr.
Moranti."

"I know," said Roly.  "N-nobody's blaming you."

"He tipped him out the box and tried to hide him, that's what did
it,"

"He's always d-doing that," said Roly, and he smiled, which made Brogan
lighten up a little.

"What if he dies?"

"I'll give you another."

"I don't want another," said Brogan.  "I want Tiger."

He watched as Roly put the bird in one of the nesting boxes, and after
seeing him settled, said, "I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault."

In one of the neighbouring cages, two of the Zebras had produced a
hatch, their dull brown feathers much the same colour as the litter
into which they flattened themselves in fright.  They gazed up at
Brogan with eyes so small it was almost impossible for him to imagine
that they were eyes at all.  Not even insects had eyes as tiny as
those, thought Brogan.  "You take better care of your birds than Mr.
Moranti."

"Th-that's why mine survive and his d-don't," said Roly, who dipped his
hand into one of the cages, and brought out a White-eyed Oriental.  He
tipped it into Brogan's hands and watched him stroke the bird, his
touch immensely gentle.  "What did Moranti do to that G-Gouldian
finch?"

Brogan thought back to the glass-domed roof and the slice of ice-cold
air that had descended from the dome.  "Left it in a draught," he
said.

"I thought as much."

"They've fixed the roof," said Brogan.  "Some of the shop-owners moaned
because the rain was getting in."

Roly took the bird from him and put it back in the cage.

"I'm glad you c-came back," he said.  "I Hike you, Bro-brogan."

"I like you too," said Brogan, and Roly touched his cheek, caressing it
so gently, the tip of his finger felt like the tip of a feather against
his skin.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Parker pulled up outside the gates to the yard, the waste ground to his
right.  He could remember a time when there had been

houses on that land, and it struck him as odd that some of the roads
had been demolished while others had been left standing.  He could only
assume that the council had encountered problems in evicting
owner-occupiers.  It was easier, in some cases, to wait for certain
occupants to move on or die off. The entire area was littered with
strips of waste ground such as this that bore witness to the fact that
the council was seizing whatever opportunities arose to fell the houses
without having to pay compensation.

Warrender's description of the yard had given him some indication that
the garden had been converted into an aviary, so he was prepared for
the wire mesh that stretched from the fence to the roof of the house.
Even so, as he approached the property it struck him as one of the
oddest things he'd seen in that the interior of the house was clearly
an extension of the aviary.  He could almost imagine what those
upstairs rooms must be like.  Given the chance, he intended to take a
look, if only to have his suspicions of squalor confirmed, but failing
that, he would be satisfied with taking a good hard look at Roland
Barnes.

He found the gates chained but not locked, and he pulled the chain
through, pushed open the gates, and walked into the net that draped
from the mesh above.  It caught him unawares, snagging on the buttons
of his jacket as he tried to free himself.  For a moment, he felt like
an insect caught in a web, and he slashed at the net in irritation as
much as anything.

Once free of it, he ducked under and into the yard, and took a good
look at the scene that now lay before him.  It was then that Parker
felt a stab of apprehension.  He wasn't an easy man to frighten.  There
wasn't a back street in Manchester that he hadn't plunged down at some
point in his career, and the darkness that had enveloped him had often
contained the unknown, but the minute he entered the yard, he felt that
he was dealing with a different kind of unknown.

The sky above was wide and clear, and the trees that strained towards
it were spaced so that he could see what lay beyond them, yet he was
gripped almost immediately by a feeling that he might never get out of
there.  It didn't matter that he could just as easily turn on his heel,
duck back under the net, walk through the gates, climb into his car and
drive as far away from the place as petrol would allow, the feeling
remained.  And when he saw a figure emerge from the shed, it increased.
This was Byrne's contact Parker couldn't swear to it, but he looked
very like the image on the security video.  "Roland Barnes?"  he
said.

Roly picked up a yard brush that rested against the shed.

"Detective Superintendent Parker.  Greater Manchester Police," said
Parker, showing his ID.  "I'm making enquiries into the disappearance
of ..."  A boy appeared in the doorway to the shed, and, taken aback,
Parker stopped mid-sentence.  '... a young lad," he finished.

Roly started to sweep the yard with slow, methodical strokes.

"I won't take much of your time," said Parker.  "I just need a word."

Roly ignored him, the swish of the brush invasive, rhythmical and
insolent.

"Mr.  Barnes, could you just stop sweeping for a moment."

Roly leant the yard brush against a wall, picked up a dustpan and
brush, and continued.

"Mr.  Barnes, could you just stop that."

"I w-won't be a minute," said Roly.

Parker suddenly lost patience.  "Now!"  he shouted.

The birds soared into the air, but as quickly as they had taken flight,
they settled, and then there was stillness.

"Now," said Parker, softly.

Roly put back the dustpan in its place, and Parker took a good look at
the boy before indicating the house.  "Inside."

They entered the kitchen and Parker was almost knocked back by the
smell.  It was no different from the smell of the yard, but it was
stronger, and no air circulated to minimize it.  Even so, he took pains
not to show his disgust as he said, "That's quite some aviary out
there."

Roly led the way into the back room, but he didn't reply.

Parker absorbed the geography of the room, its furnishings, its open
window, the birds, the pelmets and doors.  "I take it you breed
them?"

All he got by way of response was a nod from Roly.

"Sell them?"

Another nod.

"Who to?"  said Parker, making for the window, gulping at the air and
finding that it wasn't much of an improvement.

"Just p-people," said Roly, and Parker realized that his reluctance to
say more than was necessary was probably due to the speech
impediment.

Outside, the boy was creeping out of the shed.  Inching out, thought
Parker.  He wondered who he was.

He turned from the window to find Roly standing in the doorway to the
kitchen, watching him.  It was hard to know what to make of him: anyone
living in as great a degree of filth as this ought, by rights, to be
filthy himself.  None of it seemed to fit.  He produced a photo of
Gary, saying, "Local lad, Gary Maudsley, went missing a couple of weeks
back."

Roly took the photo.

"Know him?"

Roly shook his head and handed back the photo.

A movement from within the yard caught Parker's eye.  He turned his
head and saw the boy walking into the shed.  "Who's the kid?"  he
said.

"D-don't know," said Roly, and it seemed to Parker that he was
genuinely struggling to form even the simplest reply.  He suddenly felt
for him, and softened a fraction.  "Take your time," he said.

Roly added, "He ju-just turned up and a-asked to l-look at the
b-birds."

"You must get a lot of that," said Parker.  "Kids wandering in, wanting
to look around."

A nod from Roly.

"But not Gary."

And now as hake of the head.

"Mr.  Barnes," said Parker, moving away from the window, 'do you know
anyone by the name of Douglas Byrne?"

'"V '

Y-yes.

"When was the last time you spoke to him?"  "Today."

"And where was that?"  "H-here."

Parker hadn't expected Roly to be quite so open.  "What brought him
here?"

"He w-wanted to b-borrow some money."

"Why?"

"He didn't say."

"Friend of yours, is he?"

"Not r-really."

"So why would he think you might lend him some money?"

"He was d-desperate he was trying everyone he knew."

"And how do you know him?"

Roly indicated the houses opposite.  "He used to 1-live in a squat down
Roumelia R-road."

Out in the yard, the boy walked out of the nesting shed carrying a
small, polythene bag.  The ends were tied, and Parker watched as he
loosened them, dipped his hand into the bag and scattered seed on the
ground.  He didn't have much of a knack for it, and the seed hit the
ground in dollops.  Some of the birds darted down to feed, but most
remained in the trees, watching

him, made nervous by his jerky, uncertain movements.

"How long has it been since you last saw Byrne before today, I mean?"

The answer was instantaneous.  "Just a f-few days back."

"Where?"

"B-bookshop," said Roly.  "I b-bumped into him."

Was that the truth?  wondered Parker, or had the meeting been arranged?
"How come he didn't ask you for money then?"

"He did."

"And you said no."

"I haven't got any m-money," said Roly.  "I t-told him I c-couldn't
help him."

It stood to reason, thought Parker.  Maybe that was why Byrne had left
the shop so abruptly.  "Clearly, he didn't believe you?"

"P-pardon?"

"Why would he come here, today, if he believed you if he thought you
had no money?"

"I d-don't know."

The boy crouched down to a finch, extending his hand towards it,
offering seed on his palm.  From here, it was impossible to see
anything of the bird other than the dusty,

feathered back, but Parker wasn't looking so much at the bird as at the
boy.  "Well, if you think of anything that might be of interest to me,
or if Byrne should call again ..."  "I'll 1-let you know," said Roly.

As the door to the house was opened, the finch took fright, and Brogan
followed its line of flight as Parker walked over to him.  "You seem to
have a way with them," he said.

The finch was now nothing more than a dot in one of the trees.  "Scared
of me," said Brogan.  "Not used to me yet."

His voice hadn't broken, and there was a quality to it that made Parker
want to protect him.  "What's your name, son?"

He answered shyly, much as a younger boy might.  "Brogan."

"Brogan what?"

"Healey," said Brogan.

"Where do you live?"

"Arpley Street."

There was a note of warning in Parker's voice.  "You're a long way from
home, Brogan."

The comment seemed lost on the child, and Parker wondered how best to
get him out of there without making it obvious that he wanted a chance
to talk to him alone.

"Tell you what," said Parker, "Mr.  Barnes has a few things to do just
now, so why don't you let me drop you off at home?"

Roly gave the slightest nod as if to say that maybe Brogan should go
along with Parker.  "Okay," said Brogan, and Parker led him out,
lifting the net as Brogan ducked under, then closed the gates behind
them.

He led him towards a car that came as something of a disappointment to
the boy.  It was the first time he'd seen the inside of a police car,
unmarked or otherwise, and he found that there was only a police radio
to mark it out as being any different from any other saloon.  He had
somehow expected more.

"Seat-belt?"  said Parker, and Brogan did as he was told, clipping it
into place as Parker fired the engine and drove down Roumelia Road.

The waste ground flashed past to the left.  In the weeks since Brogan
had first seen it, a three-piece suite had been abandoned there. Behind
it, the corpse of a burned-out car lay on its roof, the upholstery
gone, the metal blackened, the steering-wheel ripped out.

"Known Roly long?"  said Parker, conversationally.

"No," said Brogan.

"How did you get to meet him?"

"Through Mr.  Moranti."

"Mr.  Moranti?"

"Someone I work for down the covered market."

"You look a little young to be working," said Parker.

"Saturday job," said Brogan.

"Ah."  That explained it, thought Parker, who had reckoned as much but
had wanted it spelt out.  "Hope he's paying you well?"

"Three quid a day," said Brogan, and Parker was touched by the note of
childish pride.

"That's a good whack," he said, kindly.

"Yeah.  One of my mates says he gets twenty, but I don't believe
him."

"Very wise," said Parker.  "Not even I get twenty quid a. day."

"Honest?"

"Honest," said Parker, feeling that what with tax, insurance and
everything else that disappeared from his salary, it wasn't too far
from the truth.

He kept a hand on the wheel and used the other to pull out the photo of
Gary Maudsley, passing it to Brogan and saying, "Ever seen him
before?"

Brogan took the photo and looked at it.  "No.  Why?"

"He's gone missing from home," said Parker.

"Has he run off!"

Dear God, I hope so, thought Parker, the alternative being too
appalling to contemplate.  "Possibly," he said.

"Is he a friend of Roly's?"

Parker replied, very cautiously, "Roly said he didn't know him."

"So what made you ask Roly if he'd seen him?"

"We're asking a lot of people," said Parker.

Handing the photo back, Brogan said, "What do you think's happened to
him?"

"We don't know," replied Parker.  "That's what we're trying to find
out."

The area fell away, to be replaced by evidence of industries that had
long since gone to the wall, their premises left as derelict as the
houses that surrounded them, and Parker drove the rest of the way in
silence, stopping the car in front of the house that Brogan directed
him to.

As he killed the engine, he turned to Brogan, suddenly very serious.
"I've got a lad about your age, and I'll tell you something, Brogan, if
he was going down that yard, I'd be out my mind."

"Why?"

Parker struggled to explain, constrained by the fact that he couldn't
go round telling people he had a gut feeling about somebody.  Also he
wasn't yet sure for himself what it was that bothered him about Roly.
"It's not a good thing for a lad of your age to hang around with men
they don't know very welL Understand me, Brogan?  Understand what I'm
trying to say?"

As Brogan got out of the car, Parker leant across and added: "Are your
parents in?"

"There's only my dad."

"Your dad, then."

"What do you want wi' me dad?"

"Quick word, that's all," said Parker, doing his best to reassure
him.

"I've haven't done nothin'."

"Nobody said you had."

"He's out."

"Out where?"  said Parker, but Brogan didn't reply.

He decided not to push it.  He'd call on Brogan again, and he'd keep on
calling until he managed to get a good look at his father, weigh him
up, tell him his son had been found at Roly's Yard.  In the meantime,
Parker satisfied himself with, "Don't go down the yard eh?  Not any
more," but Brogan closed the door to the car and turned towards the
house, fishing in his pocket for a key on a piece of string.

The years peeled away for Parker, and once again he was standing in
Julie Coyne's flat, reaching out for the key on the string that she'd
handed across with the words, "This is the spare.  Joey wears the other
round his neck."

Brogan's father, wherever he was, probably had a spare just like it,
thought Parker, and he only hoped he wouldn't find himself holding out
his hand to take it from him, examine it, and tell him that if any of
his officers came across anything like it, they'd try it in his lock
and see if it fitted.

The birds were swarming, the recent visit from strangers having
unsettled them.  Often, they went undisturbed for weeks, the only
person they saw being Roly, and he was nothing to worry about unless,
as was currently the case, he was lashing out at them, his hand like
the tongue from a lizard catching flies.  It was incredible how he
managed it, the sudden flash of movement that was both expert and
horrific, the speed with which he could catch a bird mid-flight, the
gentleness with which he managed to hold it for a moment and then the
decision.  Sometimes, he would release the terrified creature.  At
other times, as now, he would snap its neck and toss it into the box.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The minute the blue saloon appeared in front of the house, Mrs.
Maudsley came out to greet him.  It was as though she'd been standing
at the window, waiting, thought Parker, and he only wished he was
bringing something more than reassurance.

She looked worn, thought Parker, the last couple of weeks having added
another ten years to the seventy-odd she owned to.  "No news," he said,
aware that although she would be frustrated by that, she would also be
relieved.  At least he wasn't walking in to tell her they'd found Gary
dead.

7oseph Coyne's been found, then?"  she said.

"I'm afraid so," said Parker.

It's definite, then.  It's hint?

"Yes," replied Parker.  "Definite."

She looked very old, and he put an arm around her.  It doesn't mean
we'll find Gary dead, Mrs.  Maudsley."

"Why are you here?"

"I just came to see how you are."

"Well, now you've seen," she said.

"I know it's hard."

"What are you doing!"

Everything we can, thought Parker, but all he said was, "Gary had a
bird, didn't he?"

He followed her into the house and watched as she squatted down to
light the gas fire with a twist of paper.  It blackened the element
guarding the flame, then turned to ash that was airborne for the
briefest of moments before the spark that carried it expired.

"What about it?"

"What kind of bird was it?"

She eased herself to feet that seemed minute beneath ankles that had
swollen with age.  "Hard to say, now," she admitted.  "Summat fancy."

"Can you describe it?"

"Small, I remember that.  He used to be able to hide it just by doing
this."  She held out her hand, the joints arthritic, and curled her
fingers with difficulty.

In doing so, she made Parker realize that the bird must

indeed have been small, and he said, "What colour was it?"

"Green," she said.

"Just green?"

"Green all over, like a leaf.  Even its beak was green."

Parker felt a stab of disappointment.  It didn't sound exotic.

"Like a little green canary," she added, as an afterthought.

"Where did he get it?"

"Pet shop."

"Where?"

"Down th Street."

Tib Street, with its multitude of pet shops, no longer existed as such.
Parker tried to steer her gently into the present.  "You sure?"  he
said.  "It can't have been Tib Street, Mrs.  Maudsley.  It must have
been somewhere else."

"I can't think of anywhere else, not unless ..."

"Go on."

"He had a job, a while back, down the covered market."

The temperature suddenly dropped, or so it seemed to Parker.  He felt
as if he'd been drenched in ice-cold water.  "How long ago was this?"

o o

"Last Christmas.  And then he stopped going.  Said he'd got sick of
spending his Saturdays cleaning out the cages."  She turned towards a
coffee table jammed against the corner of the room.  It held an African
Violet, the petals the rich deep purple that Parker invariably
associated with church vestments, and beneath it, magazines were strewn
in some parody of neatness.  She leant down, pulled them out and, with
them, a book, which she held out to Parker, who took it and turned to
the title pages.  It was a library book, overdue by several weeks.

"I kept on at him to take it back, but he never got round to it."  She
sounded guilty, and Parker, who felt she had enough on her plate,
reassured her with a smile accompanied by, "I've got a library book at
home I've had it so long I'd have to mortgage the house if I took it
back."

She smiled, and he was touched by the way she cut the smile short, as
if remembering that her grandson was missing, that not even jokes were
funny at the moment and that maybe they would never be funny again. She
took the book from him and thumbed through it, finding an illustration
of the bird that Gary had kept before handing it back, saying, There
you go."

Parker looked at an illustration above the text that described the
bird's country of origin.  It depicted a finch that was green.
"Greenfinch," said Mrs.  Maudsley.  "Pretty little thing."

"Can I take this?"  said Parker.

She wasn't listening: her thoughts having drifted back to a time when
she'd told him to get rid of the bloody chirping thing.  "Eh?"

"The book.  Can I take it?"

"It's due back down the library."

"Don't worry about that I'll sort it,"

He left the house and climbed into the car.  Mrs.  Maudsley shut the
door and retreated into the house in the expectation that Parker would
just drive away.  But he didn't.  Not immediately.  He thumbed through
the book until he found the page depicting the finch.  Beneath the
illustration he read the words:

There are thirteen species of these birds, now known as Darwin's
finches, their main differences being in the shape of their bills and
their feeding habits.

He turned the page and learnt that Geospiza magnirostris had a heavy,
seed-crushing beak whereas Certhidea olivaua had the bill of an
insectivorous bird.

Parker didn't give a shit about Geospiza magnirostris or Certhidea
oUvacea; neither was green and neither had been kept by Gary Maudsley.
What Gary had kept was a Camarhynchus pallid us and he tried to imagine
him getting his tongue round the Latin.  He probably wouldn't have
bothered, thought Parker.  Chances were, he'd have called it a
Woodpecker finch and left it at that.

He closed the book, fired the engine and pulled away from the house. As
he made for the top of the road, he imagined Gary trying to visualize
the bird in its natural habitat.  Chances were, he would have failed.
Like Parker, Gary was unlikely to have known the first thing about the
Galapagos Islands other than that they, like the birds that lived
there, were clearly exotic.

Parker threaded his way through the crowds that jammed the covered
market in late afternoon, and walked into the

Emporium to find Moranti sitting on a large wicker basket,

"Mr.  Moranti?"  he said.

Moranti stood up.  Parker wasn't his usual type of visitor,

and he knew instinctively that he wasn't a potential customer.  Parker
produced his ID.  "Detective Superintendent Parker."  Moranti watched
him warily as he looked round the unit.

"That's quite a collection of birds."  He glanced along the cages.

"Where do you get them?"

Moranti seemed to take a moment to reply, and he only did so after he'd
thought it through.  "All over."

As if baffled by the reply, Parker said, "All over where?"

"The country," replied Moranti.

"All over the country?"  repeated Parker, as if he'd just been made
privy to some kind of trade secret.  "You can breed birds like these in
our climate?"

"You can breed them anywhere if you know what you're doing."

"Must be a lot of work, seeing to them all."

"It can be."

"Got any help?"

"A lad comes in, Saturdays."

Thoughtfully now, Parker turned this piece of information over as if it
were new to him.  "A lad."  And then, as if struggling to recall the
details, he said, "Let me see now ... Didn't you have a lad working for
you a while back, smallish, light brown hair?"

He couldn't be certain whether Moranti was suddenly frightened or just
unsure as to where this was leading.  "Yes," he admitted.

"What was his name?"

Moranti's voice was barely audible.  "Gary Maudsley."

"Are you aware that Gary went missing a couple of weeks ago?"

The voice grew even quieter.  "Yes."

"But you didn't contact the police."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't think it was important."

As Parker digested the comment, two of the birds started to fight,
their cries shrill, their wings beating against the bars of a cage.
"Not important?"  he said.

"Not relevant," said Moranti.

"Not relevant to whom?"  Parker asked.

Moranti replied, "The police."

"I see," said Parker, and he peered into one of the cages at a bird
with crimson wings.  It edged along the perch, keeping him in view in
much the way that Parker was using the mirror that hung in the cage to
watch Moranti as he said, "My lad would probably like a bird like this
..."  He drew away from the cage, turned a pair of cool, thoughtful
eyes on Moranti, and said, "How much is it?"

Moranti, who knew that Parker wasn't in the market for a bird but might
well be in the market for causing him a serious problem, didn't
respond.  He waited for what he suspected might be coming next.  His
suspicions were confirmed when Parker said, "Have you ever had a lad
called Joseph Coyne working for you?"

Moranti stroked the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, as
if he held a finch and was smoothing down its feathers.

"Mr.  Moranti ..."  said Parker.

The fingers continued to smooth.

"Joseph Coyne," said Parker.  "Did he work for you?"

The invisible finch was now being plucked by those fingers.  Parker
imagined its feathers as they floated to the ground.  "Do you ever buy
birds from Roland Barnes?"

Moranti's reluctance to reply provided the answer, and Parker built on
it, "Did you ever take Gary or Joseph down to Roly's Yard?"

"No," said Moranti.

"Sure?"  said Parker.

"I never take no boys of mine down to Roly's Yard."

"Why not?"

"I want them here, to watch the shop.  I do the buying, not some boy I
employ to work Saturdays."

One of the birds was attacking the side of its cage.  Its beak was
short and tough, and it wouldn't have surprised Parker if one of the
bamboo bars had splintered and split.

"Who's working for you now?"

Toting lad called Brogan," said Moranti, and once again, it seemed to
Parker as though there had been a none-too-subtle change in the
temperature, summer turning to winter with the flick of a God-like
switch.

"Well," said Parker, his voice as cold as the air that carried his
words, 'let's hope this new lad of yours doesn't just ... disappear,
eh?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Parker didn't reply.  He took one last look at the birds, as if seeing
a great deal more than was obvious to the naked eye, then sauntered
towards the door, opened it and walked out.

Parker pulled up in a side road, he and Warrender leaving the car out
of sight and walking to the front of Byrne's shop to find it closed.

The street lamps were lit, one of them casting a yellowish hue on
Parker's coat as he banged on the door.  There was no sign of life in
the room above, not that Parker had expected Byrne to oblige by walking
to the window at precisely the moment he could have done with seeing
him there.  Nevertheless, he had the feeling that Byrne wasn't merely
avoiding them: he wasn't there.

They walked round to the back and found the gate unlatched.  Parker
pushed it wide, saw Byrne's van, and then the bunker directly ahead.
He'd always felt drawn to that bunker, he didn't know why.  He'd
already checked it out and had found it to be empty, yet he checked it
again to make sure.

The same glittering blackness.  The same stained walls.

"Any ideas?"  said Warrender.

"He's local, born and bred.  He could be anywhere, with anyone."

"I'll check out his known relations."

Parker knew Byrne's background better than Warrender's, and knew that
even his closest relations had cut him out of their lives after his
conviction.  "Don't bother," he said.

He closed the lid of the bunker, a splinter coming away from the edge
and embedding itself in his palm.  As he drew it out, and sucked the
spot of blood that emerged from the wound, he thought back to what he'd
seen of that other yard earlier in the day, and he came to the
conclusion that he'd be better off using the manpower at his disposal
to watch Roly rather than Byrne.  "Byrne's lying low," he said.  "He'll
surface, soon enough."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Parker's night had been broken by dreams in which he found his younger
son at Roly's Yard.  There was nothing new in this.  Throughout his
career, he'd substituted family members for victims, but since he knew
of other officers who experienced the same, discomforting phenomenon,
he assumed it was normal.  Even so, he wished there were some technique
he could adopt to prevent it happening and it occurred to him that it
might be an idea to mention it to Hanson.  Right now, though, he didn't
intend to pull his mind from the purpose of their meeting: Hanson had
now had a chance to evaluate the contents of the file on Byrne, and
Parker was anxious to hear his view.

He checked him through Security and led him up to his office, making a
stab at small-talk but finding it difficult in the circumstances.  "Did
you find your way to the guesthouse all right?"

"Yes."

"Comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Good," said Parker, abruptly, and Hanson knew intuitively that Parker
had asked the question out of courtesy.  In reality, he wouldn't have
cared if he'd kipped on the platform at Piccadilly, provided he had
read the file and was about to make some valid observations.  He pulled
up a chair when Parker gestured to him to sit, and wasn't surprised
when Parker got straight to the point.

"So, how are we doing?"

"That's difficult to say," said Hanson.  "I've read the file, but I
haven't talked to Byrne and, as you are no doubt aware, even if I had,
criminal psychology isn't an exact science, so I '

"In your opinion, is Byrne our man or not?"  said Parker, bluntly, and
the remarks that Hanson had been about to make evaporated.

He had hoped to have the opportunity to lead up to what he was about to
say because he was certain that Parker wasn't going to like it.  He had
intended to begin by explaining that he had read the statements and
reports relating to the original investigation into Joseph's
disappearance with a view to trying to build up a picture of Byrne. All
he'd seen was a frightened man who had stuck rigidly to his story: he
didn't know Joey, though he had admitted to having asked him the time
on the morning that he was assumed to have disappeared.  Byrne insisted
that was coincidence, and a jury was likely to concede that it was
conceivable.  An elderly, purblind individual had said she might have
seen a boy who might have fitted Joseph's description hauled into a van
that might fit the description of a vehicle owned by Byrne, but nobody
had seen Gary pulled into a similar vehicle.

Granted, Byrne hadn't been able to come up with the name of anyone who
could corroborate that he'd been in his shop on the afternoon Gary had
gone missing, but the boy hadn't been seen outside it, either.
Therefore, there was little evidence to support Parker's assumption
that Byrne was responsible for the alleged abduction of Joseph Coyne
and that was all it was, alleged.

Hanson had then intended to move on to material that related to more
recent information.  Byrne's every movement had been watched since Gary
Maudsley's disappearance, and the police had been able to establish
that, some days ago, he had gone into the old covered market in central
Manchester.  After leaving it, he had gone to a bookshop where he met a
contact.  There had been a young child in the bookshop and the mother
had wandered away, giving Byrne the opportunity to approach him, but
Byrne hadn't taken it.  In fact, he wasn't known to have re offended
since being released, and when Hanson considered the nature of Byrne's
first offence, he couldn't help feeling that, although serious, it
didn't put him in the category of dangerous offenders.  Byrne had
succumbed to a temptation to molest a child, but the offence had
stopped short of penetration, and he hadn't taken steps to ensure that
the child wouldn't divulge what he had done.

"I'm waiting," said Parker.

Hanson suddenly decided not to bother attempting to defend his view or
persuade Parker of its validity.  He just wanted to get the session
over with so that he could pack his bags and get the hell out of
Manchester for good.  "There are certain things we don't know," he
said, 'like whether Joseph was abducted or if he was sexually abused,
but we're making those assumptions."

"There are times when we have no choice but to do that," said Parker.

"It isn't a criticism, it's an observation, as is the fact that we
currently don't know whether Gary Maudsley is a second victim."

"But that said ..."  prompted Parker.

"That said," agreed Hanson, 'if we stand by those assumptions, then
you're dealing with a predator, somebody with a history of sadistic
sexual of fences

"Let me tell you the rest," said Parker.  "Background, environment,
role models, the possibility that he himself was an abused child,
perhaps even hereditary factors for all we know all these things have
played a part in who this man has become.  Right now, he's in his mid
to late thirties, he lives alone, he's '

"Very good," said Hanson.

Wow tell me something I don't know," said Parker, and Hanson resigned
himself to the inevitable I don't need you to tell or lecture as the
other man went on, "I've been with the force for nigh-on fourteen
years.  It isn't the first time I've come across a crime committed by
someone who is clearly incapable of empathizing with another human
being, a person devoid of conscience the type of person we label a
psychopath."

"Which brings me to Byrne," said Hanson, and he wondered what Parker's
reaction was going to be.  "Byrne isn't a psychopath.  He isn't even
dangerous."

"Try telling that to the parents of the lad he molested."

"He isn't a killer," said Hanson.  "You're looking for a killer, and
you're also looking for somebody who obtained a perverse pleasure from
building that scaffold, someone for whom the ritual of the kill was
every bit as important as the fact of it."

"That's your professional opinion?"  said Parker.  "Byrne isn't a
killer?"

It's highly unlikely," said Hanson.  "He's a paedophile, granted, and
paedophilia, like rape, is about power, not sex, but Byrne doesn't
crave what many perceive to be the ultimate power the power to take
another human life.  On the contrary, he seems able to content himself
with images of children that you described as innocent.  Think about
it."

Parker thought about it.  He also thought back to the yard, the birds,
the lad he'd found with Roly.  Byrne had always disgusted him, but he'd
never frightened him.  That yard had frightened him, had caused him to
dream a dream in which he had found his youngest boy lying on a
scaffold.  "I had a dream," he said.

Hanson, aware of a subtle change in Parker, replied, "It's no easy
thing to deal with a case of this nature."

Parker looked up with eyes that were bloodshot from staring into the
darkness for hours after he woke.  "What about you?  What do you dream
of at night?"

The simple things, thought Hanson, a house, a wife, a child but the
child is never mine, and the house is falling down.  He

had gone there expecting Parker to fight his corner, to argue his case,
to attempt to persuade him that he hadn't spent the best part of five
years investigating someone for nothing, but the man now sitting in
front of him suddenly appeared not to want to do that.

"This power," said Parker, 'this desire for control over other living
things ..."  He thought about the birds, so small, so utterly
defenceless, then rose slowly to his feet.  Hanson did likewise, as if
summoned to do so.  "Come with me," said Parker.  "There's something I
want you to see."

From their vantage-point on the waste ground Parker and Hanson had a
good view of the gates to Roly's Yard.  The chain that held them closed
was dull, the links beginning to oxidize to a deep and bloody red.

They stood by the corpse of the burned-out car, the only splash of
colour the almost violent yellow of the vast industrial skips, and
close to where they stood, a starving bird was scavenging for food it
couldn't find.

Parker didn't lack imagination, but he did lack the poetic turn of
phrase that could describe in prosaic terms what he had felt as he
entered the yard, yet he managed to describe it vividly enough to
furnish Hanson with more than just an impression of what lay behind
those gates.  He also described the Emporium and spelled out what he
saw as a link between Moranti, Byrne and Roly.  "Gary once worked in
the covered market.  Brogan is working there now.  Byrne was seen
entering the covered market prior to meeting Roly at the bookshop, and
one of my men followed Roly to that same covered market after his
meeting with Byrne was over."

Parker's description of Moranti and the Emporium intrigued Hanson.  It
also troubled him, because although Moranti had denied taking Joseph
and Gary to the yard he had obviously taken Brogan, so it seemed likely
that he'd taken his predecessors.  "Bit of a coincidence, don't you
think?"

"I do," said Parker, 'and in my line of work, we're not all that keen
on coincidences."

Hanson watched the bird, its feathers dull and ragged.  Not the type of
bird that looked as though it might have come from the Emporium or the
yard.  Somewhere, thought Hanson, there had been a bird with a.
fabulous turquoise plumage.  A feather from that plumage had ended up
in the wood, and he hadn't realized its significance.  He told Parker,
who said, "There must be dozens of feathers lying around."

"Not like this," said Hanson, and as he began to describe it, Parker
saw a vision of it spinning to the ground.

They stood in silence a moment, Parker growing agitated, angry with
himself.  "I pulled the surveillance team off Byrne yesterday
afternoon."

"Was that wise?"

"I don't have endless resources, Murray.  I thought the men currently
at my disposal would be better employed watching the yard."

"I don't see anybody."

"Maybe not," said Parker, but he glanced towards Roumelia Road with its
boarded doors and windows and it wasn't necessary for him to
elaborate.

"If I were you," said Hanson, "I'd get him back under surveillance.  He
led you to Roly.  My guess is that even if he isn't the killer, he's
somehow involved in the deaths of these boys and there's no telling who
else he might lead you to."

As if to reassure himself, Parker blurted out, "Nothing too drastic can
have happened in under twenty-four hours.  If it had, I'd know about
it."

Hanson, who could think of plenty that could happen in under
twenty-four seconds, refrained from mentioning that Byrne might have
done anything: he could have done a runner for all Parker knew.
Clearly, however, Parker was aware that taking the surveillance team
from off Byrne had been a mistake.  But, with luck, it wasn't too late
to rectify that mistake.

Hanson said, "Pity your men saw Byrne entering the market, but didn't
actually see him enter the Emporium."

"Maybe he didn't go in.  Maybe he and Roly arranged to bump into
Moranti in one of the delicatessens."

"What for?"

"You're the criminal psychologist," said Parker.  "Why would they want
to meet?"

Hanson spared him an account of the network paedophiles build among
themselves, one through which they exchange support, information and
obscene material.  He said, "Where do you go from here?"

The bird had gathered up the courage to scratch an area of soil only
yards from their feet.

By lifting their eyes a fraction, they brought the gates into view and
Parker replied, "I'm going to organise my men with a view to making a
thorough search of that yard."

"How long will that take?"

"Couple of days."

"Why so long?"

"You'd be surprised," said Parker.  "I need to talk it through with my
own superior officers, then formulate a plan, obtain warrants and
inform the local council it is, after all, their property."

Hanson wouldn't have expected a problem there.  There would be no
reason for the local authority to deny the police access to the yard,
and Roly, as a squatter, would have no legal right to prevent the
police from entering it.

Parker went on, "An operation of that nature takes time to put
together, but we can't hang around too long those houses are coming
down, every last one of them.  This time next week, Mousade Road won't
exist any more.  Neither will the roads that surround it."  Even as he
spoke, Hanson formed a picture in his mind of one vast tract of waste
ground  "Superstores," said Parker.  "That's what's going up,
apparently.  Superstores and a Toys "R' Us."

The starving bird flapped lethargically to the rim of a skip, then
almost seemed to fall rather than fly into its interior as Hanson said,
"Search the yard, by all means, but if Roly is your man, and if you're
looking for the remains of other kids, you're wasting your time."

Parker wasn't having it.  "Oh, really!"

"There'd have been a particular purpose to the way he went about
murdering that boy, some reason for him leaving the remains on a
scaffold.  You recognised that there was an element of ritual to the
kill.  That's what drew you to me."

"What are you getting at?"

"I'm saying that the likelihood of him burying some of his victims on a
scaffold in a wood only to bury others in and around a house is highly
remote.  It wouldn't fit in with who he is and why he does what he
does."

"So I'm just supposed to hang around every wood in England waiting for
him to pop up with a couple of poles and a railway sleeper, am I?"

"I didn't say there weren't methods we could '

"I'm searching that yard," said Parker, and Hanson knew he'd be wasting
his breath if he tried to persuade him not to.

"Go ahead, but you won't find anything there."

"We'll soon find out," said Parker.

Parker had no choice but to take the matter to the Assistant Chief
Constable because he intended to request ground-scanning radar, and at
five K a day, that would be expensive.  However, in Parker's view it
would be a justifiable expense: a scanner would be able to determine
what lay beneath the ground and behind the walls and floors, so would
give a good indication of where the police should focus their
attention.  He'd only ever seen it used on a couple of occasions, the
monitor revealing information that meant nothing to him, the images on
screen changing as a probe was passed over earth or stroked against a
wall.

Operating it was more than a skilled job, it was an art, but that was
no excuse, thought Parker.  Ground-scanning radar ought to be there, at
his fingertips, whenever he required it.  If he could have had his way,
he'd have had a scanner stashed in his office, but there were only two
firms in the country who could offer such technology, and this was a
source of considerable irritation to Parker.  He felt that the police
ought to own equipment of that nature outright.

Assistant Chief Constable Chalker, who wore his fifty-odd years rather
better than Parker suspected he would himself, was in full uniform, the
hair almost white, but the face relatively unlined.  He looked what he
was, a man who was remarkably fit for his years.  Astute, worthy of his
position, and worthy also of the respect that his men had no hesitation
in showing.

He considered what Parker had told him, then asked a few questions of
his own.  "Is rfiere anything to indicate that either Gary or Joseph
ever went to this yard?"

"Not as such, sir, no, but we have every reason to suspect '

"And there's nothing on record to indicate that Roland

Barnes has ever been convicted of a sexual offence against

a minor?"

"No, sir."

"And the boy who was the re

"Brogan," said Parker.

"You haven't yet had the opportunity to talk to his father?"

"I've had a female officer go to the house.  Healey wasn't there, so
she talked to a few of the neighbours.  They reckon he doesn't live
there they think he's left the lad to his own devices."

"Have we made an active effort to trace where Healey is?"  "Warrender
found out that he's claiming income support.  Next time he signs on
he'll be followed, and we'll soon know

where he's living."

Chalker said nothing for a moment.  Thinking it through, thought
Parker, who hoped that, as a result, he'd come to the conclusion that
he himself had drawn: that yard had to be searched, and searched very
thoroughly.  Chalker said, "Hanson believes the yard is unlikely to
yield a result."

"He might be wrong," said Parker.  "Can we risk it?"

Chalker, mindful of the cost of a search on that scale, said, "It's a
massive and expensive undertaking," and Parker thought back to what he
knew of the type of house in which Roly lived.  Without even seeing the
interior, he could visualize its layout with its multitude of rooms set
on four distinct levels.  The basement would have to be ripped apart
and walls would have to be examined.  Floorboards would have to come
up.  Alcoves, pantries, stairwells there was no end to it.  He said, "I
don't dispute that but, God knows, it could be a graveyard.  We simply
can't risk the council moving in and discovering remains.  If it came
out that we had had our suspicions but hadn't conducted a thorough
investigation because of the cost ..."

"I realize that," said Chalker, 'but the fact is, you brought Hanson
in, and Hanson is of the opinion that we won't find anything of
interest at the yard."

"He could be wrong."

"I can't justify it," said Chalker.  "Not on what you've put in front
of me today."

It was the response that Parker had anticipated, yet he couldn't help
wishing that Chalker had seen the yard for himself before making such a
decision.

"Search the yard by all means, but stick to the resources already at
your disposal."

By that, Parker assumed he meant the men on his team, and although he'd
have trusted his life to any one of them,

none had X-ray vision; none could see through walls, floors or solid
earth.  A scanner could.

As if tapping into the vision of the task ahead Chalker broke into his
thoughts by saying, In my day, all I had was a team of men.  We often
got the result we were looking for."

Parker, who was aware that statistics appeared to dictate that the
number of serial killers had increased over the past thirty years, knew
the truth of the matter was that the police had just grown more
efficient This was due, in part, to the technology now available to
them, and it was this very technology that Chalker was denying him the
opportunity of using.  "In your day," he said, 'killers often got away
with murder."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," said Chalker, and Parker left his
office without waiting to be dismissed.

Parker went out of the station, and headed not for home but for some
park he hadn't seen for the best part of thirty years.  He wasn't sure
why he'd gone there, but he sat on a bench and watched several kids
fooling with a roundabout.  It was falling apart by degrees, the wooden
slats rotted through, the mechanism grating as they tried to make it
spin.  There was the suggestion that it might once have been painted
blue, the paint long gone, the roundabout now toning in with the
colourless swings and a slide.

They seemed too young to be out alone at this time of night, and it
struck him that they were probably of a similar age to Joseph and Gary.
He watched them as he'd never before watched kids of this age play.
Hah0 the time, they looked almost teenage.  The other half, they looked
as though they belonged there, as though they were clinging to some
vestige of a childhood which, for the most part, had been hard, as his
had been.

Some time later, they grabbed their bikes and rode off into the dark no
lights, no reflective gear, just a bunch of kids bumping on and off the
pavement, unmindful of being invisible to the traffic.  Then he eased
himself up from the bench, which had infused some of its cold dampness
into him, and drove home, the circuitous route he had chosen through
the back streets leading him past the house where he'd been born.

He was offended to find that its plain front door had been replaced by
something a little more ornate and was struck by the power that former
homes could exert on an individual.  It wasn't dissimilar to the house
where Brogan lived, a two-bed roomed affair with a bathroom installed
as an afterthought by parents who'd been accused of 'going all
posh!".

He'd been happy there, that was the difference, but then, he'd had
parents who'd loved him, and that, too, was the difference.  He didn't
know where Brogan's father was, but he knew he wasn't around not often,
at any rate.  Parker was beginning to get the impression that Healey,
wherever he was, paid little more than lip-service to parental duty,
and that wasn't love, it wasn't enough.

Nowhere near enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The roof had been repaired in the old covered market, a fresh pane of
glass set high into the dome like a jewel among paste replicas of what
the glass should be.  The sun shone through it, unhindered by dust, to
donate as hard of light on the units below, and as Brogan walked in, he
found Moranti sitting on the basket.  The minute he saw him, Brogan
knew something was very wrong.  "Mr.  Moranti?"  he said.

Moranti stood up.  "Brogan," he said, "I can't have you work here no
more."

He fished in the pocket of his gabardine coat, brought out a five-pound
note, and handed it to Brogan, saying, "You're a good boy, Brogan. Good
boy, but go now, please."

"But what have I done wrong?"

"Nothing," said Moranti.  "The police came to see me.  They said I was
breaking the law you're too young to work in the shop."

"That's not true."

Moranti looked at those childish hands, so gentle with the birds.  "I'm
very sorry, Brogan.  You have to go."

Brogan walked past him, and as he stepped out, Moranti added, "Don't go
down to the yard," but Brogan wasn't listening.  Parker had lost him
his job.  That was all he knew.

He left the covered market and crossed the road to the station, where
he caught a bus that he knew would drop him in the vicinity of the
yard.  During the ride, he looked out at surroundings that had grown
increasingly dismal the nearer he got to the suburb, and he found
himself noticing things he'd never noticed before: the trees were
losing their leaves and the few species of domestic bird that had
remained to brave the winter were fluffing inadequate feathers against
the cold.  Many looked fat despite lack of food, their feathers giving
the lie to skin and bone, and it brought to mind the scrap of a poem
cut from a magazine, something his mother had pasted on to a card.  She
had leant it on ash elf of the dresser that once dwarfed the kitchen
and when he had seen it, his father had said, "What the bloody hell's
this?"  But he hadn't destroyed it.  He hadn't crumpled it up in his
hand as he'd crumpled up her life; he'd merely read the first few
lines, then put it back as before, except that the card lay flat for a
while and his mother had left it like that, only putting it upright
again after tea, when his father had gone.

On reading the poem, Brogan had understood why his father had laughed;
its sickly sentiment being a far cry from anything that he could be
expected to relate to or draw comfort from.  Yet Brogan had searched
for it in the drawer after his mother's death, knowing she had hidden
it there after the dresser was sold.  He hadn't been able to find it,
and suddenly it had assumed an importance that was out of all
proportion to the effort she had gone to in cutting it out and pasting
it, in keeping it for months.  In thinking of it, he remembered her.
There was so much he wanted to tell her, about Roly, about the finches,
and so much he wouldn't want her to know, about his dad and Elaine.

He got off the bus and minutes later, as he crossed the waste ground
he, too, fluffed what few clothes he wore as if they could somehow
protect him from a coldness that came from within.  There was an
emptiness inside that wasn't entirely due to lack of proper food.  It
had something to do with wanting to

L L O O

be held, and he crossed the road to the yard, then rattled on the gates
in the knowledge that Roly would hold him.  Roly would ruffle his hair
with hands that were gentle.  There was nothing large or threatening
about those hands.  They didn't come out of nowhere to deliver blows
for minor misdemeanours.  His voice was never raised and his words were
never hard.  All he got from Roly was warmth, comfort and the welcome
that kept drawing him back for more.

He knew the minute the gates were opened that here too, something was
wrong.  It was almost as though Roly was reluctant to let him in, and
Brogan wondered whether Parker had had a word with him as well as
Moranti.  "What is it?"  he said.  "What's wrong?"

Roly drew him into the yard and chained the gates behind him.  "I've
got b-bad news," he said, and he led Brogan past the nesting shed and
into the kitchen.

"What?"  said Brogan, looking around, half expecting Parker to appear
demanding to know why he'd gone back to the yard when he'd specifically
told him not to.

Roly pulled a shoe-box from ash elf put it on the draining board and
slowly lifted the lid.  "I d-did my best," he said.

Brogan stared down at Tiger.  He seemed so small, his feathers dull and
matted.  Roly had arranged him on a bed of cotton wool.  Brogan's voice
was small.  "Can we bury him?"  he said, and he picked up the box as
Roly led him out and into the yard.

He let Brogan pick the spot, a corner by the fence where the metal was
curling away from the wooden frame that held it, and crouched beside
Brogan who dug with his hands, and made a hole that was big enough for
the shoe-box.  But at the last moment, Brogan said, "I don't want him
buried in that box."

"W-what, then?"  said Roly, and Brogan reached in for the bird, but
when he picked it up, the wings came away in his hands and he almost
dropped it in shock.  "His wings," he said.

Roly explained, "That's to set him fir-free.  You under-st-stand me,
Brogan.  I had to s-set him free."

Brogan, who didn't understand, studied the spots of blood that had
congealed where the wings had been ripped from the body.

"That's not him," said Roly.  "That's not h-him in your h-hand that's
all that's left behind."

Brogan cradled the bird for a moment, then placed it in the grave, its
wings beside the torso with the scraggy, twisted neck.  He'd managed to
keep his tears in check until then.  Now, they streamed down his face
and Roly pulled him close.  "Moranti killed him," said Brogan.

"He didn't mean t-to," said Roly.

He let him cry for a while, then led him back to the kitchen where he
opened the cupboard above the cooker.  The interior had been turned
into a mesh-lined bird-cage, and although he couldn't see the birds in
that cupboard, Brogan could hear them.  As Roly reached in and brought
one out, he said, in a voice that was cracked from the recent tears,
"Why do you keep them shut up?"

"They s-settle better if you keep them enclosed for a while."

He lowered his hands, then opened them, and Brogan looked at the bird
as if he had revealed some precious jewel.  Against a backdrop of such
utter drabness and filth, it seemed like some sort of bird-of-paradise,
the shimmering blues and greens of its back seeming hand-painted
somehow.  It was as though someone had made a sketch of it, leaving a
precise and careful child to colour the various sections with
felt-tipped pens.

"Only a f-freak of nature has that kind of beauty.  S-sometimes I think
they're the only proof we've got that there's a God."

Brogan cupped his hands, and Roly tipped the bird into them as he
added, "The s-secret ... the secret with Gouldians is, you have to
handle them s-soon as they feather," and Brogan stroked its back with
the tip of a finger.  The bird seemed quite at ease.

"Would you like him?"  said Roly.

Brogan, who couldn't imagine anything he wanted more than he
wanted that bird, just held it close.  "He's yours," said Roly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The news that a Mrs.  Palmer had turned up asking to see Parker in
connection with the Gary Maudsley case took Warrender down to the front
desk.

He found her sitting on a padded bench that ran round the reception
area, and he also found that she was younger than he'd expected, her
name having put him in mind of a middle-aged woman.  One day, she would
become the type of woman he had initially imagined her to be, the
jawline sagging, the waist

JO ) OO O

thick and the clothes ill-fitting and cheap.  Right now, she was tiny,
trim, and slightly overawed by her surroundings.

"Mrs.  Palmer?"  he said.

She stood up as he spoke, and Warrender drew her aside.  "You say you
have information?"

She fumbled in her bag and drew out a segment from a watch strap.
Warrender took it from her and studied it.  Initially, he didn't know
what its significance was, and then it dawned on him that it matched
what was left of the strap from Gary's watch.

"Where did you get this?"

"It's our Nathan's."

"Nathan?"

"My son, Nathan.  He did a swap with Gary.  He gave him a CD, and Gary
gave him the watch."

The name Nathan Palmer rang a bell with Warrender, and now he placed it
as being the name of the boy that he'd seen at the top of the road the
day Gary was reported missing.

He fingered the plastic, feeling it soft, stressed, the grey having
lightened to white as it stretched and then snapped.  "How did it get
broken?"

"He and a lad from his school were messing around.  This other lad
grabbed his wrist."

"Where were they at the time?"

She sounded more frightened now.  "Top of Gary's road."

"It's okay," said Warrender.  "Don't get upset."

"I know I should have come forward."

It was only then that Warrender realized she'd known about the watch
for some time, and the implications were serious.  If the watch hadn't
been ripped from Gary's wrist, then maybe he hadn't been abducted.
Maybe he'd gone missing from somewhere else.  "How long have you had
it, love?"

She didn't reply, and he said, "It's okay, really.  Just tell me."

"Weeks," she said.

"Why didn't you come forward?"

"I meant to, but I kept putting it off."

Warrender knew how it was.  People sometimes kept information to
themselves for years, afraid of getting involved and justifying the
decision not to do anything by telling themselves that what they knew
wasn't important.  Sometimes, it took a renewed media interest to
convince them that they had a duty to go forward, that if they didn't,
the perpetrator of a serious crime might not be brought to justice.
"It's okay," he said, again.  "You've done the right thing."

She seemed close to tears as he asked, "How old is Nathan?"

"Twelve."

The thought of her having a lad of twelve staggered Warrender, and she
waited for his reaction as he calculated what her age must have been
when Nathan was born.  He said, "Did he and Gary hang round together
much?"

Her reply was instant.  "No."

It was a lie, and Warrender knew it.  "You sure, love?  Because this
could be important even more important than the watch."

She faltered now.  "I don't know, but I don't want him questioned. He's
'

"I know," said Warrender, 'he's only a lad but he might be able to tell
us whether Gary ever talked about the places he went, the people he
knew."

"I'll ask him," she said.

"No," said Warrender, softly.  "We will."

Warrender took the information straight to Parker who was tempted to
interview Nathan himself, but the news that Brogan had been seen
heading for the yard prompted him to leave Hanson to deal with Nathan
while he headed for Arpley Street to wait for the boy to get home.

Hanson, who welcomed the opportunity to show what could be done if the
right techniques were employed, suggested it might be best if he were
left to interview Nathan alone, in his own home, and now, as he sat in
the front room of the Palmer household, Hanson had a good view of St.
Michael's church.  The steeple soared into the sky, a post-modern metal
spike that jutted from a yellow brick tower, its shadow falling across
a playground and the Portakabin annexes to a school that hadn't been
built to cope with the sheer volume of pupils for which it now
catered.

"Nathan," he said, and the lad glanced at his mother.  "Do you know who
I am?"

The lad shook his head and Hanson said, "I'm not a policeman, and I'm
not here to cause you a problem."

Nathan weighed him up and looked as though he didn't quite believe it.
He was, thought Hanson, fairly typical of many lads of his age, his
legs skinny, his knees, like his face, enormous and indicative of the
fact that, ultimately, he would develop into one of those tall,
gangling types who are all height and no strength in late adolescence.
That was years in the future, though.  Right now, Nathan Palmer looked
every inch a twelve-year-old, and Hanson was handling him with care.

"Truth is, we've got a bit of a problem, Nathan.  We're trying to find
a friend of yours, Gary."

At the mention of his name, Nathan looked sharply away, as if the
steeple suddenly held some kind of fascination for him.

"And we're not having much success."

Nathan kept his eyes fixed firmly on the shadow from that steeple, as
if, with luck, it might reach across the road and block out everything
that was happening to him.

"That your school?"  said Hanson.

He nodded.

"You don't have far to walk, then."

Nathan kept his eyes fixed on the shadow.  "Is he ever coming back?"

That was the thing about kids, thought Hanson.  You could never quite
predict how they were going to react.  Nathan might have spent the next
couple of hours talking about school, his friends, his family, his
hobbies anything but Gary.  Instead, he had come to the point, and
Hanson saw it as a good sign on the whole.  "We don't know," he said,
'but we'd like to try to find him, and to do that, we need to try to
discover what the circumstances were when he went missing.  That's why
the watch is important."

"What's the watch got to do with it?"

"We thought it was wrenched from his wrist.  Now we know that it
wasn't, we can forget that idea and think about where Gary might have
gone the day he disappeared."

"I don't know," said Nathan, and the comment sounded defensive, as if
he were afraid that Hanson thought he knew where Gary was, and wasn't
telling.

"I know," he said, reassuringly.  "Nobody thinks you know where he is,
or anything like that, but we're hoping you may be able to tell us
where he might be."

"How would I know?"

Hanson explained in the simplest possible terms: "It works something
like this, Nathan.  In order to find out where Gary might be, we need
to find out as much as we can about who he knew and where he went. That
might mean secret places places that only certain of his friends might
know about."

The lad was listening, at least, and at the mention of the word
'secret," he hadn't denied that he and Gary had any.  Hanson had known
many an individual to fix on the word and deny they had any secrets. We
all have secrets, thought Hanson, and he thought about the guesthouse,
his reason for going there, and that, very soon, his secret might be
out.  He said, "I know I probably seem pretty old to you, but it isn't
that long ago since I was twelve."

Nathan now took his eyes from the shadow and looked at Hanson.  His
expression gave him away in that he seemed to find it almost impossible
to imagine this man ever having been twelve.

"And what I remember ... What I remember most is that sometimes I went
to places that my parents didn't know about.  And you know why they
didn't know?"

Nathan shook his head.

"Because I didn't let them find out.  You know why?"

Again the lad shook his head.

"Because I knew they wouldn't have approved if they'd known."

He let the boy absorb the thought before he said, "Same with people if
I had friends I thought they might not approve of, I didn't bring them
home, and you know what?"

In a voice that Hanson had to strain to hear, Nathan replied, "What?"

"That's okay," said Hanson.  "It's perfectly normal.  Nobody should
ever expect you to tell them everything about yourself.  We all have
our secrets, and we're all entitled to keep them to ourselves."

Nathan didn't look too sure, but Hanson continued, "Trouble is, we've
got a bit of problem here, Nathan, because Gary's gone missing and we
don't know what's happened to him."

He noticed the way in which Nathan's mother squeezed his hand extra
hard at that, as if relating to what Gary's family must be going
through right now.  She was probably thanking God it was them and not
her, thought Hanson, and she was probably also feeling guilty for
thinking such a thing.  He said, "When something like that happens when
someone goes missing, I mean secrets have to be told because it may
make the difference between finding that person alive ... or not."

He didn't want to frighten the kid, but at the same time he had to get
it through to him that this was serious stuff.  "So, if you and Gary
ever went anywhere that your mum wouldn't have approved of, you have to
tell."

He'd put that badly.  "What I mean is, I think Gary would have wanted
you to tell.  I think he'd have said, "It's okay, Nathan, you can tell,
I'd do the same for you."  What do you think?"

"Nat," said Nathan.  "Gary called me Nat."

Hanson said, "When we care about someone, really care, we often give
them a nickname, or shorten their name.  I'm glad that Gary called you
Nat.  It means he liked you a lot.  He saw you as a friend.  Were you,
Nat?  Were you his friend?"

There was no immediate reaction.

"Did you like him enough to want to do whatever it took to get him
found?"

That hit the mark.  Hanson saw it in physical signs, the sudden slump
to the shoulders, the way that he glanced out of the window to St.
Michael's, and followed the shadow of that steeple as it fell across
the Portakabin classrooms.

To Nathan, it didn't seem five minutes since he and Gary had hidden
behind them, smoking, and Nathan, who hadn't seen much of him lately,
had said, "What you bin up to then?"

"Workin'," said Gary.

"Nice one.  Where?"

"Down the covered market."

"Who for?1

"Moranti."

Nathan had exhaled as Gary said, "He took me to see this yard."  He had
stopped then, as if unsure that he should say anything more, and
Nathan, who couldn't have given a toss one way or another whether he
told him or not, had left him to it Tun o' birds," said Gary.  "You've
never seen anything like it," and the following weekend, he'd taken him
to see.

Right from the start, Nathan had sensed there was something wrong with
that place.  He'd hated the way the net had caught at his face, and had
hated, also, the way the birds rose up as if to attack.  He'd said,
"Where is he then, this Roly}' but Gary hadn't replied.

The brightness had gone from the day, the sun no longer warm on their
backs, the yard more shadow than substance.  Gary had continued to
shout for Roly, and Nathan had been aware that the yard echoed in a way
that a place of this type could not, in reality, echo.  His voice had
faded away on a breeze that had seemed to chill them through, but Roly
hadn't appeared, and as the seconds ticked by, Nathan had grown
increasingly afraid.

"Look at them," said Gary.  "Amazing, or what?"  but despite his having
described the birds as amazing, Nathan had realized from the start that
not all the finches were beautiful: some were demoniac in type, their
plumage dark, their eyes watchful.  He had spotted a cardboard box
standing by the nesting shed, and had gone over to it.  The lid, damp
from rain, had collapsed inwards to reveal the remains of finches,
Scarlets, Gary had said, their feathers red as though each had been
pierced through the throat, and he had drawn away from it, his hand to
his mouth, the stench incredible.

"It's only birds," said Gary.

"Yeah, but how did they die?"

"The weather," said Gary.  "They can't take the cold," but Nathan had
felt there was something terribly broken about those tiny, scarlet
things, something inexplicable about their being there at all.  He had
looked up, had seen a figure staring down from a window, and had
panicked then, running for the net, Gary shouting after him, "Nat,
where you off?"

He didn't know, and he didn't much care.  All he had known was that the
yard and everything in it had spoken of danger.

"What is it?"  said Hanson, but it wasn't to him that Nathan turned, it
was to his mother, his voice breaking as he said, "You know you said
never to smoke?"

She squeezed his hand.

"Gary smoked," he said, 'and he gave me a fag."

She squeezed again.

At last, thought Hanson, because he recognized the admission for what
it was: the drip of information that might become a flood, the
confirmation of what Parker had suspected Gary Maudsley had gone down
the yard.  He smiled at the lad in front of him and said, "Me, I smoked
like a chimney when I was twelve," and the lad launched into a
confession that had been on his mind since he saw a photo of the
missing Gary Maudsley in the press.  Have you seen this boy?  it said,
and Nathan, who hadn't seen him lately, had thought, No, but I know
where he's gone .. .

Parker could almost have timed it to the moment when Brogan turned the
corner at the top of the street, and he saw at a glance that he nursed
a cardboard box in his hands, one that was just about the right size
for a finch.

He saw him fish for the key that hung from the string round his neck,
and as he lifted it to the lock, Parker couldn't help allowing his
imagination to furnish him with an image of Roly wrapping that string
round his hand and strangling him with almost casual ease.

He pushed away the image, climbed out of the car, and called out,
"Brogan."

The lad swung round on him but didn't speak, and Parker broke the
impasse by saying, "Where did you get the bird?"

The lie was quick and convincing: "Moranti gave it me."

"Kind of him," said Parker, and if his tone was dry, he didn't doubt it
was lost on Brogan, who twisted the key in the lock and opened the
door.

There was something especially child-like about the way he then stepped
across the threshold and tried to close the door on Parker, as if by
doing so he could make him disappear.  It put Parker in mind of the way
his eldest had played hide-and-seek as a toddler.  Parker would count
to ten, and instead of running off to hide, his son would simply stay
in the room but turn his back on him, convinced that because his dad
was now invisible to him he would be invisible to his dad.  Parker had
played along, pretending to search the house in a vain attempt at
finding him, but, right now, he wasn't in the mood for pretending to be
invisible and he jammed his foot in the door.  "Mind if I come in?"

"What for?"

"I'd like to talk to your dad."

"He isn't in."

"I'll wait."

"He won't be back till tonight."

"How about a cup pa then?"  said Parker, and he pushed his way gently
into the hall, knowing that short of ordering him out, there was
nothing Brogan could do but let him in.

He closed the door and followed Brogan into a back room, watching as he
put the box on a table strewn with crockery.

"Where've you been today?"

"Working."

"I thought you only worked Saturdays?"

"Mr.  Moranti was sick.  I had to look after the shop."

"You should be at school."

"I couldn't let him down, could I?"

"How did you know he was sick?"

"He phoned."

Parker had tried to contact Brogan's father by phone and had learned
that the Healeys phone had been cut off, but he let it go.  "Well, it
was good of you to help him, just this once."  He smiled, but Brogan
didn't return the smile.

"Sit down a minute, Brogan.  I don't bite."

Brogan edged round the couch and sat in the only chair as Parker
indicated a photograph on the mantelpiece.  "That your mother?"

The question had been unexpected, and Brogan merely nodded.

"Where is she?"

"Dead."

Parker could have kicked himself.  "I'm sorry," he said.

"S'okay," said Brogan, 'you weren't to know."

"It must be hard for your dad, bringing you up on his own."

This met with no response, and Parker added, "Sometimes, a lad needs a
mother as much as a father.  I expect you miss her?"

"She's been dead ages."

"How long?"

"A couple of years."

"Must seem a long time to you."

He looked at the boy and wondered what was running through his head.
The expression on his face as he looked at the photo it was all that
Parker could do not to pull him close and try to set his world to
rights again.  But he couldn't set his world to rights.  Nobody could.
Short of bringing his mother back to life and supplying him with the
kind of background Parker tried to give to his own two boys, nobody
could set his world to rights.

"What you doin' here?"  said Brogan, bluntly.

Parker heard the sound of scratching coming from the box.  "I wanted a
word with your dad, that's all'

"He won't be back till late."

Parker was sorely tempted to say he knew very well that Brogan's dad
wouldn't be back at all because he didn't live there, but he resisted
the impulse and said, "Pity.  I could have done with having a word."

"What about?"

Cautiously now, Parker replied, "Roly's Yard.  I wanted to let him know
I found you there the other day."

"What's wrong with that?"

"How often have you been back?"

Guiltily, though not knowing why he should feel guilty about it, Brogan
replied, "Couple of times.  Why?"

"What's the attraction?"

"Why do I go there, you mean?"

"Something like that."

Brogan fell silent again, and Parker gave him time.

"I like it down there."

"What do you like about it?"  said Parker, gently.

"The birds.  Roly gave me a Gouldian.  You ever seen a Gouldian?"

"I don't believe I have," said Parker, and Brogan went over to the
table and picked up the box.  "I'm gonna keep him in my bedroom, and
I've got to settle him down, so you'll have to go."

He opened the door, as if expecting Parker to oblige by walking through
it and out of the house, but as he got up from the chair, Parker merely
said, "I'll come up with you."

"You can't."

"I'd like to see your bird."

"I don't like people going in my room."

Parker could understand that.  At Brogan's age, he'd also felt the need
to exclude adults from his room, though there was nothing in there that
warranted the ferocity with which he had sometimes protected his
privacy.

He wasn't interested in invading Brogan's privacy, but he was
interested in seeing what, if any, posters hung on the wall in his
bedroom.  Posters could give an indication of an adolescent's

likely sexuality, though Parker was willing to admit that such markers
often weren't as reliable as one might wish on the grounds that, six
months ago, he'd been convinced that his eldest was well on the way to
becoming the next Lily Savage.  "Tell you what," he said, 'soon as
we've settled the bird into his new home, I'll be off, I promise

It was a deal, of sorts, and Brogan accepted the terms.  "All right,"
he said.

Parker followed him up the stairs to a bedroom at the front, and even
as he entered the room, the way it was furnished and decorated struck
him as inappropriate for a lad of Brogan's age.  The wallpaper print of
racing cars would have been more suitable for a boy of four, and he
noticed a total absence of posters, CDs, or anything else that boys of
Brogan's age tended to acquire.  He had hoped to be able to draw him
into conversation in order to learn more about him by asking what music
he liked, what sports he played, who his friends were, but there was
nothing in the room to give him a pointer as to where he should
start.

He watched as Brogan tipped the bird out of the box, holding it in one
hand as he fiddled with the wire on the door to the cage.  It was a far
cry from the multi-levelled cages of bamboo that Parker had seen at
Moranti's Emporium.  This cage was a cheap affair that had seen more
than its fair share of birds.

He noticed there were no ornaments jammed between the bars and recalled
that the cage in Gary's room had contained none of the paraphernalia
that he had associated with birds.  Maybe finches didn't like to look
at themselves in mirrors, or maybe they had no need of the calcium that
could be obtained from the shell of a cuttlefish.  Parker didn't know
and, what's more, he wasn't bloody interested: he had enough on his
plate without filling his mind with trivia relating to the care of
birds.

He watched as Brogan transferred the bird to the cage, and the minute
he saw it, he remembered having seen similar birds darting around in
the aviary.  At the time, his mind had been on other things and he
hadn't stopped to study them.  Now that he was seeing a Gouldianat
close quarters, he was taken aback: the bird was so brightly coloured,
it seemed almost fluorescent.

"It's a lovely lookin' bird, Bro.  Are they hard to keep?"

"They die easy.  Moranti buys 'em sometimes, but they don't live more
than a day."

Minutes earlier, Brogan had told him Moranti had given him the bird.
Parker now tricked him by saying, "And Roly gave him to you?"

Brogan looked up in alarm.  "I didn't steal him."

"The thought never entered my head.  Just wondering, though.  Why would
Roly give you a bird like that?"

"He likes me."

Parker wondered how best to phrase his next question.  There seemed no
subtle way of asking it.  "He doesn't ..."  He stopped himself.  This
wouldn't sound right, and he knew it.  "There's nothing he does that
worries you at all?"

"Like what?"  said Brogan.

"I don't know things you don't like, maybe?"

Brogan fiddled with the clasp on the door to the cage.  "You'd better
go," he said.  "If my dad walks in and finds a copper in the house,
I'll be in dead trouble."

Parker watched as he lifted the cage and put it on the pale pink vanity
unit.  The bird saw itself in the mirror and hopped up to the
reflection as far as the bars would allow.  "Brogan," said Parker, and
now he made a statement.  "Your dad isn't coming home, is he."

"He is he '

"He isn't," said Parker, 'and I want you to come to the station with
me, just to look at some photos.  Will you do that, Brogan?  Will you
come down the station?  There's nothing to worry about."

The boy was panicking now.  "I know what you're thinkin', Mr.
Parker."

Parker doubted it, but didn't say so.

Brogan turned on him angrily.  "Roly isn't nickin' stuff to pay for
feedin' his birds!"

Relieved, Parker suddenly smiled.  "I don't think that."  He shook his
head to himself.  "I don't think that at all."

Brogan had never seen the interior of a police station before, much
less an interview room.  He was taken into a room where a female
officer, somebody Parker called Maureen, brought him biscuits and
something to drink.

"Sit down," said Parker, and Brogan sat, his nerves steadying now.

"Have a biscuit," said Parker, and he indicated the plate.

Brogan took a biscuit and bit into it as Parker pulled two photographs
out of a file.  He put them on the table and said, "Take a good look at
them, Brogan.  Recognize either of them?"

Brogan studied the photographs, and Parker noticed that he paused at
the one of Gary.

"That's the photo you showed me in the car."

"That's right," said Parker.  "Do you know who the other boy is?"

"No."

"Joseph Coyne," said Parker.  "He and Gary used to work for Mr. Moranti
just like you."

Brogan took another bite from the biscuit, eating it as if it were dry
in his mouth.

"He introduced them to Roly," said Parker.  "And then they
disappeared."

In a voice that was muffled by crumbs, Brogan said, "That's not Roly's
fault, though, is it?"

"Brogan," said Parker, gently, "Joey is dead, and maybe Gary, too."

Noticing that the comment had struck home, Parker indicated the photos
once again.  "Have you ever heard Roly or Moranti mention these
boys?"

"No," said Brogan.

"Don't just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head think
about it."

Brogan shoved the plate of biscuits aside.  "You've got it in for Roly.
He doesn't know where they are."

Parker exchanged a look with Maureen, then turned his attention back to
Brogan.  "Where's your dad, Brogan?"

"At home."

"He's never there."

"How would you know?"

"I've called a number of times."

"He's out a lot."

"Does he sleep at home?"

"Yeah."

"Don't lie to me, Brogan."

He could see that the boy was beginning to get upset now, imagining all
kinds of scenarios, no doubt.  For all Parker knew, his dad might have
primed him about not telling anyone that he wasn't living there most of
the time.  They'll put you in care, so keep it shut ... "Nobody wants
to cause you or your dad any problems, but we do have to make sure
you're being looked after properly."

"I can look after myself."

"Where is he, Brogan?"

He clammed up, much as Parker had feared he might.

"I tell you what you're going to stay at this station until we find
your dad."

He was getting nothing from Brogan now, just the threat of tears, and
he said, Think about it, Brogan.  There are two photos on that desk.
could easily be three."

The threat of tears spilled over.  "He works," said Brogan.  "Not all
the time, just sometimes the DSS doesn't know."

"Where does he work?"

"Hell kill me if he finds out I '

"Where?"

"Stockton's."

"The wire-weaving place?"

A nod confirmed it, and Parker softened now.  "I'll go and have a word
with him," he said.  He stood up.  "And while I'm gone, someone's going
to talk to you.  He's not a copper, so don't be scared, but he'll want
to ask a few questions, find out how you feel about certain things.
Okay?"

He got a nod from Brogan, who was still staring down at the photos, and
then he left the room and contacted Hanson.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Hanson arrived at the station, and Parker led him down a corridor on
the ground floor.  The doors off it concealed a string of interview
rooms, most of them occupied, and as Parker opened the door to the room
where Brogan was being held, Hanson took stock of it.

In many respects, it was similar to others where he had interviewed
prisoners when compiling the database, and he wondered whether Parker
was aware of just how threatening an environment like this could be to
a boy of twelve.  The smallness of the room, the fact that there was no
window all these things could only serve to punch home the message that
this was serious business.  And then he wondered whether Parker had
chosen this room intentionally.  So far, Brogan had ignored all his
warnings, and it was just possible, he decided, that Parker was getting
tired, or desperate, or both.

He looked down at the lad, who seemed all the more tiny, sitting, as he
was, behind a table that was level with his chest.  The childish hands
were clutching a half-eaten biscuit, and sitting beside the plate was
an untouched plastic beaker of orange squash.  "Brogan," he said, and
the boy looked scared disorientated, in fact.

Hanson pulled the chair round to the side so that the desk didn't
divide him from the boy, sat down, and said, "Can I have a biscuit?"

Brogan pushed the plate towards him, and Hanson took one, bit into it
and found it crisp, fresh out of a packet.  "Not bad," he said, 'but my
mum could make them better."

Brogan put down his biscuit.

"How about your mum, Brogan?  Could she make them better than that?"

"She didn't make biscuits," said Brogan, and Hanson, who had intended
to use whatever response Brogan gave, replied, "What did she make?
Anything?"

"Cakes," said Brogan.

"Would you rather have a cake than those biscuits?"

He shrugged.  "Not bothered."

"Not hungry?"  said Hanson.

"Not bothered, that's all'

Hanson turned to Maureen, saying, "Don't suppose you could nip down the
canteen and see if they've got any cakes, could you?"  Once she along
with the uniform she wore was out of the room, he said, "My mum died
when I was a kid."

Brogan reached for the squash.

"I was older than you.  Seventeen.  I don't suppose I was a kid as such
any more.  But then, I don't suppose you are, either."

Brogan was shutting him out, thought Hanson.  Or maybe not.  Maybe what
he was shutting out was the pain of the conversation, his surroundings,
his inability to handle the situation as a whole.  "When somebody dies,
somebody as important as our mum, it makes us grow up fast.  It did me,
anyway."

Brogan, who'd never thought about it in those terms, took a gulp of the
squash.

"Thing is," said Hanson, 'it doesn't much matter how old you are.  You
could be fifty, and it wouldn't matter.  You'd still feel bad about
your mum dying.  But you ..."  Brogan put down the plastic beaker.  He
wouldn't look at

Hanson.  '... you must have been about eleven when your mum died."

"Ten," said Brogan.  "I was ten."

"And now you're twelve," said Hanson, 'but it doesn't get any easier,
does it?"

It hadn't been his intention to make him cry, but he had the feeling
that Brogan had needed to stop biting back the tears.  He cried like a
much younger boy, his hands balled up into fists which he rubbed
against his eyes, and it was at times like these that Hanson hated his
job.

He let him cry for what seemed a good while long enough at any rate for
Maureen to slip back into the room with a small iced cake.  When Brogan
had calmed down a bit, Hanson said, "At least you've found a friend."

Brogan, his face pale, stared at the small iced cake.  "Mr.  Parker
doesn't like Roly."

"No, but you do, and you wouldn't like him if you didn't have good
reason."

This sounded something like approval, and Brogan replied, "He's great
to me, Roly.  You should see his yard."

The memory of standing on that waste ground and listening to Parker's
description of what lay behind those gates flitted into Hanson's mind.
He said, "Trouble is, you may not be safe at the yard."

"That's just Mr.  Parker making it up."

"Gary and Joseph were known to have gone to the yard."

"That's not Roly's fault."

"Maybe not," said Hanson, soothingly.  "But Mr.  Parker has to check
these things out.  and until he's sure it's safe, he'd

rather you didn't go there."

He could almost guess at what was passing through Brogan's mind.  On
the one hand, he would probably be able to see the logic in that.  On
the other, he would automatically want to leap to Roly's defence, if
only to convince himself that Roly really was his friend.  He said, "To
tell you the truth, I can see

Mr.  Parker's point of view, but I can also see why you don't see any
reason why you shouldn't go there.  After all, Roly's just about the
only friend you feel you have at the moment, and it's not as though
he's ever done anything that worries you."

He thought he detected something telling in the way that Brogan looked
away a fraction, and Hanson spoke again, phrasing his words carefully.
"He hasn't, has he, Brogan?  In the few weeks you've known him, he
hasn't done one single thing you didn't like?"

"No," said Brogan, but he couldn't help thinking back to the moment
when Roly had given him the Gouldian.

"He's yours," said Roly, and then he had kissed him, not on the lips,
but the eyes.

Brogan had pulled away, not violently, but gently, more confused than
afraid, and Roly had said:

"Look at the c-colour you've gone like a little Scarlet finch," and
Brogan had reached for his throat as if there were blood on his
feathered breast.

"You shouldn't have done flat.  You shouldn't have kissed me like
that."

"I th-thought we were friends?"

"We are," said Brogan, 'but leave my eyes alone."

Hanson watched him play with the small iced cake.  "Brogan?"  he
prompted, but Brogan pressed his fingers into the icing: two sad eyes,
a cherry for a nose, and a smile that resembled a twist.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Over recent years, reports in the local press had portrayed Stockton's
as being on the brink of liquidation, but as Parker drove under the
barrier that had been raised to admit him, he saw no sign of the
company going down.  He wasn't there to question how Healey managed to
keep the job quiet from the DSS.  He only wanted to get it home to him
that his boy was in danger.

The large prefabricated units that had replaced their Victorian
predecessors seemed crammed to capacity with men, most of them working
machinery that spewed out coils of wire in varying gauges, and Parker
was directed to one of the units

by a foreman who pointed Healey out, then left him to it.

Parker found Healey standing on a production line, lengths of wire
streaming past like strands of silken thread, and although he made the
right moves, he was working on autopilot, his mind elsewhere.  Parker
guessed he'd been doing the same job for years.  He was built for it,
the arms long and muscular, the face without humour.  Brogan, thought
Parker, must have taken after his mother, and he suddenly had an
impression of a woman who was slightly built, her face pale, her eyes
large, her hands, like those of a child, small and neat.

He walked up to Healey, and could barely make himself heard above the
noise.  "Mr.  Healey?"  he said, producing his ID.

Healey didn't bother to speak.  He knew from experience that nobody
could hold a conversation in front of one of the machines.  With a
truculent nod he indicated a door at the far end of the unit, and
Parker followed him out.

They walked into a bitter wind, Healey reaching for cigarettes the
instant he stepped outside: a reflex action, thought Parker, one born
of true habit.  He may not even have wanted a smoke, but years of
taking whatever opportunity arose had forced his hand to his overall
pocket for the fags he knew would be there.  He offered one to Parker,
who declined and watched the other man light up as a fork-lift shifted
a stack of pallets across his field of vision.

"What's this about?"  said Healey, and even then, Parker knew that
Healey was no friend of the police.  The man's face was not familiar,
but Parker wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he had form. He'd
check it out "You've got a lad Brogan."

"What about him?"

Parker wasn't about to dive in with the news that Brogan was currently
at the station being questioned by Hanson.  He decided to work his way
up to that one, and started off by saying, "I gave him a lift home the
other day."

Suspicious and defensive, Healey said, "Where from?"

"Roly's Yard."

"Never heard of it,"

"Neither had I, till I went down there to make some enquiries into a
case I'm currently investigating."

"What kind of case?"

This was where it got tricky, thought Parker.  He wanted nothing more
than to be able to say he was investigating the disappearance of two
boys, that a known paedophile had unwittingly led him to Roly's Yard,
and that he had taken one look at the place and had decided Roly
warranted further investigation, but he couldn't say that not unless he
wanted to find himself up on a disciplinary.  If he implied to a member
of the public that he'd questioned Roly in connection with the missing
boys, Roly would have good cause for complaint.

"I'm not at liberty to say," he said.

"So what's the problem?"  said Healey, and Parker wondered how to go
about explaining what it was about the yard that had brought him
here.

Finally, he said, "Roly's Yard is a squat.  It's got a massive aviary
tacked on to the back of it."  He added weight to the words as he
added, "The kind of place a kid of Brogan's age might be attracted
to."

"Brogan doesn't like birds, not that I know of."

Healey was missing the point, and Parker wondered how he could make it
clearer without being too on the nose.  "Man lives there on his own,
name of Roland Barnes."

"Name means nothing to me," said Healey.

Parker struggled on.  "During the course of my enquiries, I've had
cause to call on him."

"What are these enquiries?"

"I cant say."

"What was our Brogan doing there?"

"I don't know."

Lighting a fresh cigarette from the first, Healey said, "Look, Mr.
..."

"Parker," said Parker.

"What are you getting at?"

"Nothing.  I'm just trying to let you know that your lad's hanging
around with someone I've got my eye on at the moment."

"What's he done, this bloke?"

"Nothing, that we know of."

"He's not one of these ..."  Parker left him to find the words, and
Healey said, "He's not been touchin' him up it's nothin' like that?"

There was nothing Parker wanted more than to be able to say exactly
what he thought, but he couldn't do it.  "I'm zoi not implying that.
I'm just saying we're watching him at the moment."

"Is he nickin' stuff!  Is that what this is about?"

Again, Parker replied, "Like I said, I can't say.  We're just watching
him, that's all."

"So he hasn't done anything that you know of, but you just don't like
the look of him.  Is that it?"

Parker began to lose patience.  He couldn't believe that Healey didn't
have at least some vague idea of what he was indirectly trying to tell
him.  Nobody could be that thick, but what they could be, and what
Healey clearly intended to be, was uncooperative.  "Mr.  Healey," he
said, "I'm struggling with this one help me out.  I'm constrained by
the law with regard to what I can and can't imply, and I can't tell you
what our concerns are because we don't have any proof.  For all we
know, Roly might be Manchester's answer to Mother Theresa, but until
the Pope can confirm it, I'd rather play on the safe side and make sure
you know that Brogan's been seen down his yard."

"Sounds to me like you've got it in for the bloke."

Parker's patience snapped.  "Right, Mr.  Healey, I spend my days trying
to decide who to pick on next that's the trouble with being a copper,
there's fuck all else to do."

There were times, thought Parker, when a little anger went a long way,
and he was relieved when Healey said, "Look, if it'll get you off my
back, I'll have a word with him later."

"Good," said Parker, 'but later won't do.  You'll have to talk to him
now."

"I'm workinY

"You're also claiming income support."

The change that came over Healey brought joy to Parker's heart.  On the
one hand, the man was furious that Parker knew, on the other he was
suddenly very wary.  Parker thought he detected a note of something
approaching respect as Healey said, "Where's our Brogan now?"

"Down the station," said Parker.  He smiled.  "I'll give you a lift if
you like."

Healey threw the cigarette to the ground and crushed it as if he wished
that he had Parker under his heel, but as Parker made for his car, he
followed reluctantly.

Once they reached the station, Parker took Healey into the room where
Brogan was being held.  It was obvious to Parker that Brogan had been
crying, and his heart went out to the kid, but Hanson seemed to have it
under control: they'd walked in to find that he had his arm round the
boy, comforting him.

"What diejwk's goin' on?"  said Healey.

"Mr.  Healey," said Parker, and his voice held a note of warning, but
the look that Healey shot Brogan told Parker that once he got him home,
there'd be trouble.  "Your lad's had a bit of a rough time," he said.
"Maybe you could ..."  but Healey wasn't having any of that.

He took at step towards Hanson.  "Take your hands off him."

"I'm not a copper," said Hanson.  "I'm only trying to help."

Take your fuckin' hands off him."

Brogan shrank away as his dad took a step towards them, but Parker
grabbed Healey's arm and held him back.  "Lighten up," he said.
"Nobody's hurting Brogan."

Healey shook him off and grabbed his boy.  "You're comin' home."

Parker had had enough of Healey for one day.  He pulled him off Brogan,
who clung to Hanson as if he were a lifeline, shoved him out of the
interview room and pushed him up against the wall of the corridor.
"What the hell are you playing at?"

"You don't frighten me."

"Then you have me at a disadvantage," said Parker, 'because you
frighten me."  He grabbed Healey by the throat and slammed his head
against the breeze-block wall.  "People like me end up lying awake at
nights through men like you men who don't know the meaning of the words
parental responsibility.  You frighten me because the minute you walk
out of here, you'll carry on as before.  You don't give a shit

Healey was breathing rapidly, every muscle in his body tense.  He
clearly wanted to lash out at Parker, who loosened his grip.  "Come
on," he said.  "Have a go."  But Healey didn't have the guts, and
Parker, mindful that there were people around, some of them suspects
being led to and from the interview rooms, couldn't afford to take it
any further.  And he left it.

Even so, Healey pointed a finger inches from Parker's face.  "I want to
speak to your superior officer."

"And tell him what?"  said Parker.  "That you've left your boy to fend
for himself?"

Guilt, fear, denial perhaps it was one or a combination of these things
that made Healey respond with, "I'm around."

"You don't live with Brogan."

"Don't be fuckin' ridiculous where else would I be livin'?"

"You tell me."

"I look after my boy."

"I don't think so," said Parker.  "Tell me, what kind of father are
you?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"You leave him alone he's twelve, Mr.  Healey.  You leave him alone to
fend for himself."

"I was bringin' a wage home at his age."

"You brought it home.  I'm assuming there was somebody at home to
receive it a mother, a father.  Just because he's got a roof over his
head, you think he's sorted."

"It's none of your business," said Healey, but Parker said again, "You
don't live with Brogan."

"Yes, I do," Healey insisted, and Parker knew then that he was well
aware that what he was doing was wrong.

"You know it's against the law," said Parker.  "I could have you done,
get Brogan put into care."

"I look after him," said Healey.

Parker replied, "The other day, one of my officers tried to call on
you.  She saw a box on the doorstep.  She opened the lid.  There were a
few bits of food in it.  Is that what you mean, Mr.  Healey, when you
say you're around, that you look after him?"

"I give him money.  He doesn't go short."

"He isn't starving, if that's what you mean, but I wouldn't say he
doesn't go short.  Still, Social Services will no doubt assess his
domestic situation, and take a decision on his future."

"You bastard!"  said Healey.  "What gives you the right '

Parker, who knew the only thing he could do was keep Social Services
informed and hope they'd sort it out, said, "I've got no choice but to
let you take Brogan home with you right now.  Believe me, if I had, I
wouldn't do it but if you so much as give him a sideways look, or spend
one night away from that house, I'll know, and I'll come down on you
like a ton of shit.  You got that?"

Healey appeared to have got it,

"Where are you living?"  Parker insisted, and Healey suddenly realized
he didn't intend to leave it.  "Anton Close," he said.  "Number
nine."

"There now," said Parker.  "That wasn't so difficult, was it?"

"Look, I'll move back with Brogan," said Healey, but he sounded
reluctant and Parker said: "You do that, and make sure you stay there.
In the meantime, forget about your job.  I'll contact Stockton's tell
them you've been head hunted

"Bastard," muttered Healey.

Tin not doing it to cause you a problem," said Parker.  "I'm doing it
so that you can be around, at home, to keep an eye on your lad and make
sure he doesn't go back down that yard."

"You still haven't said what the problem is."

Parker couldn't even imply that Brogan was in danger without infringing
Roly's rights and replied.  "I can't."

For the first time since Parker had got him to the station, Healey
softened.  "What's going on?"

"Keep him away from the yard," said Parker.  "Hear me?"

Healey heard.

Brogan climbed out of the patrol car and wondered what was coming to
him once it had driven off.  His dad hadn't spoken a word on the way
home, and when he flicked the light switch in the hall only to find
that the house remained in darkness, Brogan braced himself.  "What's
goin' on?"  said Healey.

"They cut the lecky off."

"When?"

"Two days ago."

"How come?"

"Bill wasn't paid."

"When did the final demand come in?"

"Ages ago."

"You didn't say nothin' to me."

"I did I brought it round."

"Jesus Christ," said Healey.  "All right, I'll sort it."

He went to the kitchen and fumbled around in a cupboard for candles,
found some and lit one.  The walls looked pocked, their every
imperfection standing out in relief against the plaster.

Brogan watched as he opened the fridge and drew out a couple of pies.
He put them on a tray and shoved them in the oven, forgetting that it
ran off electricity and cursing when it wouldn't light.  He dragged
them out and put the pies on plates, handed one to Brogan and said,
"Can you manage it cold?"

They sat in the adjoining room, the candle on the mantelpiece, the pies
on plates on their knees, and his father said, "This yard ..."

"What about it?"

"What goes on down there?"

"NothinY

"Why do you go there?"

"To see the birds."

"That all?"

"Why else would I go?"

Healey didn't know, but much though he didn't have any time for the
police, he couldn't help thinking that Parker wouldn't be making a fuss
like that for nothing.  "What's he like, this bloke?"

"What bloke?"

"Roly," said Healey.  "Who did you think I meant?"

"Dunno," said Brogan.  "Mr.  Parker maybe?"

"Don't push your luck," said Healey, quietly.  "You know who I mean."

"He's all right," said Brogan.

"What's he up to?"

"Nothin'."

"He's not..."  Healey struggled to find a way of describing the only
thing he really feared '... touching you up

"He breeds finches," said Brogan.  "He pays me to clean the cages."

"That all?"

"That's all," said Brogan.

Healey spoke through a mouthful of pie, the pastry dry and sticking to
his teeth.  "I don't want you going down there no more."

"Parker's got it all wrong."

"I don't care.  I don't need Parker breathing down my neck, so give it
a rest."

He'd expected cries of protest, but got only a quiet look of defiance.
Instead of rising to it, though, Healey made an effort, tried to see it
from Brogan's point of view.  "You must get fed up, here a lot on your
own."

Z07

"It's quiet," said Brogan, and he looked automatically at the photo of
his mother.

Healey leant forward and picked it up off the mantelpiece, looked at it
as if for the first time, and said, "She was good to me."

Brogan had seen this before, the surge of sentimentality that followed
a violent outburst of the kind that had taken place earlier, at the
station.

"She was a dreamer, your mum.  She wanted a lot out of life more than I
could give her."

She didn't complain, though, thought Brogan.  She knew better than to
criticize his dad knew what she'd get if she did.

"We all start off with dreams.  We don't expect to make a difference to
the world not most of us, anyway we just expect that, somehow, it'll be
different for us."  He put the photo down.  "I loved her a lot."

Brogan suddenly saw him grab his mother and whirl her round a room that
was far too small for happiness, for dancing, for forgiveness.  Even
so, she'd laughed like a girl, and he'd held her face in those
overlarge hands, had kissed her, and Brogan had felt a stab of jealousy
then an unreasonable thing, but he felt it almost as deeply as he'd
felt her death, as though a part of his mother was being stolen away
from him.

"Looks like I'll have to come home," said Healey.  "I'll nip off to
Elaine's later tell her what's goin' on."

Brogan, who wasn't so sure that he wanted his dad around any more, said
nothing.

"I'll tell her what's happened and ask her if she'd like to move in
with us."

Brogan cut the pie, a slow, rhythmical slicing of the knife, as if the
knife were blunt or his hands were cold or both.

"Nothing much'll change, but you'll have us for company."

Brogan chewed the filling, more gristle than meat.

"Well?"  said Healey.

Brogan stopped chewing.  "She's not my mum."  "Nobody's sayin' she
is."

Brogan jumped to his feet, the plate crashing to the floor as he ran
for the door.  "You killed my mum."  "Brogan '

"You killed her, you killed her and I'm gonna tell Mr.  Parker '

"Don't you run out when I'm Calkin' to you!  Don't you

Brogan!"

When Brogan returned to the house, he found the candle snuffed and his
father gone.  He relit the candle and found that his dad had left a
note, the words "Elane', and 'back layter', the only ones he could
decipher.  As he read it, he trod into the carpet the remains of the
pie that had fallen from his plate.  His dad had left it there as a
statement.  You threw it, you clear it up.  There had once been a time
when Brogan would have done so.  Now, he left it.  This was no longer
his home.  By inviting Elaine to live there, his father would drive all
memory of his mother out of the house.  There'd be nothing to stay
for.

He tried to visualize what the room might be like if Elaine and her
kids moved in.  The chest of drawers that his mother had kept polished
along with the dresser would be spoiled.  Soon, there'd be scratches,
figures drawn in crayon on the side, rings from mugs set straight down
on to the surface without a coaster.

He took what was left of the candle up to his room where he balanced it
on the vanity unit.  The wax dripped down to form milky pools the
colour of the moon, and the room was lit by a yellowish light that
flickered and jumped and played.  He reached into the cage and brought
out the Gouldian, setting it free and noting that it made straight for
the rail that ran round the room, an instinctive need to gain height
and therefore safety.

His mother would have liked it, he decided.  His mother would have
bought him felt-tipped pens so he could draw it.  She'd have pinned his
every effort on to the door of the kitchen, and she'd have told him the
drawings were great even if they weren't.

He went to the window and looked out on the houses opposite, their
curtains closed tight on the early-evening darkness.  He knew his dad
well enough to have understood that there was no point arguing: no
matter what he felt about it, he'd be back later, having spoken to
Elaine, and ultimately, she'd move in with her kids, whether he liked
it or not.

He drew the curtains closed, but one of them snagged on the runner.  He
pulled again and it came away altogether, a ragged, half-hung thing, so
he yanked it down completely to leave the window bare.

From its vantage-point on the picture rail, the bird watched Brogan
pull the remaining curtain from its runner.  He threw it down on the
floor on top of books he had owned for longer than he could remember.
The pictures were brightly coloured, the words beneath them printed in
large, bold letters.  They lay in a pile on the floor, and on top of
them strips of paper that Brogan had pulled from the walls.  The
plaster beneath was grey, cracked, and flaking.  The house was old,
parts of it damp, and it came away with ease.

It seemed to the bird that the boy worked with a frantic energy,
stripped to the waist, his body glossy with sweat, and as the last of
the wallpaper came away, he turned on the pale pink dresser with
something approaching venom, emptying the drawers, tipping the cuttings
from comics on to the pile, adding the small plaster figures of
families carved from imagination.

He piled the rubbish into black plastic bin-liners and carried them
downstairs, the bird flying with him, soaring over his head as he made
for the back door.

Brogan shooed it back into the kitchen, where it perched on one of the
units and stared out to a yard so different from the aviary of his
birth.  Here, there were no slender trees, just a strip of concrete
twelve feet wide and half as long again.

The bird watched through the window as Brogan tipped the bags into the
centre of the yard, put a match to the pile and set the rubbish alight.
Dry and porous, the wallpaper ignited instantly, and as he watched his
childhood turn to ash, Brogan decided to leave the house for good. Roly
had said he was welcome at the yard whenever he liked.  He'd take his
Gouldian with him, and he'd go.

Having taken the decision, he shooed the bird back to his bedroom,
snuffed the candle and sneaked out, closing the door behind him,
leaving his bird in darkness.  A short while later, he returned and
closed the door to the cage.  The Gouldian, coaxed back inside by the
food, cowered on the litter as Brogan picked up the cage, and left the
house for the yard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Darkness did Roumelia Road no favours.  The street lamps that had once
lit the pavement were gone and the houses were stark, black shapes
against an even blacker sky.

A truck had been parked by the waste ground  It reminded Brogan of
something his mother had bought him when his hands were too small to
hold it properly.  He'd pushed it along the kitchen floor, the wheels
spinning fast on the lino, and he had woven it through her feet as she
polished the dresser.

The gates to the yard were closed and chained, but he knew that Roly
was there.  He didn't know how he knew until he thought about the birds
and realized that they seemed settled.  Some sat in the trees,
watching, as he entered the yard and knocked on the kitchen door.

A light came on in the kitchen.  Roly opened the door.  He took one
look at Brogan, reached out and pulled him inside without saying a
word, then shut and bolted the door.

Minutes later, he and Brogan left the house, chaining the gates behind
them.  They walked across the waste ground then slipped between the
houses, and the men who were watching the yard radioed in to the
station.

The news went straight to the incident room and Parker, who was off
duty, was contacted at home.  He was told that Brogan had left the yard
with Roly, who had led him across the waste ground and almost up to the
house where Parker's men were positioned, but he'd then led him down
one of the many alleys that divided what was left of Roumelia Road from
other derelict properties.

An attempt had been made to follow them, but Roly, who wasn't on record
as owning a vehicle, had stopped at a row of garages that stood
disused, the doors like bent tin cans.

The officers following them had been on foot.  Roly had gone into one
of the garages, had guided the boy into an ancient, battered Escort and
had driven away.  In short, Parker's men had lost them, but Parker, who
was devastated by the news, made a better job of keeping his temper
than Healey had earlier.

To do Healey credit, he'd called the police to tell them Brogan was
gone, and Parker went to Arpley Street to find him there, worrying
about his boy.

He sat on the arm of the couch, a six-pack at his feet, the density of
the smoke in the room evidence enough of his concern.

"I'll kill our Brogan," said Healey, to which Parker replied, more to
himself than to Healey:

"You may not have to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, Mr.  Healey just a figure of speech," but Healey wasn't
prepared to allow Parker to fob him off.  "What's goin' on?"  he
said.

Parker, who would have liked nothing more than to tell

him the truth, still couldn't risk it.  Not only might Healey cause him
a problem by repeating whatever he said, but Parker, who now knew
first-hand how easily Healey lost his temper, feared that he might go
berserk if he knew the extent of his concerns.  He said, "When Brogan
comes back, I want you to give permission for him to be examined by a
doctor."  Instantly, Healey grew aggressive.  "What for?"  Soothingly,
Parker said; "Alcohol, drugs, and just a general check-up.  Okay with
you?"

Healey couldn't be stupid, thought Parker.  He must know the nature and
purpose of such an examination, and yet he focused on the words drugs
and alcohol, choosing to ignore that the result of such an examination
might bring him face-to-face with facts that he might not be able to
deal with.

"If you think it's necessary," said Healey.

"I do," said Parker.

He left an officer at the house, partly to ensure that he would be
informed if Brogan didn't come home this was Parker's greatest fear,
that Brogan would disappear and that, somewhere down the road, someone
would do as Hardman had and stumble on his remains.

He told Healey that he'd call on him the following morning, then went
home in the knowledge that there was nothing more he could do: all cars
were on the alert for Roly's Escort, but as he slept that night, he
dreamed he could see it being driven down a road towards a wood.  He
was a

helpless bystander, someone who could only watch as Brogan was placed
on a scaffold.  What kind of game are we playing, Roly?  What if
somebody comes?

The following morning, he was shaken awake by his wife, who said,
"Someone phoned from the station."

Parker reached for the phone on his bedside table and phoned in.
"Brogan's back," he was told.

Healey, mindful of Parker's warning and mindful also that Parker had
left one of his officers in the house in case Brogan should turn up,
had somehow managed to keep his temper when Brogan had let himself into
the house at seven that morning.

He'd seemed surprised to see his dad actually there, but not quite so
surprised to find the police in the house too.

The uniform had reported in to say that Brogan had turned up, but he
didn't question the boy.  Neither did Healey, Parker's last words to
him having been, "If he turns up and let's hope he does leave him to
me."

Roly had been seen returning to the yard and Parker was tempted to
bring him in, but he had plans for Roly, and none of them included
letting him know he was under surveillance.  He probably suspected as
much, but that was a far cry from knowing it for sure, and Parker
wanted Roly where he could see him so that he could arrest him the
morning they searched the yard.  If he were to do anything to alarm
him, Roly might do a runner, and Parker had enough on his plate trying
to find Byrne.

Parker told the uniform to take Brogan down to the station, where he
talked to him in the interview room in which Hanson had questioned him
the previous day.

Hanson stayed in the background.  He had wanted to be the one to talk
to Brogan, but Parker wouldn't hear of it, though he'd taken a leaf out
of Hanson's book by sitting next to the boy so that the table didn't
form some sort of psychological barrier between them.  "Where've you
been?"  he said, gently.

"Roly's Yard."

"Why did you go there?"

"I wanted to see Roly."

Parker tried to talk to the boy in the way that he hoped a senior
officer would talk to one of his own lads in the event of them causing
concern, but it wasn't easy: his emotions were running high, and he
wanted nothing more than to get it through to him what he, his father,
and every member of the team had been through in worrying about him,
searching for him, fearing the worst.

"We were worried," he said, gently.

"Why?"

"We didn't know where you were."

"I was all right."

Parker, who could see full well that Brogan was all right,

replied, "We weren't to know that, Brogan.  For all we knew, something
might have happened to you."

"Well, it didn't," said Brogan.

"Where did you go?"

"Nowhere."

"You must have gone somewhere."

Brogan couldn't deny the logic of that.  "Okay," he said.  "We parked
down a road in the country."

"Whereabouts in the country?"

"Dunno," said Brogan, and he recalled the way the suburbs had seemed to
melt into the darkness.  Trees replaced the buildings, and hedges
replaced the roads.

"Sounds like you went quite a way out of town."

"It took a long time to get there," Brogan confirmed.

"And when you got there, what happened?"

"Nothin'," said Brogan.  "We sat there, that's all."

"Sat in the car?"

"Yeah."

"All night?"

"Yeah."

"You must have been cold."

"I was, a bit."

"And bored," said Parker.

"A bit."

"What did you do all night?"

"Nothin'," said Brogan.  "Just sat there."

"Front or back?"  said Parker.

Brogan didn't seem to understand.  Parker said, "Were you sitting in
the front of the car or the back?"

"Both," said Brogan.  "I mean ... we sat in the front at first, and
then we climbed into the back."

"What made you climb into the back of the car?"

"Roly said it was more comfortable."

I'll bet he did, thought Parker.  He looked at Hanson who shook his
head a fraction, as if to say, "Don't ask not now.  You won't yet an
answer and all it will do is make

him defensive.

"Why did you go to the yard in the first place?"

"Well," said Brogan, "I'd had a row with my dad, and Roly had said I
could live with him at the yard if I wanted, so I went."

"What about your bird?"

"Took it with me."

"Where is it now?"

"At the yard.  Hope it's all right."

"Why shouldn't it be?"

"You never know," said Brogan.

No, thought Parker.  You never know.  Mothers die.  Dads go A.W.O.L..
Anything could happen in the world that Brogan inhabited.  He said,
"I'm sure your bird'll be fine, but why did you leave it there?"

Brogan sensed a trick.  "How do you mean?"

"You wouldn't have left it there if you didn't intend to go back some
time, and I thought you promised me you wouldn't go back down the
yard."

"I never promised."

Parker bit back a desire to clip him round the ear, and said, "That's
true.  You've never actually promised that you wouldn't go back to the
yard.  In fact, you've never actually said that you wouldn't go back to
the yard but I hoped, in view of everything I'd told you, that you
might think carefully before you did."

"I haven't done nothin' wrong," said Brogan.

Parker spoke for Hanson as well as himself when he replied: "Nobody's
saying you have.  We're just concerned, that's all."

Taking him back a step, Hanson put in, "You left your bird at the yard
and you said you hoped he'd be okay.  What did you mean by that?"

"Just what I said," replied Brogan.  "I hope he's okay."

"Why shouldn't he be?"

"Tiger wasn't," said Brogan.  "But that wasn't Roly's fault'

It was the first time Parker had heard of Tiger's existence.  "Who's
Tiger?"

"Tiger finch that Roly gave me the first time Mr.  Moranti took me down
the yard."

"Ah," said Parker, and he smiled.

The smile faded when Brogan added, "He died,"

The way he said it, as if to say it didn't really matter, that nothing
could really hurt him any more, wasn't lost on Parker.  "How did he
die?"

"Moranti squashed him," said Brogan.  "I took him back to the yard to
see if Roly could make him better."

"And he couldn't," said Parker, quietly.

"We carried him out," said Brogan, 'in a shoe-box."  He looked up at
Parker, his face a complete blank.  "His wings fell off

Hanson was trying to visualise the scene.  "You carried him out in a
shoe-box, and his wings fell off."  Softly now: "How do you mean?"

"I lifted him out of the shoe-box.  He was lying on cotton wool.  I
didn't like the thought of burying him in a shoe-box, it didn't seem
right."

Hanson could suddenly picture the boy standing by his mother's grave,
the coffin being lowered, and Brogan wanting desperately to set her
free from it, to bring her back to life.

"I lifted him out of the box," said, Brogan, 'but his wings fell off in
my hand."

"How did you feel when his wings fell off?"

"Dunno," said Brogan.  "What did it matter?  Tiger was dead, Roly said
you had to cut the wings off, otherwise the bird inside stayed
trapped."

Hanson walked forward, crouched down in front of the boy.  "What did
you think he meant by that?"

"Dunno," said Brogan.  Tiger was dead.  It didn't really matter what I
thought,"

But it did, thought Hanson.  It mattered very much.  The boy had been
so stricken by the death of the bird, he'd blotted out the pain of it,
had refused to feel it, and to such an extent that he hadn't even
questioned the oddity of the bird having been dismembered.  "Then
what?"  said Hanson.

"We went back in the house, and Roly gave me Goldie."

"The Gouldian finch," guessed Parker.

"I call him Goldie."

"Good name, for a Gouldian," said Parker, kindly, and Brogan smiled a
fraction.

"Hope he's all right," he repeated.

"I'm sure he's fine," Hanson reassured him.  "If you like, Mr.  Parker
will go back down the yard and get him for you, bring him to you."

"Back to my dad's?"

"No," said Hanson.  "You won't be going back to your dad's for a
while."  He didn't add that Brogan might not be going back to his dad's
at all, though he thought there was a distinct possibility that by the
time the authorities had investigated Brogan's domestic circumstances,
it might well prove to be the case.

"Where am I goin'?"

"We're not sure," Parker admitted.  "Some people are going to take care
of you until your dad sorts himself out a bit."

"Stops hitting me, you mean?"

Hanson and Parker looked at one another.  Between them, they'd heard it
all before, but it never got any easier.  "Does he hit you a lot?" said
Parker.

"Only when I ask for it ... when I make him angry, mostly."

It was Hanson who was angry now.  Healey had robbed his son of his
self-esteem, and to such a degree that Brogan felt he deserved the
abuse meted out to him.  "Nobody has the right to hit another
person."

zzo

"Mr.  Parker hit my dad," said Brogan, brightly, 'didn't you, Mr.
Parker?"

Parker fumbled for an appropriate reply and failed to find one.  It was
Hanson who fished him out of an awkward moment by saying, "Was that
what he did last night?  Did he hit you?"

"No, he didn't dare.  I think he's scared of Mr.  Parker."

Parker smiled at that one.

Brogan added, "He said he was going over to Elaine's to ask her to move
in, and I couldn't stand the thought of her living in our house.  She
isn't my mum."

Parker said, "I don't expect he realized you'd take it that way."

"He's the one you should go for, not Roly."

"Why's that?"  said Parker, gently.

"He killed her."

"Killed who?"

"My mum."

Hanson took his hand from Brogan's shoulder.  "Brogan," he said, 'what
do you mean by that?"

"He killed her," he said.  "He battered my mum to death."

After Social Services had collected Brogan from the station, Hanson and
Parker spoke in Parker's office.  "Was it really necessary to involve
them?"

"What choice do we have?"  said Parker.  "His father can't be trusted
to keep him away from the yard.  I can't even trust my own men to keep
tabs on him."  In an outburst of frustration, he went on, "We haven't
seen sight nor sound of Byrne since I took the surveillance team off
him God knows where he is, what he's doing."

"When was the last time he was seen?"

"We know he went home after he led us to the yard.  That's about it."

"He hasn't been seen since?"

"Like I said."

You' Il pick up the thread," said Hanson.

"I hope so," said Parker.  "He could be out of the country, for all we
know."

"Well, if he is, he isn't posing a threat to Brogan."

"No, but he's posing a threat to someone ..."

There was no arguing with that, and Hanson didn't try.

Parker said, "I asked his father to grant permission to have him
examined by a doctor."

"Did he give it?"

"Yes, though I'm not convinced he understands exactly what I was asking
him to agree to."

Hanson had grave misgivings: the only way they would be able to find
out whether Brogan had been abused by Roly was by violating the boy's
right to privacy, by degrading him, by perpetrating a different form of
abuse.  "I'm glad I haven't got your job," said Hanson.  "It must be
one of the toughest there is."

"You're wrong," said Parker.  "Being a father is tougher."

His words were a painful reminder to Hanson of something his wife had
said.  I'm pregnant.  But she hadn't been pregnant for long.  Besides,
the child that she'd aborted hadn't been his.  "I wouldn't know," he
said.

"Take it from me," said Parker.

The last time Brogan had seen his doctor's surgery, his mother had
brought him.  Now he'd been brought by a social worker, someone he'd
only met a few hours earlier, her manner over-friendly, her smile
determinedly bright.

She went with him into a consulting room that had changed since he'd
last seen it.  There were still the same white cupboards set against a
wall, but the sink and mirror were new, and the beige and brown of the
screen that concealed an examination couch had been replaced with a
newer, whiter version.

Dr.  Freeman, too, had changed, his brogue shoes replaced by trainers
similar to those that Brogan had seen on a documentary focusing on drug
dealers.  He sat behind a desk that was narrower than Brogan
remembered, the paperwork neatly arranged.

The thought of Dr.  Freeman as a dealer made Brogan smile to himself,
and Freeman misinterpreted the look.  "How are you, Brogan?"

Brogan didn't reply until he'd looked at his social worker as if for
permission to speak.  "He's fine," she said, 'all things considered,"
and Brogan was reminded that the last time he'd been here, Dr.  Freeman
had shone a torch down his ears and had gone on to write a prescription
for a mild antibiotic.  He'd then asked his mother how things were
going and she'd replied in that shy way she had, lifting a hand to her
cheek, feeling it hot as if the bruise that had last been there still
showed.  "Fine," she'd replied.  "All things considered."

Freeman was aware that this was a difficult situation and he was
anxious to make it as easy for Brogan as possible.  "I expected to see
your father here."

The social worker answered on Brogan's behalf.  "He didn't want him
here."

Freeman looked at Brogan.  "Is that true?"

"Dunno," said Brogan.

"Well," said Freeman, 'either way, I'm sorry to have to put you through
all this."

"Put me through what?"

Freeman's smile evaporated.  "Has anyone actually told you why you're
here?"

"They said something about an examination."

"Did they explain the nature of that examination?"

"How do you mean?"

Freeman turned to the social worker.  "Maybe you could give us a
moment."

"I was told to stay."

"I want to talk to Brogan.  You can come back in after that."

Before she walked out, she picked up a bag that was woven and
tasselled, a dolphin key-ring clipped to the plaited handle.

Freeman waited until she'd closed the door behind her before he said,
"Brogan, before I examine you, I'm going to explain exactly what the
examination entails.  Once I'm sure you understand what I'm going to
do, and why, you can tell me whether you agree to me doing it."

Brogan sat and listened, but he didn't speak.

"Do you understand, Brogan?"

Brogan nodded.

"Are you still in agreement?"

The door opened, and before Brogan could reply, his social worker
walked back into the consulting room.  She held a pale green envelope
in her hand.  It seemed an odd colour for an envelope, and Brogan
couldn't take his eyes off it, not even after she'd handed it to
Freeman.  "This is his father's written permission.  If that's not
enough, we can get an order from the court,"

Freeman drew the letter out of the envelope.  Whatever was in it was
typed, and Healey's signature was little more than a witnessed scrawl.
Brogan wondered whether his dad had even known what he was consenting
to.

Freeman read it, and handed it back to the social worker.  "I'm sorry,"
he said, to Brogan.  "It seems you have no choice."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Parker and Warrender turned up on Moranti's doorstep to find that the
house was detached, modern, and situated on an estate that was
owner-occupied.  Parker guessed it to be worth pretty much what his own
house was worth, and that wasn't a fortune by anybody's standards, yet
he couldn't see the Emporium producing sufficient income to buy a house
of this type and he wondered where Moranti had got the money.

He banged on the door and looked up to see the curtains tightly drawn.
Within seconds of his knock, the pattern of one of those curtains was
disturbed as they were pulled back.

He held up his ED, and Mrs.  Moranti drew away from the window to be
replaced by her husband.  He stared down at Parker and Warrender as if
at an apparition, then he, too, disappeared from the window.

Once Moranti was safely in custody, Parker intended to have his house
and the Emporium thoroughly searched, but he was no more hopeful of
finding pornographic material there than he'd been of finding it at
Byrne's, because something Hanson had said had stuck in his mind, was
playing on it, in fact: "Paedophiles sometimes rent premises under a
false name.  They keep their material there, particularly if it's the
hard stuff

Most of the people with units on the market tended to

store a proportion of their goods elsewhere.  As the Emporium was being
searched, two of his men would be talking to other traders to see if
they could find out whether Moranti had a lock-up that they knew of.

It was Mrs.  Moranti who came to the door, her husband behind her and
struggling his way into a dressing gown, but it was Moranti that Parker
addressed as he showed his ID and said, "Get dressed, Mr.  Moranti. I'm
taking you down to the station."

For a moment, Moranti looked stunned, and it was his wife who addressed
Parker in some European language, spoken very fast.

Moranti spoke in English, the accent heavy, the tone fearful: "What
have I done?"

There was something about the way he said it, something that told
Parker he'd experienced this before, and suddenly, he was able to
visualize Moranti as a boy, hiding behind his parents as they opened
the door to men who stole them from their home.

Mrs.  Moranti appealed to her husband to do something, but if there was
one thing that Moranti had learnt from the past it was that resistance
was pointless.

"Etta," he said, and Parker wasn't sure whether he had spoken her name
or a word of reassurance.

"Go and get dressed," he repeated, and Warrender materialized beside
him.

They pushed their way into Moranti's house, Warrender threading his way
down the hall and covering the back in case Moranti took it into his
head to do a runner.  Not that he'd have got far.  Parker's men were
all over the place.  Moranti was going nowhere.

As he made his way to the interview room where Moranti was being held,
Warrender caught up with Parker.

"Social services just phoned the station Brogan's done a runner."

"Where from?"

"Doctor's surgery."

"Was he examined."

Yes."

"Well, at least that's something."  Parker didn't have to think very
hard to know where Brogan would go.  "He's bound to head for the yard
we'll pick him up in no time."

He considered information that Warrender had accessed shortly after
Brogan was taken into care.  Much as Parker suspected, Healey was known
to the police, but not for the reasons Parker had imagined: on more
than a dozen occasions, he had put his wife in hospital, but he hadn't
found himself in court as a result.  Brogan's mother had refused to
press charges.

"What did she die of?"

"Fell downstairs, apparently."

They looked at one another.

"Discharged herself.  Went home.  Died of internal bleeding."

Parker wondered what had gone on in Brogan's mind.  Maybe his mother
had fallen downstairs.  Maybe not.  Whatever the case, Brogan was
clearly laying the blame for her death at his father's door.

He walked into the interview room and saw Moranti sitting on the very
edge of a chair.  "Mr.  Moranti," said Parker.

Moranti attempted to rise: his age and the fact that he'd been sitting
there for twenty minutes or so had stiffened him to near immobility.
"Please stay sitting," said Parker, and he pulled a chair opposite, the
table between them.

Moranti sounded fearful as he said, "My shop ..."

"Don't worry about your shop," said Parker.  "My men are there, and the
birds won't starve for the moment."

"What are your men doing?"

"Searching it," said Parker, and he put a warrant face up on the
table.

Moranti didn't look at it, and Parker added, "When I came into the
shop, you admitted that Gary had worked for you for a while."

"What if he did?"  said Moranti.  "Lots of boys have worked for me over
the years."

"Not all of them have gone missing, though," said Parker.  "I asked you
whether you'd ever taken Gary to Roly's Yard."

"I told you," said Moranti, "I never take boys to the yard.  I pay them
to clean the cages, watch the shop.  If I go out, they stay behind, see
to the customers."

Parker wondered how much more tense Moranti would become when he
confronted him with information pulled from Nathan's statement.  He
produced the file on Gary and pulled out the library book, opened it at
the page depicting the finch that Gary had kept and said, "Do you ever
sell this type of bird?"

Moranti took the book from him, looked at the illustration, and handed
it back.  "No."

"Never?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Who would want a plain green bird?  Not people who buy from me.  They
want birds of colour, birds from exotic countries."

"This bird came from an exotic country," said Parker.  "Do you know
what it is?"

"No," said Moranti.

"It's a Woodpecker finch."

Moranti shrugged.  "It's not very beautiful."

"Maybe not," agreed Parker.  "But it is an exotic finch."

"You think so?  I don't think so.  I'd never sell a bird like that."

"So who would?"  said Parker.

"I don't know," said Moranti.  "Not anybody I know."

"There must be someone," said Parker.  "Try to think."

Moranti gave it thought, and finally came up with, "A bird like that
only true finch fancier would keep, someone who wants many different
types."

"Someone like Roly?"  said Parker.

"Maybe, I don't know."

"You've never seen a finch like that at Roly's Yard?"

Moranti shrugged, the gesture oddly dramatic.  "So many birds at Roly's
Yard.  Who can say?  There might be many birds I never see."

Parker could believe it.  "Mr.  Moranti," he said, "Gary had a
Woodpecker finch.  He kept it at home in a cage."

Immediately, Moranti leapt to his own defence.  "He didn't get it from
me!"

In that case, where did he get it?"

Moranti just sat there, his eyes on the book, the illustration upside
down to him now.  Parker let him look at it a moment, and then, his
tone of voice leaving Moranti in no doubt that he could prove the
content of what he said next, he said, "We have proof that you took
Gary down to the yard.  We also have proof that you introduced Brogan
Healey to Roly."

For a moment, Moranti said nothing, and then he began to cry.

"When did you first take Gary down to the yard?"

Moranti's reply was barely audible.  "Last Christmas.  Business was
good.  I sell many birds."  He wiped at his face with the sleeve of the
gabardine coat.  "Come, I say to Gary ... We go to buy more birds."

"And you introduced him to Roly."

Moranti didn't reply.  Too frightened, thought Parker.  "Mr.  Moranti,"
he said, 'did you know Joseph Coyne?"

Moranti could no longer speak.  He closed his eyes, as if by doing so
he might be able to stem the flood of tears.

Parker tried again.  "Mr.  Moranti."

"Yes," he whispered.

"Did he work for you?"

"Yes."

"How long for?"

"Not long," said Moranti.  "Joey ... he wasn't no good with the birds.
He hold them like this ..."  Moranti held out his hand and clenched the
fingers tightly.  "He damage them.  I say to him, "Joey this no good,
you have to find another job."

"So you paid him off," said Parker, but Moranti didn't respond.

"Mr.  Moranti?"  said Parker.

Moranti shook his head.  "I don't pay him off, no ... He ..."

Parker finished the sentence for him.  "Joey disappeared."

Moranti's hands fluttered nervously, as if he were trying to hold a
finch that didn't want to be held.

"And when Gary also disappeared, didn't it strike you as strange that
two of the lads who'd been working for you ... ?"

"A little, perhaps."

"A little?"  said Parker.  "I'd have found it more than a little
strange.  I'd have informed the police.  Unless, of course, I had
something to hide."

Moranti opened his eyes and the tears fell down unchecked.  "Over the
years, I have many boys who work for me.  They come.  They go.  Only
Joseph and Gary disappeared."

"How many have you taken down to the yard?"

"Most of them.  All of them.  I don't know."

Parker opened the file on Gary Maudsley.  In it, he'd slipped ashe et
of paper, and on that sheet of paper was information that one of the
team had accessed prior to Parker bringing Moranti in.  He laid it flat
on the table.

"When did you first come to England, Mr.  Moranti?"

Parker could barely hear his voice as he made the reply.

"Nineteen thirty-nine."

"Why did you come?"

"My family feared persecution."

Fair enough, thought Parker, and Moranti added, "We were what you
people might call travellers circus people.  Not very big.  More a
side-show."

"So how did you make a living when you first got to England?"

"I started a shop said Moranti.

"The Emporium?"

"A second-hand furniture shop."

It sounded such a far cry from the Emporium that Parker found it
difficult to visualize Moranti running a business of that kind.  As if
guessing what he was thinking, Moranti said, "One day, I sold a curious
thing, a brass ashtray made from the casing of ashen.  I collected more
things like that, and soon, I realize there is more money in these
strange things than in furniture."

"The Emporium was born," said Parker, drily.

"It's all legal your men won't find any stolen property."

"We're not looking for any."

"What are you looking for?"

"Proof that you were procuring boys for Roly."

Moranti's hands flew wide abruptly, the imaginary bird battering at the
window to the room.  "I think," he said, "I want solicitor."

"Very wise," said Parker.

CHAPTER THIRTY

After Moranti had been taken down to the cells, Warrender took the
opportunity to inform Parker that Gifford, the man he'd seen near the
spot were the platform had stood, had been brought in for questioning.
The address he had given hadn't checked, and Parker, who had made a
note of the registration number of Gifford's pick-up, told one of his
men to find out who he was and where he lived.

Information had subsequently come in that Gifford was the man's real
name, but that his address was Crowthorne, Berkshire.  It seemed to
Parker a hell of a way for Gifford to have come if his only purpose in
going to the wood had been to catch a glimpse of the remains.  He had
therefore given orders for him to be tracked down and picked up.

As Parker walked into the interview room, he weighed the man up afresh
and concluded that Gifford, his face deeply lined from a lifetime spent
working out of doors, had to be approaching his mid-fifties.  He
couldn't look at Parker, who got the impression that he was very much
regretting having gone to the wood at all

It took him a good ten minutes to get out of Gifford that he'd been the
foreman of a road gang, and that he'd gone to the wood out of interest
because he'd once worked on a road in the vicinity of Colbourne Wood.

"Which road?"  said Parker.

"Ring road at Bickley."

Parker knew the name, but couldn't think why.  "Bickley," he said.

"Just on the edge of the Colbourne estate."

Parker had it now a strip of densely wooded land that was marked up on
some of the older maps supplied by the National Trust.  It had once
divided Colbourne Wood from a further strip of land that was privately
owned.  "Wasn't that strip of woodland bought by the Ministry of the
Environment?"

"Yes," said Gifford.

Parker wished he'd taken greater notice of some of the documentation
supplied by the National Trust.  Among the mass of information supplied
at his request was material relating to the purchase of Bickley Wood,
which had been bought by the Ministry of the Environment at about the
time that Fenwick had purchased Colbourne House.  Gifford said, "The
Ministry decided to build a ring road to keep traffic out of the centre
of the town, but it wasn't built until eight years ago."

"Why?"  said Parker.

"Fenwick put up a battle," said Gifford.  "He didn't want a major road
on the edge of his estate."

"Bickley didn't belong to him," said Parker.  "How did he block it?"

"He promised his estate to the National Trust if they put pressure on
the Ministry to change the route planned for the road.  They didn't
manage that, but they stopped it from being built for a good many
years."

"And how did they do that?"

"They pointed out that the woodland was ancient.  But it didn't work
for ever, and once Fenwick knew the road was about to be built, he
threatened to bring in a particularly militant protest group."

"And did he?"

"No," said Gifford.

"Why not?"

"I don't know," he admitted, but Parker thought he knew the answer to
that one: Fenwick had been a recluse, and to have informed a militant
protest group would have been to invite unwelcome guests to his
doorstep for what might have turned out to be a considerable time.

"Go on," said Parker.

"I was in charge of the men responsible for felling the trees.  We were
told to go in and make a start, which is what we did."

"And?"  said Parker.

Gifford thought back to the day that he and his men had rolled up to
Bickley Wood with heavy plant machinery, the type of equipment capable
of tearing trees from the ground by their roots, of slicing them into
confetti if need be, of erasing all trace of woodland and leaving in
its wake a smooth, flat surface, ready for the hardcore laid down in
preparation for concrete and tarmac.  They had arrived in anticipation
of being met by the kind of protesters who could cause them a serious
problem, the kind of protesters who had learned that direct action
could delay the felling of ancient woods, the kind who would do rather
more than simply stage a dig-in.  But none had been there.

Giffbrd stared at the contents of his cup, wisps of steam curling from
the liquid to evaporate, like his confidence.  "Maybe I shouldn't be
saying this ..."

"We're dealing with murder," Parker reminded him, gently.  "Anything
you can tell us ..."

"We found a scaffold," said Gifford.

Parker, who had remained standing throughout the proceedings, sat down.
For some moments, neither he nor Gifford spoke a word, then Gifford
swirled what remained of his coffee and knocked it back as if it were
the stiff drink he no doubt wished it was.  He put the cup on the
table.  It made an insubstantial sound, the rattle of hollow plastic on
a laminated surface.  "I wanted to see the scaffold," he said, 'to see
if it looked the same."

"It wasn't there," said Parker.

"No, I know and even if it had been, I wouldn't have been able to get
anywhere near it."

"Why didn't you come forward?"  said Parker.

"I wanted to ..."  said Gifford, 'but ..."

Parker didn't want to put him on the defensive so he raised a
conciliatory hand.  "It's not important you're here now."  He chose his
words carefully.  "You called it a scaffold.  Is that because the press
referred to it as that?"

"No, it's because that's what they looked like."

"They?"  said Parker.

"There were several of them."

Parker's conciliatory gesture became frozen for a moment, and then he
watched his hand as it drifted to the table like the feather that had
spun from Hanson's fingers.  He could also see Gifford, but it was as
if he were looking at the man through some telescopic device: he seemed
small, and very far away.

"Most of the remains on those scaffolds were nothing but rags and
bones.  But one ..."  Gifford grew quiet, as if the memory of what he'd
seen would stay with him for life.  "It looked like something from a
movie set."

Parker, who knew first-hand what the remains of a partly decomposed
body could look like, saw the scene through Gifford's eyes and wondered
whether, like those of his men who had seen the remains at Colbourne,
Gifford had dreamed the same dreams, had woken in the night to reach
out for a

partner who, no matter how she tried, couldn't come anywhere close to
seeing the visions he held in his head.

"What did you do?"

"I called my boss."

"Who was?"

"Pierce," said Gifford, 'of Pierce and Newman."

It was almost a household name, and Parker was acquainted with it in
the way that he would have been acquainted with the name McAlpine.  He
said, "Was Pierce on site?"

"No," said Gifford.  "He was based in London."

"What did he do about it?"

"He came down to Bickley Wood, took a look at the scaffolds and told
the police."

"The area comes under our jurisdiction," Parker reminded him, 'and I
was a senior officer eight years ago.  If anything of that nature had
been found at Bickley or Colbourne, I'd know about it."

Gifford stared into his cup and replied, "I wouldn't know about
that."

"Take my word," said Parker, softly, as Gifford stood up abruptly, the
empty plastic cup wafting to the ground as if blown away by his
torment.

"We were given a couple of days off and told to keep away from the
place while the police checked out the area.  By the time we got back
to the job, the scaffolds had been removed.  We never heard anything
about them again.  We were told that if we wanted to keep our jobs, we
should keep our mouths shut and get on with felling the trees."

"Why?"

"The boss didn't want anything to get in the way of the contract."

Parker stood up and joined him at a window where wire mesh divided them
from a courtyard and the buildings that stood opposite.

"How many men were there on the job?"

"Twenty-odd," said Gifford.

"And all of you kept your mouths shut?"

"People told their families maybe I don't know.  I never said a word,
not even to the missus."

Parker was finding it increasingly difficult to believe that, if that
was the case, the story hadn't found its way into the press.  "Are you
asking me to believe '

"We were told that the remains were plastic, a practical joke left by
protesters to make us stop until they could get it together to occupy
the trees."

"And you all swallowed that?"  said Parker.

"Listen, Mr.  Parker, eight years ago, the building industry was in
even worse shape than it is today.  Men like us were hanging on to our
jobs by whatever means we could.  We'd been told to fell a strip of
woodland and we knew that if we did we'd be in work for another six
months because that road had to be built and we were up for the
contract.  In circumstances like those, when somebody tells you you've
stumbled on a practical joke, you believe it."  He paused, then added,
"Because you want to."

Parker could relate to that.  His mind went into overdrive, searching
for motivation on the part of the people responsible for slipping on to
the site then seeking out and getting rid of whatever remains were
discovered.  He found it in the knowledge that, if the police had been
called to the scene, the entire area would have been sealed off for as
long as it took the police to conduct a thorough investigation.  There
would have been media interest, and media interest would have been like
a gift from the gods to the type of protester that Gifford's boss had
feared might turn up on the scene.

The idea that some businessman had taken it upon himself to arrange for
the remains to be removed, buried elsewhere or just destroyed, outraged
Parker, but he was no stranger to the lengths to which powerful and
wealthy men were capable of going to ensure that their plans were never
thwarted.  He could even imagine the type of individual that Gifford's
boss might be someone who had started at the bottom, clawed his way up
to his present position and wasn't about to allow a few bones to rob
him of the potential for massive profit.

"What kind of man was your boss?"

"You wouldn't want to cross him," said Gifford.

Gratified that he'd read the man accurately, Parker said, "Where can I
find him?"

Gifford smiled in a way that Parker couldn't read.  "He was younger
than me," he said.  "Money can't buy you health, Mr.  Parker."

No, thought Parker, and it can't buy you morals, either.  "What about
the men you were working with at the time?  Are you willing to give
their names?"

"I can't remember all of them, but a few, yes."

A few will do, thought Parker, and he pondered on the likelihood of
finding those remains.  There was little hope, he decided.  Men like
Gifford's boss sometimes operated on the fringe of the criminal
fraternity.  He wouldn't have been averse to arranging for those
remains to be slipped into concrete at any one of a dozen sites up and
down the country, and there would have been the people to help him do
it, men silenced by money, or by the knowledge that if ever they spoke
out, Pierce might well arrange for them never to speak again.

"The remains," said Parker.  "Were they children's?"

Gifford thought back to a scene that he had convinced himself had been
erased from his mind by sheer power of will, and found that his will
was weaker than he had realized.  He looked at Parker in a way that
suggested that, over the years, the scene had haunted him.  "It's been
good to get it out," he said.  "To tell someone."

"You did the right thing," said Parker.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hanson arrived at Colbourne to find Parker waiting for him on the other
side of the wood.  He could hear traffic in the distance, the drone
forming a backdrop to Parker's voice as he briefed him.  "The road
we're standing on used to be known as Bickley Wood."

It didn't look much like a wood.  Not any more.  The road ahead was a
slip-road that led to a dual carriage way  Hanson listened as Parker
told him what Gifford had said, ending with: "We'll never know what was
in that wood."

"No, but we can guess," said Hanson, and up ahead, the traffic
thundered by, the wheels spinning effortlessly over the ground where
Hanson imagined boys to have run in their last few moments of life.  He
could almost see their expressions of curiosity change to terror as it
dawned on them that this was no game.  They hadn't been taken there to
explore some secret place.  They had gone there to die and, in those
last few moments, they would undoubtedly have fought.  But where could
they have run to?  thought Hanson.  At one time, there was no road,
just a network of bridlepaths impossibly overgrown, and the trees so
dense they couldn't see where they were going.  Their killer would have
known the area well, would have anticipated their every move, would
have hunted them down with ease.

"Why?"  said Parker.  "What possible pleasure could he have got from
what he did?"

"We're all capable of the same behaviour.  Fortunately, most of us
indulge ourselves to a lesser degree."

Parker found that impossible to accept.  He replied, "I don't know what
kind of people you find yourself dealing with, but I can tell you for a
fact that I don't know of any normal individual who indulges in that
type of fantasy, much less behaviour."

"Really?"  said Hanson.  "How many men do you know who target a woman
with the sole intention of making a conquest?  They're not interested
in the individual.  They don't want to get to know her.  They get their
kicks from the thrill of the chase.  Sometimes, they even back off at
the point where the sexual act the supposed point of it all is about to
take place.  The conquest is made.  Game over."

It was difficult for Parker to equate what to him seemed fairly normal
male behaviour with the thought of what had taken place in that wood.
He was about to say so, but Hanson didn't give him the opportunity.
"Sherringham said the body had been dismembered."

Parker didn't need reminding.  He also didn't need reminding that
Sherringham had suggested that dismemberment may have occurred before
death.

Hanson added, "When you were a kid, didn't you ever pull the wings from
a butterfly?"

"I don't know," said Parker.  If I did, I grew out of it.  I have no
recollection of doing anything like that if I did it at all, it must
have been because I was too young to realize it was cruel."

"Precisely," said Hanson.  "But when you say you grew out of it, what
you mean is that as you matured emotionally, you learned to empathize
with another creature.  You began to understand that it was capable of
feeling pain, that it had rights, that it had value over and above that
which you placed on it for your own gratification.  The person
responsible for dismembering Joseph Coyne hasn't matured in that
regard.  He's still pulling the wings off butterflies."

"But the butterflies are boys," said Parker, softly, 'and in this case,
it would be more apt to say that he's pulling the wings off birds."

Parker looked at a map that gave the approximate dimensions of what had
been Bickley Wood.  He stabbed it with a forefinger.  "There was once a
bridlepath leading from the wood where Joseph's remains were found to
the wood at Bickley," he said.  Hanson looked for evidence that, at
some point, the path branched and led to a minor road.  There was none,
and that alone indicated that whoever had brought the materials and the
bodies to Bickley would have had to have come from the direction of
Colbourne House.

"There's something else I want to show you," said Parker, and Hanson
followed him back to the car.

Parker drove on to the dual carriage way but took the next slip-road
off, and doubled back to the house.

The media had departed some days before, but the house, now empty, was
being guarded by two solitary men in uniform.  They acknowledged
Parker, who led Hanson round to the back where a walled garden gave on
to a gravelled path.

It led to the type of cottage that served as a reminder that there had
been nothing romantic or easy about the life of a farm labourer at the
turn of the century.  Its doorway was small, the windows above and to
the side of it minute, the walls bowing with age.

Parker led the way round the back to a garden that might once have
produced a few meagre vegetables and said, "According to our enquiries,
Fenwick had an odd-job man, someone who cut wood in winter, mended
frozen pipes, ensured that the boundaries of the estate were kept in
good repair.  He never paid him anything, but he let him use the
cottage."

Hanson looked up.  The windows were so small, they looked like tiny
black eyes.

"He stuck around for several years, on and off.  Coming and going,
turning up, disappearing.  Fenwick didn't seem to have a problem with
that."

One of the small black eyes had been propped wide open with a ruler.
"Want to see inside?"  said Parker, and Hanson followed him in.

It smelt a little damp, but that was all.  Even so, Hanson found
himself gulping at the air and holding it in his lungs in anticipation
of a stench that never came.  The walls, the floors and every available
surface were covered in birdshit, but even as Hanson thought back to
the way in which the upstairs window had been propped open, Parker
said, "It's circumstantial.  That window's probably been open for
years.  There are rats, birds, mice you name it."

I can name it, thought Hanson.  He said, "When did your men come across
this cottage?"

"The day the remains were removed from Colbourne Wood."

"How come this is the first I've heard?"

"I've only just been informed of its possible relevance," said Parker.
"You have to understand, I rely on reports from the men who are
searching the area.  All I was told was that a cottage had o o been
searched at the back of the house, that it was derelict, that there was
nothing of interest in it.  I didn't connect it with Roly until the men
who searched it heard about the yard and realized there might be a
connection."

"What made them make that assumption?"

As if by way of reply, Parker opened a kitchen cupboard to reveal its
mesh-lined interior.

"Old habits die hard," said Hanson, softly.  "Assuming they die at
all."

"And do they?"  said Parker.

"Rarely," admitted Hanson.  "In later years, the libido often
decreases, and with it, the desire to indulge in the type of sexual act
that can gratify the individual's needs."

"So there is hope then," said Parker.  "They can change?"

Hanson replied, "An individual's sexuality and preferences are
determined by many complex factors, very early in life.  People can
never rid themselves of that.  The best that can be hoped for is that
therapy enables them to learn to control their impulses."

"How many succeed?"

"Very few."

"Parker closed the cupboard, as Hanson added, "Is this the first time
you've seen this place?"

"Second," said Parker.  "I took a look before you arrived.  What do you
think of it?"

"I think your men were justified in pointing out a possible
connection," said Hanson.  "When are you searching the yard?"

"Tomorrow," said Parker.

"Do you need me around?"

"I'd prefer you to keep in the background."

"That's what I thought," said Hanson, who knew from experience that the
last thing the police needed was a civilian at the scene of an
operation of that kind.  "You can get me on my mobile if you need
me."

"You don't sound convinced that we might?"

"I think you're wasting your time," said Hanson.

"So you keep saying," said Parker, adding, "We'll know for sure, soon
enough."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Parker left his men sitting in vans parked up at the top of the road,
men who were unrecognizable as police, their casual clothes covered by
overalls, the vans they sat in dark blue, unmarked, their windowless
sides concealing the men within.

All was as Parker remembered it, yet nothing could have prepared him
for the atmosphere of rot and desolation as he walked down Roumelia
Road.  The houses appeared to be weeping, a recent rain having run from
the roofs to dribble down the walls.  With their windows boarded up,
they had the slightly stunned look of a recently blinded man, as though
the realization that they would never see again hadn't quite sunk in,
or wasn't to be believed.

He tried the gates and found them chained, then motioned Warrender and
a couple of uniforms to appear, as if out of nowhere, and join him as
he made his way to the front o{ the squat.

The properties opposite stood with windows boarded up, and Parker took
a good look at what remained of Mousade Road.  Its once prestigious
shop-fronts seemed more derelict than any he'd ever seen, the names of
former proprietors having weathered away from the signs so that it was
difficult to tell what some of the shops might have sold or who might
once have owned them.

These fading signs put Parker in mind of the type of inscription that
one might reasonably expect to find on a memorial, the years having
weathered the lettering to nothing, so that anyone reading them would
find the names illegible.  These cherished things, these businesses
that had once represented a way of life, a source of income to a
culture he could barely imagine to have existed, were gone for ever. He
felt the loss as he knocked on the door to the squat.

There was very little furniture.  Parker didn't have to see inside to
know that.  The sound of his knock wouldn't have echoed off carpets,
off papered walls, off windows that were covered by soft thick
drapes.

Behind him, his men stood prepared as Roly answered the door, and as he
tried to close it on them, they forced their way into a hall that was
every bit as stark as Parker had imagined.  "Roland Barnes," said
Parker, and Roly spat in his face as Parker, who didn't have grounds to
arrest him, told him he was wanted

for questioning in connection with the disappearance of Joseph Coyne
and Gary Maudsley.

Parker couldn't have forced Roly to go to the station if he'd refused
and he was relieved when the man appeared to come to the conclusion
that further resistance was probably pointless.  He walked out of the
squat with two of Parker's men, and after seeing him driven away in the
back of a patrol car, Parker, followed by Warrender, went through the
hall and into the kitchen where Parker placed his hand on a tap and
drew cold water, which he splashed against his face.  Warrender stared
around him in sheer, unbridled disgust as he took in the filth, the
squalor.

All around them men were entering the property, pulling down the boards
that blacked out the windows, letting light into rooms that had
forgotten what it was to feel the sun on those plaster walls.

"You okay?"  said Warrender, and Parker lifted the hand that had turned
the tap to find it smothered in grease.  There was nothing around that
he could use to wipe away the filth.  "Go back to one of the vehicles,
Neil, and get me something I can use to clean myself up."

While he was gone, Parker left the tap running and searched the kitchen
for keys to the padlock that chained the gate.  He hadn't been averse
to smashing them down if necessary, but he was aware that if he did so,
the mesh that reached up to the roof would come down with them and the
birds would escape.  He wasn't a cruel man, and limited though his
knowledge of birds might be, he was aware that exotic finches were
hardly likely to be able to fend for themselves if they found
themselves turned free.

Warrender returned from the car with a rag.  "It could be cleaner," he
said, but Parker took it gratefully.

"It's got to be an improvement on anything we'll find round here."

He ran the rag under the tap, cleaned himself up, then used it to turn
off the tap before tossing it into a bucket that passed for a bin.

"Where do we start?"  said Warrender.

"We take a look round the house, just to get the geography of the
place, and decide on aspects of it that seem likely to produce a
result."

He started with the room that faced the road.  It was empty.  Above
him, the ceilings were high, the plaster mouldings intricate, and in
front of him stood a fireplace of generous proportions.  Its hearth was
missing and Parker wondered whether a slab of marble had once stood in
front of the grate.  If so, it had been stolen, as had the fender that
no longer surrounded it.

That fireplace would once have been a focal point for the family who
lived here, thought Parker.  He could imagine them sitting around it,
velvet drapes at the windows, a nursery tea, then bed.  Now there was
only a blackened grate where once a fire had blazed, and the echo of
his and Warrender's footsteps as they trod with caution on floorboards
they didn't trust to withstand their weight.

They left the room, and made for the stairs, birds flying down from the
bedrooms above even as they climbed.  The way those finches flitted
past, inches from his face, spooked Warrender.  He saw nothing
beautiful about them, and, left to his own devices, would have classed
them as vermin.  They could be sky-blue-pink for all he cared they
didn't belong here.  He saw them as macabre.

The front bedroom was unused and devoid of furniture, the floor as bare
as that of the room below, but the window wasn't boarded.  At some
stage, glass had been restored to the frame, and it took Parker a
moment to work out what was strange about the birds that flapped at the
window.

His immediate impression was of two finches lying flat against the
glass.  As if glued, thought Parker.  And then he thought, No, not
glued, but held into position.  He took a step closer.  They had been
trapped between two sheets of glass that comprised a crude form of
double-glazing.

Those birds didn't fly into that glass tomb, thought Parker, they were
walled up.  Instantly, he had a vision of the way in which Roly had
crept up on them as they had fluttered at the glass, puzzled by their
inability to fly through it and out to freedom.  He would have jammed a
second pane against them, holding them there.  Then he would have
reached for tools that had been placed by the window in readiness, and
Parker imagined him using putty, wood, nails, or whatever else he
needed to ensure that the birds remained trapped.

He wondered how long it had taken for them to die, and how much longer
it had taken for them to become reduced to feather and bone.  He found
it bizarre that, despite there being barely anything of them,
sufficient remained to keep the feathers intact.  They looked like
feathered skeletons, captured in flight, their skulls devoid of
flesh.

They left the room and walked into a bathroom where mould had taken
hold, and what looked like a map of Australia had grown on one of the
walls.  The bath stood in the centre like an afterthought, the enamel
cracked and yellow, great streaks running like tears where water had
dripped from the taps over the years.  The taps themselves were
masterpieces of craftsmanship, the chrome dull, but the fixtures strong
built to last, thought Parker.

A lavatory, its bowl blackened by bacteria, the water yellow and
reeking, drove them out, and they walked into the bedroom that
overlooked the aviary.

Warrender, who had always prided himself on having nerves of steel,
felt afraid when he entered that room.  He didn't know why.  All it
contained was a bed, a wardrobe and a chair, and there was nothing in
these things alone to make him sick with fear.  But all along the
picture rail, which ran the length of the room, finches of every
description were clinging to the walls.

Some remained quite motionless as he and Parker walked in; others flew
past them towards the open window, and he found himself surrounded by
the flapping, panicking wings.  He backed towards the door as Parker
made for the wardrobe and opened it to find that it contained nothing
of interest, just a few clothes and some brand-new trainers, still in
their white cardboard box.

He walked over to the window and stood as he imagined Roly might stand
when looking out on his birds.  Below him, men were making what
amounted to a cursory search of the yard.  They'd be lucky to find what
they'd come for, thought Parker, who still felt the lack of a
scanner.

The birds had become like leaves that were blown from one end of the
aviary to the other.  Each movement made by his men resulted in a
counter-movement by the birds: when the men were still they, too, were
still, huddling into the trees, packed closely, feather to feather, a
shivering mass of fear.

Parker felt for them.  These things were warm and real.  They ate and
breathed and slept.  They didn't understand the implications of what
was happening around them.  They, like the boys whose remains he
dreaded yet hoped to find, deserved more respect than to end up here.

He left the room, Warrender close on his heels, unwilling to be left
there with so many little eyes, so many tiny claws.  "These birds," he
said, lashing out at them.  "I can't they Christ The way they fly in
your face!"

Parker shared his unease, but it wasn't the birds that made him afraid,
it was the thought of what had happened there, in what he had come to
believe was a house of death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Two hours into the search, Parker noticed that the birds were growing
fractious and he walked into the nesting shed to find a bag of seed.

Nothing seemed disturbed.  The cages that lined the sides of the shed
had been lifted away then returned to their rightful place, the
plaintive cries from the hatchlings within making the men who had
handled those cages extra gentle.  "Take them into the house," Parker
said, 'and keep them warm the last thing we need is some animal-rights
group accusing us of cruelty."

He picked up a bag of seed that was standing by the door and walked
into the yard with it, untwisting the ends and dipping his hand in to
bring out a fistful of seed.

The birds, at first suspicious, began to swoop down in droves, and
Parker looked up sharply, surprised by the sudden onslaught from the
trees.

A finch flew on to his shoulder, and his first reaction, which had been
to brush it away, was replaced by a feeling of pleasure.  He couldn't
explain why but he felt honoured, somehow, as though he'd been picked
out for a moment as something special.  He knew that, in reality, the
only thing that had drawn the finch was that he had food; and yet the
feeling remained, and after it darted away, his spirits dropped a
fraction.

This was it, then: the lure of the birds, the lure that had brought
customers to Moranti and Moranti to the yard, along with the boys who
had returned, never to leave.

He tied the ends of the bag and returned it to the shed, the birds,
ever hopeful, like so many tiny missiles, darting past his face.  He
flicked them away, irritated by their persistence, and turned to find
that Warrender had come out of the house and was walking towards him.

"We've covered everything obvious."

"Anything?"

"Nothing," said Warrender, 'just this."

He held up a spool of tape designed to fit in an old projector.  "And
one of the men thinks you should take a look at an alcove in an
upstairs room."

Parker went into the house with him, climbing the stairs as Warrender
added, "It looks as though it might have been sealed over fairly
recently."

Parker followed him to a room on the second floor.  The windows faced
the waste ground chinks of light showing through the cracks and
revealing a chimney breast divided by a couple of alcoves.

Warrender approached one, reached out and touched the plaster work

"That does look a bit recent," Parker agreed.

A metal hoop, maybe an inch or so wide, had been screwed into the wall,
level with Parker's chest.  He wondered what it was.  He couldn't think
of anything the bracket might have held, but it was there for a
reason.

A hole had been drilled beneath the hoop, a hole so small in diameter
that Parker assumed it had been made by a nail.  If so, the nail had
come out.  He peered at the hole, but couldn't see a thing.

Turning to one of his men, Parker said, "Get a pickaxe."

Moments later, the officer returned, carrying one as though born to the
job of wielding it with considerable strength.  His shoulders were
broad and strong, the arms those of a labourer

Z54

rather than of a man who had scored rather higher on the academic scale
than Parker would have given him credit for.  "Go on, then," said
Parker.  "Let's see what you can do with it,"

He stood back and watched as the axe was brought to bear and the
plaster work fell away like marzipan.  It was, he concluded, a DIY
mixture with neither the strength nor the texture to withstand a
determined effort to remove it, but the brickwork beneath it was solid
enough: Roly might know little or nothing about plaster work thought
Parker, but in bricking up that alcove, he'd done a near professional
job.  It was almost as hame to ruin it, but ruin it he would.

The pickaxe was coming down on the brick with steady, rhythmical blows,
the man wielding it working up a sweat that soaked the back of his
overalls.  Once damaged, the strength of the structure was diminished
considerably, and, five minutes into the job, one of the bricks fell on
to the floor.

Parker shone a torch into the depths, half expecting to see a face, or
what was left of a face, staring back at him.

But there was nothing.

He stood back and let the man finish the job, creating a hole large
enough to allow Parker to get his upper body in there and shine the
torch right round.

The alcove measured ten feet by three, and was maybe two feet deep. The
interior walls had been painted brown at some point, but not in recent
years, and there were still brackets at the sides where shelves had
once rested.

"Anything?"  said Warrender.

"Nothing," said Parker, who couldn't quite believe it.

He pulled away from the alcove, brushing dust from his clothes, and
indicated its twin.  "No point leaving it," he said, and again he
waited as the pickaxe pulled away the plaster work to reveal bricks
that had been kid every bit as recently as those that had sealed the
adjoining alcove.

The pickaxe gained a purchase, hauling first one, then more of the
bricks away to create the space that Parker needed,

and once again, Parker leant in, shining his torch into an interior
identical to that of the neighbouring alcove; the same proportions, the
same brown paint, the same rusting brackets.

There was no smell.  That was the first thing he noticed.  And that
didn't seem right, thought Parker, not when he stopped to consider what
the beam of his torch had rested on.  He saw a figure slumped on the
floor of the alcove, its clothes instantly familiar to him.  The bomber
jacket, its zipper like a row of teeth, the dark-blue denim jeans these
were the clothes that Gary was known to have worn when he
disappeared.

He pulled away, and turned so that his back was to the alcove.  He
closed his eyes for a moment, breathing rapidly, cutting the beam from
the torch as if, by doing so, he could make the contents of the alcove
disappear.

Hanson had been wrong, thought Parker.  Very, very wrong.  "Hanson," he
said.

Warrender replied, "What about him?"

"Get him down here.  I want him to see what we've found."

By the time Hanson arrived at the yard, vehicles he recognized as
belonging to the press were parked up on the far side of the waste
ground  He ducked under the net to find Parker in the yard, his suit
dusted with powder.  Hanson walked up to him.  "We've got company," he
said, nodding towards the gates.

"I know," said Parker.  "I'm keeping them at bay with the offer of a
press release."

"What are you going to tell them?"

"As little as possible."  He turned towards the house.  "You said we
wouldn't find anything," but Hanson wasn't listening.  This was the
first time he'd actually seen the yard, and in studying the way in
which he turned, very slowly, to take it in, Parker had a vision of the
way in which Gary and Joseph might have done the same.

As Hanson scanned the yard, he saw a bird with plumage that was green
and cobalt blue.  Its tail seemed impossibly long, the blue becoming
turquoise, and he recalled the moment in the wood, his fingers
releasing the feather, the way he had been unable to take his eyes off
it as it spiralled to the ground.

The bird made for a hole where the mesh had come away from a fragment
of guttering, and soared off over the rooftops, only to return.  It
seemed, for a moment, to hesitate, as if considering freedom, then
squeezed back through the hole and into the yard.

"This way," said Parker, and Hanson followed him into the house, eyes
like vacuums, sucking in the details.  The interior was more in keeping
with the type of environment that he had come across before.  Bodies
hidden in alcoves, under floorboards or walled up, as those finches had
been, were hardly unheard of.

He looked at the finches trapped in their tombs of glass, and Parker
wondered whether, like himself, he was working out precisely how Roly
had managed to fix them there.

It was the premeditation that Hanson found disturbing, that in order to
have achieved such a feat, it would have been necessary for their
killer to have prepared their deaths in advance.  He felt it to be very
much in keeping with the building of the scaffold, and he wondered
whether he would find evidence of similar preparation in the adjoining
room.  He turned wordlessly from the window, and Parker led him
through.

Here, as in the aviary, finches flitted past, and Hanson caught a flash
of crimson and mauve.

Warrender seemed unduly upset by the birds.  He swiped at them as if
they were wasps, his face distorted by fear.  "You're not too fond of
birds," said Hanson.

"Don't mind them as a rule," said Warrender.  "But these ..."

Hanson saw his point: he didn't mind birds either, but the way they
came at them, out of the darkness, set his nerves on edge.

"There's an entire colony in the attic rooms," said Warrender, 'some of
them nesting, for God's sake."

"Wonder why Roly allows it?"  said Parker, and although Hanson knew the
answer, he didn't reply.  The birds were there for a purpose; they were
part of the ritual.  Their presence was not only welcome, it was
essential to Roland Barnes.

Parker led the way into the room that faced the road, acknowledging his
men as they stood aside to allow Hanson access to the alcove.

"Here," said Parker, handing him a torch.

Hanson took it, the strong solid beam lighting the patterned wallpaper.
Like Parker, he thrust his head and upper body through the hole.  Like
Parker, he shone the beam around the interior and, like Parker, he let
the beam settle on the jacket, the jeans and the zipper.

He drew away from the alcove, the beam of light a circle on the
floorboards at his feet.  He and Parker looked at one another, neither
speaking, then Parker turned to one of his men and said, "Knock it
down."

They stood back as the pickaxe was wielded again, the overalled officer
aided by others who clawed at the fractured bricks each time he rested,
widening the hole, making it longer, deeper, revealing the alcove and
all that it contained.

It seemed an age before the hacking stopped, but when it did, those
present stood back and stared, unable, or just unwilling, to believe
what lay before them.

The figure was now covered by plaster, dust, and fragments of shattered
brick, and Parker thought back to the first time he'd seen it, when he
had realized it didn't smell.  He touched it gently, and stepped back
as it slumped forward, rags spilling from the neck, the sleeves and the
trouser legs.

He attempted to speak for them all, but was incapable of finding the
words to describe what he was looking at.

Hanson stepped forward, touched the bundle of rags with a trembling
hand, and looked up at him.  "It's an effigy," he said.

They walked out of the gates to waiting vehicles, and came face to face
with photographers who had broken through the cordon to get what
pictures they could.

Parker barked an order at the men who had failed to keep them back, a
flash of light from one of the cameras leaving him in no doubt that,
the following day, his photograph would be plastered all over the front
page of some paper.  The thought didn't please him.  Not only did he
object to being portrayed as having been caught unawares but he didn't
much like the idea of one of his superior officers wondering why the
scene hadn't been better secured in the first place.

"Mr.  Hanson)' said a reporter, and Hanson turned away.  "It is Mr.
Hanson?"  the reporter repeated.

Parker climbed into a car, Hanson jumped in next to him.  Warrender
closed the door as the vehicle pulled away but remained at the scene.

"What a bloody fiasco," said Parker.  "All we find is a bundle of rags.
It's a joke."

"A joke?"  said Hanson.  "I wouldn't say that," but Parker wasn't
listening.

They sat in the back of the car, Parker exhausted and Hanson deeply
disturbed by what they'd found.  Whatever Parker might feel about that
effigy, he decided, it was far from something that any of them could
afford to dismiss as a joke.

Once they got back to the station, Parker led the way to the incident
room where he briefed other members of the team: the outcome of the
search was, in some ways, disappointing, but the news that an effigy
had been found, clothed in an identical manner to the way in which Gary
was known to have been clothed when he disappeared, was at least
something.  Parker said, "Forensic will soon tell us whether the
clothes are Gary's.  If so, we'll be in a position to keep Roly in
custody for as long as it takes to find out what's happened to Gary. If
not," said

Parker, 'we may have a problem keeping him in custody beyond tomorrow
night.  Same goes for Moranti."

He was telling the team something they already knew.  In itself, the
effigy might well be evidence of a sick mind, but what Roly had done
wasn't against the law and they wouldn't be able to keep him in on that
alone.

Nothing had been found at the yard nothing that was anywhere near
incriminating enough and nothing of any interest had been found at the
Emporium.  None of the market traders had known whether Moranti rented
premises elsewhere for storage purposes, and still there'd been no sign
of Douglas Byrne.

Worse by far in Parker's view was the fact that Brogan was missing.
He hadn't returned to Arpley Street and Parker " pictured him
scavenging for food in some back-street alley.

As he brought the briefing to a close, Parker turned to his men. "Those
of you who've been on duty for the past twelve hours ought to go home,
get some kip."

They all knew that he'd been on duty longer than any of them, and one
said, "What about you?"

"I'll stay on have a crack at Barnes," said Parker.  And then he ended
the briefing, taking Hanson with him, down to the interview room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Roly readjusted his position in a chair that wasn't designed for
comfort.  It suited the austerity of the interview room in that
everything about it was hard, angular, and without colour.

In size, the room was barely large enough for Parker and the table that
divided him from Roly.  With Hanson, a detective and a duty solicitor
present, Parker couldn't avoid the feeling that there was insufficient
air, that the ceiling was pressing down on them, that the walls were
closing in.

Roly had been at the station since early morning.  He'd eaten when
offered food, had asked for tea and been given it, but hadn't asked why
he was there or why the yard was being searched.  That was very
telling, in Parker's view.  People with nothing to hide were usually,
at the very least, indignant about being dragged by force from their
homes.  They generally demanded an explanation and threatened to write
to everybody from the chief constable to their local MP.  Roly had spat
in his face at the moment that Parker and his men had pushed their way
through his front door, but other than that he'd been as quiet as a
lamb; had seemed, in fact, almost resigned to the situation.

As Parker started the interview, recording the time, date, names, ranks
and professions of those present, he reminded himself that Roly
wouldn't know that the effigy had been found.  Therefore, he watched
for his reaction as he kicked off the proceedings by saying, "You gave
us quite a turn with that thing in the alcove."

Roly kept his eyes fixed on a tape deck set into the wall and didn't
react.

"Roly," said Parker, quietly, 'that effigy was dressed in clothes
identical to those that Gary Maudsley was known to be wearing the day
he disappeared."

Roly said nothing.

"Did you know Gary?"

"No."

"Then how did you come by his clothes?"

Roly countered with, "H-how do you know they were h-his?"

Point taken, thought Parker.  Forensic would confirm it one way or
another soon enough.  "Fair enough," he said.  "But it strikes me as
odd that you dressed that thing in clothes identical to those that Gary
was known to be wearing."

"C-coincidence," said Roly.

"Maybe," said Parker.  "How did you come by them?"

"F-found them."

"Where?"

"On the w-waste ground

That was bullshit.  Parker and everyone present knew it, but proving it
might be a problem.  "Why stuff them with rags and brick them up in an
alcove?"

"Houses are coming down," said Roly.  "W-wanted to give the workmen a
fright."  He took his eyes off the tape deck.  "They're knocking down
my home."

It could just be true, thought Hanson.  He didn't for one moment think
it was, but a jury might.

Leaving it for the moment, Parker said, "It's not very pleasant to be
evicted from your home.  I know I wouldn't like it, especially if I'd
lived there long.  How long have you lived there, Roly?"

"Years," said Roly, 'on and off."

"When did you move there?"

"After I left the children's home."

"You lived in a children's home," said Parker.  "How come?"

"D-dumped," said Roly, and Hanson picked up on the way he described
what had happened to him as a baby.  Dumped, he'd said.  Not left, or
even abandoned, but dumped.

Parker said, "How old were you?"

"Two," said Roly.

"Two years old," said Parker.

"Days," said Roly.  "Two days old.  Somebody handed me in."

"Where did they find you?"

"Shoe-box," said Roly, and suddenly, he laughed.

"Why are you laughing?"  said Parker.

"Don't know," said Roly.  "Just seems funny, that's all f-found in a
shoe-box.  Don't know ... just seems funny."

It didn't seem funny to Parker, who couldn't have laughed if he'd
tried.  He couldn't imagine a baby being small enough to fit inside a
shoe-box, but when he thought about it, he supposed it depended on the
size of the baby concerned and the type of shoe-box.  He thought back
to the birth of his own two sons and found that his memory of what it
had felt like to hold them in his arms for the very first time was
somehow distorted; all he recalled was their weight not that they'd
each been so many pounds or so many kilos, but that for something so
small they'd seemed incredibly heavy, as if he were holding the weight
of the world in arms that had trembled with fear.  He might drop them.
He might fail them.  "This children's home," he said.  "How long did
you live there

"I w-went into f-foster care at nine, but w-went back to the home and
left when I was s-sixteen."

Thrown out, thought Hanson.  Society's duty done.

"Where was it?"  said Parker.

"Salisbury Road."

The name meant nothing to Hanson, but it clearly meant something to
Parker who said, "That's where the waste ground is the one that divides
the yard from Roumelia Road."

"Yes," said Roly, seeming pleased that Parker knew where it was.

"So you really have lived there a very long time," said Parker.  "Not
in the same house, or even in the same road, maybe, but right opposite
the children's home."

"Yes," said Roly.  "They knocked it down a while back.  Now they're
knocking my y-yard down.  I wanted to give them ash-shock."

"You'd have done that, all right," said Parker.  "It scared the living
daylights out of me."

Roly smiled, and Hanson felt that the smile was essentially of the
disarming variety the sort of smile that would make a boy feel easy in
his company.  "I'm sorry," said Roly.  "It wasn't m-meant for you."

"No harm done," said Parker.  "We all like a bit of a joke."  He, too,
smiled.  "Just don't do it again, eh?"

"I w-wouldn't do that, Mr.  Parker."

"Good," said Parker, 'only I wouldn't want any of my men coming across
a similar shock sensitive souls, some of them."  His tone growing
serious now, Parker added coldly, "You should see the state they were
in when they saw what was left of Joey."

Roly stopped smiling.  "I heard," he said.  "You f-found him in a
wood."

"You're no doubt going to tell me you didn't know him, that he never
came to the yard," said Parker.

"He didn't," said Roly.

"Good," said Parker, 'because if we happen to find Joey's , clothes
down that yard, the council won't have to bother I'll I demolish it for
them."

A knock at the door to the interview room robbed Hanson , of the
opportunity to evaluate what Roly's response might P have been, and
Parker suspended the interview as one of his men poked his head round
the door.  "Guv I need a word."

Parker left the room alone, returning seconds later to motion Hanson
out of there.  Hanson joined the two men in the corridor where Parker
kept his voice down.  "Problem over at Byrne's place.  Warrender's down
there now."

"Want me along?"

"No," said Parker.  "By the time we're through, it'll be nearly
midnight.  You might as well go home."

Home, thought Hanson.  The guesthouse wasn't home not any more.  "What
about Roly?"

Parker had been on duty a good fourteen hours already and saw the rest
of the evening stretching ahead like a long, bad dream.  He was tired.
He was disappointed by what the yard had produced, and short of
Forensic telling him that the effigy was dressed in Gary's clothes, he
wasn't over-hopeful of finding a means to keep Roly and Moranti in
beyond tomorrow.  "We'll carry on in the morning."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Parker got himself down to the road that led to the shop only to find
that he couldn't get any further.  From beginning to end, it was
swarming with people, some of them trying to get at the door that led
to Byrne's bed sit

He pushed through the crowd, made his way to the shop and saw one of
his men pulling a woman away from the door.  The dents around the lock
were evidence enough of her anger, and his men had a job getting her
into a car.

He ran up to Warrender, who was standing with two of the uniforms, as a
jeer went up from the crowd, one of the women shouting, "You want to
spend our taxes looking after our kids, not protecting some bloody
child molester."

"What's going on?"  said Parker.

By way of reply, Warrender handed him a copy of the evening paper.  The
headline said as much as Parker needed to know.  The local press had
reported that the yard was being searched, and had taken it upon
themselves to publish Byrne's identity along with his address and an
article divulging that he'd been questioned in connection with the
disappearance of Joseph Coyne and Gary Maudsley.

Somebody's head would roll for this, thought Parker, assuming that he
ever found out who'd given the information to the press.  Chances were,
he'd never know, and if the truth were told, this was one occasion
when, despite the hassle it had brought to his door, Parker could
sympathize.  If he had a paedophile living within a few hundred yards
of his sons, he'd want to know about it.  "Right," he said.  "Let's get
more back-up.  Get these people shifted."

He turned to the crowd and recognized some of the people that comprised
it.  Julie Coyne was there, her face drawn, her eyes hooded, the first
signs of shock and grief manifesting now.  Gone was the his-at-peace
look that she'd worn when he first broke the news.  It was sinking in,
and Julie looked ill.  "Get one of the lads to take her home," he said
to Warrender, and as he arranged it, Parker looked up at the bed sit
"Byrne?"

"Still no sign," said Warrender.

The crowd began to chant Byrne's name, staring up at the bed sit hoping
he was in there, wanting to tear him apart.

Back-up arrived in the form of further patrols, the crowd allowing
itself to be pushed away from the shop.  Warrender added: "Mind you,
one of the neighbours said she saw him burying something out the back
some nights ago."

Parker doubted that was true.  Byrne knew full-well that he was under
surveillance or had been until Parker had first clapped eyes on that
yard.  He wouldn't be stupid enough to bury anything out the back, and
the back, in any case, was under concrete.  Right now, his van was
standing on that concrete Byrne, wherever he'd gone, hadn't taken it
with him, mindful perhaps of the likelihood of his vehicle being
spotted.  "We'll take a look," he said, wearily, 'once we've got rid of
this lot."

It took some time to get the crowd to disperse, and Parker placed men
at the top and bottom of the road to make sure that those who had
stayed behind didn't congregate anywhere near the shop.

He then led the way to the side gate, lifted the latch, and walked
round to the back.  Byrne's van was still there, all right.  "Let's
take a look at his bed sit he said.

He went to the front of the shop and hammered on the door, then lifted
the letterbox and shouted, "Dougie, if you're in there, it's safe, open
the door."

Byrne didn't open the door, and Parker took the decision to have one of
his men break the lock.

He fumbled for a switch as he and Warrender stepped through and into
the square of space that stood at the foot of the stairs.  "Dougief he
shouted, but there was no reply, and Parker and Warrender walked up the
stairs to the bed sit

They pushed the door and flung it wide, half expecting to see Byrne
cowering on the floor, but the room was empty.

"Where the hell is he?"  said Parker.

They left the bed sit and went down to the street.  "I'll check the
van," said Warrender, and he and Parker returned to the back of the
shop.

Warrender produced a torch and shone it into the van.  It was empty, so
far as they could see, and he and Parker came away from it, Warrender
shining the torch to the ground for some evidence of the concrete
having been disturbed.  So much

of the information they got on any given case was a fabrication of
somebody's overactive imagination that it didn't surprise either of
them to discover that the concrete was much as they remembered it.

Then Parker took the torch and shone it in the direction of the bunker.
This, too, was much as they remembered it.  Except for one thing. "That
bunker's been moved," said Parker.

"Doesn't look like it's been moved to me."

Parker, who knew every brick on the wall of the house and where the
bunker stood in relation to it, replied, "It's been moved."

Four of the men who had been involved in searching the yard arrived on
the scene.  Now, as then, they were dressed in dark blue overalls, and
Parker directed them to the bunker.  "Over there," he said.

They walked over to it, lifted the lid and peered in, finding it empty
as Parker had known it would be.  Then two of them got a grip and tried
to lift it.  It moved, but only a fraction and, try as he might, Parker
couldn't imagine how Byrne had ever managed to shift it.  It had taken
two of his men to inch it aside, but Byrne had had the additional
strength afforded by desperation.  He couldn't afford not to be able to
move it.

He had worked at night, thought Parker, mindful that the back of the
shop was overlooked by neighbouring houses.  But despite his every
precaution, one of the neighbours had seen him.  And thank God for
that, thought Parker, who might not have bothered to search the bunker
again.

A short while later the concrete structure was positioned several feet
from where it had stood before, and Parker watched as his men began to
dig.

Almost immediately, they came across something buried a mere two feet
beneath the surface, and it took Parker back to that moment years
before when he had expected to find the remains of Joseph Coyne and his
men had uncovered the flyte case filled with clothing catalogues.
They'd probably find something similar now.  Byrne had done a runner,
and had buried something he couldn't take with him.  Stupid of him,
thought Parker.  He should have destroyed it, whatever it was.  But
then again, these were his treasures, his photographs of children.

The spade had slid into the soil as if it had recently been hoed and,
in what seemed like minutes, it was swapped for a trowel.

The man using it leant down from the side of what was now as hallow
pit, and worked with the care of an archaeologist who had stumbled on a
find.  He brushed at the soil with almost delicate strokes, and
revealed a knot that sealed a plastic sack.  The trowel was placed at
the side of the pit and a knife was used to slit the plastic.  Its
sides sprang open like the petals of a large black rose to reveal the
remains of a boy.  Whoever had killed him had done what they could to
ensure that it would prove difficult to identify the remains, but
Parker knew who it was, and he was overwhelmed by a sense of failure.

For the second time in a day, Parker found himself saying, "Hanson get
him down here I want him to see what we've found," and as he looked at
that black plastic tomb, he swore to himself that he would never reveal
certain details to the relatives, that he'd try to persuade them not to
be in court when facts relating to what that body had looked like, and
what the killer had done to ensure that it fitted in that sack, were
made known to a jury.  There were certain things, thought Parker, that
the relatives of a victim should be spared.

As Hanson arrived at the shop, he noticed that paint had been hurled
across the brickwork.  The windows had been smashed, and the door had
been scraped as if someone had dug their nails into the wood, had tried
to claw their way inside to get at Byrne.

Maybe they had, he thought.

Warrender led him to the back of the shop and Hanson saw someone
squatting down to take a look at the remains.  "Sherringham," Warrender
said, and Hanson saw him touch the plastic with a hand that seemed to
be trembling.  It took a lot to rattle a pathologist, thought Hanson,
but Sherringham was clearly shaken.

He looked past him to see Parker standing by a bunker, its concrete
sides and the timber lid giving it the appearance of a makeshift
sarcophagus.

"Do we know who it is?"  said Hanson.

"Gary," said Parker.

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."

If Parker had looked tired earlier, he now looked completely exhausted.
He leant against the bunker as if it were propping him up.

Hanson felt that he was being unfair in asking Parker anything at this
stage, but there were certain things he needed to know to make the
deductions that Parker would expect of him by morning, and he said,
"How long has he been dead?"

"Three or four days."

"Byrne didn't murder him," said Hanson.

"No," said Parker.  "I realize that."

In that case, thought Hanson, Parker must also realize that Gary had
been kept prisoner somewhere, that Roly had been

panicked into murdering him and had dumped the body in Byrne's back
yard to focus Parker's attention back on Byrne.

Indicating the remains, Parker said, "Would this fit in with | what you
make of Roly?"

Hanson, who still felt he knew too little about Roly to be able to
determine what drove him, thought back to that alcove and the clothes
found on the effigy.  "I think you can expect Forensic to confirm that
Gary was kept in the alcove and that the clothes on the effigy are
his."

"That doesn't answer my question.  I want to know why he did that.  Why
imprison him?"

Hanson gave the only answer he could at that particular moment.  "I
don't know," he admitted.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The following morning, Hanson walked into the dining room to find that
only two of the breakfast tables were set.  Business must be bad, he
thought, though he doubted trade was seasonal.

He nodded an acknowledgement to the only other guest, then left him to
his paper and sat down at a table by the window.  In a sense, it was an
unfortunate choice in that there had once been another table in exactly
this spot, but that had been antique, its surface decorated with
squares inlaid with different types of wood.

Mrs.  Judd walked through carrying a breakfast and set it down in front
of the guest that Hanson had decided was a rep, the smell of hot
croissants wafting across the room.  "Morning," she said. "Croissants?"
and Hanson, who felt that he couldn't face anything much considering
what he'd been through with Parker the night before, found himself
replying, "Fine."

He had stood at the bunker with Parker, had tried to tell him that what
had been found was entirely in keeping with what Roly was likely to do
if cornered, and had realized in the end that Parker wasn't taking it
in.  He'd seen too much in too short a space of time.  He needed sleep,
time to think, time to come to grips with the latest development.

Whether Parker had heeded his advice to go home and get some sleep,
Hanson didn't know.  He only knew that Parker had asked him to stick
around a few days longer.

In the circumstances, Hanson didn't see how he could refuse, but in the
knowledge that Parker had said he wouldn't be required at the station
until early that afternoon, he decided that he might as well do
something other than stare at the guesthouse walls all morning.  His
old school wasn't far from Bury.  He'd always intended to take a look
at the place, but he'd never been back.  Time to pay it a visit.

The croissants, when they came, were disappointing yesterday's
offerings steamed back to life but barely passing for fresh.  He washed
them down with pale, milky coffee, and walked back up to his room, the
aftertaste of chicory stinging the roof of his mouth.

He hadn't opened the curtains and the room was still in darkness, his
bed as yet unmade.  For a moment, he could almost imagine that Lorna
was lying there, the bedclothes barely moving as she breathed.  But
they were bedclothes, no more, no less, and he wondered what
subconscious desire had allowed him to push them aside when he woke,
and leave them sculpted into ash ape that looked like her sleeping
form.

He straightened the bed abruptly, drew back the curtains and found that
it was raining.  It would have seemed odd if that hadn't been the case.
Whenever he thought back to Manchester, and to what had become of his
marriage, every scene he saw seemed set against a backdrop of rain, as
if the sun had never once shone on their relationship.

He picked up the briefcase and opened the door that led from his room
to the landing.  He walked past Mrs.  Judd as he made for the stairs,
then glanced back to find that she was watching him.  She still hadn't
placed him, but she knew now that he wasn't who he said he was.  He
didn't blame her for being suspicious of him, but wasn't about to
enlighten her; he couldn't divulge what had brought him there to the
very person whose presence in the house he so resented.

He left her to her thoughts, aware, even as he left the house, that she
was in his room.  If he were to return to it right now, she'd be poking
around on the pretext of tidying it in his absence, but what she would
really be looking for were clues.

Hanson's life revolved around looking for clues and he could relate to
that.  The need to know was a powerful force, one that had been driving
him for as long as he could remember.  He needed to know why he felt as
he did about his current relationship.  He needed to know why Lorna had
left him for somebody else.  He needed to know why he'd had to return
and face the past like this.

And these were just some of the things he needed to know.  If he
thought about it, he realized that it was this same need that drove him
to get to the root of his patients' problems, and Lorna had once
accused him of spending every waking moment analysing what went on in
the minds of sexual deviants and serial killers.  It isn't normal,"
she'd added.  "Why surround yourself with these people?"

He had defended himself with, "I don't they're referred to me by the
NHS because people like you, people who are trained to deal with
physical illness, don't know where to start when it comes to dealing
with behavioural problems."

In the infuriating way she had of making sweeping generalizations,
Lorna had replied, "Psychopaths are incurable.  What's the point?"  and
he'd replied that certain physical illnesses were also incurable, but
that didn't give others the right to end the misery of the victims
against their will.

It had led to an argument that had become typical of their
relationship, the subject matter gravitating towards more personal
issues until, eventually, he had found himself retreating behind what,
at the time, he had regarded as a civilized silence.  He no longer
regarded that silence as having been civilized; he regarded it as
having been a mistake.

How many times since had he told patients to express what they felt,
explaining that to bottle up emotions was unhealthy?

He had no idea.  He only knew that he had never once given vent to his
true feelings, had never once let her know how deeply she'd hurt him.
The quiet rage that he'd kept contained in the years following her
departure was pushing the lid of that bottle now, threatening to
explode.

He had thrown himself more deeply into his work during his marriage,
his interest in criminal psychology an addition rather than an
extension to his everyday work at the clinic.  As Lorna well knew, few
of his patients were dangerous, or even particularly interesting if he
were honest the women referred by the courts or their GP had invariably
stolen items they could well afford to pay for cries for attention from
people whom they had come to believe no longer loved or wanted them.
The emasculated middle managers tended not to get out of bed one
morning: they simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, impervious to
the bewilderment, worry or even fury of the women they'd married twenty
years before.  Some left their jobs, their spouses, their entire past,
only to be found in a doorway.  If they were lucky, they were referred
to him, or to someone like him, someone who could help them put their
lives together again, not as before but in a my that was it least
manageably if gnly fgr the moment:

He found his work rewarding, and if the money was poor, then at least
the rewards were substantial in terms of the minor triumphs that
sometimes seemed to arrive on a daily basis the agoraphobic who made it
to the post box and back, the woman who found herself able to cuddle
her kids for the first time in years, the lad who nerved himself to
stand up to an abusive father.

Such was the bread-and-butter stuff of life, and he knew it to be small
beer by comparison with those who achieved a first in the treatment of
some major mental disorder, but what mattered to him was that what he
did made an appreciable difference to somebody's otherwise miserable
existence.

He only wished he could make an appreciable difference to his own.

* * *

As he headed out of Manchester in the direction of the school, he grew
increasingly aware that the layout of the roads had changed a great
deal since he'd last lived in the area.  He reached for a road map, his
hand dipping into the glove box and coming out with a wrapper from a
high-energy snack bar.  It served as a reminder that he hadn't made
contact with Jan since the brief, stilted phone call he'd made the day
he'd arrived at the guesthouse, and questions she'd asked came to him
now, questions she'd asked only recently, as if picking up on the fact
that, of late, Lorna had been on his mind.

"Is she anything like me?"

"No, not really."

"In what way?"

In every way, thought Hanson, but all he'd said was, "You don't look
alike, if that's what you mean."

It wasn't what she'd meant, and he knew it.  "So what does she look
like?"

"Small and dark'

That would have to do for now, and she settled for it, although, when
she'd come across a photo some time later, she had shown it to him
saying, "Is this Lorna?"

He had glanced at it quickly and looked away, angry at what he had
perceived to be a violation of his privacy.  "Yes."

She'd gone very quiet, and he knew he ought to give her the reassurance
she no doubt needed, but anger had made him leave her to suffer.  It
was her own fault, thought Hanson.  People who root through other
people's belongings sometimes come across things they wish they hadn't
seen.

"She's beautiful."

He hadn't made any reply.

"Don't you think she's beautiful?"

"If you say so."

She'd put the photo back, slipping it into the hold-all that he'd kept
on the top of a wardrobe.

It hadn't been mentioned again until later in the day when she'd
suddenly said, "That holdall.  The one on top of the wardrobe."

"What about it?"

"I thought it was empty."

"Well, it's not."

"I never thought ... I ..."

He let her struggle on.

"I wanted it for gym, that's all.  The handle's broken on mine.  I
didn't mean ..."

"You didn't mean any harm?"  he'd said.

"No," she'd replied.

"No harm done."

But that wasn't true, and he knew it.  Now that she'd seen a photo of
Lornashe felt inferior, and that night, when he'd reached out to her,
he had found her unresponsive.  Again, he hadn't been able to bring
himself to give the reassurance she clearly needed: the photo had been
thrust at him without him having had the chance to prepare himself for
seeing it, and he wanted her punished for the pain it had caused him.

He had turned off the light and when she spoke again, her voice had
seemed to come at him from very far away.  "What does she do for a
living?"

He knew his reply would fan the flames of the inferiority complex she
was nurturing, but told her anyway.  "She's a doctor."

Her response was very small, very quiet.  "Oh."

He'd tried to sleep, but she wasn't finished.

"Do you ever '

"Jan," he'd said, "I'm trying to sleep."

' hear from her?"

"No."

"Maybe you should phone her some time, see how she's getting along."

His patience exhausted, he'd replied, "Maybe I should," and she'd left
it at that, turning away abruptly.

He wondered what she'd make of his not having phoned since he'd first
arrived at the guesthouse, and decided that by now she'd be convinced
that he was about to end their relationship.  Maybe he was.  If she'd
asked him how he felt and what he wanted, he wouldn't have been able to
tell her.  Maybe that was why he hadn't called.  Maybe he would never
call again.  Maybe he'd just drift back home after Parker had finished
with his services and tell her he couldn't commit to more than he was
already giving, that the house, the toad and the holdall were his and
his alone, along with the mortgage, the finance on the car and the
certainty that if he didn't sort himself out, he'd end up in therapy in
late middle age: I don't have anyone in my life.  My life lacks focus
and meaning.  I Just don't see the point of it all.  any more ... He
wondered what her response would be if he told her he couldn't commit,
and it suddenly wasn't too difficult to imagine her taking the news
calmly, then packing her things into something other than the holdalL
Most of it would be items of clothing that largely belonged to him, in
which case not only would he be saying goodbye to a relationship that
was calm, workable, comfortable, he'd be saying goodbye to every
sweatshirt he'd ever owned, and he wasn't quite sure he could cope with
that The house would be lonely without them.  Lonely, cold, and devoid
of the maroons, blues and greys that were tied round her waist if not
left to hang round her shoulders.

He'd also go hungry or, if not hungry, malnourished, as he would, no
doubt, revert to the junk food he'd eaten before he met her.  There'd
be no more salads as an accompaniment to the evening meal; no more
fresh fruit brought home.  No more wrappers pushed into the glove
compartment of the Saab.

He picked up the wrapper, screwed it into a ball and pushed it into the
ashtray, out of sight

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Mrs.  Maudsley opened the door, a pot plant -in her hand.  The African
Violet, Parker thought, although he was no expert on these things.  It
was similar to one kept on the sill in his own kitchen, its leaves
yellowing from too much light and water.  He said, "Do you think I
could come in, Mrs.  Maudsley?"

She had been expecting him, really.  Every minute of the past few weeks
she had been expecting him.  Parker could see it in the way she held on
to the plant and made no effort to invite him inside, as if by
preventing him from crossing the threshold she could somehow prevent
the news from being true.

He led her gently by the elbow and guided her into a back room where
she put the plant on the coffee table that held the magazines.  "Are
you here on your own, Mrs.  Maudsley?"

Her eyes grew wide with fear.  "Why do you want to know?"

"Late last night," said Parker, 'we found ... we found the body of a
boy ... at a shop not far from here."

"What did I do with my plant?"

Parker picked it up off the table and gave it to her.

"I don't know where I go wrong.  I've had others, you know, and they've
all gone the same way.  First the leaves turn yellow and then they die.
Everybody tells me I water them too much but it doesn't seem to matter
what I do, they die just the same."

She stroked the leaves as if she were performing some strange healing
ritual, and then, quite suddenly, she pinched one so that an impression
was left, a bruise that would never quite heal but would cause some
essential part of the leaf to die away.

"Mrs.  Maudsley ..."

"I don't know who this boy is you've found, but I do know it isn't our
Gary," and, as if the thought had only just struck her, she looked up,
her eyes bright with possibility.  "He could be in London, couldn't he?
That's where they go, isn't it, London?"

"Gary didn't run away, Mrs.  Maudsley."

"It's his birthday, Wednesday.  I'm putting on a tea."

A tea, thought Parker, and he felt his chest constrict as if her grief
were about to crush him.

She turned to a photo on a bookshelf, a photo identical to the one the
police had released to the press.  He had been an attractive kid, his
cheekbones high, his complexion slightly freckled, but the expression
on his face had struck Parker as being rather vacant, as if, during the
split second that the photograph had been taken, he had somehow managed
to glance into the future and had found himself to be absent from it.

"You should see what I've bought for his birthday.  When he comes back,
he won't be able to move in his room for the clothes and presents I've
bought."

Parker was lost for words.  That small dismembered bundle would never
be coming home.

By the side of the photo, there was a plaster ornament, a donkey
labouring under the weight of a load that, in reality, it couldn't
possibly have been expected to carry.  He reached out and picked it up.
It felt coarse in his hand and had about it a fairground cheapness that
was in keeping with the rest of the room: the brown and yellow material
that covered a wing-backed sofa, the grey nylon rug in front of a gas
fire, its elements blackened through being lit by a twist of newspaper.
He imagined the way in which the print would expand in the moment
before the paper turned to ash, a chain of words that would fail to
convey what impact the human tragedy would have on those left to suffer
in its wake.  Tomorrow, there would be fresh tapers made from today's
news and somebody, somewhere, would be burning the words, 'missing boy
found dead ..."

He knew that, whatever he said, she wouldn't take it in first time;
that he would have to come back and repeat it, word for word.  He'd
seen it all before other missing kids, other bewildered relatives
plummeting into denial.

He explained that the pathologist had confirmed that the boy was Gary
and she nodded and smiled.  "I see," she said.  "I see ..."  She
carried on stroking the leaves of the plant, still nodding and smiling,
and seeing.  "Makes you wonder, doesn't it."

"Excuse me?"  said Parker..

"What he must have gone through."

Parker found himself replying, "Yes, it does, Mrs.  Maudsley, it makes
you wonder very much."  Then he left, in case he, too, was bruised by
an impression that would never quite heal but would cause some
essential part of him to die away also.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Hanson drove up to the gates of the school and found the grounds
silent, the pupils hidden behind the walls to classrooms that he could
recall in detail.  For a place crammed to capacity with young life, it
seemed oddly quiet and intense.

In the distance, he could see the cricket pavilion, the nets and the
strips of earth where the grass had been worn to the roots by inexpert
bowlers.  He recalled the lad who had ultimately become a county-level
cricket player, had heard of him since and knew that he'd opened a
sports shop somewhere in Hastings.

It seemed inappropriate end for someone whose Eiknt M

made his face instantly recognizable on advertising hoardings.  He,
like a number of old boys, had made his mark, had faded to obscurity,
was one of those whose names were inscribed on a plaque in the
headmaster's study.

Hanson, whose name had yet to be inscribed, didn't go into the school.
He drove by, finding the roads unchanged, and finding also that what
had been designated green belt had remained so.  No one had given up a
slice of their garden for development.  No blocks of flats had sprouted
up on a former village green.  It was all a far cry from the estate
he'd travelled from during his school days, the journey an hour-long
bus ride with changes at the terminal in the centre of Manchester.

He'd walked these roads as a boy, finishing prep at school,

then lugging his books to the house where Parris had lived with the
wife he'd murdered.  He came to it now, and found it smaller than he'd
remembered, though no less picturesque.

Parris would either be dead or approaching seventy.  At any rate,
Hanson couldn't imagine that he might have returned to the house where
he'd committed the crime described by the press as dreadful The
expression seemed genteel.  He couldn't recall having seen the phrase
used in recent times.  A dreadful crime.  The press preferred more
sensational terms today, and yet, they'd been right.  The crime had
been dreadful, not merely because of its violent nature, but because it
had been committed by someone like Parris rather than by somebody long
suspected of being psychotic.  And therein lay the fascination, thought
Hanson.  People might die in drive-by shootings, and crimes of that
nature were no less dreadful, but such cases didn't have legs.  Not
these days.  What Parris had done had ensured that, over a period of
weeks, his life and the lives of his closest relatives had been picked
over by a press that had wanted to keep the story running.  Here was a
man whose background and qualifications were impeccable, a man who had
taught the children of prominent local figures.  What did those pupils
think of him now?

Many had said, in his defence, that Parris had been a wonderful man,
and not at all the type of person likely to take a hammer to his wife
without good reason.

But what had been the reason good or otherwise?  thought Hanson.

The press had portrayed Parris's wife as a loving mother, an academic,
a respected magistrate, and that was understandable, Hanson supposed.
But she must have been something else as well as those good and
commendable things, because Parris had been driven to murder her. There
had been no other woman involved, no other man.  No third party. No
explanation.  Just Parris, with his gentle air of regret, his
willingness to admit to the crime, his refusal to blame anyone but
himself.

Why?

z86

He parked in front of the house, climbed out of the car, and approached
a small, wrought-iron gate the height of his waist.  In Parris's day,
there had been no sign to warn the unsuspecting that they should Beware
of the Dog, and even as he cast his eye over a garden that seemed every
bit as well kept as he remembered, a Bouvier de Flandres loped from the
back of the house, its coat steel blue, its face deceptively placid.

Hanson had seen that deadpan expression many times before and wasn't
fooled: it was never the noisy, yappy people who bit, it was those who
considered their options then exploded into action.  He took his hand
from the gate as more than mere precaution.

He looked up and saw the figure of a man emerging from the side of the
cottage.  He was middle-aged and dressed as if he were about to get
down to the garden.  He looked past Hanson to the Saab, and Hanson made
a move away from the gate.

"Can I help you?"

He turned to face the man, an apology on his lips.  "I'm sorry, I was
formerly the pupil of a maths teacher who used to live here.  I was
passing so I pulled over."

The Bouvier lifted its lip in total, and meaningful, silence.  "I used
to come to the house after school sometimes."

This met with no response, and Hanson added, I didnt mean to stop,
actually, I just ..."  His words trailed away.  The man looked at him.
The dog looked at him.  "I'd better be on my way," said Hanson.

"Hold on," said the man, and Hanson turned back.  "You say my father
used to teach you."

The dog let his lip fall back into place.  Odd, thought Hanson, how one
simple act could transform it so totally.  It now looked more of a
family pet than the guard dog that it so clearly, genuinely, was.

"A long time ago," said Hanson.

"Have you come far?"

"London," said Hanson, "though I'm working on something in Manchester
at present, so I decided to drive up and see my old school."

"It hasn't changed."

"So I see."

They regarded one another a few seconds longer, the dog relaxing, the
quietness of their voices having imparted the message that,
essentially, there seemed to be no problem.

"Would you like to come in?"

"No, there's no need, really ..."

"He doesn't get many visitors."

For a moment, Hanson wondered whether he'd heard correctly.

"I'm sure he'd be only too pleased to have a visit from one of his
former pupils."

You're ..."

"Gus," said the man, opening the gate, and Hanson recalled the press
having made a mockery of the fact that Parris had named one of his sons
Augustus.

The dog gave him the once-over, sniffing his shoes, his jacket and his
trousers, then let him in, padding off to a corner of the garden,
settling down, watching, head on paws, as Gus led the stranger into the
house.

The wall clock had never worked when Hanson had gone to the house as a
boy.  Now, the pendulum swung and the hall was filled with a soft and
comforting tick.  The paintwork was relatively fresh but the hall had
been redecorated in much the same colours as Parris, or his wife, had
chosen years before.

He was led through and into a room that looked out on the garden at the
back.  In Hanson's day, it had been a sitting room.  Now it was a
bedroom, and, sitting in a chair, his back to him, was Parris.
"Father," said Gus, 'you've a visitor."

He led Hanson round the chair so that he was facing Parris.

My God, thought Hanson, he's so old.  "Mr.  Parris," he said, 'it's
Murray Hanson.  Do you remember me?"

Parris took his eyes from the garden, allowed them to rest on him and
said, "Vaguely, yes."

They shook hands, Parris's palm like parchment.

Hanson found himself totally unprepared.  What did you say to a man who
had shaped your entire life by one single act?  And then he grasped
that it hadn't been one single act but a series of acts that had shaped
him: that every time Parris had paid him special attention, he had
instilled in him the notion that much was expected of him and that he
was capable of fulfilling those expectations.

He followed Parris's gaze to the garden and was disconcerted to find
that, from here, he could see right out to the garden furniture, the
cast-iron table, its four white chairs, the scene of his crime.

"Is that why you came?"  said Parris.  "To see where I did it?"

"Father," said Gus, but Hanson broke in with: "No, but now that I'm
here, I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it interesting."

"You surprise me.  Most people want to avoid the subject.

It embarrasses them."  He turned to Hanson, "Does it embarrass you,
Murray?"

He had to think about it.  It didn't embarrass him, yet if asked before
the visit to consider whether he would have brought the subject up,
he'd have replied that it wouldn't have seemed appropriate.

"No."

"So why did you come?"

"I came to see the house.  I didn't expect ..."

"You thought I'd be dead," said Parris.  "That was a reasonable enough
assumption."

"Now that I find you're not, I can at least thank you," said Hanson.

"For what?"

"For extra tuition, for putting me well on the road to making a success
of my life."

"Is that what you've done?"  said Parris.  "Made a success of your
life?"

Hanson didn't reply straight away.  Parris watched him thoughtfully,
lowering his eyes when Hanson said, "I suppose I have, yes, on one
level."

"And on what level might that be?"

Hanson was suddenly aware that if he were to reveal the nature of his
work, Parris might feel he had gone there to study him.  "I'm a
doctor," he replied, and this wasn't entirely untrue.  His thesis had
related to criminal psychology and he would have been entitled to
request that people address him as Doctor.

"Where?"

"London."

He steered him away from the subject, asking after his health,
accepting the offer of coffee, noting that Parris seemed tired, and
feeling slightly alarmed when the old man returned to the subject of
his occupation by saying, "Why did you tell an untruth?"

An untruth.  The word seemed to belong to another time, one in which
people refrained from coming out with the darker word, lie.

"I'm not aware that I '

"You said you were a doctor."

"I '

"You didn't go in to the school today."

He'd totally lost Hanson now.  "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"The plaque," said Parris, 'the one in the headmaster's study.  You
haven't seen it?"

"Is there any reason why I should?"

"Your name was inscribed on it some time last year.  Something to do
with criminal psychology, if I'm not mistaken."

In all this time, he hadn't yet taken his eyes from that table and
chairs.

The feeling of guilt that washed over Hanson was almost child-like in
its intensity.  He hadn't felt anything like it since being caught in
some minor misdemeanour as a schoolboy, and it interested him to note
the psychological effect that being in Parris's presence had on him. In
his view, Parris would never be a murderer so much as a schoolmaster.
Nothing could ever change that.  "I'm sorry," he said. "You're
right."

"Is that why you came?"

"No."

"So why did you come?"

"I don't know," admitted Hanson.  "Right now, there are things in my
life ... I ... things I need to sort ... I can't explain."

"A woman?"  said Parris, and the guilt was replaced by embarrassment.
Hanson, who had no difficulty discussing the finer points of whatever
sexual deviation a patient might throw at him, knew he would find it
impossible to discuss any matter relating to the opposite sex with his
former schoolmaster.  "I was married," he said.  "It didn't work
out."

"Ah," said Parris.

Hanson rose to go.

"You're leaving?"

"I shouldn't have come."

"You've only just arrived."

"I didn't mean ..."

"Neither did I," said Parris.  "On occasion, we all tend to find
ourselves doing things we didn't mean to do."

Hanson couldn't have wished for a better lead into the type of
conversation that might have enabled him to ask Parris why he had
murdered his wife, and yet he didn't ask.  To have done so would have
seemed an almost unforgivable intrusion.  It therefore came as a
surprise when, in the moments that followed, Parris inadvertently
revealed his motivation, and by so doing, he articulated everything
Hanson had thought and felt with regard to his own failed marriage.

He looked once again at the table and chairs, the paintwork recent,
white, and terribly clean.  Hard to imagine what it might have looked
like after Parris had wielded that hammer, the mixture of blood and
tea, and Mrs.  Parris's face pressed into the metal so that, later,
when her remains were removed from the scene, it had borne the imprint
of a single leaf of ivy, one wrought into the metalwork to scar her
cheek in death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

After leaving Parris, Hanson drove straight to the station where
Warrender handed him a copy of that morning's paper.

Much of the article was devoted to the search at the yard and the
discovery of remains at the back of Byrne's shop, but Hanson's
attention was drawn to a photograph on one of the inside pages.

It had been taken outside the yard the day before.  It depicted Parker,
who'd been barking a command at the men who had allowed the press to
break through the cordon.  This, in itself, was no problem.  The
problem lay in that Hanson had been standing beside him when the
photograph was taken, and the text beneath the photo gave his name and
occupation.

That's all I need, thought Hanson.

He wondered how Mrs.  Judd would react when she discovered that Mr.
Franklin the conference organizer was actually Mr.  Hanson the criminal
psychologist, imagined being asked to explain himself, and imagined,
also, being unable to do so.

A thought crept into his mind, and he quashed it as too appalling a
prospect to consider.  The Judds seemed short of money.  What if they
were to contact the press and tell them he was staying at the
guesthouse under the name of Franklin?  That had to be worth something,
surely, especially if it came to light that he and his former wife had
once owned the place.

He could imagine what the press would make of that, just as he could
imagine what Parker might say.  A thing like this could damage his
career, not to mention the effect it might have on his relationship
with Jan.  She would want to know why he'd returned to his former
matrimonial home, and he wouldn't be able to offer an explanation he
didn't have one.

At the thought of the potential consequences on both counts, he was
enveloped by a wave of acute embarrassment, and he calmed himself with
the assurance that the Judds were highly unlikely to contact the press.
And then he wasn't so sure ... As Warrender led him up to the incident
room, he said, "If the press track you down, don't make any comment,
and don't give any interviews."

"I don't intend to," said Hanson.

Parker was in the incident room, briefing his men.  Byrne's video shop
had been cordoned off.  Forensic were still down there.  The remains
had been removed the night before and had already been positively
identified as those of Gary Maudsley.

Hanson took in the details then broke in with a question: "Have
Forensic come up with a result on that alcove?"

"Not yet," said Parker.

They will, thought Hanson.  "What about the clothes found on the
effigy?"

"Forensic are working on those, too.  If hair and skin cells are found,
and if they match those that have been taken from clothes found in the
laundry basket at Gary's home, we'll soon know.  Trouble is, that takes
time, and I don't have that time."

Hanson fell silent as Parker explained that, as things stood, they
still had too little to go on.  Roly's solicitor was putting forward
the argument that nothing had been found at the yard or the squat,
despite Parker's men having taken the place apart.  What had been
found, however, was Gary Maudsley's body, and this had been found
buried at the back of a shop owned by a known paedophile, a paedophile
who appeared to have done a runner.  Roly couldn't be held simply
because he'd made an effigy which he alleged had been intended to shock
the workmen who were about to destroy his squat.  Roly's solicitor was
therefore pointing out that it was high time Parker either charged his
client, or released him, albeit for the time being.

He had a point, thought Hanson, who followed Parker up to his office
after he'd ended the briefing.

Once there, Hanson saw that Parker hadn't taken his advice go home, and
get some sleep, or if he had, the sleep hadn't been enough.  He sat in
his chair like a much older man, the whites of his eyes almost totally
bloodshot now.

"There must be something you can do?"  said Hanson.

Parker replied, "I can get an order keeping him for a further
twenty-four hours.  After that, I'll either have to charge him, or let
him go.  Same with Moranti."

Hanson thought back to the statement made by Nathan Palmer.  "We know
that Gary Maudsley went down to the yard, and Moranti admitted taking
most if not all of the boys he's employed down the years to the
yard."

"It's not enough."

Hanson was beginning to wonder whether anything would ever be enough.
He knew that Parker had spent the greater part of the morning
questioning Roly again, and he said, "What's Roly thrown at you?"

"Nothing of interest," said Parker.  "We found an old bit of film at
the yard and on the back of it I managed to wheedle a little more out
of him."

"Film?"  said Hanson.

"Home movie.  Reel-to-reel.  Done about thirty years ago."

"What's on it?"

"Child's birthday party," said Parker.  "Plenty of adults around.
Balloons, streamers, jelly.  It's all pretty innocent stuff."

Let me be the judge of that, thought Hanson, who said, "So what's his
background?"

"Like he says, he was dumped as a two-day-old infant and,

like he says, he ended up in the children's home that used to be on
Salisbury Road."

Hanson had stood on the waste ground at the very spot where the
children's home was purported to have stood.  He had looked at the
surrounding houses, and had been able to imagine what they must have
been like in their heyday.  These derelict, rambling houses had once
been the homes of wealthy, professional people, and he couldn't imagine
a children's home to have been built among them.  "Are you sure about
the existence of this home?"

"I remember it," said Parker.  "St.  Francis House."  As he spoke its
name, Hanson saw the saint, his arms outstretched, a host of exotic
finches feeding from his palms.  "Not that it was always a children's
home," said Parker.  "My information has it that it was three large
properties knocked into one.  You couldn't have distinguished it from
any of the houses that surrounded it not unless you saw the name on the
door."

Hanson, who could see the name on the door only too clearly, said, "Do
records exist of the children they had in their care?"

"In abundance," said Parker.  "Warrender pulled what he could."

"Which was?"

"We know that Roly was put up for adoption as a baby, but that nobody
came forward," said Parker.

"Unusual," said Hanson.  "I'd have thought a baby had every chance of
finding adoptive parents."

"Hare lip," said Parker, 'though you'd never know it to look at him
now.  Whoever operated did a good job, superficially at any rate.  He
still stutters."

"That's not related," said Hanson.  "A hare lip is one thing, a stutter
is another."

"Whatever," said Parker, but already Hanson was on the look-out for
anything Parker might say to indicate what had brought about that
stutter.  "What else do we know about his background?"

Parker handed a folded slip of paper to Hanson as he added, "St.
Francis House was initially run by a Church organization.  It was taken
over by the local authority in the late sixties.  Roly was nine at the
time, and Social Services placed an ad in one of the local papers. I've
got a copy of it here."

He handed Hanson a photocopy of the advert, and Hanson read the
words:

Roly is an attractive, brown-eyed boy of nine.  Intelligent but shy, be
needs a family who can give him the individual attention we Jeel he
needs.

Hanson had to fight an urge to crumple the page.  To have described a
child as an attractive brown-eyed boy was almost an open invitation to
a paedophile.  But the ad had been placed thirty years ago, when people
were less aware of the potential consequences of advertising for
foster-parents to boys and girls who could be considered attractive,
vulnerable and in need of individual attention.  "Who fostered him?" he
said.  "Some local people people called Timpson."  Hanson, who was
already planning to interview them with a view to finding out a little
more about Roly's early years, said, "Do they still live locally?"

"We don't know," said Parker.  "They ... disappeared."  For a minute,
Hanson thought Parker was about to tell him that the Timpsons had been
found dead, that their nine-year-old foster-child was assumed to have
murdered them, but Parker added, "Randolph Timpson was reported by a
former foster-child who'd grown to adulthood bitter that he'd been
abused by him.  Roly was taken away from them, and the Timpsons simply
evaporated.  There's no record of where they might have gone."  "Did
anyone talk to Roly, find out what he'd been through while he was
staying with these people?"

"Ah," said Parker, and there was a subtext to that gentle, thoughtful
Ah.  "This is where Social Services appear to have discovered a problem
with their otherwise excellent records, which appear to be
incomplete."

I'll bet, thought Hanson, as Parker said, "Funny thing is, there is a
record of Social Services defending their initial decision to allow the
Timpsons to foster the boy in the first place.  Somebody seemed to feel
that they were absolutely ideal."

"Why?"

"Something to do with Randolph Timpson's line of work," said Parker,
drily.  "You might say, his profession."

"And what was that?"

"Entertainer," said Parker.  "Children's entertainer."

Why do I see this?  thought Hanson.  Why do I see him giving the boy a
balloon for being good."  for consenting to perform some sexual act?
Quietly, he said, "I'd like a chance to talk to Roly."

"And I'd like to give you that chance," said Parker.  "Thing is,
Murray, you know as well as I do, I can't risk it."

Hanson was reminded that, if Parker were to allow him to talk to his
suspect at this stage in the proceedings, Roly's brief might later
claim that Hanson had somehow tricked his client into incriminating
himself.  There was a further complication in that any information
gleaned by Hanson could be deemed inadmissible.  Hanson wasn't a police
officer.  His function was to piece together a profile of Roly and
increase Parker's ability to question him effectively.  He said, "Any
sign of Brogan?"

"No."

In the knowledge that Parker would be able to hold Roly if it
transpired that Brogan had been abused during the night he spent with
Roly, Hanson said, "What was the result of the physical examination?"

"Freeman won't divulge the result to anyone but Brogan's father."

"So why hasn't he done so?"

"Healey doesn't want to know the result."

Talk to him."  "I've tried' "Let me try."  "Be my guest."

Where is he?"

"Anton Close."

Hanson hadn't heard the name mentioned before and Parker explained that
this was where Healey had been living before Parker had insisted that
he return home and take care of Brogan.

"Why's he gone back there?"

Parker replied, "He didn't see much point in staying at Arpley Street
once Brogan did a runner."

"He hasn't gone back to the yard?"

If he had, we'd know," said Parker.

That's where he'll head," said Hanson, 'sooner or later."

"We'll pick him up if he does."

Hanson pictured Brogan, sleeping rough in town or hanging around the
houses that surrounded Roly's Yard.  He'd have seen the police activity
and wouldn't have approached it, but once the police were gone, he'd
return Hanson was sure of it, particularly if he realized Roly was
back.  He said, "Are the birds still at the yard?"

Parker had given orders that the mesh wasn't to be disturbed and found
himself justifying that decision, as if Hanson might think him soft. If
we'd pulled the mesh down during the search, they'd have been dead in a
couple of days.  I didn't want some Save the Budgie group breathing
down my neck so I made sure none of my teams damaged the aviary."

They can't stay there for ever that yard is coming down."

"I'm trying to arrange for someone to come and round them up, take them
to some pet shop or an aviary somewhere."

Hanson wasn't so much bothered about what would become of the birds as
what would become of Brogan if they didn't get it through to him that
Roly was a danger to him.  "So the aviary still exists as such."

"It's all pretty much as it was, except we've dug up the yard and
returned the soil as best we can.  Why?"

Hanson wondered how Parker would take his next suggestion.  "Maybe it
could work in your favour if, for the moment, you were to release Roly
from custody."

"I don't see how."

"Pull your men," said Hanson.  "Release Roly.  Watch the yard.  I'll
almost guarantee that the minute Brogan knows he's back there, he will
go to that yard, provided there are no police in evidence."

"Why should he?"  said Parker, and Hanson thought of the way in which
the long-tailed bird had escaped from the mesh, only to return to what
it saw as security.  "Roly's all he's got," he said.  "He trusts
him."

"What do we have to gain?"

"Everything," said Hanson.  "The minute Brogan shows, we go to Anton
Close, tell his father he's heading for the yard and that chances are,
he'll ultimately go and stay with Roly when Roly sets up somewhere
else."

"How will that help matters?"

"Healey will have heard news bulletins by now, so he now knows
something you couldn't tell him a few days ago, namely, that Roly is
under suspicion of being, at the very least, implicated in the murders
of Joseph and Gary.  Healey will be terrified for Brogan's safety.
He'll also realize there's real chance that his son might have been
abused."

"I think he knows that already.  That's why he doesn't want the result
from Freeman."

"So force him to face up to it," said Hanson.  "Tell him you can't do
anything further because you don't have anything concrete to go on.
Tell him that if Brogan's been abused you can get Roly off the
streets."

"Healey won't '

"You don't know that," said Hanson.  "You haven't let me dy."

Parker sat there, tired, and growing increasingly desperate.  "You
think it might work?"

It's the only option you've got right now."

"Okay," said Parker.  "I'll pull my men."

CHAPTER FORTY

It seemed to Brogan many weeks since he had run from Freeman's surgery.
In reality, it was a matter of a few days, which he had spent sleeping
rough in the houses that surrounded Roly's Yard.  He'd seen Roly
arrested, and he'd watched the yard being searched, and if he'd eaten
little, that was nothing new.  He'd ventured out at night, walked into
Manchester and stolen out of bins.  He wasn't streetwise enough to know
that if he'd gone into a burger bar or gravitated towards the type of
area that boys who were sleeping rough found themselves drawn to from
necessity, he'd have been picked up.  He had no money, it was as simple
as that, and he wanted to stay as close to the yard as he could,
without being seen.

It was daylight when Roly came back.  Brogan had imagined him walking
across the waste ground but that didn't happen.  He watched from the
window of one of the houses as a police vehicle drew up at the yard,
and Roly got out.  He walked through the gates, and the vehicle drove
away.

Brogan left the house where he'd been hiding and walked across the
waste ground to the yard.  He knew that if the police were watching out
for him, he'd be spotted, whatever he did, within the vicinity of the
yard, but he was fed up with it all.  A part of him wouldn't have
minded if he'd ended up at the station and then back in care.

At least there had been food at the home, and people to talk to.

There were vehicles on the waste ground now, vehicles he associated
with demolition.  Workmen were piling out of them and, in the distance,
he saw a crane arrive.  The vast metal ball that hung from the jib
seemed bigger than the houses it eclipsed as it rolled into view, and
the workmen who watched it arrive seemed small by comparison.  They
didn't notice Brogan, but he noticed them.  He also knew what the
arrival of the crane signified: the houses were coming down.

He found that the gates were open and walked in to find the yard very
different from the way it had been the last time he'd seen it.  The
concrete, such as it was, had been drilled away.  It lay in large grey
chunks in a mixture of earth and rubble, but there wasn't a finch out
of place, and they watched him from the trees.

This was a boy who had fed them and they weren't afraid of him.  He'd
never been known to snap his fingers and whip them into a frenzy; he'd
never been known to lash out and catch one among them as they flew.

They watched him cross the yard, and saw him enter the house, Roly
letting him in then closing the door, as if the house were swallowing
the boy.

The news that Brogan had returned to the yard came as no surprise to
Hanson.  That he had done so within so short time of Roly being
released told him that Brogan must have been hiding in one of the other
houses.  Parker's men had kept an eye open, had even checked inside
those houses, but they hadn't found him.

"He was there all the time," said Parker.

"So it would seem," said Hanson.  "How do you want to handle it?"

"We'll stick to our plan," said Parker.  "I'll get down to the yard.
You get down to Anton Close see if you can persuade Healey to get the
result from Freeman."

If nothing else, thought Hanson, the exercise had flushed Brogan out of
hiding.  The police would be able to return him to care, and Social
Services would do their best to make sure he didn't get the opportunity
to do another runner.

Parker handed him a photograph of the scaffold.  It was one that hadn't
been released to the press, one that depicted what Hardman had seen
when he peeled back the ivy with the tip of his scythe.  "If you don't
get any joy out of Healey, show him that,"

As Hanson placed the photograph in the inside pocket of his jacket,
Parker added, "If that doesn't work, show him this."  He handed Hanson
a photo of what had been found under the bunker.  It was the first time
Hanson had seen photographic evidence of what the remains had looked
like, and in every respect it was worse than the horror of the
scaffold.  He wondered how the person who had photographed it felt, or
whether they understood that they had to have some kind of defence
mechanism that enabled them to push aside these visions of death once
they came off duty.  "Let's hope I don't have to show him anything," he
said, and he echoed the sentiments Parker had felt when gazing down at
the plastic bag that had held Gary Maudsley's remains.  "There are some
things the public are better off not knowing."

Healey answered Hanson's knock by flinging the door wide with arms that
seemed too muscular for his otherwise average frame.  He was nothing
like his son, thought Hanson.  Brogan had clearly taken after his
mother.  "Mr.  Healey?"  he said.  "Can I come in for a moment?"

He thought he detected a flicker of alarm.  "What's happened?"  said
Healey.

"Can I come in?"  said Hanson.

A woman appeared in the hall behind Healey, her clothes not dirty but
somehow in need of a wash, as if they, like the woman who wore them,
were impregnated by the shoddy, tasteless surroundings.

Healey stood aside to let him in, and Hanson followed him down a hall
in which the walls appeared to lean towards him.  In looking at the
pattern of the sunflowers, he found it difficult to imagine a room that
the decor would suit.  If the person who'd chosen it had hoped it would
brighten an otherwise claustrophobic space, they'd been wrong.  He felt
as if he were hallucinating, the brush strokes weaving and waving, but
not even yellows as vibrant as these could brighten so narrow a hall.

In the only downstairs room, two young children sat in front of a
television, and Hanson found the very fact that Healey made no move to
turn it off intrusive.  It didn't even appear to occur to him to turn
down the volume.

Hanson followed him through the room and into a galley kitchen, its
floor swamped with brightly coloured plastic toys.

The youngest child, a toddler, waddled in behind them, plucked at the
string of a dog on wheels and tottered out of the kitchen, pulling it
behind him.

Hanson glanced around the kitchen and couldn't hide his thoughts.
Small, cramped and a total mess, he didn't doubt that it was in keeping
with the rest of the house.  He could imagine the rooms above, the
bathroom the size of the kitchen, a mass of ducks, toy-shaped soaps, a
scum round the rim of the bath.

"What's the problem?"  said Healey.

"Brogan's been seen," said Hanson.

"Where?"

"He's gone to the yard."

Healey said nothing at all.  He launched himself at the back door and
Hanson said, "Parker's on his way down there."

Healey flung open the door and was about to step outside when Hanson
said, "We can force Brogan to leave the yard today, but we can't
guarantee that we can keep him away."

"I'll sort that, if and when," said Healey.

"You may not get the chance," said Hanson.  The yard is coming down.
Roly will move on.  Brogan might follow.  If he does, you'll never see
him again."

Healey was listening.

"Parker's got nothing on Roly.  What he knows to be true and what he
can prove to be true are two different things.  He had to let him go
and he'll have to keep on letting him go until he's got something
concrete to put in front of a court."

"That's not my problem."

"It is," said Hanson.  "You're the only one who can help us put Roly
away."

Healey stood in the doorway, half in, half out of the house.

"Mr.  Healey," said Hanson, 'please phone Dr.  Freeman."

Healey tightened his grip on the door.  "I can't,"

"Why not?"

Healey didn't reply, but Hanson knew the answer: if Healey were faced
with the facts, he'd have to come to terms with a scenario that
frightened him almost more than the prospect of his son going missing,
of being found in circumstances similar to those in which Gary and
Joseph had been found.

"How do you think I'm gonna feel if Brogan's ... ?"  He couldn't finish
the sentence.

"Brogan isn't an extension of your own masculinity," said Hanson, but
he'd lost Healey there he saw it immediately.  "What I mean is, if it
turns out that Brogan's been abused, it's no reflection on Brogan's
masculinity or yours."

"Don't come here talking your bollocks to me," said Healey.  "You said
I could help you put this bloke away.  Tell me how."

"By getting the result from Freeman."

"What you mean is, if he's done what you think he's done, that gives
Parker grounds to arrest him, get him sent down."

"Something like that, yes."

"You want to use our Brogan to get this bloke sent down.  Why can't you
use somebody else's kid?"

Hanson drew the photos out of the jacket of his pocket.  He handed them
to Healey.  "We would, if we could, but they're dead ..."

He knew that Healey would never have seen anything like those photos
and he said, "We know for a fact that they both went down to the yard.
We can't do a thing about it.  It's down to you."

"What if ..."  said Healey.  "What if Freeman ..."

"Please," said Hanson, quietly, 'phone him."

"I ..."

Hanson drew a mobile phone out of his pocket, handed it to Healey and
said, "Parker wouldn't be able to bring himself to beg, but I don't
have that problem, Mr.  Healey.  I've worked with people like Roly.  I
know he'll kill your son.  So I have no reservations I'm begging you to
phone Freeman."

Healey took the mobile phone.  "The number," he mumbled, "I don't know
the number," and Hanson, who'd encoded it, took it from him, pressed a
couple of buttons, and handed it back to Healey as he heard the ringing
tone.  He heard Healey give his name and ask for Dr.  Freeman.  He also
heard Healey say, "Tell me .."  just tell me

The next few moments seemed to go on for ever for Hanson.  He hadn't
known what to expect in that he didn't know for sure what the result
would be, and neither did he know how Healey would react if Freeman
confirmed the worst.

Healey tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come,

and the phone fell to the floor as he put his hands to his face.  There
was no need to ask what Freeman had told him.  Hanson knew the result.
"Come on," he said.  "Let's bring him home," and he led Healey out to
the car.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Roly led Brogan up the stairs, darkness leading to darkness, to the
world of the rooms above that Brogan had never seen.  He felt his way
along the walls, unable to see a hand in front of his face until Roly
opened the door to the back bedroom.

Here, as in the room below, a six-inch wooden ruler, its markings
imperial and meaningless to Brogan, was jammed between the frame and
the sill of a sashed window, finches diving from filth-encrusted
pelmets to dart from the dark interior and into the cool grey light of
Roly's Yard.  They shot away like flashes of light on a slide-show,
some smashing into the mesh-lined fence to spiral to the ground, others
finding their footing and hanging on to the wire.

Brogan looked beyond them to where the jib of a crane reared above the
houses like a mast.  The metal ball hung dead and still, and then it
began to swing, gathering momentum, as the driver positioned the
crane.

The ball was swinging now, and gone was the impression of mass, of
lumbering immobility; now it was agile, deadly accurate, and it hit the
side of the house, the sound like a muffled explosion.

In seeing the front of the house cave in, it seemed to Brogan that the
bricks merely sighed, then collapsed as if the breath had been sucked
out of them.  He saw through plumes

3"

of smoke-like dust the contents of the alcove, but the house was across
the waste ground and he couldn't make it out.

"He kept me locked in an a-alcove," said Roly.  "A-ll I got was water.
I used to have to thank him.  Sometimes, I was in that alcove for days.
I used to have to shit in there.  My clothes st-stuck to my skin.  I
scratched the walls and I b-begged him to let me go.  He never would.
But when I was good, he gave me birds hundreds of beautiful b-birds.  I
couldn't decide how I felt about them.  They were a c-constant reminder
of what I'd had to d-do to get them.  I h-hated those birds, but they
were all I had I... I loved them, too."

Brogan stared out at the workmen.  Some of them were walking towards
the house.  Others were already there, staring up at the alcove, and
then, in the distance, he saw a car being driven across the waste
ground then swerving to a halt just yards from the house.

Parker had heard the thud of that metal ball from two blocks away. He'd
never heard the sound before, and yet he knew what it was.  He'd driven
across the waste ground and now he jumped from the car.  As he ran up
to the workmen, the house collapsed a fraction.  It was a barely
perceptible sideways shift, but the bricks began to fall, and the
driver of the crane yelled out, "Keep back!"

None of the men kept back, not even Parker, and as the driver ran
towards them, Parker looked up at the alcove.

He knew that what they were looking at was all that was left of Byrne,
and he realized also that Byrne must have returned to the yard in those
few hours when neither he nor Roly were under surveillance.  By Roly's
own admission, the first time Byrne had gone to the yard, he'd been
demanding money.  Roly had probably told him to go back later, and he'd
used what time he'd had to prepare the alcove.  Byrne had returned, and
had then been walled up alive.

JIZ

Byrne must have known something, thought Parker.  He must have tried to
blackmail him.  Give me some money, or I'll tell Parker that Gary and
Joseph used to come down the yard.

He wondered what Hanson would make of the fact that Byrne had been
found in the alcove.  He may have been right with regard to the way in
which Roly preferred to dispose of his victims, but the motivation for
this particular murder had been different, and Roly had had neither
time nor the motivation to build some scaffold in a wood.

How Roly had got him to that alcove was something Parker would probably
never know, he decided.  Maybe he'd convinced Dougie that he had money
stashed in Roumelia Road.  Maybe he'd knocked him unconscious and had
bricked him up alive.  But why do that?  thought Parker.  Why not
simply kill him?  He didn't understand.

The driver of the crane spoke to the foreman.  "Jarko," he said,
'where's your mobile?"

The foreman fumbled in the pocket of a duffel coat.  "Who do you want
me to call?"

The driver of the crane couldn't seem to make up his mind for a moment.
"Police," he said, uncertainly.

Parker said, "Don't bother."

Even as he spoke, the back-up he'd requested on his way to the yard
arrived with blue lights flashing.  The workmen seemed so stunned by
what they'd found that none of them commented none of them seemed to
wonder how the police came to be there so quickly.

Parker turned from the alcove and stared across the waste ground  Roly
was staring back at him.  He melted away from the window.

Parker took a step towards the yard, but even as he did so he caught
sight of Hanson's car pulling up beside his own.

Healey jumped out of the passenger seat, and ran up to one of the
workmen, yanked something out of his hands, a wrecking bar, thought
Parker, who reached out to grab it from him.

Healey shook him off and ran across the waste ground Parker close
behind him.  He tore the chain from the gates, kicked them wide, then
burst into the yard with a cry that sounded as close to inhuman as
Parker had ever heard.

He raced after Healey, diving into the yard with him as he started to
smash it apart, renting great holes in the netting and the mesh.  He
wanted to stop him, but knew that if he tried Healey might lash out at
him with that lethal metal bar, and so he watched as he pulled at the
mesh with tearing, bleeding hands, the wire cutting his fingers,
lacerating the flesh, and Healey weeping and shouting as the birds
began to swarm.

He knew then that what Freeman had told him was the very thing that
Healey had most feared hearing, and knew also that, at last, he had
Barnes in his grasp.  "Healey," he said, and just for a moment, he
thought the man had calmed, but what had stopped him from smashing the
yard wasn't the sound of his voice.  It was the sight of Roly, who was
coming out of the house.

Healey stopped dead at the sight of him, but Roly was watching his
birds.  They flew through the gaping holes in the mesh, and swept
across the waste ground towards Roumelia Road.  They flew across the
jib of the crane and the roof of the corner house, swooping and gliding
to freedom, thought Parker, freedom and certain death.

Roly stood in the yard and he watched his birds fly free.  He didn't
seem to notice Healey, who stood and stared at him as if he were seeing
a demon.  The movement he made towards Roly suddenly seemed fearful
rather than savage, that of a man who is facing a predator in the
knowledge that he has only one shot, that he has to make it count, and
that if he gets it wrong he'll lose his life.  He raised the metal bar,
and brought it to bear with every ounce of strength in his possession,
and Parker, who had been told of a phenomenon that he hoped he would
never witness, witnessed it now.

The force of the blow split Roly's skull and his brains

3H

spewed out like a liquid.  It sickened yet fascinated Parker.  Roly was
still standing.  Parker wouldn't have thought that was possible, but
just for a moment, Roly stood, as if watching the last of his birds fly
out of the yard.

And then he went down.  Not as one who'd been hit with tremendous
force, but slowly.  He fell to the ground like a drowning man, the
final submission of one who knows he'll

never surface again.

Parker looked up to see Brogan staring down from the window.  He
pressed his fingers to the glass, those child's hands with the
fingertips whitened by the pressure, and then he was gone.

Healey looked at the wrecking bar, the steel discoloured by blood, then
threw it to the ground.  He took a few steps away from it but he didn't
run, and as Brogan burst out of the house, Parker suddenly saw it all
through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy.

The sky was empty.  The birds had gone, and Roly was lying dead at his
father's feet.

A blur of colour appeared among the grey.  Parker focused on it.  A
fledgling, a Gouldian, had got in the way of Healey's attack on the
yard.

It lay by the door to the shed.  Brogan walked up to it, picked it up,
and started to stroke the feathers, and as Hanson appeared in the yard,
Parker looked at the way in which the boy was loving the bird.  He was
talking to it, coaxing it, as if he could somehow bring it back to
life.

Uniforms cuffed Healey as Hanson led his son towards the gate.  Healey
didn't resist, but Brogan did.  He wanted to stay with Roly.  Roly was
my friend, and he placed the corpse of the Gouldian by his body.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The last time Parker's team had sat in this room with its semi-circular
rows, they'd been watching footage relating to the appeal made by Gary
Maudsley's family.  Now they were watching the film that had been found
at Roly's Yard.

Hanson sat at the back of the room, his thoughts very much on Brogan.
Parker had wanted to question him, but Hanson had suggested that maybe
he should leave it for the moment.  Brogan was in shock.  Now was not
the time.

Parker dimmed the lights, then went to sit by Hanson, and as the lights
went down in the room, the screen became a snowstorm.

Rather than clear completely, the blizzard became a sideways sweep of
sleet.  It swept across the footage, making it hard for those who were
watching to see what was being portrayed.  The film was old, thought
Hanson, who knew that Parker had wanted to show it to his men the
minute they got their hands on it, but had been delayed by the
necessity of having it transferred from reel to reel.

The quality was desperately poor, yet it was possible for Hanson to
make out a magician, his black moustache alarming and far too large to
be real.  He wore a top hat and a cape that was lined with scarlet, and
in his hands, he held a magic wand.

A young boy stood beside him, a boy of nine or ten.  He wore a
skin-tight, flesh-coloured suit that gave him the appearance of a boy
who stood naked but for the cape that was fixed round his throat.

The person who had shot the movie had been inexpert.  The picture shook
and drifted into and out of focus, but as the camera pulled back,
Hanson saw that the magician was performing in a room decorated with
streamers.

Red and blue balloons had been fixed to the corners of the room, and
children sat cross-legged at the magician's feet, their parents in the
background.  They gazed up in wonder as the magician showed them an
empty bamboo cage before covering it with a cloth, then removing it to
reveal a Diamond Firetail.

The screen became a snowstorm for a second, then cleared, and Hanson
saw children putting their hands to their mouths as the magician sawed
through a box.

o &

A boy lay in the box, his head moving, his feet visible and twitching,
the limbs clearly clothing stuffed with rags.  The children didn't
mind.  As the magician sawed through the limbs, they suspended their
disbelief, and squealed in delight as the arms and legs thudded softly
to the floor.

The film ended, and Parker turned to Hanson, "Unfortunately, there's
nothing untoward about the film.  It's all run-of-the-mill Magic Circle
stuff

"The boy in the box," said Hanson, softly.  "It's Roly."

Moranti sat in the interview room, and in his hands he held the bird
that was invisible to the eye.  He'd never seen Hanson before, and he
seemed wary of him, as if sensing that events had somehow taken a turn
for the worse.

Parker didn't introduce Hanson, but he noted his presence for the
benefit of those who would ultimately hear what was being recorded.  He
then turned his attention to Moranti.

"Mr.  Moranti," said Parker, 'you told me you came to England in
nineteen thirty-nine."

"Yes," said Moranti.

"You told me your family were travellers."

"Circus," said Moranti.  "A very small circus more a side-show."

"Quite," said Parker.  "And when you came to England, you adopted an
English name."

"I don't understand .. ," said Moranti.

"Nothing unusual in that," said Parker.  "A lot of people have done the
same.  They feel that it helps them integrate into the community."

"I don't use that name any more."

"No," replied Parker, "I realize that, but for many years you were
known as Randolph Timpson.  Morris Randolph Timpson."

"What about it?"

"Yet you used the name Moranti, your real name, when you worked as a
children's magician.  Why didn't you use that name when you applied to
the local authority as a potential foster-parent?"

"It made me sound more foreign," said Moranti.  "I thought that might
go against me."

Something would have gone against him, thought Parker, but it wouldn't
have been his nationality: it would have been what came to light when
the authorities checked his background.  "Not all records were
destroyed during the war," said Parker.  "You have a record for child
molestation.  Any local authority worth its salt would have checked
whatever records were available, and they would have discovered that.
Is that why you changed your name when you came to England?"

Parker suspended the interview to allow Moranti time to compose
himself.

He knew the implications of what he'd done, thought

Hanson.  He knew that, at the very least, he'd be charged with
procuring the boys whom Roly had murdered.

"Why did you do it?"  said Parker.  "You must have known that by taking
them down to the yard you were as good as signing their death
warrants?"

"I didn't know what he did with them.  I thought he want to film them,
that's all."

"And why would he want to do that?"

"For Byrne," said Moranti.

Byrne distributed the videos under the counter, Parker guessed.  "Good
money, was it?"

"It wasn't done for the money," said Moranti.

No, thought Hanson, who knew enough to know that money wouldn't have
been the prime objective: Moranti would have got as much of a kick out
of those films as Byrne had got from the photos in those clothing
catalogues.

He caught Parker's eye as if to ask permission to put a question to
Moranti, but Parker just wouldn't risk it.  He shook his head a
fraction, then went on to ask what Hanson had, in any case, intended to
ask.  "Tell me, Mr.  Moranti, when Roly was a child when Roly was in
your care what did you give him for doing what you wanted him to do?"

For a moment, Hanson wondered whether Moranti was going to deny what
Parker was proposing he had done, and Parker, who wasn't averse to
spelling out the precise nature of the sexual acts he was referring to,
said, "We can get hold of the man who reported what you did to him.
Once a court hears his evidence, a jury will no doubt come to the
conclusion '

"A bird," Moranti blurted.  "Roly always love birds."

Little wonder, thought Hanson, that Roly would for ever associate these
birds with his earliest sexual experiences.

"And tell me," said Parker, 'how did you punish Roly if he refused to
do what you wanted?"

Moranti declined to answer, and Parker said, "You'll only be telling us
something we already know."

"I lock him in an alcove," said Moranti.

"How long for?"

Moranti gave that oddly dramatic shrug.  "A while."

"An hour, a day, two days, perhaps?"

Moranti looked at Parker, as if suddenly believing him to have access
to information relating to the most private details of his past, "A
week, sometimes.  Maybe longer it's all a long time ago, I don't
remember."

Parker said, "You're asking me to believe you locked him in an alcove
for weeks at a time on occasion.  He'd have died."

Quietly now, Moranti said, "I gave him water."

"How?"

"A feeder," said Moranti.  "I rig up a feeder ..."  and Hanson knew in
that moment that Forensic would come back with the information that
Gary had been kept in the alcove at the yard, and the mystery of the
bracket and the hole that was drilled into the plaster work would be
solved for Parker.  In his mind's eye, he saw a bird-cage and, fixed to
the bars, a bracket designed to hold a water-feeder.  A metal tube
protruded from the water-feeder, and the bird sipped water from it. The
bracket on the wall of the alcove had also held a feeder.  The tube was
slotted through the brickwork, and Gary had drunk from it.

Hanson saw the look on Parker's face and knew that he shared his vision
of Gary's last weeks of life.  He also guessed he was blaming himself.
If only I'd found kim sooner.  If only I'd searched that squat the day
I found Brogan at the yard ... In reality, Parker couldn't hold himself
to blame, but shaking off the feeling was going to take some doing.  He
would need to talk it through with someone who could

rationalize it for him.

During the silence that followed, Hanson thought about Byrne.  Roly had
kept Gary alive by giving him water, but he wouldn't have risked going
to Roumelia Road to show the same mercy to Byrne.  He knew he was under
surveillance, and Byrne had died in that tomb.  In many ways, thought

Hanson, he'd been more fortunate than Gary, who'd been kept alive for
weeks.  When Roly realized that Byrne had led Parker to him, he would
also have realized that the yard was bound to be searched.  Having
already dealt with Byrne, he had released Gary from the alcove, had
killed him, and had taken his remains to the bunker to focus Parker's
attention back on Byrne.  The scaffold that Roly had no doubt been in
the process of completing would never be used ... Parker had collected
himself to a degree, but when he spoke again it was in a voice that
suggested he was having to force out the words.  As if they wouldn't
come.  As if the horror of Roly's Yard were somehow constricting his
throat.  "You said the boys were filmed."

Moranti played with the invisible bird, a bird that was all the colours
of the world.

"Where are the films?"

Moranti knew it was over.  He pressed a thumb hard against the palm of
his other hand.  The finch was crushed by the impact.  Parker saw it
die.  "Lock-up garage," he said.

"Tell me where," said Parker, and Moranti broke down.

Parker stood with Hanson at the back of the room.  They were alone. The
semi-circular rows seemed filled with ghosts.

The screen was before them, a dull, lifeless grey, but Parker slotted a
video cassette into a machine at the back of the room.

Earlier, he had gone to the lock-up rented by Moranti, and in it he had
found more videos than Bryne could ever have hoped to stock in his
poorly kept shop.  Some had been imported and were nothing to do with
the case.  Others, such as this one, were all the evidence he would
ever need with regard to what had become of Joseph Coyne.

"You ready?"  he said, to Hanson.

"Ready," said Hanson, and the screen now came to life.

Initially, all Hanson could see were swarms of exotic finches.  They
filled a dusk-streaked sky, and dipped down into trees, and he took the
scene to have been shot in some tropical forest.  But there was
something about it that didn't ring true.  The trees were too English,
and there were other giveaways, like a pylon that was accidentally
caught for a fraction of a second before the camera zoomed in on the
figure of a boy.  He was naked, bar the cape that streamed from his
slender throat, and he was running for his life, the glimpse of a
granite house in the background informing Hanson that this was Colboume
Wood.

Parker paused the video.  "You don't have to watch the rest,"

"I've seen worse," said Hanson, and Parker resumed the screening.

It answered the final questions with regard to what had become of
Joseph Coyne, and it was something that Parker intended should never be
public knowledge.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

There had been nothing further that Hanson could do at the station, and
he returned to the guesthouse to discover that he had a visitor.  He
recognized her voice even before he walked into the dining room to find
her sitting by the window, as she always had.  "Lorna," he said.

Mrs.  Judd stood up.  "I invited her in.  I hope that was all right?"

It seemed bizarre to see them talking like old friends, almost as if it
were Mrs.  Judd, and not he, who had shared this house with Lorna.

"Murray," she said, and she looked much the same.  A little older,
perhaps, but that was all.  She was dressed in a V-necked sweater,
along with a navy skirt and those gold button earrings, as though she'd
only just bought the scarf with the pattern he'd found it so easy to
recall.  "You look well," he said, but she wasn't to be distracted by
his attempt at making small-talk.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same of you."

Mrs.  Judd slipped from the room and it struck him as the only sign of
sensitivity she had shown in all the time he'd been there.  At least
the woman knew when she wasn't wanted.

"I read it in the paper.  You can't imagine the shock I got."

Hanson knew then that the Judds had told the press where he was
staying.

"I don't know," said Hanson.  "I don't know what I'm doing here," and
then he thought back to something Parris had said earlier.  In all the
years we were married, I never once told her how deeply she'd managed
to hurt me.

Hanson had observed that it was never wise to bottle these things up,
that people who put their feelings away with the intention of dealing
with them at a more convenient time often discovered that their
feelings dealt with them before they got round to it.  "How are you,
Lorna?"

"Don't you think your behaviour is rather odd?"

He sat down, the table between them in much the way that the antique
table with its pattern of inlaid wood had been between them years
ago.

"Not to me."

"Enlighten me, then," she said.  "I've had some of our friends on the
phone, asking me what you're playing at."

Hanson wondered who those friends might be.  Most of

the people they'd known were colleagues of Lorna's, and none had been
friends of his.  "I can't say I'm terribly worried about what anyone
else might think."

"Then at least tell me why you chose to stay here, of all places."

Hanson looked past her to a wall that he'd practically rebuilt at one
stage.  The plaster mouldings that matched those in the bedroom above
were white now, one or other of the Judds having slapped a coat of
emulsion over the intricate detail that he'd picked out with such care.
"I like the place," he said.  "It meant something to me."

"It meant something to me, too, but I wouldn't dream of booking in as a
guest."

"I wanted to see what had become of it," said Hanson.  "I wanted to see
what someone had done to the rooms I restored with such care."

She looked at him as if she could barely remember what a state the
house had been in when they had purchased it.

"We were lucky," said Hanson, softly.  "If not for the fact that the
house was falling apart, we'd never have been able to afford it."

"I found it cold," she said.

"Such great rooms," said Hanson.  "Big.  I'll never have a house like
this again."

"What are you talking about?"

Hanson thought back to Parris, and wondered whether, if Lorna hadn't
been sitting there, he'd ever have looked her up to say what he had
wanted to say for years: "You took me for every penny, Lorna.  Stripped
me of the house, and what little money I'd managed to put aside."

She was staring at him now, as if someone who was capable of behaving
in what she considered to be so strange a manner might be capable of
anything.

"But worse than that, you stripped me of my dignity, my self-esteem and
my happiness."

"I don't know how you work that one out."

"You carried on an affair in this house, slept in our bed with people
who knew me, people who told me what was going on.  Have you any idea
how I felt when I found out?"

"Keep your voice down, Murray!"

Hanson was well aware that one or both of the Judds were probably
listening but had no intention of keeping his voice down.  "Are you
happy?"  he said.

"That's a strange question."

"Maybe ... but I'd like to know if everything you did to me was worth
it.  Tell me, Lorna, I'd really like to know."

"I'm happy enough," she said, and he smiled as he replied, "I'll take
that as a no."

He thought back to those last few moments with Parris, who had observed
that it was possible for a person to be too civilized, too
understanding and too reluctant to give vent to justifiable anger.  It
isn't civilized, Murray, it's weak, and it's the weak who resort to
murder, not the strong ... "I met a former teacher of mine today."

"I didn't come here to talk about some former teacher."

"He murdered his wife," said Murray.  "For years, I've thought about
him on and off, wondering what became of him, but it wasn't until the
last few months that I really began to wonder why he did it."

"I spent our entire marriage listening to you talking about what
motivates people to kill."

"But recently," he continued, "I've thought of little else.  I'd almost
became obsessed with it, and now I know why."

She looked towards the door, finding consolation in the thought that
the Judds were close to hand, should she need them.

He reached out, took her hand and found it cold.  "I wanted to kill
you, Loma.  I've never told you that, but I wanted to make you a cup of
tea, take it into the garden, and watch you lift the cup to your lips
as I crushed your skull with a hammer."

She jerked her hand away, and stood up, the chair falling back as she
took a step away from him.  "You're sick," she said.  "I always knew
you were sick."

"Not sick, Lorna.  Normal We all have these feelings.  Most of us never
act on them.  The few who do are sometimes referred to people like me,
that's all."

Mrs.  Judd entered the room, the sound of the chair having drawn her in
from the hall.  She stood in the doorway.  "Is everything all right?"

He stood up and caught the scent that Lorna wore.  There had once been
a time when the scent had aroused him.  Now, he couldn't imagine
himself ever having made love to her.  "Everything's fine," he said.
"Lorna's just leaving."

He followed her out to the hall, needing to be the one

to open the door, to watch her cross the threshold, to close the door
behind her.  "Goodbye," he said, slamming it closed,

flicking the lock that he'd fitted when they'd first moved into the
house.  He was shutting her out, consigning her to the past.

He turned to find that Mrs.  Judd was backing away from him.  "Don't
worry," he said.  "I'll get my things, and then I'll be on my way."

"What about your bill?"  she said.

Hanson replied, "I take it you were paid by the press for telling them
where I was?"

She didn't deny it.

"So let's call it quits," said Hanson.

Hanson arrived home to find the cottage in darkness.  Not a good sign,
he thought, and he visualized the way in which Jan might have tried to
come to terms with the story run by the press.

Most of the papers and Hanson had now seen the majority of them had
published a photograph of the Judds standing at the door to the house
that he and Lorna had shared.  No doubt the press would get hold of
Lorna in due course, but he was no longer worried by what she might
say.  He was, however, worried about what Jan would make of it all. She
was bound to fear the worst, thought Hanson, and that was fair enough.
In her position, he, too, would think the worst.  She had probably
imagined that he had been drawn back to the house he had shared with
Lorna because he still loved her, and the implications of that would
have made any woman with an ounce of pride pack her bags.

Something about the lack of light from within the rooms of the cottage
made him reluctant to turn his key in the door.  He didn't want to walk
in to find her gone, and he suddenly realized how badly he'd behaved.
He hadn't told her what he was doing because he hadn't understood it
himself, and he had hoped to get away with it without her ever knowing.
Plenty of people embarked on affairs for similar reasons, thought
Hanson, and most were caught out, as he had been, by events they hadn't
envisaged.

He walked round the side of the cottage to the garden at the back.  At
first, he found it difficult to make out the shape at the bottom of the
garden, and then he saw her, sitting at the foot of the rockery, and he
walked over.

"Hi," she said, but she didn't look up, and Hanson touched her hair. It
was damp in the way it was always damp whenever she'd been to the gym,
and he noticed that she was wearing a couple of jumpers.  "No
sweatshirt?"  he said.

"I put them all in your drawer."

The subtext wasn't lost on him.  She had given them back, and her
clothes were packed, ready to be moved.

"I'm sorry I didn't phone."

"You obviously had your reasons."

She still wouldn't look at him.

He crouched beside her, sitting on a boulder that he'd

picked up from the side of the road earlier in the summer.  Between
them, they'd stolen boulders from all over the country.  Some rock.
Some granite.  Some smooth and others jagged.  The result was a mildly
guilty conscience and an outstanding rockery.  It was hard to imagine
that a garden once so neglected could be transformed in such a short
space of time, and it wasn't just the garden: in looking back at the
cottage, he saw how much work they'd done on it together.  It was
nowhere near the size of the house in Bury, but it was big enough for
two.

"Where's the toad?"  he said.

"I haven't seen it for ages."

"Time of year," said Hanson.  "He'll turn up, next spring."

"Give him my regards."

"Give them yourself."

She looked up at him now.  "Murray, what's going on?"

He didn't feel up to telling her why he'd gone to the house, not
tonight, but he'd tell her in the next few days, and then he'd suggest
that maybe it was time that he stopped behaving like an emotional fuck
wit and admitted that he wanted to make a commitment.  "There was
something I had to sort out," he said.  "I couldn't make a commitment
to you without doing it, so I went back."

It wasn't much of an explanation.  Plenty of women would have pushed
him for more, but not her.  "You hurt me," she said, simply.

"I was hurting myself," said Hanson.  "You got caught in the
cross-fire.  I'm sorry."

"Do you still love her?"

"No," said Hanson, truthfully, 'but a part of me will always love the
house."  He smiled.  "Think you can cope with that?"

"Only if you promise not to make a habit of going back."

"I think I can manage that," he said, and she followed him into the
cottage.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Parker and Brogan stood with their backs to Roumelia Road, the shell of
the house half hidden by plasterboard screens, and they watched as
Roly's Yard was being dismantled.

The house looked smaller, somehow, as if the place had been crushed on
more than an earthly level, and the aviary, now stripped of the
boundaries that had defined it, melted into the gardens on either side.
Its surface resembled nothing so much as a mass grave, great trenches
having been dug its length and breadth, and the trees, the fencing, the
mesh had been ripped away.

The birds were gone, and Brogan didn't have to see the evidence to know
that, without exception, all were dead.  If the cold hadn't killed
them, native birds or lack of the type of seed they required were bound
to have done so, and he pictured their remains as a scattering of
colour in the gutters and gardens of the city and its suburbs.  People
would come across these strange, fragile creatures, and, in realizing
that they were not indigenous to the country, would wonder how they had
come to be in so grey a place to die.

Workmen were tossing debris into the skips, rolls of mesh, bricks,
slabs of concrete.  They touched these things as if they were
contaminated, their hands gloved, their eyes averted as if afraid of
what they might inadvertently pick up.  None of them spoke.  None of
them wanted to be there, and it showed.

Parker didn't blame them.  Within hours of Roly's death, Forensic had
reported that the clothes found on the effigy had belonged to Gary
Maudsley, and tests done on the alcove where the effigy was found had
revealed that Gary had been imprisoned there prior to his death.

Parker had assumed that Roly had imprisoned Gary in order to give
himself time to build a scaffold.  Hanson, however, had had experience
of killers who suffered from the type of psychosis he believed Roly to
have suffered from, and he was as convinced as was possible under the
circumstances that Roly wouldn't have imprisoned Gary until the
scaffold had already been erected.

Upon hearing Hanson's opinion, Parker had experienced a vision of the
future, a vision in which someone like Hardman came across the scaffold
intended for Gary.

Unless they were acquainted with the details of this particular case,
they wouldn't be able to work out what it was, or what the person who
had built it had intended it to support.  Chances were, they'd knock it
down, considering it to be a project that had never been completed,
and, in that regard, they'd be right, thought Parker.  The scaffold
could only ever have been complete once Gary was lying on it.

He recalled asking Hanson why Roly had imprisoned Gary in the first
place, and Hanson had put it down to the fact that, as Moranti had
imprisoned Roly for refusing to perform certain sexual acts, it was
just possible that imprisonment of his victims had played an important
part in the ritual of the kill.

Parker had left the questions of why Roly had felt it imperative to
follow a particular ritual, and had turned his attention to the
question of where he had murdered Gary.  The question had been answered
when Forensic came back with a result on blood specks found on the
walls of the room where the effigy had been found.  The blood matched
Gary's.

There were further traces of blood found in the cracks on the bath at
the yard, and the press had revealed that the police believed his body
had been dismembered in the bathroom before being transported to the
bunker in the back of Roly's car.  Therefore, the workmen were only too
aware that the pieces of debris they handled might well hold traces of
unimaginable horror, traces barely visible, but there ... A non-stop
rain produced a steady stream of sludge that rolled from the yard to
the road.  It slid by their feet, lapping at the soles of their shoes,
threatening to deepen but never doing more than sliding by, and as he
side-stepped some of it, Brogan felt the house behind him reaching out
as if to draw him into the alcove, its former tenant having vacated the
premises in favour of sacred ground.

The distant rumble of heavy machinery drew their attention.  The driver
of the crane killed the engine and jumped from the cab.  He spoke to
the workmen briefly, then approached Parker and Brogan.

Brogan recognized him as the man who'd driven the crane the day the
contents of the alcove were revealed, and it seemed strange to him that
he should be willing to come back at all.  Perhaps it was the money, or
perhaps, like him, he had to lay the ghost, finish the job.

"It isn't safe," the driver said.  "You'll have to leave."

"We're going," said Parker, his arm on Brogan's shoulder.  He led him
away from the slow-moving sludge that was all that remained of the
yard.  "I'd better get you back," he said, and they headed for the
car.

Social Services had found temporary foster-parents for Brogan.  They
looked okay to Parker, but how could you tell?  In view of the
foster-parents that had been found for Roly, Parker had grave
misgivings, but the only alternative was for Brogan to stay in a
children's home and, in view of recent publicity, Parker wasn't
altogether sure he'd be any safer there.  He said, "If you have any
problems of any description, you come straight to me, you
understand?"

"What kind of problems?"

Parker didn't believe that Brogan was still so naive in view of
everything that had happened and said, "Anything that troubles you,
anything at all."

Brogan turned for one last glimpse of the yard, and saw, as the crane
rolled into position, the way in which the workmen stood well back,
goggles and masks in place.

"What are you thinking?"  said Parker, but Brogan doubted he'd
understand if he were to tell him that he hated to see the yard like
this, that he'd give anything to see it with its boundaries defined and
the tall slender trees weaving their fragile branches through the
mesh.

Over recent weeks, the gaping wound in his belly seemed to have
expanded a fraction, as if to accommodate emotions he could barely
comprehend, emotions that related to his mother's death, the murder of
Roland Barnes, the desecration of the yard, keeping them safe until
such time as he could pull them out, turn them to the light, examine
them, and put them back, no less painful, but a great deal better
understood.

He turned away.

There were weeds pushing through in the flowerbed that circled the lawn
of the foster-home where Brogan was now living.  They crushed the stem
of some flowering shrub, its petals a splash of purple, bleeding on to
green.  Brogan had watched it burst into flower over the past few days,
and it was as if the soul of a Gouldian had taken possession of the
soil to dictate the colours the petals would become.

Parker's car drew up at the gate and Brogan watched from a downstairs
window as he climbed out and made his way to the house.

Moments later, he was led into the room by his foster-mother who said,
"You've a visitor, Brogan."  Then she took Parker's jacket and
disappeared, leaving them alone.

Parker stood by the window, its curtains of crimson velvet pinned well
back to leave an unimpeded view of the garden.  "How's it going?"  he
said.

o o

"Fine," said Brogan.

"Back at school?"

"Yeah, I'm back."

"Sticking to it, not slopin' off?"

"Stickin' it out.  My foster-parents see to that."

"Social workers'll be pleased."

It had been some months since Parker had last questioned him to put the
final touches to his statements, but during that time, Brogan seemed,
if anything, to have grown slightly more child-like, as though the
events of the past few months had made him curl in on himself.

He looked at Parker shyly.  "That all you came for to find out how I
am?"

"No," said Parker, quietly.  "I came to tell you your father was in
court today.  Ultimately, it'll go to Crown Court, and you'll be called
as a witness."

"Will he go to jail?"

That was a tough one, thought Parker.  Healey hadn't been much of a
father to Brogan, but, at the end of the day, he was his father, and
Parker wasn't sure how Brogan might react to the news that a jail
sentence was almost inevitable.  Healey was pleading manslaughter on
the grounds of diminished responsibility.  He might just get away with
it, thought Parker, but not if the Crown Prosecution Service came up
with medical records relating to Brogan's mother, and not if they then
persuaded a jury that, at the moment that Healey had grabbed the
wrecking bar, he'd intended to do rather more than wreck the yard.
Several seconds had elapsed between the moment that Healey had seen
Roland Barnes walk from the house to the yard.  Roly had stared at the
finches as they flew across the crane, and Healey had sneaked up on him
like a cat sneaks up on a bird, had crushed his skull with a single
blow, had hit him from behind.

"It's hard to say," said Parker.  "He's pleading diminished
responsibility, and even on a bad day, a judge would have to agree that
there were mitigating circumstances, but the problem is ..."

He stopped.  Brogan deserved the truth.  Better to hear it now than to
harbour hopes and have them crushed.  "He's going down," said Parker.

There wasn't much of a reaction from Brogan, and Parker prompted him
gently, "You okay?"

Brogan faced a mirror that hung above the mantelpiece.  The window at
Parker's back was reflected in the glass, a small domestic finch
huddling on the sill.  Brogan kept his eye on it and said, "Don't make
no difference to me.  He wasn't around much anyway."

"No well ... he did his best."

Brogan didn't reply, and Parker wondered what was on his mind.  "Want
to talk about it?"  he said.

"That man ... that man you found in the alcove ..."

"Douglas Byrne?"

"Maybe Roly never meant to hurt me.  Maybe he killed him to stop him
from killing me."

"Brogan ..."  said Parker.

"He was good to me, Roly.  He gave me birds.  He was ..."

He stopped, and Parker forced himself not to stride across the room,
grab him by the shoulders, and shake the truth into him.

"He was my friend," said Brogan.

Quietly now, Parker replied, "He wasn't much of a friend to Joseph and
Gary."

"That was Byrne," said Brogan, and Parker knew that now was neither the
time nor the place to argue.  Eventually Brogan would understand just
how close he'd come to meeting a fate similar to that of the boys whose
disappearance had occupied his every waking moment for as long as he
could remember, but at present, Brogan believed that Roly had been a
friend to him at a time when he had no one.  He appeared to be plucking
up the courage to ask something else, and Parker gave him the space to
do it in his own good time.

"How many ... ?"  The words trailed to nothing before Brogan tried
again.  "Were there any more?"

Parker thought back to enquiries that had been made with the firm that
had employed Gifford.  Pierce and Newman had kept no record of there
having been anything unusual found at Bickley Wood.  Pierce was dead,
and Parker only hoped that he had taken his secret with him into hell.
"There are certain things we can never hope to prove," he said, and
even as he said it, he realized that Brogan would cling to the remark,
feeling that it was proof enough that Roly hadn't harmed anyone, and
wouldn't have harmed him.

It was very quiet in that room, very still.

"Roly wouldn't have hurt me," said Brogan.  "He liked me."

Parker choked back the urge to get it through to him that Roly would
have killed him in the end.  "You're a lucky lad," he said, and he held
out his hand.

Brogan took it, shook it uncertainly, and felt that although Parker's
grip was firm, it felt like a letting go, as if he were saying
goodbye.

"I won't be back."

He let himself out, and after he'd gone, Brogan went to the window and
looked down on the finch.  It was one he hadn't seen since the previous
spring, a domestic bird, rather dull by comparison with the exotic
species down at the yard, and he had the strangest feeling, as if he
were the bird, perched on the sill, divided from the room by a window
that had been closed against him.  He saw a few slender trees in the
reflection, finches flying through the branches, a backdrop of
Manchester sky.

The bird stared in through the window, the boy stared out through the
glass, and it seemed to the bird as if Roly's Yard had been
superimposed on his face.