Body of a Woman By Clare Curzon

Synopsis:

Called to investigate the death of a young woman dumped in woodland,
Superintendent Mike Yeadings and his Thames Valley team find the body
in exotic evening dress, her face covered by a bird-featured mask.
After further investigation Yeadings realises he has encountered her
before.  She is Leila, the undervalued wife of Professor Knightley;
owner of a gift shop in a quiet Buckinghamshire town, and devoted to
her teenage step-children.  Having lived a life of enviable comfort,
the circumstances of her death seem totally alien to all who knew her.
Can Yeadings piece together the fragments of Leila's life to throw"
some light onto the manner of her death?  He very quickly discovers
that still waters run deep and Leila was not as shy and retiring as she
appeared... riooth, professional, and entirely engaging ... wi
certainly appeal to lovers of quirky British mysteries'

Booklist

"Absorbing from first to last'

Kirkus Reviews

Body of a Woman CLARE CURZON

Allison & Busby Limited

Bon Marche Centre 241-251 FerndaleRoad

London SW9 8BJ http://wwwv.allisonandbusby.com

Copyright 2002 by Clare Curzon The moral right of the author has been
asserted.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 0 7490 0670 6

Printed and bound by Liberduplex, si.  Barcelona, Spain,

CLARE CURZON began writing in the 1960s and has published about 40
novels under a variety of pseudonyms.  Body of a Woman is the ninth
book in the series set in the Thames Valley area.

The Body

Chapter 1

Friday, 2 July

"Beautiful," he whispered, watching himself slit-eyed in the tilted
cheval glass.  With one long forefinger he traced the wingspan of an
eyebrow, then followed down the line of his nose from bridge to
chiselled nostril.  He knew whose features his own copied.  She had
been beautiful too.  Before the accident.

He moaned and his image lurched at a surrealist angle, foreshortened,
kneecaps enormous, chalky face elongated and planed like a Lucian Freud
nude's.

The woman, face uppermost, curved limply over his splayed thighs.  The
pair of them made a pieta in white marble.  Her eyes were shut now.  He
must have overdone it, but he couldn't remember how.  Or quite when.

He'd left her for only a moment, bound.  Bound to be bound he smiled
because she was a wild thing, spitting like a llama at the zoo.  So
he'd taped her mouth, like her wrists, with the sticky-backed plastic
used for sealing parcels.

When he got back, so few minutes later, the gag was torn off.  She was
different, older somehow.  He wasn't even sure it was the same doll.
Her unpinned hair seemed longer.  He saw now it was tinted with henna.
How could she have changed so much while he was gone for the stuff;
more for himself and something for her.  But she'd no longer need it;
not like this.

He passed one hand over his eyes.  Time was treacherous.  Days passed
in a moment, or were lost entirely.  Things could happen twice over,
making you think time had stopped and you were in a forever-now.  Or in
a dream dreaming you were waking from a dream, but instead you went on
asleep dreaming you were waking, over and over again.

He leaned across, shifting his feet so that one thigh was accommodated
by the hollow above her buttocks; the other nudging in between her
scapulae.  Admiring in the mirror his fine, long-fingered hands, he
touched one pointed breast.  There was no response.

She was no use this way, beautiful but spoiled.  He frowned, peering
closer.  Her face it seemed there were two faces, one (from memory)
hovering like a transparency over this other which he did not care to
stare at long.  The wide rictus was an animal snarl, the purple tongue
extruded.  Her eyes dear God!  He closed them with his hand.

Anger roared through him like a fireball.  That she should make herself
so hideous!  It was indecent.  Cover her, cover her quickly.  He groped
about his feet for the dress, forced it over her head, laid her on the
carpet to pull her arms through the fine shoulder straps.

He peered at her again.  Suspicion hardened in him that there had been
two dolls, one now and another some time ago.  This was the false one.
He was flooded with fury.

She did not deserve that lovely hair.  It was wasted on her.  He wound
its ends around his left wrist.  The kitchen knife he'd used to free
her ankles slashed close against the scalp as he sheared.  Bright blood
like little scarlet beads sprang from her flesh but she made no
protest.  He did not want her.

If she comes again, he told himself, I shall know her that way.  She
cannot pretend then to be the other one.  Chloe's hair will be loose
about her shoulders.  This one's, the imposter's, I shall keep.  She
must come begging for it back.

He had to conceal that face.  Her party mask had fallen between the
legs of the mirror stand.  He crouched to reach through and met his own
face aggressively thrust at him.  Retrieving the mask, he bunched his
other fist and beat at the glass.  Shards fell tinkling from the frame
and were silenced in the thick carpet.

It didn't hurt at first.  He had fitted the bird-mask over her shaggy
skull before he was aware of the ripped flesh on his knuckles.  From
its black frame of cock's tail-feathers the cruel beak curved towards
him as his own blood spurted.  He whimpered.

"Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a could re  The words sang in his
ears.  That was Francois Villon's "Ballade for the Hanged."  He closed
his eyes to savour the sweet decadence and saw a body suspended from a
gibbet.  The birds' tearing beaks were pecking and pocking the dead
flesh like any half-coconut hanging from a string in the garden.

First-year Uni French Lit returning to give him the shakes.  But this
black raven here was incapable of pecking.  And people weren't hanged
any more, whatever their crimes.

A burst of loud voices and party music signalled a door opening
somewhere deep inside the house.  There was a shout of wild laughter. A
girl squealed with glee.  People coming this way.  He heard steps in
the passage outside.

He couldn't be found like this.  Nursing the hurt hand against his
chest, he nudged the body aside with one foot, thrust the curtains
apart and swung himself over the windowsill dropping sixteen feet to
the shrubbery below.  A twiggy bush rasped painfully against his
quivering flesh.

Cowering, he recalled that he was naked.

Chapter 2

Nan Yeadings stood back by the theatre's closed entrance, distancing
herself from the boisterous hallooing at taxis.  The crowd began to
disperse with a slamming of car doors.  Couples broke away, walking off
into the scented summer night, silently linked or babbling enthusiasm.
One of the older men she'd glimpsed in the crush bar wobbled across and
peered into her face.  "Coma longa us," he invited.  "Cram in together,
eh?  Much more fun."

"Thank you," she said, 'but my husband's fetching the car."

Owlishly the man considered this, slowly shook his head and staggered
off as Mike drew up at the kerb side and leaned across to open her
door.

"I think I was just propositioned," she claimed happily, belting
herself in.

"M'm.  The street lighting not too good just here."

"Thanks, but I refuse to be deflated.  It was a great play and it's a
lovely night.  Just see that wonderful velvet sky."

He looked admiringly across at her still sparkling with excitement from
the final curtain, at the uplifted chin, the bright eyes and hint of a
smile.  "You're lovely too.  That was a cheap crack of mine."  He
leaned across and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

They stayed silent as he steered free of the dispersing crowd,
threading through Windsor's narrow streets under the Castle's humped
shadow.  She had lowered her window and was drinking in the night air
as they headed for the motorway.

"I love being out in the dark," she said suddenly.  "Everything comes
so vibrantly alive.  I feel a kid again.  There's a thrill in all those
lighted windows reaching out from the blackness.  I can imagine the
hundreds and thousands of unknown people behind them, all busy with
their secret lives."

Well, she was right there, about secret lives.  Not that he was so
enchanted himself by those unknown thousands.  It was part of his
ever-present problem: penetrating too many of those same secrets,
worming out the truth about unpalatable activities.  In the best of all
possible worlds, which Nan would dearly love to believe in, there would
be no need for his job.

Not that his steady, pragmatic Nan permanently wore rose-coloured
spectacles.  No one who'd been a casualty nurse and theatre sister at
the old Westminster Hospital kept her illusions long.  He remembered
from his years as a young copper in the Met the sort of scenes she'd
faced in A&E on a Friday night, threatened with flick knives and broken
bottles by crazed junkies desperate for a fix.  Nor had dealing with
the shattered bodies of IRA bomb victims been a petalled path.

At present her life provided what she claimed she most wanted, with a
husband, children and a home to run.  Yet he doubted it could really be
enough for anyone so vital the restraints of dull domesticity plus the
demands of a riotous toddler and an older Downs' Syndrome daughter. His
Nan fitted the role so well that he was accustomed to seeing her that
way.  It took an evening such as this to remind him she was so much
more than an efficient home-maker.

Nan didn't often expose her inner emotions.  It was perhaps the play
that made her put so much into words, having agonised for almost three
hours over the intimate problems of invented characters, taking them on
as her own, as was the way with women.

The Rover took the next motorway exit and almost instantly they were in
real country, their headlights slicing through avenues of arching
trees, picking out a single golden group of beeches leaning to the
road, and the tiny rounded shapes of rabbits bunking off to the safety
of long grass.  Nan was sitting forward, drinking it all in like a
child.

"We must do this more often," he offered.  He reached forward to the
radio and smooch music filled the car, good old fifties stuff from
before the world got so cynical; a remake of Nat King Cole.

"We really were kids then," he allowed.  "Mike, we were barely born!" A
gurgling laugh escaped her.

"They try to tell me I'm too young," he crooned.  Then the song changed
to "Some Enchanted Evening' which he'd nostalgically hoarded in vinyl.
It recalled sad memories finally chased away by their finding one
another.  For a brief moment they were separate again, each knowing the
other vulnerable.

Home soon, Yeadings thought.  Drive the child-minder back; a drop of
The Macallan for nightcap, a look-in on Sally and Luke, then bed, with
Nan warmly yielding in his arms.  Not perhaps a showbiz Enchanted
Evening, but certainly the satisfactory end of a tender and comfortable
one.  He was a very lucky man.

Then, just short of Shotters Wood, blue lights flickered ahead.  "An
accident?"  Nan queried as they cruised close.

"That's Mott's Saab."  Yeadings passed to draw up beside a marked
police car.  A constable shone a flashlight towards them.

"I must ask you to move on, sir.  There's been oh sorry, Mr.  Yeadings.
I didn't see you.  DI Mott's attending, sir.  There's room to park
further down."

"I'd better show my face," Mike told Nan, pulling in on the opposite
verge.  "The constable's a chatty sort and Angus might wonder if we
breezed past.  I'll take a quick look and be straight back.  Do you
mind waiting?"

So much for his aroused romantic feelings, he thought wryly, fetching
his wellies from the car boot and stuffing in his trouser legs.  There
was starlight enough to follow the blue and white plastic tape that
marked out a path to the incident.  It was, as he'd guessed, a body.

No more than fifty yards in among the trees he came upon it.  Little
effort had been made to conceal it under the edge of a scratchy
hawthorn.  The dry earth had been roughly hollowed out by hand and a
thin layer of leaf mould scattered around.

"Just passing by," Yeadings greeted his DI who looked at him curiously,
standing up to make room.

He took Mott's proffered flashlight and hunkered alongside.  At first
sight his breath escaped in an audible whoosh.  He had half expected an
old vagrant worn out from a hard life on the road and gut rot from me
ths  But this was bizarre; at the other extreme.

The body lay curled on one side in the shallow dip, knees to chin, with
the neck twisted to make it seem to gaze skyward.  Except that there
was no face.

Instead he met the head of a huge bird of prey.  Behind the cruelly
curved beak eagle features glittered with black sequins, surrounded by
a sable burst of cock's tail-feathers.

From its clothes the body appeared to be female, but Yeadings wouldn't
assume as much.  The extravagantly exotic outfit posed a question, and
at one point where the long feathers were crushed he glimpsed dark hair
razored close, almost non-existent, with skin showing through
bone-white in patches.

He lifted aside a thorny branch to get a clearer view and observed
dried blood beading the scalp where the blade used had left savage
gashes.  Never a haircut of the victim's choosing.

This mutilation reminded him of ritual punishment to women traitors
after World War II.  Such hair as showed seemed almost black, but with
the metallic red glint of henna.  The bloody gouging suggested the
victim had struggled against being sheared.  Had this resistance pushed
the attacker further, into killing?  Or was death intended in any case
to follow the mutilation?  Murder in a frenzy of retaliation, or
cold-blooded sadism?  And was there a sex angle here?

"What have we got?"  Yeadings asked his DI.

Mott straightened.  "No ID.  No handbag found so far, and I haven't
uncovered the face because I know Littlejohn would want to see her
untouched in situ.  He's on his way.

"Duty police surgeon has come and gone.  He just confirmed death and
took preliminary readings of rectal and air temperatures.  Minimal
interference with limbs or clothing.  Got instantly called off to an
RTA on the M4.  Gave no hint of cause or time of death, but he did
admit she hadn't started to stiffen."

She, Yeadings noted: something the medic wouldn't have missed.  It
eliminated his most dreaded kind of case.  All violence affected him
despite the many years he'd had to view its outcome, but
self-destruction through sexual experiment plagued him with an extra
sense of tragic futility.  Seekers after the ultimate in sensation were
the sorriest of human kind, creating a terrible legacy for those
surviving.

But this was no cross-dresser who'd chased orgasm too far and been
dumped in panic by his fellows.  It was a woman able to enrage another
human being into taking her life.  Or else, in the classic phrase, one
who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In this case he
felt there must surely be more to it than that.

He looked for the marks of ligatures.  They were present in abrasions
on the crossed, bare ankles.  Her wrists, hidden by the way she lay
tucked half under the bush, were pulled back behind her, possibly still
bound.

He rose to his feet, returned the flashlight to Mott and thrust his
hands back in his jacket pockets.  He had no wish to uncover the face
obscured by the feathers and spangles.  He had already seen too much,
risking his own traces being left on the murder scene.  Best leave the
body to Mott and the sterile-suited SOCO team in their white paper
overalls.

Yeadings moved back beside his DI.  "Who found the body?"

"Two boys cycling through the wood.  Larking about after escaping from
their bedroom windows.  It scared them stiff and they shot off home.
One was caught climbing back in and he spilled the beans.  His father
came out to check and then rang in.  He claims they're both in shock.

"Two patrolmen from Area took a look.  Fifteen minutes later Dr. Lament
and myself; so the ground's already trodden."

This was nothing new.  Yeadings nodded.  "I want a lid kept on all
description of the scene.  Warn everyone concerned.  Simply "the body
of a woman has been found in Shotters Wood.  The death is thought to be
recent."  See to it yourself that the boys and their contacts stay
stumm about the rest.  Also warn whoever they've already talked to.
I've a gut feeling this one is going to prove a stinker."

He stared back towards the hidden face, again resisting the impulse to
uncover it, then nodded to his DI.  "You don't need me here.  My
regards to Littlejohn when he turns up.  He'll be ringing me with time
of the post mortem.  I know tomorrow's Saturday, but my guess is he'll
want to get on to it straight away.

"Meanwhile see that SOCO get all they can from approach routes before
they start in on the close stuff.  The soil's very dried out round
here, but they might get something from it."

Keeping again to the route which Mott had had marked out with police
tapes, he returned to where the strobing blue lights had attracted a
little knot of residents dog-walking or out for a late-night stroll.

He let himself out under the plastic tape and nodded to the uniformed
sergeant on guard there.  "Is the site secured from the far end?"

"Yes sir.  I sent two constables round there with flashlights.  They're
setting up bollards."

"And the children who found the body?"

"At home, sir.  Your DI's got their addresses."

"Right.  We can leave them to him and a WPC.  Goodnight then."

He stood a moment in the dark before approaching his own car, intent on
fixing the murder scene in his mind.

There had been three known visits to the site before the police
presence: a pity, but some trace of who placed the body there might yet
remain.  He considered the body itself, extravagantly clothed and lying
barely hidden, as though asleep except that the arms were restrained
behind and the neck unnaturally twisted to make her seem gazing up
through the feathered eye-slits.

Despite evidence of duress the precise cause of death wasn't
immediately obvious.  That was often par for the course in the initial
stage of a murder investigation, but the rest was unreal fantastically
theatrical, with a Gothic, Hammer Horror mark of evil.

The woman's long evening gown had been of clinging chiffon printed with
lurid swirls of purple and poison green overshot with a sort of
spider's web design in silver thread.  Surely no ordinary, off-the-peg
label.

Returning now in even more vivid detail as he concentrated with closed
eyes, was the bizarre bird-face covering the human one: an elaborate
sequin-spangled confection of black papier mache with cut-out eye holes
and wide-swept wings fashioned from the shiny, black tail-feathers of a
cockerel

The mask was uniquely striking.  And he recognised it.  He heard again
a whisper of bamboo chimes as the door opened and he stepped into the
little gift shop in Mardham village about three weeks back.  He saw the
black, sharp-beaked, feathered mask displayed with others strung
against the bull's-eye glass of the door.  The shop was called PARTY

FUN.

Tonight the carnival bird-face had been worn by a woman going out
exquisitely dressed for a very sophisticated occasion.  Of all the
party junk in that little village shop she had selected the most
eye-catching.  If she'd intended making an impact, he'd accept she'd
done that.

Now she was grotesque, her hair savagely shorn like a traitor's.  Then
her killer had replaced the bird-mask over the dead human face and
dumped her contemptuously in a public place, to be discovered by
children or any sniffing dog let loose in the woodland.

What kind of perverted mind would do that?

And what kind of life would be uncovered once they started digging into
the dead woman's past?  A sensation-seeker certainly; not short of
money; possibly a drug user?  That last would be for Littlejohn to
discover when he performed the post mortem.

Despite the warm midsummer evening Yeadings shivered, turned up the
collar of his dinner jacket and stomped back to his car.  He didn't
trouble to remove his wellies as he rejoined Nan.  Tightlipped he put
the car in gear and steered off the grass verge.

"A bad one?"  she assumed.

He nodded.  Any magic that the evening had had was gone.  Tomorrow
could be unpleasant.

Chapter 3

Shaving next morning, Yeadings froze half-lathered and stared at his
own reflection.  For a moment his nose, protruding from downy foam, had
seemed beak-like under the dark brows and slitted eyes.  Momentarily,
he saw himself as a bird of prey.

The connection was automatic, bypassing last night's incident and
cueing an instant replay of that June Saturday morning when, on a
sudden impulse, he'd seized a way out of a personal dilemma.  He had
braked and drawn into the kerb as he drove home through Mardham.

The little gift shop had an olde worlde frontage, with PARTY FUN
scrawled in loopy script over the fascia.  In the bulging bay window
bobbed heart-shaped silver balloons with cartoon-face stickers and
brightly coloured messages: "It's a Boy!"  "Happy Eighteenth', "Welcome
Home Darling'.

As he opened the door a hanging mobile set off a set of bamboo chimes.
Inside, quivering against the glass panes, were strung clusters of
fantastic masks, spangled, sequinned and feathered; some exquisite,
some comic, others malevolently scowling; all ghosts of a Venetian
Carnival.

Immediately ahead he saw enticing trays of hand-made chocolates
displayed in a chilled, triple-shelved glass cabinet.

Mike Yeadings had gazed down the shop's narrow interior, his mind far
from partying, having for the second time within a fortnight slept in
his suit and shaved roughly in his office.  It had been a night of
sporadic emergencies involving an armed man holed up with two women
hostages in a housing estate.  Not until dawn had the man thrown his
shotgun from an upstairs window and allowed the women to run out.

With that little excitement over, what the superintendent pursued now
was no dangerous criminal but a suitable gift to sweeten his delayed
arrival home.  Something rather special because last night's kerfuffle
had made him fail young Sally, whose birthday it had been.

There were no "Sorry I Stood You Up' balloons, much less any with
excuses for the policeman's lot.  There was a rich choice of furry toy
animals; covens of plastic witches and trolls; Batman, fairies',
ballerinas' and wizards' costumes; crystal balls; dangling spiders;
hovering bats; comic hats; strings of tinsel and wads of glitzy gift
wrapping; also acres of greeting cards to cover every imaginable
occasion except his present one.  None would guarantee delight on the
morning after he'd missed a special daughter's birthday party.

Yesterday there had been balloons and gifts enough at home, including
his own offering presented solo by Nan.  Now had dawned the morning of
the juvenile hangover.  Not that Sally was spoilt and demanding, but
she had asked for a conjuror and he had rashly agreed to stand in as
the magician's apprentice.  Moreover he had promised to be there.  By
now he should certainly have known better.

He made a solemn circuit of the shop, aware of the two women assistants
keeping a surveillant eye on his progress (non-progress so far as
inspiration went) while the younger, winding a blonde curl round one
finger, continued to consider aloud the romantic potential of someone
called Josh despite the other's warning glances.

Beside himself, the only other customer on this early Saturday morning
was a dumpy middle-aged woman muttering over the greetings cards.

"They're all so sloppy," she confided as he passed her.  The verses
inside."

Yeadings paused, an eyebrow raised warily.  "What would you like them
to say?"

The woman shrugged.  "Well, it's for my us band birthday."  Then she
let out an eldritch cackle.  "Cor, they'd never dare print what I reely
wish 'im."  And, so cheered, she seized on a florid garden scene,
matched it to its envelope and waddled off to pay.

Arriving back at the entrance Yeadings made up his mind as promptly.
Luxury chocolates were a dietetic no-no in his household, but could
flatter a little girl in ankle socks.  No harm in just a dozen
specially selected and wrapped in one of those gilt boxes tied in blue
streamers and with a little silk rosebud hacked in.  The cost would, of
course, be exorbitant.

The darker-haired of the two assistants opened the glass cabinet with
ritual reverence, covered one hand with a latex glove and fastidiously
lifted out each chocolate as he made his selection.  Yeadings left the
shop with the casket inside a dinky carrier bag proclaiming (untimely
in his case) PARTY FUN in elegant gilt script.

From the landing window Nan Yeadings had glimpsed her husband's return.
"Daddy's back!"  she called, watching him slither shamefacedly out of
the car.  Despite a perfect June morning his face as he walked up the
path showed left-out-in-the-rain dejection.

Their eyes locked through the glass and he grimaced in mock penitence.
Not entirely an act, she thought: Mike took his fathering earnestly,
assuming it rather later in life than most.  On occasions when police
children met, their two gravitated towards the youngsters of junior
ranks.  Mike's own team were short on offspring, both DI Mott and
Sergeant Rosemary Zyczynski being single, and DS Beaumont's quirky
teenage son already facing serious school exams with hopes of an
eventual career in medicine.

Nan kissed her husband at the front door.  "Sally is making you a
special breakfast," she warned him.

"Cremated toast and soggy cereal."

"That could well be, but not intentionally."

"Good.  My absence wasn't intentional either."

"Actually we discussed that last night.  You'll find you're already
forgiven."

Again their eyes met and she almost giggled, bringing on his rueful
grin.  He shed his jacket.

"Where's my birthday girl then?"  he shouted joyfully, and Sally
promptly appeared in the kitchen doorway, her puppyish Down's Syndrome
features earnestly puckered over the task in hand.  Her voice was
cheerful enough.  "Daddy, I'm making your breakfast!"

He bent to kiss her.  Case dismissed; he was grateful for the
acquittal.

Now, weeks later, he grinned at his reflection, completed the lathering
and cut the first swathe through with his safety razor.  There was
nothing like the finish of the old-fashioned method, he considered,
rubbing a hand over the smooth surface produced.  He even kept an old
cut-throat for special occasions.

Littlejohn's assistant rang through while he was still at breakfast.
The post mortem was set for 10.30am.

"On a Saturday," Nan grumbled.  "He must be keen."

"It suits me.  Ample time to see the team beforehand.  I'd like to get
it over."

"You're attending, yourself?"  She didn't sound surprised, having
wormed some of the story out of him before bed last night.  "It's that
mask, isn't it?  You feel it involves you."

"I guess so.  I should have mentioned to Angus last night that I'd seen
it before.  The truth is it gave me a bit of a..."  He shrugged.  "I'd
better arrange with him now to meet up beforehand."

Entering his office the Superintendent nodded to his two sergeants.
Beaumont was leaning forward in his seat with a star-pupil intensity,
or perhaps more like a terrier poised to leap for the flung bone.
Rosemary Zyczynski smiled, casually brushing an invisible speck from
her tan linen skirt.

"I'll be attending the pm with Angus," Yeadings informed them, 'and
since the body's female, I think we'll have Z along."

"Sir," she acknowledged, gratified.

"I'd not mind a look-see," Beaumont put in quickly, unwilling to miss
out.

Yeadings considered.  Everything of importance would have been recorded
by the SOCO photographer on site.  Shots of the body would show detail,
but there was still the obscured face.  Beaumont was as entitled as
anyone to see it revealed in the flesh.  He was getting pretty uptight
these days about even-pegging his woman rival, and competition would
keep him on his toes.

"All four of us then, with the coroner's officer," Yeadings allowed,
his face sardonic as he noted that, appropriately, they would make
quite a little party themselves.  It was fortunate that Prof Littlejohn
thrived on pulling an audience.

"Any new Misper reported locally?"  Yeadings enquired of his DIas they
walked to the lab.

"Nothing as yet, sir.  She looked to be heading for a really wild night
out.  Likely its survivors won't be stirring yet, let alone sobered up
enough to count heads and find her missing."

Survivors, Yeadings considered.  Like himself Mott had assumed she was
bound for some mega-rave.  Recall of her outlandish appearance struck
him as even more bizarre by the light of day.  She'd dressed for a
decidedly exotic brand of nightlife.  So where could such have been
provided?

Obviously at some distance from where she was found, because no one
would choose to dump a corpse in their own back yard.

But if the body was discovered without noticeable rigor in Shotters
Wood at 11.28pm, she'd not had time to deck herself out and travel far.
Bizarre parties of the kind he suspected were unlikely to get going
much before midnight.  Maybe these 'survivors' ravers, musicians, smack
merchants, whatever would at most have noticed that she hadn't turned
up.  Which meant they'd be in the clear, with nothing more to survive
as yet than the usual after-effects of alcohol and amphetamines.

So, in mentioning fellow revellers, was Mott already considering
collusion in a ritual killing?  Even black magic an arcane satanic
ceremony requiring a sacrificial victim?

Certainly the corpse's masking brought to mind some kind of Comus rout.
But in that case the ceremonies would surely have been more protracted
and the corpse not released until dawn.

Professor Littlejohn was prompt on the job.  When the team arrived they
found the body naked under a partly turned-back sheet, toe-tagged and
spotlit, ready waiting.  Either refrigeration had been minimal or
thawing had been started early.

Yeadings had a word with the pathologist as he stood shaking talc into
his latex gloves to ease them over his bony fingers.  Then he went over
to where the merciless lights shone brightest.  The team's other three
shuffled aside, making room for him to stare down on the dead face.

That should have been his first sight of it, but, even distorted by a
hideous death and shorn of its dark, hennaed hair, it was one that,
with sudden shock, Yeadings realised he knew.

He couldn't put a name to her, but he had watched her, alive, for
several minutes; spoken with her.  She wasn't any chance customer of
PARTY FUN but the older saleswoman there.  She was the dark-haired one
who had served him, fastidiously, with Sally's chocolates; was possibly
the shop's manager.

He moved the sheet to expose the hands.  Any jewellery had been removed
and bagged, together with the clothing, but on the left-hand fourth
finger a paler indentation showed where she had previously worn a ring.
Somewhere there could be a husband who had woken up a widower this
morning.

Yeadings stared at the scratched black enamel on the fingernails.  He
remembered the earlier butterscotch shade glinting through the
translucent gloves as the manicured hands lifted each chocolate singly
and nestled it into tissue paper in the little gilt casket.  Now the
slender wrists were rubbed almost raw by the chafing of bonds.

It shook him, the pathos of it.  Alive she had seemed so elegantly in
charge: a breathing, likeable person reduced now to the official police
description "the body of a woman".

He turned to Mott.  "Have we a name yet?"

Apparently they hadn't.  He let Littlejohn drone out her physical
particulars into the mike clipped on his rubber apron: "Body, female,
between twenty-five and thirty-two years of age; height five feet six
inches; weight one hundred and thirty-three pounds; well-nourished but
slender; in apparent good health apart, as DS Beaumont might say, from
being dead."

Perhaps the killer had done well to replace the mask because, whatever
else Littlejohn was to find, she had died from gar rotting with a sharp
ligature.  The features were cyanosed and distorted, eyes staring,
purple tongue obscenely extended.  Petechiae present on the scalp were
barely distinguishable from scars caused by the shearing.

In places the cord or wire used had cut into her flesh, marking it like
a finely strung necklace of unmatched garnets.  The ligature had been
removed after death, then the bird-mask added.  Or replaced.

Nothing resembling the murder instrument had yet been discovered in the
locality of Shotters Wood.

"Are you sure, sir?"  Mott ventured to ask when Yeadings later
explained where he'd encountered the dead woman.  "If you only saw her
the once?  I mean, there was a lot of facial distortion."

"I remember her all right.  It was at the shop that sold the mask.
There was that small black mole high on the left cheekbone.  She'd
darkened it with mascara to look like an eighteenth century beauty
spot.  It added a certain piquancy."

He recalled how she had paused at one point in the wrapping as if she
might start up a conversation, then quickly glanced sideways at the
younger woman and thought better of it.  It might have been some small
help to him now if she'd actually opened up.  At least he'd have a
shred more knowledge of the person she was.

Accustomed to taking quick stock of strangers, he'd put her down as
normally a reserved woman, educated and conventional, perhaps a little
lacking in self-assertiveness but meticulous within her own sphere of
activity; quite beautiful in a smooth-featured way, yet not trading on
the fact.

With Yeadings apparently lost in reverie, Mott avoided Beaumont's
meaningful stare.  So what, if the Boss had picked up on such details
in a single brief sighting on a drive home through Mardham?  He was
famously observant.

All the same when a sobersides like Mike Yeadings got to close-studying
racy women...!

Zyczinski read through a list of the dead woman's clothing, comparing
it with what she could see of the plastic bags' contents.  "No shoes
then?"

Mott nodded.  "Bare feet when found.  And nothing of the sort has
turned up yet.  Uniform are doing a daylight search of the wood now.
Someone transported her there, so let's hope the shoes are eventually
found where they shouldn't be, to give us a connection."

"Without a description how shall we know they're hers?"  Z grumbled.

"Feminine intuition?"  Beaumont suggested snidely.  "Can't you match
them to the rest of her gear?"

"Only roughly.  You'd hardly expect galoshes or trainers.  But then,
under a full-length skirt she might have preferred comfort to high
fashion.  I know a violinist who wears fur-lined boots under her
evening dress.  Chilly places, concert platforms."

"What about it, Boss?"  Beaumont pursued.  "You're the one who knew the
dead woman."

Yeadings considered this.  "Saw her once," he corrected.  "So -given
the fancy dress and her earlier appearance my money would be on
fashionable high heels and a collection of straps.  But bear in mind
what Z says.  From the state of her soles we know she didn't walk the
woods barefoot, but she just might have gone there prepared for the
terrain.  So keep an open mind."

Now the team were aware of him moving off; apparently he'd seen enough.
Was he letting the dead woman get to him?  His face gave nothing
away.

"Rather touching, in nit  Beaumont said in a hoarse stage whisper.
"Reminds me of that ancient film with Celia Johnson: Brief One over the
Counter, or sommat."

"The shop should give us a name for her," Z said coolly.  Of late she'd
a convenient way of not hearing Beaumont's questionable wit.  "The
assistants will know who she is."

"Was," Beaumont corrected her woodenly.  He was back in Pinocchio mode,
puppet-faced policeman, totally impersonal.

"You go," Mott ordered him.  "Slope off now and get her particulars."
He knew that Littlejohn's sharp ears could pick up their asides.
Anything jokey over the mortuary slab had to be of the pathologist's
own sardonic honing.

Littlejohn looked up now, electric saw in hand.  "Splendid idea," he
said lightly.  "Get me a Saturday Telegraph while you're at it, there's
a good lad.  And have them put it in a carrier bag for you, otherwise
all the supplementary bits drop out."

He swung the magnifying spotlight closer over the chest aperture.

"Which brings me if you others are quite ready for it to the
innards."

The Woman

Chapter 4

Saturday, 12 June

Yeadings might not know her name, but she had known his.  He was widely
remembered in Mardham because of the murder inquiry two years before
when briefly the dozy little Buckinghamshire town hit page one of the
tabloid press.  The invasive police presence had been at the same time
vaguely unnerving and yet a reassurance.  She had been reminded of a
nature film where a school of sharks swam with silent menace through a
shivering mesh of smaller fish: immediate danger suspended but the
threat ever present.

By sight the main four members of CID had become familiar to her, three
continually darting into crevices after tit bits while their chief
finned blandly around soaking up the atmosphere.  She had watched him
one morning gazing wide-eyed, into the pastry cook's window, savouring
the smell of fresh-baked bread like any hungry schoolboy; and again
leaning chummily with the old codgers on the river wall, wreathed in a
communal blue haze as they puffed out pipe smoke against the midges. He
had seemed the sort of big, slow-smiling man you could too easily find
yourself opening up to.

The morning he had appeared in the shop he was still driving the same
green Rover and had parked it by the kerb to come in for chocolates.
Briefly she'd wondered who the lucky lady they were intended for was,
but mainly, while she made up his order, she had questioned whether she
dared speak to him of a personal worry which nagged at her.

What decided her against it was Rita's being present, with her sharp
ears and her even sharper taste for fabricating scandal out of nothing.
And perhaps not exactly nothing in this case.

But anyway the opportunity was lost because the instant he had paid for
the chocolates her customer was off.  Later that was something Leila
would regret.

She stayed on at the shop a further half-hour until Maggie arrived to
relieve her.  That was a drawback in running a small-town business,
this reliance on part-timers for staff.  Housewives were dependable up
to a point but their families came first; whch meant she was never
entirely free herself.  As well as retaining a financial interest and
keeping the books, she was obliged to stand in as dogs body to cover
gaps caused by ailments, music lessons and the dentists' appointments
of other women's children.  Which stung her the more because she was
childless herself.

She was fond of her teenage stepson and stepdaughter.  In a curiously
detached way they, she believed, returned their own, but inadequate,
kind of fondness.  There was a time when she had hoped that the arrival
of a baby would bring new warmth and closeness to weld them all into a
real family; but in that she'd failed, never becoming pregnant despite
various efforts at medical intervention.

It hadn't seemed to trouble Aidan.  But then why should it?  He had
proved himself twice over, had already done with breeding and moved on
to alternative interests almost totally scientific and academic,
leaving her shamed as infertile and deficient.  It didn't help one's
self-esteem.

Within her husband's professional circle she sensed herself regarded as
a social accoutrement and little else, hardly a person in her own right
and certainly an intellectual lightweight: almost like something
inadvertently picked up on a shoe.

Once, she sadly thought, I counted: I had a future, if not precisely
mapped out, at least roughly sketched.  Studying for a degree in Modern
History, barely eighteen years old and inexperienced, she had happened
on the very campus where

Aidan was the indisputable Big Shot currently in demand by the
scholastic press and already making guest appearances on TV's
scientific programmes.

She was flattered to have gained his notice.  They had danced together
twice at the Freshers' Ball, and a week later, passing in the quad, he
had impulsively stopped in his tracks, his black gown billowing
heroically in the wind, and asked her out to dinner.

There had been student gossip about him but she had taken it with quite
a deal of salt.  Apart from following his open lectures she had never
encountered him in action, not being in the Faculty of Science.  She
quickly picked up that Arts undergraduates were by implication
inferiors, and she accepted what seemed the common devaluation, seeing
herself in every way many rungs down, while he, made officer stuff,
breathed a more rarefied air.

She was young and untried.  He delighted in her coltish beauty, in
watching her opening perception, her ready enthusiasms, even sometimes
her unforeseeable reactions.  He felt it incumbent on him to seduce
her, which he did with a deal of practised skill and an unaccustomed
persistence.

Halfway through her second year, when he was drinking overmuch, being
between books and tetchily impatient for fresh inspiration, he uneasily
discovered that he had actually proposed marriage and been happily
accepted.

Scarcely four months earlier Marjorie, his longtime ailing wife, had
departed this life taking with her his sole irrefutable excuse for
withdrawal from entanglements.  Partly through the mischief of
colleagues, but mainly from the romantic imagination of genuinely
interested onlookers, it became accepted that a wedding was planned for
the Easter vacation.  With preparations increasingly made on their
behalf, he had found it more onerous to block than to accept the
apparently inevitable.

So, on April 8, just over nine years back, Professor and Mrs.  Aidan
Knightley had shaken the confetti out of their new,

matching suitcases in an Athens hotel.  They settled to conduct their
honeymoon, in the sticky atmosphere of an unseasonal heatwave, while
attending the International Conference of Physical Chemists and Allied
Scientists.

Sex as a single girl, Leila then discovered, had been better.

The Saturday morning of Yeadings' appearance, once Maggie had shown up,
Leila retrieved her car from the shop's rear courtyard and made
posthaste homewards.  Today was to be another of Aidan's public
occasions, so her place at his side was obligatory.  Uncomfortably so,
she knew in advance, because again she'd prove quite hopeless at
sustaining his high level of discourse and would be passed on as
intellectually inadequate to new acquaintances who would fail to find
common ground.  Finally she would be relegated to the dolly-bird role
by any grey beards inclined to take the easy line of sexual badinage
and unsuitably adolescent innuendo.

At home she found Aidan ready dressed and huffing with impatience.  He
was wearing a light summer suit in a milky tea shade, with beneath it a
figured satin waistcoat which she considered utterly naff.  Instead,
either the waistcoat with open neck and shirtsleeves quite mod or the
suit over a conservative cream shirt and plain silk tie: but never the
mix.

It was his decision however and, equally stubborn, she let him wait
while she took time over dressing.

She wasn't totally downcast about the engagement.  It was a glorious
day and, however daunting the company, there was a lot to be said for
lunch at Carlton House Terrace and drinking Pimms or champagne in the
Royal Society's upper salon overlooking the Mall.  This was the second
year they were to be grandstand guests as the Queen reviewed her Guards
at Trooping the Colour.  Aidan clearly saw the invitation as the
prelude to his being proposed as an RS Fellow himself.  His upward move
from a provincial university to the new London appointment must surely
serve towards that ambition.

They travelled up by chauffeured limousine, Aidan preferring the
expense of hiring, rather than losing face searching for parking space
on such a grand occasion.  Dropped at the door, they entered the lofty
hall, aquarium-cool and shady after brilliant sunshine.  There was a
babble of striving voices; perhaps more querulous than in the year
before?  Certainly the gathering by the stairs appeared to have aged by
at least a decade since then.

Leila looked towards Aidan for a lead.  He stood wirily erect, chest
expanded, making the most of his five feet five inches, his ginger
goatee out thrust (and clashing badly, she thought, with the rosy
pattern of the deplorable waistcoat.)

He was waiting for recognition and acclaim.  He could wait a long time
here: everyone was so full of him- or herself, all volubly chattering
while nobody listened.  "Shall we go up?"  Leila suggested.

He began to acknowledge acquaintances.  There were congratulations on
the new appointment and compliments on his most recent publication.
Leila listened for the tone rather than the words, wise enough by now
to pick up on professional jealousies and false good wishes.  Some
faces were familiar through photographs in scientific journals or
television appearances.  One or two of the older Fellows smiled at her
vaguely, remembering introductions last year.  There were a number of
desiccated ladies with authoritative voices but few younger men and
those Aidan seemed not to know.

Across the terrace she recognized a bushy, dark moustache and caught
Lord Winston's eye.  Kindly and charming as ever, he smiled, too
discreet to let it show they were professionally known to each other.
Not presuming on his successes in human fertility and gene research, he
would leave it to his subjects to approach if they wished.

Leila turned aside as a long flute of champagne was pushed into her
hand.  From far away she heard a brass band strike up a military march
but few craned at the windows to watch.  Upper branches from the Mall's
trees had been clipped for the occasion but still provided a hefty
screen.

Unseen from Leila's viewpoint, Queen Elizabeth distantly alighted from
an open carriage at Horse Guards and took her stand on the parade
ground's dais.

"She's wearing bright yellow," shouted an elderly woman farther along
who was using field glasses.  She was one of the few who took much
interest in the ceremony, or even in personal appearance.  Not a smart
lot, the Royal Society ladies.  But then, with brains who needed
fashion?  Style without content was more the politicians' line, Leila
supposed.

Aidan was deep in conversation with their host, a geophysicist at
Imperial College, and between them the technical terms were rolling
like the credits for a Spielberg film.  Leila felt herself an alien
among this assembly of the country's best, or most recognized,
scientific brains.

"Mrs.  Knightley," breathed a voice above her head.  She recalled the
man's name: Sir Arthur Waites, a wizened beanpole with a few sparse
hairs grown long to smear across his pale, bald peak in the vain hope
of deception; but which any shaming breeze would float like filmy
seaweed about his face.  Last year he had been kind to her, so she owed
him an effort.

Someone had told her that his wife, badly injured a year back in a car
crash, was in a permanent vegetative state.  Probably wiser in that
case not to ask after her.  She let him steer her by the elbow to an
open window where there was a view of the military ritual.

Down on Horse Guards Parade the mass movement of red tunics and bulky
black bearskins froze into stillness.  On foot two solitaries advanced
on each other with swords drawn, saluted, remained motionless, then
retreated to their former positions.  From one flank a group of riders
approached centre front, jingling and jogging, with standards flying,
dark uniforms bobbing under rather more merciful hats busbies, weren't
they?  She imagined they were Hussars but, viewed from so far away,
they remained faceless toy soldiers.

By any standard the horses were magnificent.  They performed some
elaborate wheeling motion and presented a new pattern.  Except for when
the standards passed, the Queen had remained seated.  In earlier times
she would have saluted them from on horseback, gracefully seated
side-saddle.  This year she was dressed as a civilian but the Press had
announced that as a Colonel-in-Chief, Princess Anne would be mounted
astride.

Meaningless to Leila, the troops' geometric combinations and
permutations would continue for half an hour yet.  While sections
circled and wove, the sun bore down on serried, unmoving lines where
only fear of their RSM's blistering threats kept the sweltering ranks
from dropping with heatstroke.

"I suppose," she suggested to the maths-man beside her, 'that you
admire all this geometric precision."

"Not really," he admitted, sipping slowly at his Bollinger.  "My
principal interest is in the chaos theory.  I get high on cause and
effect."

She looked again at Waites.  Perhaps he was more interesting than she'd
assumed.  He had been talking Oceanology with a stout woman to Leila's
left and without actually eavesdropping she'd picked up an intriguing
term foreign to her.

"What is an algorithm?"  she asked suddenly.  "Logarithms I've a vague
memory of from school.  So is algorithm just a mathematician's joke
anagram of the same?"

Waites came suddenly alive.  "It might well be.  You'd have to ask the
Ancient Greeks."  He considered for a moment.  To give you the broad
definition, it's a procedure to solve a well-defined problem in a
routine manner.  We use it to deal with equations; perform calculations
and construct geometrical figures; sort our data."

He was becoming quite pink with enthusiasm, waving his empty champagne
flute perilously close to her hat brim.  "To take a simple example:
when a computer arranges a list of,

say, your party guests into alphabetical order, that is performed by an
algorithmic procedure of moving upwards initial letters according to
pre-imposed pattern; then the second letters in the same way; and so on
through each word until the required order is achieved.

"Euclid himself contrived a mathematical algorithm to find the highest
common factor, or divisor.  Take for instance the numbers 35 and 150.
Divide the greater by the smaller and the remainder is 10.  Now divide
the original 35 by that remainder and the new remainder is 5. Next
divide your 10 by that 5 and the remainder is nought.  Arriving at zero
remainder proves that both original numbers are divisible by the last
number you have reached.  And that, being the first to obtain zero, is
the greatest."

"Which was 5," she said faintly, accepting but still not seeing why.
She had always imagined a parallel between mathematics and religion:
that reasoning in either was beyond her.  Which left only a choice of
blind faith or disbelief.

He was beaming at her delightedly through thick lenses which made his
eyes into huge, dark beetles, his wire-rimmed spectacles askew on the
beaky nose.

Well, she had brought that on herself.  To escape sinking further out
of her depth, she glanced past him, seemed to recognise an acquaintance
and gave a little social wave.  "It was lovely meeting you again," she
lied, smiled and moved on.

"Gorgeous hat," intervened an old goat breathing brandy fumes over her.
She kept her gaze ahead, content in the knowledge that a wide brim
ensured a certain degree of privacy.  Few dared plunge under to kiss
since the exercise required some co-operation from the wearer.

Perhaps the best part was the luncheon itself, although she sat in a
group of Aidan's choosing.  Happily the vein of high-flown
technicalities appeared to have dried up, but their pettish talk was
mainly of research under funding grumbles at the government and (from
the more elderly) unpleasant details of ill health.

Leila refused the offer of liqueurs with the coffee, hoping that Aidan
might do the same, but he was set on going the whole hog, by now
flushed and self-important.  Not that there and then it would be
noticeably unique.

Returning from the ladies' room she found him alone, strutting about
the hall, waving his mobile phone and loudly complaining that he'd sent
for the car ten minutes back and the bloody chauffeur hadn't turned up.
When he did, Aidan gave him the Ozymandias brush-off.

"God," he said, leaning back against the cushions, 'what a lot of
boring old farts they are.  I'll be glad to get home."

Not more, Leila thought, than she would.  There was plenty to do there;
at least six tea chests remained to be unpacked from the old house, and
family guests were expected tomorrow for lunch.

Chapter 5

Leila's Uncle Charles was a big man in several ways, but wherever he
was invited and took along his middle-aged mistress, he invariably
introduced her as his housekeeper.  Leila, feminist rebel over this if
nothing else, had once questioned what she considered a slight.  Janey,
subject of the disagreement, was forthright about it.  "Housekeep is
what I do.  Wife I'm not.  And what we get up to in the bedroom is
between him and me."

She was a totally honest woman, or as near as dammit.  She had a flat,
rectangular face, with a straight nose and high, straight brows set
precisely at right angles to it.  The parchment-pale flesh over her
cheeks fitted tightly to the bony infrastructure so that her lips often
drew apart, making her look slightly aghast; which she never was.  Her
manner was always calmly pragmatic, and Leila was very fond of her.

They arrived for lunch half an hour early which irritated Aidan
although, knowing Charles, he should have expected it.  "Tell me what I
can do to help," Janey offered.

"Sit down, relax and stop fussing, woman," Charles growled.  "Where are
your kids, Aidan?  Backpacking to Taiwan or prostrate over exams?"

"Edward's in the States, fixing himself up with some research into
Artificial Intelligence.  Chloe's staying with her grandmother in
Nice."

If Aidan had hoped to dazzle the older man he was disappointed.

"So Eddie's into robotics, eh?  Great future in that.  Especially in
astronavigation.  Gone to Houston, I suppose."

Leila darted him a glance.  His response was too instant and informed.
She guessed Eddie had been writing to Charles.  Which could indicate he
was short of money again.

(And Charles not even a blood relative, although both children
preferred to ignore that shortcoming.)

"We thought you might like to look over the house," she suggested,
'while I finish getting lunch."

Charles sat on over his drink, digging himself out for the guided tour
with Aidan just minutes before the hot meal was ready for serving.

"And the wicked old thing knows exactly what he's doing,"

Janey remarked confidently, sitting on the kitchen table and swinging
her legs like a teenager.  "As in Alice, "He only does it to annoy,"
Because he knows it teases."  I do think you've got yourself a lovely
house here, Leila."

"It will be, I think, but there's a lot to be done.  I'm glad Aidan
decided against living in London.  I just hope the commuting doesn't
get him down."

"A grand new job, a grand new house, with both the kids growing up and
away.  This will be a quite different lifestyle for you both.  So what
are your plans?"

Leila straightened after transferring the roast beef from cooker shelf
to cork mat and paused a moment, hands in oven gloves on her hips.  "Do
you know, Janey, I've no idea.  Aidan will be pretty involved with the
university, of course."

"Damn Aidan's plans; what about your own?  You must get yourself a
life, Leila.  It's more than time."

"Well, I have the shop.  I'm really grateful to Uncle Charles for
setting me up with that."

Janey grimaced.  "It wasn't what I'd hoped he would pick on, but you
know Charles: two years ago the lease was up for grabs and property
hereabouts gets more valuable every year.  He felt it was too good to
pass up.  But running a shop doesn't exactly stretch you, does it?"

Leila smiled.  "It's a bit like that fully-stocked doll's-house he gave
me when I was ten."

"And you should have been five.  It wouldn't have happened if I'd been
around then, my dear."

Leila laughed.  "You certainly know how to work on him."

"I don't manipulate, Leila.  I simply tell him what I'd prefer.  Like
that dress account he opened for me.  I really didn't need it, so once
I'd explained he cancelled it and gave me carte blanche at the bookshop
instead.  Much more sensible.  I'm sorry I can't take you for a new
swish outfit again, but do let me have a list of what you fancy
reading."

By now Janey had slid off the table, seized some tongs and was
arranging roast potatoes for her in a ceramic dish.  These are crisped
perfectly, Leila.  Oh, I do enjoy eating what someone else has
cooked."

Leila reached out and hugged her.  This plain-faced little woman
dressed as a middle-aged flower child was one of the most comfortable
people she knew.

At lunch Janey left the men to do the talking, only piping up during
the dessert with a question to Leila about picking up her studies
again.  It had the effect of halting the others' conversation.

"I should hardly think she'd want to do that," Aidan decided.

"She needn't do it at your college.  Why not the Open University?"

"Yes," Charles agreed wickedly.  "If she keeps it dark you won't lose
face, old man.  How about it, Leila?  I was sorry you never went on to
get your degree.  Whatever happened to your early thirst for
history?"

The truth was it had got crowded out.  Her special fascination was with
pre-colonial Africa, and she'd hoped to spend a few years out there in
research.  Aidan and marriage had put paid to that.

"Maybe it wasn't all that pressing," she offered.  "I hadn't actually
fixed my options for if I graduated."

"Not if: when," her uncle said staunchly.

"A piece of paper!"  Aidan cried scornfully.  "One advantage of passing
through the entire academic process is learning that degrees and
diplomas aren't worth the paper they're printed on.  But of course you
must acquire them to dare point out the fact."

As Janey mumbled into her plate Leila thought she caught 'pissing from
a great height."

When they had consigned the china and cutlery to the dishwasher the two
women rejoined the men who had decided on a local stroll.  "We'll see
what your new neighbourhood's like," said Charles benignly.

"Beech woods and farmland in that direction," Aidan offered at the foot
of the drive, squire-like and waving a fancy walking-stick.  "The
village is over to your right.  Though village or town, we haven't
quite decided yet.  Anyway there are shops and dwellings, pubs and
churches, bus and train stations.  That sort of thing.  Leila tells me
there's even a Tuesday market."

By common consent they turned left where the road began to twist and
narrow, descending between over-arching beech trees.

"Deer?  You really get wild deer?"  Janey cried in delight, pointing to
the roadside warning.

Leila nodded.  "Now and again.  They don't gallop about as the sign
shows.  A lone one will just stalk across the road, very dignified and
snooty.  That's why motorists need to cut speed.  Let's go through that
gate and strike off into the woods, then we can work back in a
circle."

The roundabout route took a good hour and a half, including a
twenty-minute lounge on the sunbaked grass of a large clearing.  Then
they climbed steeply between silver birches and oaks to a wicket gate
in a barbed wire fence.  Beyond it were signs of a community presence.
An asphalt path, shaded to one side by an avenue of tall lime trees,
opened on the other to a sports field where a cricket match was in
progress.

"Bless my soul!"  declared Charles as a fielder came streaking towards
their boundary, hands cupped for a catch.  "Surely that's a..."

"A woman," Janey completed.  "They've picked a mixed team.  I wonder
how well she bats."

"We'll never know.  According to the scoreboard this is the second side
in."

They strolled around two sides of the field to bring them close to a
tiny pavilion.  About twenty relatives and friends were sprawled in
deck chairs or on the grass to cheer on what were clearly scratch teams
kit ted out in a wide variety of whites.  On folding tables among the
spectators were scattered the remains of a picnic lunch.

The scoreboard, a clumsy, wheeled affair with slots for figured cards
was being managed by a plump girl rising on tiptoes to record the runs.
"Nineteen required to win," she shouted and the little crowd adlibbed
with cheers or groans.

Theess," said a tall, rangy young man in a battered panama, carefully
placing tongue between teeth to achieve the unnatural Anglo-Saxon
double consonant, 'ees a crehzy ghem."

Leila smiled at him.  He had a long, droll, sad-clown face with a hint
of crescent-moon to the profile.  When he was older, she imagined,
nose-tip and chin would grow closer, with the wide, loopy grin trapped
in between.  A humorous Mr.  Punch with an Inspector Clouseau accent,
almost too Gallic to be true.

He rolled his eyes at the newcomers, waving an arm towards the field.
"Can sohmwohn explehn to me pleess ow it works?  I think per'aps there
are some roools about the weather.  But today it as not rhenned and so
the ghem goes on forever."

"It just feels like that, Pascal," said the plump girl briskly, and as
a shout went up from the field, "Oh Lord, was that a four or a six?"

Flat-bellied, in baggy cream flannels of ancient vintage stopping two
inches short of his ankles, and topped by an immaculate white silk
shirt, the Frenchman must surely be dressed for play.  "How many did
you make?"  Leila enquired of him.

"Do not ask.  I just 'it at the ball when I see eet and I nearly knock
out the uhmpire."

"He got forty-seven," said the plump girl kindly.  "He went in as
number five and he may have saved their day."

But he hadn't.  As they watched, his team's score rose bravely by
singles and a couple of fours until with a howl from the watchers the
heroic schoolboy batsman was run out.

Their last man stomped in.  He must have been eighty but he squared his
shoulders, hit out low and took a single, leaving the other batsman to
lose the match with an easy catch to square leg.

"So who is playing?"  Charles demanded amid the applause and cheerful
commiserations.

"Acrefield Way," said the plump girl.  "We have this match every year
in June, and a return one in September.  One side of the road plays the
other; the odds against the evens."

"And which has won?"

"We did," she said, total partisan.  "Evens, of course."

Stumps were being drawn as batsmen and fielders came streaming back to
surround them.

Charles was grinning as he poked Aidan in the ribs.  "Go on, admit to
everyone that Acrefield's where you live.  Next year we'll see you out
there with your pads strapped on, showing what a Blue can do."

"You know I detest all sports," Aidan muttered.  "And anyway our house
has a name, not a number."

"You really are' the plump girl asked, 'the new folks at Knollhurst?"

"Yes," Leila admitted happily.  "And now we can meet our neighbours."

"Wohnderfoool," said Pascal, savouring the word.  "You lee ve on the
sehm side of the road as myself.  Welcohm to the loozairs."

They were toasted with flat lager, plied with leftover sausage rolls
and the offer of sandwiches drily curling under the scorching sun.

"A true village community," boomed Charles, enjoying Aidan's
embarrassment at being surrounded by locals he'd had every intention of
staying aloof from.

"Look, we have to get back.  I've things to do," Aidan reminded Leila
tetchily.

Charles beamed back at him.  "If you must.  I think I'll stay on for a
bit; circulate and get to meet folks, don't y'know.  So thanks for a
great lunch, and we'll pick you both up Tuesday at eleven on the dot.
Best bibs and fuckers, eh?  Cheerio then."

"Tuesday," Leila agreed, kissed them both warmly and followed in her
husband's wake.  Tuesday would be fun.  Tuesday meant the thrill of
Ascot, and forecasts promised that the good weather would continue
unbroken.

"Swish" was what the fashion-blind Janey had called the expensive suit.
Three years old now, it was still Leila's favourite, folded away in
tissue paper between the rare special occasions when she graced it. And
now, with the invitation to Ascot, already she'd be wearing it twice in
four days.

Its pale shade was the same "apricot creme" that filled the hand-made
Belgian chocolates at the shop.  The jacket was long and beneath it the
short, floaty skirt's handkerchief points drew attention to slim legs
and delicate matching sandals.

The fine straw hat, however, was new this year, wide-brimmed and
translucent.  A classic: nothing idiotic or eye catching

Anyway it was Janey who would turn heads, with her strange assembly of
charity shop cast-offs.  One sure bet was that she and her outfit would
later feature in some glossy colour magazine, falsely attributed to one
of the famous way-out designers.

Owning one leg of a horse that was running in the three o'clock,
Charles was persona grata in the saddling enclosure, chatting almost
knowledgeably with jockey and trainer.  Although the syndicate's newest
member he was the only one present that day.  The chestnut gelding,
satin-coated and inclined to prance, was drawn number four.

"It won't win," Charles forecast breezily, 'but we should back it as
encouragement.  Good lad, that jockey.  He'll give it what it takes.
Meanwhile let's get back to our box for some strawberries and
bubbly."

On the way they encountered a knot of Charles's City friends, then the
crowd opened as the royal party came through.

"Ello," said a voice above Leila's hat and she looked up to recognize
Pascal of the cricket field.  Today, elegance personified, he was
escorting two exquisite young women, one on each arm.  He detached them
and reached for Leila's hand.

"Oh, hello.  We were admiring my uncle's horse.  Number four," she
gabbled, for some reason feeling shy at the encounter.

"Then we mohst certainly back eet."

"No, I didn't mean that."  She felt her face flushing, caught at a loss
among these sophisticates.  Now they would imagine Charles owned the
whole horse.

"Yoor ohncle?"

"Yes, he' She looked around, discovered his party had moved on and that
she was stranded alone.  "Look, I'm so sorry.  I have to catch them
up."

His eyes were laughing at her.  "We shall meet again."

"I hope so."  Now why did she say that?  A smile would have sufficed.
She nodded to the women, turned and fled.

The rest of the day was enthralling.  Quincunx, their number 4,
appropriately came in fourth, to Charles's great delight.

"Why Quincunx?"  she asked him as their car slowed, manoeuvring through
the home going throng.  "What does it mean?"

"It's a pattern," he explained.  "Five dots: four arranged in a square
with one at the centre.  Like a five in dice or dominoes.  But he's
called that because he was by White Domino out of Queen Mab.  Quin for
queen: sort of pun, d'you see?"

"He should have drawn number 5 then," Janey suggested airily.  "Maybe
the 4 confused him."

"If he's that numerate," Charles said damningly, 'he'd've likely seen
fit to come in fifth.  As it is, I'm well pleased for a start."

But Pascal won't be, Leila thought.  I wonder how much he lost?  Why on
earth did I allow him to bet on Charles's latest fad?

Chapter 6

Two days later Leila was expecting a grocery delivery, but when she
opened the back door it was to Pascal nonchalantly leaning there, a
bone-china teacup held out like a begging bowl.  "I do not recall," he
said, his brow furrowed, 'eef eet ees flour or sugar I am supposed to
run short of.  These British social nuances are a leetle difficult to
pick ohp."

She found herself responding to the laughter dancing in his eyes.

"According to the TV commercials you're hoping to share my instant
coffee.  Anyway, do come in."

She was aware of Hetty Chadwick's vigorous vacuuming upstairs suddenly
hushed and suspected that the twice-weekly cleaner was leaning over the
banisters to listen.  It was unfortunate that he had chosen one of her
days to call, but at least his arrival offered Leila the chance to
apologise for her gauche retreat at Ascot.

He heard her out and nodded.  "I could forge eve your horry on one
condition," he told her sombrely.  "Eef you will please accept a spare
ticket for Wimbledohn next week, Friday on Centre Court.  I know it ees
and on the neck, but the strawberry cream teas mehk up for eet."

She couldn't accept, of course.  One spare ticket meant that he didn't
pretend to invite Aidan too.  "Why me?"  she asked.  "I'm sure you have
lots of friends who would love to take you up on it."

"But I wish to know you better, Leila.  I may call you that, I ope?  We
could share my big ohmbrella when it rehns."

"It's going to be fine and sunny all next week."

"But Wimbledohn, sooner or lehter, eet alwehs rehns."

"It's a very kind offer, but I really don't know.  There's still so
much to be done here, unpacking.  Come through and see what a mess
we're in."

He followed her into the drawing-room from which open patio doors led
to the large conservatory and a panorama of half-emptied crates.  A
trestle table held several trays piled with china, linen and kitchen
equipment.

"Isn't it grim?  I didn't know we'd accumulated so much junk."

Pascal surveyed the scene.  "You must ave been a collector from
birth."

"Most of it's from Aidan's old home.  He was married before I came
along.  I've two stepchildren and they're pretty acquisitive too.  But
once they'd sorted their best stuff into their rooms they went off for
the summer, leaving me to dispose of the rest."

She knew she was talking too much because his presence challenged her:
he so urbane, while she, the housewife, had never been anywhere, never
made anything of her life.  He didn't want to hear all this trivia.
He'd think her a fool.

"Theess eez your stepdaughter wee th you?"  He had picked the
photograph off a side table and regarded it with interest.  "She could
be your own.  You are so alike, particularly since you ave changed your
air colour since theess."

Leila touched her head nervously.  "Mine's really dark brown.  It was
Chloe's suggestion I should try tinting it like hers.  In this photo
she was only eight; it was taken seven years ago and she's not so
ginger now.  Really dark red."

"And you ave been married to the Professor ow long?"

"Just over nine years."

Pascal smiled: a melon-slice of white teeth.  "The child bride."

"I was a student," she said shortly, remembering.  Aidan, though she
hadn't guessed it then, had an ongoing predilection for nubile
eighteen-year-olds.  But that was information she had no intention of
sharing with this stranger.

Perhaps by accepting the chair at the University of London Aidan really
would change and cut free from his current entanglement at Reading.  It
seemed a vain hope, but he had managed to imply something like that,
without actually admitting he was still in the throes of an amorous
adventure.

Not that amorous was quite the right word.  Sexual, she supposed; love
and romance being foreign to his nature.  But in extramural sexual
research the Professor was well qualified.  It made her own situation
the more hollow.  She sometimes thought that if it hadn't been for
Eddie and Chloe... If.  How bitterly ironic that she was reduced to a
life of recurrent' If Onlys'.

"Leila," Pascal cooed.  "Cohm back.  You are miles a-weh."

"I'm sorry."  She waved towards the carrier's crates.  "There's such a
lot to be done."

"But by a week tomorrow all will be streht and you will be looking for
an escape from duty.  See, I will leave my card.  Ring me at any time
before then and say you accept.  Oo knows, we may even see the
admirable Mr.  en man in action."

He gave her a jaunty salute with the empty teacup.  "Coffee another
time per'aps.  I will see myself out."

She knew she wouldn't take him up on the offer, because it wasn't the
sort of thing she did.  Quite outside one's wifely remit, she told
herself.

But why not accept?  There'd be no harm in it.  God knows, Aidan was
never slow in picking up on an invitation to something he fancied.  And
if anyone else had invited her she'd probably have accepted like a
shot.  So was it because of Pascal himself that she hesitated?

He was personable, amusingly eccentric, and she'd admit she found his
easy familiarity attractive.  Not handsome.  Handsome men always left
her rather uneasy.  They had such an opinion of themselves, and since
childhood she'd had this fear of being looked down on.

She went back to unwrapping and washing the surplus china.

So Wimbledon.  She would be glued to the television for the entire
fortnight if she had the chance.  But to be actually there, feeling the
atmosphere, being a part of that involved crowd -that was something
she'd never had the chance to aspire to.

So it was a great pity she told herself as she tore tissue paper off a
quite hideous dinner service that she had to turn down the offer.

She had prepared a fricasse of chicken in a sauce of liquidised
pineapple, red pepper and mango for dinner, but twenty minutes after
Aidan was due back he rang in to say he was tied up with some finals
students.  They were panicking over a paper they'd already taken and
wanted to conduct an inquest.  It could go on quite late.  If so he'd
stay there overnight, be back tomorrow evening.

Leila stood with the phone cradled in her hands listening to the
dialling tone purr after he'd rung off.  She supposed there'd be a
smidgen of truth in what he said.  Probably one finals student, female,
had gone weepy over the likelihood of getting a low grade.  He'd find a
way of consoling her.  As he'd done to others before.

He knew she knew the truth, and still he handed out these fictions.  So
why hadn't she the courage to snarl, "Tell me another!"  and slam the
phone down on him?

Would it come to that some day?  Or if she let the years drag on
without real protest could she believe that with age he'd finally come
to his senses?  But suppose someone special came on the scene, very
attractive and more determined than most; he might want to move on
permanently or think that he did.  Then where would she stand?

She'd be free to pick up where she'd left off her real life.  But it
might be too late by then to resume as a student.  And with divorce it
stood to reason she'd lose Eddie and Chloe, because his was the blood
link with them.

She wasn't as daring as she'd once been.  It would take courage to
stand alone, stripped of the daily domesticity she'd used as her
armour.

She'd become a coward by habit.  She had to stop the process, make a
decision, opt for something she wanted to do for itself.  Dammit, for a
start she'd accept Pascal's invitation to Wimbledon.  It would be a
gesture of defiance, and no harm to anyone in it.

It even seemed a kind of joke.  While she felt the warm blood of
rebellion coursing in her veins she would strike her midget blow for
freedom.  She propped Pascal's card against the phone and dialled his
number.

Aidan was away for two days.  Then he came back mid-morning on the
Sunday in a bustle of organization, showered, changed, packed an
overnight bag, collected his mail and read three messages off his
answering machine.

There's a lot of clearing up to be done before I'm finished there," he
said shortly, 'and I can't waste time or energy commuting."

Leila served him a cold lunch and no warmer a reception.  After an
hour's nap on his study couch he left at 4.30pm.

He hadn't asked about the children.  Out of sight they might be, but
Leila was left feeling doubly responsible.  There was that suspicion
that Eddie had again been touching Uncle Charles for money.

And Chloe where was she?  Supposedly with Granny at Nice, but old Mrs.
Knightley's last letter had as ever been full of complaints that she
never saw the children and none of the family had time for her.  So
Leila had rung her twice since then and discovered that the old lady's
grumble was just the same.  Clearly Chloe had never arrived, nor even
informed Granny she intended to come.

Arthritis might reasonably have prevented her meeting her granddaughter
at the airport, but Chloe had been insistent that Granny's hired
chauffeur was to be there instead.  The girl claimed to have arranged
it all by phone.  None of which could be true.

When Leila drove her to Heathrow for the flight Chloe had brusquely
ordered her to drop her and go: such a hoohah with parking there and
anyway she loathed sloppy leavetak-ings.

Her phone call on arrival said that all was well, but it could have
been made from anywhere.  So far as Leila knew with hindsight, she
might still be in England, or indeed anywhere within four hours' travel
of Heathrow.

There were reasons for not having shared her unease with Aidan.  If he
cared at all he would blame Leila herself for Chloe's being out of
control.  And there would be terrible recriminations when the girl did
return.  Chloe wasn't a bad person, just wilful as fifteen-year-olds
felt was their right.

The truth would be that she'd planned a more interesting alternative
which she didn't care to share with her stepmother: some venture
involving school friends  Leila understood the bid for independence,
hurtful though it was, and basically she trusted her.  Aidan
wouldn't.

And yet shouldn't she do something?  Although what could be done
without alarming Granny and causing Chloe awful embarrassment by
raising a hue and cry?  She wished there was someone she could share
her concern with.  She had missed the opportunity when Janey was here
with Charles, just as earlier she'd bottled out of approaching that
comfortable senior detective who came into the shop.  Not that she'd
expect anything of him but an outsider's suggestion of how she might
discreetly trace Chloe.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would again ring her mother-in-law for a
general chat.  If she learned that Chloe had finally arrived there, all
well and good.  If not she didn't know what she could do.

She still hadn't decided after making the call, during which Mrs.
Knightley senior had asked after Aidan and both children.

Pascal was to pick her up at twenty to twelve on the Friday of
Wimbledon.  They would have lunch en route: much better, he promised,
than in one of those corporate hospitality tents at the All England
Club.  And it was superb, because he made a detour to Marlow and they
ate at the Compleat Angler with the dazzling Thames streaming slowly
past, festive with little boats and graced by swans.

Although curious she didn't enquire which company lunch he'd opted out
of, and Pascal didn't inform her.

At Wimbledon the men's singles had breathtaking moments, running to
five deuces in the final game of the fifth set.  Their seats were in
shade until mid-afternoon when Pascal produced a tube of sun barrier
cream and offered it for her bare arms.  She was aware of him watching
and smiling as she spread the cream on.

Their shared excitement as the match approached climax had created a
new familiarity.  "Have I missed a bit?"  she challenged him, and it
seemed quite natural that he should take the tube from her and cover
what he chose to see as bare patches.

Keen to stay watching play, they couldn't spare time for the celebrated
Wimbledon tea.  Instead they broke their journey home at a country pub
where Leila refused anything to eat.  "My eyes have been devouring all
day," she protested.  "I have really enjoyed myself so much, Pascal.
Thank you."

She thanked him again as they stood at her front porch before she let
herself into the darkened house.  For a moment there had recurred that
long-forgotten teenage uncertainty about asking him in.  But he solved
it for her.

Pascal simply took her face in both hands, bent and kissed her on the
forehead.  "I've had a wonderful time too.  Goodnight, Leila.  Take
care."  He left without looking back.

It was only as she undressed by the shower that it struck her how he
had spoken.  With an English Oxbridge voice.  And without a hint of the
Inspector Clouseau accent.

The following day, after she had worked a shift at the Mardham shop,
and since there had been no message from Aidan about the weekend, she
rang to invite Pascal to lunch.  They spent the afternoon together,
talking and lazing in hammocks in her garden.  When Leila thought to
listen for the way he spoke it seemed that sometimes he still sounded
French.  At others she couldn't be sure.  Perhaps she was becoming more
accustomed to his voice.

She learned that he had a serious side, loved classical music,

had once studied art and exhibited in London and New York.  His age
made him only four years her senior, but there were decades of
experience separating his life and hers.

It was on their third outing together that he drove her to
Henley-on-Thames and they boarded a small cruiser to sail upriver.
While she took over the helm he performed masterly moves in the galley,
producing omelettes stuffed with creamed ham, and a dressed salad of
mange tout spring onions, olives, cucumber and mixed peppers.

When they'd moored she went below to where he'd set the square table
and opened wine from the miniature fridge.  He'd known where everything
was kept and hadn't hesitated over the basic cooking facilities.  So if
it wasn't his own boat, at least he'd had use of it before.

"There is no sweet," he announced, carrying off the used dishes.
"Except you."

He came back from the galley carrying two globes of cognac and sat
beside her on the padded bench.  "To us," he said, put down his glass
and kissed her.  Kissed her properly this time, deliberately, drawing
away once to challenge her eyes.

"No," she said weakly.

"Oh, but I think yes.  You think so too, don't you ?  It is time you
took a chance with me.  I know you want to."

They made love tenderly and exploratively, and talked until the sky
darkened from primrose to purple.  Then he let her steer the boat back
to where they had found it, relocked the cabin and led her back to the
car.  When they neared home she knew she would be staying with him,
whether there were lights in her own windows or not.

It was the first time she had seen where he lived.  Unlike the trim
little river craft the cottage was old and almost tumbledown, one of
the two original flint and red brick labourer's dwellings from before
the village was gentrified.  Since it was built there had been in
filling for the full stretch of the long lane, with a mixture of
Victorian villas, thirties' semis and postwar detached four-bed roomed
houses.  Amongst them this pair of ancient cottages was as eccentric as
Pascal's own appearance when they first met, with his battered panama
hat and cream flannels stopping two inches above his ankles.

She found it endearing.  Indoors she ran her hand along the uneven
whitewashed brick, smiling as Pascal bent to avoid the beam before the
narrow doorway and showed her the minuscule kitchen and bathroom
beyond.  Colourful daubs covered the living-room walls, some mounted
and framed, others curling with heat and casually attached by blu-tack.
Perhaps there was no electricity, because he lit an oil lamp, turned up
the wick and said, "Behind that curtain you'll find a crooked
staircase.  At the top is the bedroom."

She held the lamp high and went up in front of him, stumbling a little
at the steepness of the irregular wooden steps.  She found the bed
already turned down, and the linen was fresh.  Pascal had put a bottle
of chilled Sancerre and glasses to hand.

"You knew I would come," she accused him.

"Of course.  Welcome, Leila, to my country retreat."

Next morning he showed her how to operate the shower from an overhead
tank with a hand-held release chain.  She dressed again in the pyjamas
he had lent her, waiting in the sitting-room while Pascal fried bacon
over the kitchen's wood-burning stove.  The dream quality of the
previous day continued.  She had no thought for a possible awakening.
As she finished to welling her hair there came a rattling outside and
the sound of steps receding over flagstones.

"That will be the post," Pascal called.  "Would you mind fetching it
in?"

She found a handful of letters thrust into a horizontal drainpipe fixed
at waist height just outside the front door.  It was junk mail mostly;
also a wrapped newspaper; three business envelopes and one duke size,
hand-written, with a foreign stamp.

Her heart lurched at sight of the writing.  She must be mistaken, but
there was that curious capital G for his surname

Gregory.  There was only one person she knew who slashed the letter
through with that extravagant curlicue.  And there below was her ornate
capital B that began the county.

How on earth did Chloe come to know Pascal?  And be writing to him from
abroad?

Leila held up the envelope to the window's light to make out the
postmark.  The stamp was a Swiss one franked in Montreux.

And Chloe had done her vanishing trick almost two weeks back, on a
supposed trip to southern France.

Chapter 7

She should have remained there and faced him out.  It was too late by
the time she knew that.

So much had already happened in the last twenty-four hours, such an
emotional upheaval in her drab life, forcing passion from her, shaking
her concept of what she stood for, that she couldn't take in this new
shock.  It had struck alien into a warm experience of being awakened
after coma.  Her mind seemed to fall about inside like one of those
equilibrist dolls which you push one way and it keeps swinging back at
you.  Totally overcome, like a hunted beast she had instinctively run
for home.

All her misgivings now revolved about Chloe.  At least the girl had
been able to write and post that letter, so at least she was in control
of her own actions.  This was something to hold on to.  But the
connection with Pascal remained inexplicable.

Leila blamed herself bitterly that she'd allowed her fascination for
him to smother her unease over Chloe.  Since the last negative phone
call to Mrs.  Knightley she'd taken no steps to discover where her
stepdaughter might have gone.  Now, in view of the letter, she was
little wiser, except to know from which town and country Chloe had
written.  If the girl was bent on travelling through Europe she could
well have moved on by now.

She'd had Chloe" s letter in her hands and left it behind.  Why?  From
scruples because it was addressed to Pascal?  That was stupid.  She
should have hung on to it and insisted that he explain.  Or concealed
it, taken it away to open in private.  Which could have given her time
to think before she faced him over it.

And Pascal surely a stranger clearly more in the child's confidence
than she was herself!  Where did he stand in this?  When she fled from
his cottage he hadn't run after her.

So what had he thought when she suddenly vanished?  He had been
preoccupied in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, still talking to her
through the open doorway.  Eventually he would have come out to see why
she didn't answer.

Then he'd have picked up the mail which she'd dropped.  He'd have seen
Chloe's writing on the envelope and surely he'd know she'd recognised
it.

So now he would realise her shock, would surely follow her here and
offer some explanation.

She thought of the morning she'd found him on her doorstep with the
empty teacup.  It seemed months ago.  Amused at his fake excuse, she'd
invited him into her home, where he'd picked up the photograph.  He'd
remarked how alike they were, stepmother and stepdaughter.

All this time he had known Chloe and he hadn't let on.  That was
deliberate deceit.  What need had there been to keep their association
secret?  The deception was scary.

As for herself, this this tenderness she'd thought she felt for him,
and his pretence of interest in her she could see now he'd been playing
her along for some ulterior reason.  To what purpose?  How would he
expect to use her?  Was he intimate enough with Chloe ever to confide
to her that her father's wife had slept with him?  Was that his
intention?  to shame Leila in the child's eyes, widening the gulf
between her parents?

Deliberate entrapment.  That much was clear now.  Even at their first
meeting, out on the cricket field, he must have known who she was, and
on some whim he'd set out to charm her.  Why her?  It hadn't been for
her brains or beauty: she couldn't fool herself she was something
special.

What she'd taken for interest fondness even was deliberate
mischief-making.  The reason had to be that she was Chloe's guardian.
In some way he hoped to get at the child through her.

And Chloe only fifteen!

If Leila herself, supposedly adult, could be so easily hood winked,
what chance against him had a schoolgirl with even less experience?

I have to keep a cool head, she warned herself.  Whatever else, I've
put myself in a position to be blackmailed.  But I won't cover up for
him.  I'd rather it all came out and Aidan blew his top, than allow
that fiend to get anywhere near my daughter.  Anyway, why should I be
afraid of what my husband thinks, with him the pathetic womaniser he
is?

She went through to the kitchen and put her face under the cold tap,
letting water dribble over her hair.  Her underlying fear was that she
was too late.  Perhaps the Frenchman already had the child submissive
to him.  Chloe seduced?  But if so he would surely have been abroad
with her now.  No, maybe she was sent on ahead and he would be joining
her later.  There might be a chance yet to keep them apart.

Certainly Chloe concealed secrets Leila had never suspected.  It was
vital she find out more.  Perhaps upstairs Chloe had left behind a
diary or an address book.  There must surely be some way to get in
touch and warn her off the man.

Normally scatterbrain with her belongings, the girl had taken some
pride in her new room.  It was twice the size of the one in Caversham
and she had chosen the decoration herself.  One wall was painted bright
yellow, one dark blue and the other two terra cotta  Leila had gone
with her to choose the bedcover and curtains of wildly patterned
indigo.

As a parent she had never invaded Chloe" s privacy and it shamed her to
be reduced to it, but as she cautiously went through her stepdaughter's
clothes and papers she told herself it was for protection rather than
invasive.

The room's tidiness seemed unnatural, although Leila knew the girl was
almost obsessively meticulous when it came to her schoolwork.  She'd be
an academic perfectionist like her father, although still a scatty
teenager.

The written exercises, stacked and tied in subject bundles, were stored
on the floor of her wardrobe behind the four mirror-fronted sliding
doors.  There was no private correspondence there.

She wasn't on the internet but the work station for her word processor
had been set up in the window's bay so that she could sun herself over
her revision.  Floppy disks, all neatly docketed, were boxed on a lower
shelf.  Leila helped herself to the one labelled Personal.  A quick
skim through revealed no more than girlish correspondence with her
friends.

Chloe at only fifteen was bright enough to have tackled several GCSE
subjects a year in advance, but these letters revealed a childish
innocence only thinly masked by a pose of sophistication.  Young and
silly, her mild adventures would have been recounted with a superior
smirk and read with giggles: childish opinions on adult eccentricities;
the occasional snide poke at someone who'd briefly offended.  But no
passion; no angst; no real duplicity.

Finally Leila went through the drawers of the tallboy.  Again nothing
unexpected, except that the lowest drawer jammed as she shut it.  The
runners were slightly warped and she had to force it back in place.
That was perhaps why the drawer contained only leftover Christmas
wrappings, glitzy paper, gift tags and satin ribbons provided by Leila
herself from PARTY FUN stock.

Slamming the drawer finally shut made the whole piece shake.  The
triptych mirror on top wobbled, threatening to fall.  She reached out
instinctively to save it and her fingertips closed on a lump behind one
edge of the frame.

She laid the mirror flat and peeled off the sticky tape which secured a
small flat package wrapped in a white tissue.  The contents yielded
like granules of coffee sweetener.

She held her breath and gently eased off the tape seal.  The tissue
tore but she could always replace it.  No,of course she'd never replace
it; not if inside there was what she suspected.

In her hand lay a small plastic envelope containing white powder.  One
corner had been snipped off and a little eased out as she held it. Dear
God, no!

Pointless to try it on her tongue.  What should it taste of?  Shouldn't
taste of?  And in any case she knew: she'd seen it so often on
television, in films; little packages like this, and the knowing glance
exchanged between investigating police.  She knew the contents because
she knew the cliche.

But what had this to do with Chloe?  It made her present disappearance
more alarming.  Supposedly visiting her grandmother, she was deep into
deceit, concealing her whereabouts from her family; perhaps planning
her flight to Montreux with a grown-up lover.  Or waiting there alone,
and writing back to demand why he hadn't caught up with her?

It had to be Pascal she was involved with.  And now this new discovery
must surely mean that he was her supplier.

Everything had suddenly changed, yet again lurched into a Kafkaesque
distortion.  She saw now that searching she'd been looking for
something different, proof that Chloe" s link with the man was less
serious; some innocent reason for her writing.  It would have been
disturbing enough because unsuspected, but hurtful on a personal level
only because Leila herself had been attracted, and deceived, by him.
She'd not have needed to see Chloe and herself in the same
predicament.

Now that she knew for certain that the child was in moral danger she
must search more thoroughly.  She began again, desperately.

Nothing new in the drawers, which yielded only underclothes, with
school uniform strictly segregated.  The sliding doors of her wardrobe
re-opened on to the same hanging garments; on the floor the same games
gear and files of school notes, lacrosse and hockey sticks; a box with
microscope and slides; shoes neatly lined up in pairs; stationery for
personal correspondence and for printer.

Nothing.  Leila sat back on her heels.  If Chloe had anything relating
to her secret life she would have taken it away with her.  So what had
she actually packed in her single suitcase?  Which of her clothes were
missing?

As Leila's hands brushed along them a hanger clattered and some filmy
material cascaded down.  She bent to pick it up and saw that at the top
it was still attached to the hanger.  A full-length evening dress.

She lifted it out.  It was of semi-transparent silk chiffon and low
cut, panelled on the bias.  Weird purples, black and poison green
merged into each other under a glittering tracery of silver thread.
Quite fabulous.

She laid the dress on the bed and stared at it; imagined Chloe
spellbound by its fantasy.  And she had never spoken of it, kept to
herself what must have been a very thrilling, personal gift, because no
way would her pocket money ever have stretched to this.

Leila felt sick at how easily the girl had been bought: with drugs and
a fabulous dress.

But she was a greater fool herself, when it took no more than a Centre
Court ticket and a river trip to have her convinced that Pascal was in
love with her!  And herself with him.  That had been enough to destroy
a lifetime's belief in a wife's due loyalty.  Something inside seemed
to shrivel at the thought.  "God," she moaned, 'what a pathetic
fool!"

She heard the squeal of the garden gate.  Someone was approaching the
house by the front path.  From behind the curtain she looked down and
saw Pascal loping towards the front porch.  So at last he had thought
up some scheme of damage limitation.

She wasn't ready for him.  He shouldn't find her here.

He rang three times with long pauses between.  Even when his footfalls
had died away she stayed crouched beside Chloe's bed, the fabric of the
abominable dress crumpled in one fist.  She let time pass before
standing up, and found she had stiffened.

She straightened and took stock.  One thing about the dress now puzzled
her: that it was still here.  That and the powder, whatever it was.

If Chloe had special plans for Montreux, why hadn't she taken these
things with her?  It was unaccountable, on a level with Pascal himself
having stayed behind.

She had thought she knew her stepdaughter.  Was it just possible that
the extravagant gift of the dress had embarrassed her and she'd sense
enough to see through the motive behind it?  Handing it back might have
been awkward, involving seeing the man again.  The letter from abroad
could be her way of explaining how she felt.

No, it was a wilful stretching of imagination to think that Chloe had
repudiated him and that, rejected, he'd then meant to use her
stepmother to regain access.  And yet why else such deliberate pursuit?
and it had been deliberate, she saw now; from the first, with that
self-guying, stage-Gallic role he'd played to catch her attention at
the cricket match.

Holding the dress close Leila now became aware of its perfume.  The
whole wardrobe had smelled faintly of Chloe" s favourite Je Reviens one
of Uncle Charles's unsuitable gifts last Christmas.  The scent
certainly didn't come off her laundered school uniform.  It was this
filmy material that had perfumed the rest.

Which suggested that Chloe had already worn it.

Now that Leila examined it more closely she found a drawn thread
puckering the fabric of one slim shoulder strap.  And the hem had been
amateurishly turned up to make it two inches shorter.  Not even hemmed,
but secured at distances of four or five inches with stationery
staples.

At some time Chloe must have gone out dressed in this seductive outfit
and her parents had known nothing of it.  Nor that she was
experimenting with what could be cocaine.

There seemed no end to the disasters that threatened to submerge her.
For a short while Leila's reason deserted her.  In febrile shock she
went round the house double-locking outer doors and closing windows, as
if preparing for a high gale.  She felt the house under siege, and
herself gone to earth like a hunted beast.

Shaking, she fetched a decanter and a tumbler from the dining room and
went back upstairs.  In her own room she slid beneath the duvet.  One
outstretched arm encountered Aidan's folded pyjamas and she recoiled,
dragged herself from the bed and fled to the ochre and terra cotta
stage-set of Chloe's room.  Nothing, herself included, was normal any
more.  She was become part of the surreal.

There she closed Chloe's dark curtains and turned on the overhead light
at eleven o'clock on a bright summer morning.  It was insane and she
dimly acknowledged it.  She shed all her clothes and slid between the
cool sheets, poured brandy into the chattering glass, then lay
shivering, despite a temperature already in the eighties.

It was the doorbell's shrilling that half-woke her.  Still confused by
the brandy she stumbled downstairs.  The brain inside her skull felt
swollen, pressing hotly behind her eyes.  It beat at each step and her
balance was uncertain.  In the hall she clung to the newel post to
steady herself, gasping as she bruised her naked breasts.

She was aware enough to seize a raincoat from the lobby and cover
herself before opening the front door.  It was then she recalled the
danger: that Pascal could have come after her.

Someone she didn't know was standing there a young man in shirtsleeves
and chinos.  He was trying not to notice her dishevelled appearance.
"What is it?"  she demanded.

He had to explain twice over because she didn't grasp his connection
with the library.  Then it appeared that he worked there and he'd
called here on his way home.

So it was evening now.  And yes, she did remember him after all.  He
had been the serious one usually date-stamping or working at the
computer keyboard.

It seemed the book was for her daughter.  Chloe must have left it
behind: one from her list for exam work.  By mistake it had been put
back on the shelves where a helpful browser had reported something of
Chloe's inside.  Then a librarian remembered a student laying it down
to riffle through her tote bag.  She could have gone off without it.

The young man hoped it wasn't too late to be helpful with her work.  It
must be the end of term soon.

"Yes, yes.  Thank you."  It was too complicated to explain that Chloe
was away, having been allowed, like other pupils, to slope off early
once her own exams were over.

The young man wanted to linger and chat but she shut the door firmly on
him and relocked it.

The book was a novel by Martin Amis.  Leila hadn't known it was on the
Eng Lit syllabus.  If she left it in Chloe's room she would find it
when she returned.  Not that it was clear when that would be, or if at
all.

Drowsily she went back and sat on the side of the bed, opening the book
at the first page.  She read a paragraph through and it made no sense.
Well that was probably intentional.  There were people who read Joyce's
Ulysses for the fun of its obfuscation.  Amis appeared rather the same,
only simpler.  Time's Arrow.  Chloe might enjoy it.  Not herself.

Reaching out to the bedside table she miscalculated and the book fell,
exploding on its face.  A square white envelope had detached itself
from the pages.

This was what the young man had mentioned: something of Chloe's which
another reader had found.  The envelope, printed with the girl's name
but no address, showed no sign of having been opened.

Until today Leila had respected her stepchildren's privacy.  But no
longer.  Opening this was no more taboo than searching Chloe's room had
been.  She inserted a fingernail in the envelope and tore the flap
back.

The deckle-edged card it contained was a formal invitation requesting
the pleasure of the company of... Chloe's name was written in by hand,
with the word 'over' after place and time.

On the reverse side the same script offered a personal message: "A few
very select friends look forward to meeting you.  Come precisely at ten
and you shall have what you asked for."

Come where?  Leila turned back to the card's die-stamped heading.
Carnaval Masque.  The address was a house near Henley.  The date two
days ahead.

Whatever it meant Leila felt a cold shiver of premonition.  On the
surface the invitation was formal and proper, yet she was aware of
menace in the wording.  The written sentence was ambiguous, but for
Chloe it must hold a specific message.

Would she have known who they were, these few very select friends eager
to meet a young schoolgirl?  And given a precise time at which to
appear like a servant or some kind of performer.  And what was promised
that she had asked for?

Had she really made some demand, or should the phrase be taken in the
other sense, as a bully's threat that she would 'get what she'd been
asking for'?

The envelope was unstamped, so delivered by hand.  As the book had been
just now.  It could mean that the young man from the library was
involved.  She would see him and demand to know.

But no: anyone could have left that for her at the library, where her
name and face would be familiar.  If the young librarian hadn't brought
it Chloe would have been handed it next time she went in.  Which meant
the sender had no idea Chloe was away and untraceable.  Had she
disappeared for just that reason, being afraid of what might happen?
Scared for the results of some action of her own?

And where in this was the link with Pascal revealed by today's letter
to him?  "Carnaval Masque': because of the use of French, Leila felt
this had to be more of his doing.

There was also the recurrence of Henley in the address, close to where
he had taken her yesterday!  She mistrusted coincidence.  She wished
she had a clearer head, because it was up to her now to find out what
these 'few special friends' expected of Chloe.  She had been a weak
fool to befuddle herself with drink.

Leila went through to the kitchen and poured a tumbler of water.  It
made her retch and she recalled she'd run out on breakfast and had only
brandy since.  She must force something down.

With a slice of whole meal toast inside her she felt more normal.
Thank God Chloe was away and hadn't received the invitation.  It was up
to her, Leila, to follow up the card, drive over to Henley while it was
still daylight to hunt out the house where the masquerade was to be
held.

Quickly she tidied both beds and dressed to go out, but as she opened
the front door she saw Aidan's car turn into the driveway, blocking the
way out for her own.

He'd said he'd be gone for two days, hadn't he?  And that must have
been three or four days ago.  She seemed to have lost all account of
time.

Whatever, he wasn't in the sweetest of tempers.  As he passed her in
the hall he stopped and stared suspiciously.  He sniffed.  "You've been
drinking.  I hope you let someone else drive you home."

It was easier to let him think she'd just come in.  "Of course," she
said, dumped her shoulder-bag and made again for the kitchen.  The
smell of toast there was less conspicuous than the brandy but she
opened a window straight away.  A few minutes later he followed her in
and demanded, "What's for dinner?"

"Breasts of lamb," she invented quickly.  It seemed to have almost
Freudian aptness but her woman ising husband missed it.

"You're earlier than I expected," she told him, 'so they're not
marinaded yet.  We'll be eating at eight."

He hardly seemed to hear what she said, and certainly hadn't picked up
on her uncustomary sharpness.  "I'll be in the lounge," he said
shortly.  "You can bring me some coffee through."

Drawing-room, she corrected him silently: you're in the wrong house.
You aren't at your little bimbo's semi now.

It amazed her how strong her distaste for him had suddenly become, and
what pleasure surged up from such petty rebellion.  It seemed she had
passed over an invisible line, and instead of the expected guilt at
adultery it brought her a kind of angry release.

At least for that she could thank Pascal.

She wondered how far rebellion could take her; whether she would become
like one of those vengeful wives who cut up their husbands' suits,
poured away their vintage claret and slashed their car tyres.  Perhaps,
some day; but for the present there were more serious worries to occupy
her.  And in comparison Aidan's affaires seemed of little importance.

What most rankled was his utter inability to understand or help with
whatever fix his young daughter had landed herself in.  She could never
even suggest to him that anything was amiss in Chloe's life.  It would
only send him berserk, raging at Leila herself.

She continued to play the distant housewife, allowing rancour to build
silently inside throughout their meal, fortifying her.  When the hall
phone shrilled she was on her way to the kitchen with her hands full of
dishes and all her tension flooded back.

He beat her to it, anxious to prevent her taking the call.  His body
language gave him away, hunched with his back towards where he guessed
she must be standing.  Then the loosening up, the turning to include
her: "It's Chloe; she's calling from Granny's."

After a few meaningless words he handed the receiver across.  "Mum,"
her stepdaughter greeted her, 'how're things?  Is the heatwave still
on?  It's terrific here.  I've been swimming in the sea with the boy
from the apartment opposite, name of Roger but pronounced Ro-zhay; a
bit of a prune actually."  She was talking fast to prevent her
stepmother squeezing a word in.

Leila attempted to hold her voice steady.  "Hello, love.  Yes, it's
been baking.  Someone dropped by to see you this evening.  Remember
that serious young man from the library?  He brought a book you left
behind there."

There was silence at the far end of the line and she tried to picture
the girl's face.  "He seemed disappointed you weren't here."

"Yeah; think I know the one you mean.  Rather sweet really.  What book
was it?"

"A Martin Amis.  I didn't know you were into that gloomy stuff."

"Nor did I. I guess he made it up for an excuse.  Philip, I mean.  If
so, that's quite enterprising.  For him, that is."

Aidan was hanging about in the hall and it wasn't possible for Leila to
probe what she needed to know.  "Could I have a word with Granny now?"
she asked, falsely casual.

"Sure.  She's right here.  Wait a minute while she plugs her ear-thingy
in."

Leila's mother-in-law came on, gushing about how wonderful to have
little Chloe turn up.  They were going to visit all sorts of places
together.  And she would take really good care of her.  They weren't to
worry at all about her darling granddaughter.

"I'm sure you'll have a great time together," Leila assured her, shaky
with relief.  "Make her stay as long as you can."

She chatted on about airy nothings and hung up after another fruitless
little session with Chloe.

In the kitchen, preparing after-dinner coffee, she heard the phone ring
again and Aidan rush to take his expected call.  This silly affair of
his didn't matter so much, now that Chloe was where she should be safe,
at least for the present.  Perhaps Aidan could be persuaded to pay his
mother a long-promised visit and act as a damper on Chloe's flitting
again.

But not bring her back until the mysterious business of the Henley
invitation was sorted.

The girl's phone call had settled some doubts but raised a fresh
suspicion.  It had come too opportunely on Leila's intercepting her
letter from Montreux.  So had Pascal, realising what her running off
signified, immediately rung Chloe in Montreux and advised her to beat
it to Granny's fast?  It would have taken her the best part of the day
to get there and settle in.

That could be the reason Pascal hadn't come back here with excuses
after his first fruitless call.  He'd expected that whatever had been
going on between himself and Chloe could now be swept under the
carpet.

But then he didn't know what Leila had turned up during her search of
Chloe's bedroom.  Nor that she held the sinister-sounding invitation
with the Henley address.

Chapter 8

Aldan's return had stopped any chance of her getting out to Henley that
evening.  She must leave it until daylight tomorrow.  He should be
flitting off again then.  She was aware of him rooting about for fresh
clothes and furtively sliding a suitcase under the bed.

They'd had a chance to achieve separate sleeping arrangements in this
new house.  Leila had funked broaching the subject of twin beds, but
her mind was made up now.  In fact with so much more space there was no
need even to share a room.  However, for tonight anyway she would let
it ride.  She undressed in the bathroom and slid in beside him, turning
her back and moving to the mattress edge.

Aidan, half-asleep, gave a deep sigh and promptly rolled back to take
over the centre.  Stiff with anger, Leila lay hunched, feeling herself
all bones pressing into each other, imagined herself a skeleton; and
when at last she fell fitfully asleep it was to enter a zombie-life of
Halloween horrors.

Dawn brought a haze that promised further heat.  It hung silvery-blue
across distant trees and the sky shimmered with a dusty Saharan colour
that must indicate pollution from the city.

Uncle Charles claimed that London air rose on a thermal, spread into a
doughnut ring and produced fallout over the Home Counties.  Which was
his excuse for still living among all that traffic chaos instead of
taking a peaceful country estate.  Well, even he had tired of cities
for the present and gone up to Scotland for a whiff of heather and
malt.  Hard luck on poor Janey, who said it was a country of cow pats
drizzle and gnats.

"I'm off then," Aidan announced brusquely, clattering his cup into a
saucer ringed with spilt coffee.  It cut into her breakfast musings,
signalling the moment for action.

And she was ready for it.  Today, even stiff from her uncomfortable
night, she felt strangely competent.  As soon as Aidan's car had pulled
away she filled a thermos flask with the rest of the coffee, collected
sandwiches from the fridge, and fetched her own car round from the
garage.  Finally she rang her PARTY FUN assistant manager to ask her to
open up.

The scale of the road atlas on the seat beside her, pressed open at
page 22, was 3 miles to the inch; probably useless because she knew the
route well enough as far as Henley-on-Thames and really needed an
Ordnance Survey map from there.  She drove by the way she'd been taken
only two days before, tasting bile as she passed through Marlow,
remembering how at lunch there she'd already been in thrall to the
charmer Pascal.

In thrall: that was an archaic description.  Weird, how it had come to
her mind.  Perhaps it was due to the country she had just passed
through, historically soaked in occultism and sexual fantasy: the
decadent Medmenham revels of the Dashwood coven and the almost Black
Forest mysticism of the snaking valley sunk between tiers of densely
packed conifers.  It must be due to the shaken state of her mind that
she felt at the same time menaced yet tempted beyond her normal
limits.

Henley had a more wholesome air.  The narrow streets with their tiny
shops crammed with bright touristic kitsch; sun-drugged visitors
spilling from crowded pavements into the roadway; ice cream cornets
dripping in toddlers' hands; the scent of freshly roasted coffee beans
wafted from open cafe doorways; and then the horizontal vista opening
out to the steady-flowing Thames with white-painted boat houses and
scullers floating past in their fragile shells.  It brought back
normality, making her waver for a moment and question whether she'd
been imagining non-existent dangers.

But the house she sought wasn't here.  She parked at the far end of
town where the small cruisers' moorings were and enquired about the
address.  No one seemed to have heard of it.  Finally a shopkeeper
thought it was out Stonor way so she drove back into town and and
turned left away from the river.

It was a road she remembered from visits to Grays Court and Stonor as a
girl, when the governess, inflicted on her by Uncle Charles as holiday
guardian, took her to stay with her mother at Fawley.  The two
countrywomen were ardent admirers of stately homes, making pilgrimages
to both houses two or three times each season.  She could still feel
the magic of walking under a ceiling of ornamental white cherry blossom
at the one, and watching the proud-antlered stags at the other, with a
tantalising glimpse of the Judas-deer's white rump flickering between
distant trees to betray where the herd merged into tawny undergrowth.

The road rose quickly from the river valley, dipping and rising between
rolling hills where for centuries the ruling classes had built their
mini-palaces either on crests to dominate the anotama or in folded
valleys, hoping to stay disreetly safe from the persecutions of their
day.

Somewhere out here lived the party-giver who had sent that enigmatic
message to young Chloe.  Leila guessed he would have opted for a
valley.

A network of narrow lanes led her in circles and figures of eight,
passing and repassing the same landmarks before she espied a stony
track through a shallow ford and, fifty yards farther on, saw a pair of
old stone pillars with the name chiselled in.  On one was the word
Havelock and on the other House.  By some irony of fate, ivy trailing
from the gryphon-mounted finial obscured parts of the initial word so
that at first she read it as Havoc There was a pair of tall wrought
iron gates in quite good repair and painted a rusty black with gilt
ornamentation of vine leaves and grape clusters.  Through their
intricacies she could make out a curving, macadamed drive.  There
appeared to be some kind of lake and the house wasn't far beyond
because the trellised brickwork of its red Jacobean chimneys showed
above mixed woodland planted to guarantee privacy.  Leila counted the
chimney pots and visualized a house of considerable size on a single
building line.  Any additional wings could have been removed in a more
frugal period to leave something the size of an average private hotel.
Or perhaps a discreet country club.  Certainly Havelock House hadn't
featured on the list of stately homes open to the public when she was a
child.

The recent fine weather had left no marks on the macadam drive, but the
stony track that led to it was deeply rutted where cars had swung in at
speed.  So sometimes the gates were left open.  If guests were expected
for the Carnaval Masque in two days' time that could well be the case
again.

For the moment, however, there seemed no chance of penetrating further
because the metallic box affixed to one pillar suggested electronic
surveillance.  Leila had no intention of advertising her interest.  She
put the car into gear and continued on her way to find a point for
turning.

After a hundred yards or so the track broadened to become a made-up
lane and subsequently met a recognisable road at a T-junction.  A
signpost pointing right offered High Wycombe; the left indicated
Henley.  There was no finger for the direction she'd come from.  But
certainly she was now on the recognised route to Havelock House and
she'd arrived at it in reverse.  If she came back in darkness it would
be much easier to find from here.

And would she?  she asked herself.  Was it more than a hare-brained
fancy to consider taking up the invitation to Chloe and finding out for
herself what the girl had become involved in?

Engrossed in this question she rounded a sharp corner to face a large
silver car speeding towards her on the crown of the road.  She jerked
the wheel wildly and braked.  The Volvo spun and ended at a crazed
angle on the grass verge, its front left wheel in some kind of ditch.
Through the rearview mirror she watched the other car, a Mercedes,
continue unchecked until braking to turn into the lane she'd come out
of.

A few minutes earlier and she could have been caught spying on the
house.  That was alarming enough, but what really shook her was the
glimpse she'd caught of the Mercedes' driver.

She didn't think he'd recognized her, being fully taken up with
controlling his own speed.  But she knew him.  Less than three weeks
back they had chatted together at the Royal Society lunch.  He had
seemed a reasonably friendly person, even if his appearance was a
little eccentric.

Could he be bound for Havelock House?  That track led nowhere else
apart from a network of other narrow lanes.  What connection could the
place have with Sir Arthur Waites, the celebrated mathematician who'd
amusingly claimed that chaos was his obsession?

Could that wizened beanpole with his wispy hair actually live there? If
so it suddenly struck her then it could be no accident that its name
was partly obscured, reading as Havoc.  Havoc was a good old mediaeval
word, and one of its meanings was chaos.  Wouldn't that just suit the
man's quirky humour?

There was no reason, she told herself driving home, why he shouldn't at
some time have come across Chloe in Aidan's company.  And then a
follow-up invitation to his house, although unconventional, wouldn't
necessarily be sinister.  And the message promising to provide what she
had asked for could have a quite innocent meaning perhaps some
mathematical shortcut that would help with her examination work?

Except that Aidan didn't take his daughter with him on his social
rounds.  There were few professional occasions when he thought fit to
have even his wife tagging along.  Besides before she dismissed her
earlier alarm as paranoia triggered by Pascal's duplicity what was a
man of Waites's age doing setting up a rendezvous with a teenager at
ten o'clock at night?  How on earth would he have supposed she could
get herself to it?

No, it just wasn't on.  In her right mind Chloe' would never have
encouraged anyone like that, however much she might chuck her
adolescent chest at a personable male of her own age.

In her right mind.  The words echoed in Leila's head.

So suppose Chloe sometimes wasn't in her right mind.  Suppose she'd
become dependent on that white powder hidden at the back of her
mirror.

Dear God, don't let that old monster be dealing the stuff to her!

There was only one way to be quite certain, and that was to accept the
invitation in her place.  With a domino mask and in the dress Chloe
must have worn before, she might not be instantly recognisable.  If the
entire party was kept in period, maybe by candles or torchlight, she
could perhaps pass as her stepdaughter.

It was a risk she had to take.  She'd arrive early, say at nine, park
the car at some distance and walk to the house through its surrounding
woodland.

And if she was discovered?  She would have to appeal to Sir Arthur,
always supposing he was present.  And if not, then she could claim he'd
sent her along by way of a joke: part of the chaos that gave him his
highs.  Havoc House after all.

Investigation

Chapter 9

Saturday, 3 July

After Littlejohn's conducting of the post mortem, DI Mott and Rosemary
Zyczynski joined their chief in Yeadings' office for coffee, having
declined the less appealing offer of a brew-up at the morgue.  The
Superintendent was passing out mugs from a desk drawer when Beaumont
sauntered in.

"Gotta name," he announced, 'assuming you're right, Boss, about her
being the one in the novelties shop.  One Leila Knightley, married to a
prof at Reading University some kind of scientist.  They used to live
at Caversham but moved here four weeks back when he got himself a new
job at a London college.  I've just run their names through records but
there's nothing on either of them.  Not so much as a parking ticket.

"In Mardham she was quite well liked, if considered a tad highfalutin'
by the girls she employs.  She half-owned the shop and worked there
part-time three days a week.  Drove a red Volvo but nobody knew its
number.  I had a word too with the news agent three doors down.  He
lives over his shop and holds her spare set of keys against
emergencies.  He's an awkward git; won't hand them over until her
partner gives permission.  Said partner's a sleeping one, name not
generally known."

"Her address?"  Mott demanded.

Beaumont produced a folded page headed PARTY FUN from his inner pocket.
"Right close here.  Knollhurst, Acrefield Way.  And guess what: it's no
more than half a mile from Shotters Wood."

"Let's hope we find the husband at home," said Yeadings sombrely.  "If
he was partying with her, why hasn't he been in touch to report her
missing?"

"Think he did it?  Could be, though my money's on a lover," Beaumont
asserted.  "A sexy-looking wench, going out dressed to kill; it could
be that her target had the same idea, in spades, and she got done
instead."

Mott gave him a stony stare.  "We'll be looking for the party-thrower,
checking the Knightleys' acquaintances.  There can't be all that number
of flashy entertainments in this neck of the woods.  I want you to run
a check on hotels and nightclubs within a thirty-mile area.  See what
gala affairs were billed for last night."

Yeadings grunted.  "There's also a chance she was dumped by car from
farther afield; and we don't know yet how long she was held while tied
up.  The party or whatever could have been earlier than Friday."

Mott nodded impatiently.  "Right.  I want photographs of the dress
circulated to fashion shops as soon as Forensics have finished with it.
It's striking enough for someone to remember."

"Z?"  Yeadings invited, 'can you suggest any other line of inquiry?"

The woman DS nodded.  "The victim's hair was sheared off before death.
Either the killer's a fetishist and it may turn up as evidence when we
eventually get to him; or else he'll have tried to dispose of it.  So
we should organize a search of refuse bins locally and sniff round
bonfires; though burning's a less likely option because of the giveaway
stench."

"Yes," Yeadings agreed.  "Hair is difficult to dispose of totally. Even
if he mainly succeeded there could be the telltale wisp left behind.
So where would you start your scavenging?"

"At the dead woman's home; then discreetly at her acquaintances'.  As
Angus says, our priority is to find the party-thrower, who could be a
neighbour or colleague."

"So, first interview the husband," Mott said decisively, 'and any other
family.  Saturday's a good time to catch people at home.  I'll cover
breaking the news myself, with Z along in case there are womenfolk."

He turned to the other sergeant.  "Beaumont, in addition to the hotels
angle I want a report on the clothing asap.  Get on Forensics' tail. No
excuses about weekend leave."

Beaumont grunted.  Twice already Z had pulled the plums on this
inquiry.  Political over-correctness dealt the mere male a bum card.
Some principle, sexual equality!

His shoe nudged the plastic carrier bag he'd dumped on the floor.  "Any
bids for a quantity of processed rain forest?  I lugged all this to the
morgue for Littlejohn and he'd scarpered.  It's no use to a higgorant
tabloid-skimmer like me."

"Don't look my way," growled Yeadings.  "I already have Saturday's
armful of newsprint and it lasts me all week.  That's if I get to
tackle it at all.  Read it to broaden your outlook.  And don't let me
see it on your expense sheet."

"Bloody hell," the DS complained as the team trooped along the
corridor; 'what's soured the Boss?  Anyone'd think the body was
family."

They found that Acrefield Way was a straggling lane with Tudor cottages
huddling matily between Georgian elegance and prim Victorian villas.
Knollhurst, at the far end before woodland and hedged fields took over,
was one of two elegant Edwardian houses standing back from the road
within their own grounds.  The panelled front door was newly painted a
glossy black and the rest of the woodwork white.  On this hot June
afternoon all the windows appeared to be shut.

They're away," Z guessed.  The brass knocker produced only a hollow
echo, so after waiting a short while Mott took off for the rear of the
building.  He found side windows similarly closed, also the
glass-panelled back door where cream-coloured holland blinds obscured
any view of the interior.  Farther on, a large domed conservatory with
double doors giving on to the terrace offered a view of plumply
cushioned rattan chairs and sofas punctuated by two potted palms and an
oversized fatsedera.  Glaringly out of place among their

'85|

stylish arrangement stood a large trestle table covered with trays of
domestic junk, and beneath it half a dozen removals cartons spilling
polystyrene packaging.  Mott recalled then that the family had only
recently moved here.  So maybe everyone had gone back to the earlier
home for a final clear-out.

Doors to the double garage at the back of the house were locked, but by
hauling himself up to the rear windows Mott discovered it was empty. It
appeared likely, then, that the woman had driven herself to wherever
she met her death, and any recent sighting of the car might lead them
there.  As the other space was also vacant Mott assumed the husband was
separately absent with his own car.

"Get hold of her licence number," he ordered Z as he returned to the
front garden.  "The computer might still have her old address on it.
Then get what you can from the nextdoor neighbours."

Jeffrey and Madeleine Piggott were an irascibly separated couple who
occasionally threatened each other with divorce, but so far neither had
had sufficient persistence to set it in motion.  Their two boys, living
with the exasperated mother, were tetchily claimed on occasional
weekends by the father, a turf accountant whose shop was considered by
many local residents to be a blot on the village's good name.

In summer, when the weather permitted, he would invariably discharge
his paternal duty by driving his sons on Saturdays to the coast where,
loaded with coins, they conveniently disappeared into amusement
arcades.  On the Sunday the brothers, one eleven, one nine, and
constantly at loggerheads, would spend most of their time locked in a
near-lethal grapple on the hearth rug in his decidedly poky flat in
Aylesbury.  The only remedy for which, Piggott pere had discovered, was
to pay them to sit in a cinema until he was disposed to transfer them
to the nearest McDonalds and feed them to the point of semi-stupor
before delivery home.

The older, Dunkie (for Duncan), was a good-natured dreamer, slow but
not stupid.  Patrick bright and a tease, with a short temper and an
even shorter concentration span -was the more vicious thumper,
irritated by competition unless assured he'd come out on top.  Jeffrey
took some pride in recognising him as a chip off his own worthy
block.

On this particular Saturday, due to a glitch in distant planning, each
parent had understood that care of the boys fell to him- or herself.

"You've got the wrong week, silly cow!"  Jeffrey stormed, snatching at
his wife's diary.  "Look!  there's jam or something sticking two pages
together."

"Well, I'm all dressed up now," Madeleine retorted.  "And I'd turned
down a chance to have my sister across.  Besides, you should've got
here sooner.  There's barely time for a jaunt to the seaside now."

"So what?  Whose fault is that?  Not mine.  You're the one wasting time
arguing."  He glared at the boys.  "Out in the car you two.  We're
going down to Brighton."

"She said we could take grub to the Zoo," Patrick protested, scenting
the occasion for an unholy row.  "We've got pork pies and chocolate
gateau ready waiting in the fridge."

"Brighton," his father threatened darkly.

"Boys, you know you'd rather see the animals," their mother pleaded.

Dunkie hesitated.  Patrick jumped in.  "Why can't we go to Brighton
today, stop here overnight and all do the Zoo picnic tomorrow?  Dad can
drive us."

"I don't do picnics," Jeffrey said with scorn.

Madeleine considered.  "They do have restaurants there."  If Jeffrey
joined them she'd not have to pay.  Flashing a bulging wallet was one
of her husband's less offensive habits.  And the spare room had a bed
made up if he needed it.

Jeffrey hesitated.  He was damned if he'd trail back home and admit to
a wasted weekend.  This way he could still use the new car, so he'd be
seen to have won, sort of; and admittedly brats shared were brats
halved in a manner of speaking.  He could leave their management to
their mother and tomorrow take a dander on his own, see what new tricks
the blue-arsed monkeys were up to.  He hadn't been to the Zoo for
donkeys' years.  Not since spending a weekend with that blondie who
lived in a narrow boat on Regent's Canal.  "Right," he said.  "But
Brighton today, like I said, and we'll eat properly both days, so you
can bin the junk food."

The family was jockeying for seats in Jeffrey's Mercedes as DS Rosemary
Zyczynski turned into their drive on foot and made purposefully towards
them.

Madeleine squared her jaw, prepared to repel Seventh Day Adventists.
"We're just going out," she declared aggressively.

Rosemary flourished her ID.  "Sergeant Zyczynski, Thames Valley CID. If
you live here I'd like a word, please, before you leave."

"She does," Jeffrey claimed harshly, scowling towards his wife.  It was
a cause of some rancour that over accommodation she'd come off better
than himself because she had the boys to house.

"We already belong to Neighbourhood Watch," Madeleine claimed primly.
"And we don't need any more Crime Prevention lectures."

"No lecture," Z promised.  "Just one or two questions about your
nextdoor neighbours.  Do you know where I could get in touch with
Professor Knightley?  Nobody seems to be at home there just now."

"She's usually there at weekends," Madeleine offered.  "Don't see much
of him though.  Tell you what: ask their cleaner.  She lives in one of
those tumbledown cottages towards the far end.  Hetty Chadwick she's
called."

"Right," Zyczynski said.  "Thanks.  I don't suppose you've really got
to know them yet anyway."

"Dunkie has," Patrick said sneakily.  "He's got the hots for the girl
there.  Been inside the house too."

"You never told me," his mother accused.

"I fixed her bike chain," Duncan admitted.  "So she asked me in for a
Pepsi.  That's all."

"Ah.  So the Knightleys have children?"  Z probed.

"Seems so," Madeleine sniffed.  "I heard there's an older boy too, but
I've not set eyes on either of them yet.  Hetty said he's gone to
America."

It sounded as though the cleaner was just the chatty sort needed.  Z
thanked them again and stood back for Piggott to sweep magnificently
out of the drive.

She extracted her own car from nextdoor and cruised down Acrefield Way.
About two thirds along she saw a pair of flint and brick cottages
Hiring louchely towards each other in seventeenth century intimacy.  On
the grass strip in front of one and backed by a line of pink
hollyhocks, a fleshy middle-aged woman was making the weekend peace
hideous with an ancient hand-operated mower.

"Mrs.  Chadwick?"  Z called.

"Aye.  That's me."  She halted, resting muscular forearms on the
machine's cross-handle and surveyed the young woman smiling from the
car's open window.  She looked a good prospect; with any luck they'd be
a double-salaried couple, both out all day: little wear and tear on the
house.  Hetty's slow gaze belied her mental cogs' activity as she
calculated what price she'd name for her services.  Not that she'd
finalise until she'd had a dekko at how the place was kept.  Polished
wood floors and priceless rugs would be a quid an hour more than
wall-to-wall carpets.

"I believe you know the Knightleys who've recently moved in along the
road?"

"I do for them, Tuesdays and Thursdays, right?"  Cautiously.

"Ah."  The girl was getting out and coming round the car towards her,
holding out a badge or something.

"Who?"  she demanded suspiciously, and made Z repeat her ID.

"Oh, per lice  Can't think what you'd want with me, chuck, but you'd
best come inside."

Z followed her into a small, brick-floored sitting-room crowded with
oversized furniture.  After the brilliant sunshine outside, the room
seemed in almost total darkness.  Mrs.  Chadwick steered her guest
towards a cretonne-covered sofa that smelled faintly of scented washing
powder.  She was torn between disappointed hopes of fresh employment
and a flutter of excitement at the promise of gossip.  Police didn't
feature hugely in the village; certainly not the plain-clothes
variety.

"Them Knightleys," she prompted.  There's nowt wrong wi' them, is
there?"

"I couldn't say," Rosemary hedged.  "I've been trying to contact them
but no one seems to be at home'

"Well, I'm sure I don't know where'd they'd be, miss.  It's Saturday
after all."

"I wondered if they'd gone back to their old home to clear up.  Do you
know the address?"

"No.  Oh, wait a bit though.  She did write me fro' there before she
moved in.  Let's see if I can put me hand on it."

Mrs.  Chadwick bustled into a back room where her solid heels rang out
on stone flags.  There followed a brisk pulling out of wooden drawers,
clanging of enamel pans and a rustling of paper.

There, I knew I'd kept it."  She came back in triumph.  "Caversham,
that's where they were before.  D'you wanta copy it down?"

Z took her time transferring the address to her notebook.  Then she
looked up at the north-countrywoman, smiling.  "I wouldn't mind moving
here myself.  It's a lovely village.  I expect the Knightleys are
delighted they've come."

"Well, it's a nice house.  I'll grant them that much.  Not that they're
ever in it.  The professor, he's barely spent a coupla nights there at
a time, and the young people were off away almost as soon as they moved
in.  Of course Mrs.  K's got a shop in Mardham so mostly she's at home
just evenings.  All the same it seems a bit lonely like.  For a
youngish woman, I

mean.  Get to my time of life, you're glad enough for some peace and
quiet."

"I expect she'll soon make new friends here."

A tremor animated the cleaner's pudgy face and was gone in an instant.
Her opening mouth snapped shut Ike a rat trap.  Z waited but nothing
was forthcoming.  A pity, because she was sure the woman had almost let
slip an indiscretion.  Well, let it pass.  It was a point to come back
to on a later visit.  Once the family had been informed of the death
and the news spread, Hetty Chadwick might be more eager to volunteer
information and claim some local fame.

"Thanks for your help," Z said, sliding her notebook into a shirt
pocket.  "I'm sorry to have interrupted your gardening."

As she belted herself into the car she heard the horrendous clatter and
shake of the old hand-mower restarting.

Back at the Knightleys' house she found Angus Mott talking into his
mobile phone.  "Right, sir," he said shortly and switched off.

"The Boss has authorised a break-in.  There's a patrol car on its
way."

He had picked on the glass-panelled kitchen door, expecting that, as
with so many incautious householders, the key would be left inside in
the lock.

"The lock's clear," Z warned, bending to peer through.

He checked, and saw they were out of luck.  "Right then, it'll be the
lavatory window for you."

Goody: so I can plunge into the open loo pan, Z reckoned.  However, the
two uniformed constables who drove up five minutes later were provided
with an electric ram and proceeded to demolish the kitchen door's
lock.

"Stay outside," Mott ordered them.  "One of you go round to the front.
Z, you're to cover the ground floor.  I'll look upstairs."

On the threshold they listened for the noises of the house, identifying
the refrigerator's hum and the more distant dragging tick of a long
case clock.  There was a smell of newness and freshly painted woodwork.
Despite the anti-burglar device on the house's outer wall no alarm had
shrieked out at them.  Mott made for the cupboard under the staircase
and confirmed that the system had not been turned on.  So was someone
waiting inside, monitoring their movements?

Z acted on Mott's nod as he stood ready by the stairs.  She moved
through the empty kitchen into the square hall and slid into the first
open doorway.  There was no one in the large, green and gold
dining-room.  Two long windows overlooked the side garden and the
drive.  White-painted wooden shutters framed them both, matching
smaller ones that covered the serving hatch to the kitchen.  The inner
wall between was covered with shelving and glazed cupboards stacked
with an immense amount of good china and glassware.  The long mahogany
dining-table had eight chairs set close, leaving little space for
anyone to hide underneath, even a child.

The next door off the hall was closed but not locked.  Z turned the
cut-glass knob and eased the door open.  There was a lingering scent of
stale tobacco.  Whether it came partly from the well-worn leather
furniture or the stacks of books that lined three of the walls she
couldn't tell, but it struck her as old-fashioned, a man's room
belonging to an age that had been strictly a male world.  The
wallpaper, where it was revealed, was a peppery colour patterned with
pictures of game birds, and clearly hadn't been changed for decades.
Perhaps the books, together with their oak shelving, some of it
glass-fronted, had been installed first before any part of the house
was redecorated.

There would be time later, she promised herself, to see what the books
were about.  Between the windows stood an old roll-top desk with a
key-ring hanging from the lock.  This should contain correspondence and
banking details.  Z left that for Mott to go through and moved back
into the hall.

Unlike the other rooms which sported pale, polished floor-boards, the
hall was chequer-tiled in ivory and black marble.  The front vestibule
door was glass-panelled with an art deco design of pink water lilies
and long-legged birds.  When the outer south-facing door was left open
sunshine would stream through and stain the floor with the warm colours
of the glass.

Z stole across and stood in the last doorway, on the far side of the
curving staircase.  The drawing-room was immense, stretching the full
depth of the house.  And was unoccupied, as elsewhere.  Fluted,
cream-painted columns framed an impressive fireplace and over mantel
Another matching pair framed each of the four tall windows opposite,
and she guessed they served to support dividing walls of the rooms
above.

At the far end glass doors stood open and led to the domed conservatory
into which they had peered from outside.  Only in there was there any
sign of interrupted domestic life, with the trestle table covered in
household junk and a tray with an empty mug that appeared to have held
coffee.  Beside it a blue checked apron was thrown down.  Under the
table stood a bucket half full of soapy water, now cold, with a pair of
yellow rubber gloves balanced on the rim.

A 'nice house," Hetty Chadwick had called it.  It was all of that, once
home to an Edwardian family of some substance.  And the Knightleys
couldn't be short of cash either, with the way house prices had soared
of late in Thames Valley.

She heard Mott's footsteps on the stairs and went out to meet him in
the hall.  "Nothing," he said.

"No sign of anyone here either.  Hetty Chadwick comes Tuesdays and
Thursdays.  Someone seems to have abandoned washing china and gewgaws
in the conservatory though.  She could probably tell us who that would
be, and when."

"If Knightley doesn't put in an appearance I'll be ordering a full
search," Mott said.  "What we need is a diary or address book."  He was
scowling.  "It begins to look bad for the professor."

"I guess so," Zyczynski agreed sombrely.  "One way or the other."

Chapter 10

When the team met up again to compare notes Beaumont flourished the
Caversham address already obtained from the computer via the Volvo's
registration," Z had little fresh to offer the team beyond her
suspicion that short though the Knightleys' stay in the village, there
could already be a whiff of gossip.  She described the cleaner's
suddenly buttoned lips at mention of Leila making new friends.  "Not
that she didn't need some," Z granted, 'seeing that the rest of the
family appears to be missing."

"Missing since when though?"  Beaumont demanded.  "And who drove who
away?"

"Who, whom," Yeadings corrected as if to himself.  He rubbed his
temples ruefully.  "I'd never deny village gossip has its uses, but a
lot of it can be pure supposition.  Facts often get a colourful twist.
However, you'd do well, Z, to keep in touch with this Hetty
Chadwick."

Getting in touch with the dead woman's husband was another matter.  A
phone call to the old address was answered by the new owner.  He had
never, he assured Mott stiffly, so much as set eyes on Mr.  Knightley,
all business over the house purchase having been conducted through
their respective agents and solicitors.

"Another try with the University?"  Beaumont suggested.

His phone enquiry having been passed along a chain of porters, grounds
men and indoor domestic staff to an overworked and underpaid Reader in
Biochemistry who was working there weekends on a paper he hoped to
publish -drew an equal blank.  It began to look as though the husband
could be pencilled in as their prime suspect.  Unless he'd shared a
similar fate to Leila's.

"If he blew his lid and did his missus in, he's likely by now to have
topped himself too.  A familiar pattern for domestic murders," Beaumont
reminded them smugly.  "All we need do is wait, and body number two
will turn up of itself."

"So where are the children?"  Yeadings asked heavily.  "Did he ensure
they were both out of harm's way first?  If so, that implies
premeditation.  How far ahead do you think this murder was planned?"

"A matter of days, perhaps weeks," Z suggested.  "The party or whatever
would take some arranging; invitations to be sent out, or tickets
printed if it was open to the public."

"You're assuming the occasion was vital to the planning," Beaumont
complained.  "It didn't have to be that way.  Something the woman said
or did that evening could have been the last straw that broke the
camel's back.  Sudden rage on the way, say, and hubby whips a cord
round her neck, bingo!  Then he panics, dumps her in the wood, returns
home to collect his clothes, money and passport.  Exit panicky
academic.  He could be anywhere on the continent by now, thanks to
Eurostar."

"In which case we'll trace him through his car," Yeadings assured them.
"I've pulled its licence number out of the computer.  It's being
circulated, ports and airports informed.  But your sudden-attack
scenario doesn't account for Leila Knightley's hands and ankles being
bound.  She wouldn't have sat quietly in the car while he got out and
came round to do that.  However, whether the husband's our suspect or
not we have to find him.  Until then the body's not officially
identified."

"Except by yourself," Beaumont said barely audibly.  Into the ensuing
silence he dropped a subdued, "Sir."

That was bloody unnecessary," Mott snapped when they were again outside
Yeadings' office.

"But you'll admit the Boss feels personally involved?"

"No more than anyone would be who'd met the victim earlier."

"You saw the body as found, Guv.  I only saw shots of it.  She looked a
pretty hot number in that gerup.  Even if..."

"Oh, stow it, Beaumont," Z cut in sharply.  "We're none of us icicles.
We might even feel sorry to see you on the slab."

"Go home you two," Mott sighed.  "Nothing'll drop in our laps today, so
get some rest.  I'll see you at nine tomorrow to discuss Littlejohn's
report.  And you can thank your stars that he's seen fit to work
through the weekend."

In their empty office Mott found a message from Reading Area on his
desk.  Enquiries among ex-neighbours in Caversham had come up with the
addresses of the Knightleys' lawyer and of an uncle of the dead woman,
a Londoner who lived in Pimlico.

The former was an Edgar Gross, traced through particulars of the house
sale.  When interviewed by a Reading DC he had been quite shocked but
was unable to suggest the professor's current whereabouts.

A message concerning the uncle, Charles Hadfield, was passed to the
Met.  The reply, received two hours later, informed Mott that Mr.
Hadfield was away on holiday.  Neighbours who were key holders for his
London home could say nothing more specific than that he was touring in
Scotland with his housekeeper.  When (or if) he phoned in he would be
told to contact DI Mott at a Thames Valley Police number.

"Meanwhile we don't sit on our butts," Mott muttered to himself.  There
was another Knightley listed in the address book he had turned up in
the study desk at Knollhurst.  She lived in France: a Mrs.  G.
Knightley with an address in Nice," Z could pick up on that tomorrow.

He switched off the lights, collected his car and was more than halfway
home when he was buzzed by Area.  A Charles Hadfield had just contacted
his neighbour and been advised to get in touch with DI Mott.  He had
immediately rung in demanding to speak to him, and had sounded more
than a little upset at having to leave his number.

Mott sighed, tossed in his mind whether to continue, but decided to
return.  The call to Scotland was long distance.

and he'd rather it went direct on to Thames Valley's bill.  The
expected conversation could be a lengthy one.

Hadfield was awaiting his call with impatience and while Mott briefly
outlined what had happened the man had difficulty keeping himself from
shouting.  The DI visualized him: tall, spare, tweedy and redfaced.
He'd be the sort to ride roughshod over the police once he got within
galloping distance.

He too claimed to have no idea of Professor Knightley's whereabouts,
but quoted the son's address in the US without hesitation.  Then,
"Chloe?  She'll still be at her Granny's, won't she?"

"Would that be Mrs.  G. Knightley, sir?"

"Are you being funny, young man?"

Mott was at a loss why he should think that.  "We have a Mrs.  G.
Knightley in the family address book.  An address in France, sir."

There was an apoplectic snort.  "Thought you meant G for Granny.  Yes,
she lives in Nice.  Invalid of some sort.  Arthritis, I believe.  Now I
come to think of it her name is Gladys."

His mistake had made him slightly more amenable.  On a quieter note he
explained he would be travelling south by inter-city rail, leaving next
morning.  "We shall pick up my car in London and come direct to the
house.  I expect to meet you there.  I'll phone you on arrival at
King's Cross."

Mott consulted his watch and decided that even with the hour's time
difference he should contact the daughter in France at once.  If he'd
been in Nice on a balmy summer evening himself he wouldn't have retired
to bed yet.

An elderly woman's voice answered his ring and she spoke in passable
French.  Nevertheless there was no hiding the authoritarian sharpness
of an upper-class Englishwoman.

"Qui done?"  she insisted loudly.  Possibly the sharpness came from
apprehension over deafness.

"Detective-Inspector Angus Mott of Thames Valley Police, madam.  I
understand your granddaughter Chloe Knightley is staying with you at
present?"

"What's that about Chloe?"

"Is she there?  I'd like to speak to her."

"How do I know you're a policeman?"

Dear, oh dear.  Mott moaned silently, matching his mental expletives to
present company, for all that she couldn't hear them.

He explained that she could ring Thames Valley Headquarters at
Kidlington and they would verify his identity and present phone number.
Then she could call him back and they could begin a proper
conversation.

"But what would Chloe have to do with a policeman?"  the old dear
quavered.  "You must realise, young man, that I am responsible for her
while she is under my roof.  The child is only fifteen, you know."

But I've no intention of seducing her, he wanted to bite back. However,
in consideration of Chloe's tender years perhaps it would be better to
hold off, leaving it to Granny to break the news, or a sanitised
version of it.  If only she hadn't chosen to retire abroad he could
simply have off-loaded the chore by sending a sympathetic WPC round to
see her.

"Anyway, my granddaughter is not at home at present."

That was precisely his problem.  But now, of course, Granny meant her
own home.

"When she returns," Mott said slowly and distinctly, 'would you kindly
tell her that her stepmother has been involved in an accident.  If she
will return my call giving her flight number I will arrange for someone
to meet her plane at Heathrow or Gatwick tomorrow and drive her
home."

Shock had apparently done much for the old lady's deafness or obduracy.
This time she got the message in one, and Mott firmly detached himself
from further babbled questions without divulging more precise
details.

He wasn't happy about having understated the situation, but breaking
news of a death wasn't something to be done lightly over the wires,
especially to strangers.  The incident left him strangely aware of the
old lady waiting alone for the unsuspecting child to return late from
an evening out with friends.

He wished he knew how Chloe had regarded her stepmother.  If there was
antagonism she might not respond by coming back.  It was likely she
would ring home and expect to speak with her father.  Finding there was
no reply she could assume he was at Leila's bedside in some hospital
casualty unit.  Even then she might well wonder why the only contact
made with her was through the police.

Mott supposed he'd have to hang around indefinitely for some message
from the girl.

No, dammit.  He'd done enough.  He'd arrange for the reply to be held
over for him until the next morning.  And Scotland was nearer than the
Riviera, wasn't it?  By the time the child arrived it could be left to
the uncle step-great uncle or whatever to tell her the full story of
Leila Knightley's killing and the professor's disappearance.  Much
better for it to come from someone she knew.

With that settled, Mott felt in need of tender loving care himself and
dialled Paula's London flat.  But his fiancee too, it seemed, was out
on the Hies and not expected back until the early hours.  "Some kind of
party?"  he asked with a twitch of envy.

"I'll say!"  her flat mate laughed.  "It's a hen night.  One of her
colleagues is getting hitched next Saturday.  That's allowing a whole
week for them to recover before the big day, so I guess tonight's going
to get wild."

"You're not going yourself?"

"No; they're all lawyers and I don't really fit in.  Still, I have
grabbed the contract for catering and floral decorations on the big
day.  We intend giving them the works."

"Lucky you," he said lamely.  Tell Paula I called, will you?  Her turn
to ring next."

He wished now he hadn't bothered, but he had needed to hear Paula's
voice.  He'd have treated her to a comic version of the Granny
conversation and been rewarded with that low, throaty chuckle that was
only one of the wonderful things about her.

What wasn't wonderful was that she still hung on in London.  That and
the way their own wedding plans had twice been put on hold already,
without renewing a date; all because of her bloody work at those bloody
moneymaking Chambers.

Saturday had not proved entirely satisfactory for the Piggott family
either.  While the parents bickered and quibbled in the front seats,
the boys had curled up in the rear, in their sock soles for comfort.

Duncan was endeavouring to track their route with an out-of-date map
which utterly failed to recognise motor ways while Patrick
systematically fired at him from close quarters with a spud gun until
all the ammunition was exhausted.  Tiny plugs of slightly mildewed King
Edward potatoes littered the dove grey carpet or adhered to the other
boy's rlothes and hair, contributing an odour of musty rottenness to
the air-conditioned interior.

When Madeleine rebelled and demanded a rear window opened it struck
Patrick as mildly amusing to drop one of his brother's white trainers
out on the passing roadway.  Its absence was only noticed as they drew
up on Brighton se afront and the family was evicted by Piggott pere,
his patience already sorely tried by Madeleine's vacuous prattle.

That would account for the pong," Patrick observed brightly.  "Dunkie's
feet, I mean."

"I had both on when I started out," Duncan maintained doggedly.

"He just wouldn't know.  He's a dope!"  Patrick jeered.

"Well you can't hobble along on a sock," snapped his mother.  "It'll be
all holes before you've gone a couple of yards."

So Duncan sat down on the kerb to remove the remaining trainer and both
socks, wriggling his toes contentedly at the unexpected freedom.

Doubtless because of his bare feet Madeleine decided that she and the
boys should repair to the beach and paddle; which wouldn't have been so
bad if there had been a good stretch of sand and plenty of slimy rock
pools for Patrick to ensure his brother fell into.  The tide, however,
was high and the pebbles extremely hard to sit on.  They could all have
had deck chairs but Madeleine was convinced that the scruffy young
people who hired them out were bent on a rip-off.  Rather than risk
that and an enforced shouting match, she opted to suffer, but not in
silence.

Patrick and Duncan, themselves suffering withdrawal symptoms from their
addictive slot-machine games, made a nuisance of themselves until she
suggested they find their father.  Which they did to his annoyance
while chatting up two bright-eyed young women who had braved his
favourite pub in their bikinis.  Their presence caused him to overplay
the role of indulgent father when Patrick whistled from the doorway
with his hand held out for subsistence.

The family met up for a lunch of fish and chips in a crowded restaurant
where Madeleine smugly reckoned that Jeffrey paid six times what it
would have cost her to provide it fresh at home.  After double portions
of banana split and knickerbocker glory respectively Duncan and Patrick
were persuaded that the tide was now far enough out for them to sample
the sands.

But Brighton could offer none of the Beach Boy element they were
accustomed to on TV.  There wasn't a surfboard in sight, the waves
being pathetic little ripples and all the sun-worshippers wrinklies or
toddlers.

Sun and air, however, wrought their customary effect and by the time
Madeleine decreed it was time to go home everyone was sluggish and
bad-tempered.  The three slept for the best part of the journey back.
Jeffrey, sitting on an uncomfortable quantity of canned beer, suffered
alone the barely moving queue of traffic on the motorway, which came to
a dead halt for a mile each side of Heathrow.

On finally reaching Acrefield Way they dispersed to all corners of the
house, made separate raids on the fridge and went early to bed.  With a
minimum of surliness Jeffrey accepted the single bed in the spare room
and, although she had rather wondered, Madeleine's night was
undisturbed.

Taken all round, Saturday's experience did not augur well for a second
day of family togetherness.

Chapter 11

On Sunday Yeadings' team gathered outside his office at a little before
9am.  They could tell he had arrived early by the established aroma of
Mocha coffee in the corridor.

"Did the prelim path report come?"  Z asked Mott.

"Yes.  I hear he's got copies for us.  We'd better give him a few
minutes for a read-through."

But Yeadings was aware of them waiting and opened the door.  "Get
seated and let's tackle this together.  As you know, death was by
strangulation with a ligature."

He nodded towards the coffeemaker.  "There's enough there for a first
round.  Fill your mugs.  Then let's consider what Littlejohn's
discovered."

They all studied the sheets provided.

"No sexual interference with the body before or after death," Beaumont
commented, skimming through quickly.

"Not "the body"," Yeadings murmured with distaste.  "From now on we'll
use the name Leila Knightley, accepting the evidence of family
photographs found at the house.  You'll see there's also positive
identification through dental records.  We're lucky that Littlejohn has
already accessed them on his old-boy network.  It being a country
practice the dentist lives in the flat over the surgery and didn't mind
paper-shuffling on a Saturday night."

"Right."  Mott was scanning the report.  "She was in good health prior
to the incident, and not pregnant.  It's pretty detailed about chafing
of skin at wrists and ankles, but he's being chary about any length of
time for her being tied up."

"The marks must depend on how much she struggled," Z said.  There
appears to have been an early attempt to break free, then a period
while the skin lesions dried.  Then a second burst of struggling, more
frenzied than the first, which burst them open again."

"Only at the wrists," Beaumont pointed out.  "After that first stage
the ankles seem to have been released.  Does that mean rape was
intended, even if not carried out?"

"Or she was made to walk somewhere," Mott warned.  "Like the
fingernails, we don't know much yet about the scrapings taken from
under her toenails and between the toes.  They have to be further
analysed.  But, although there were no obvious traces of woodland
floor, this report does mention microscopic threads of fibre.  They
could have come from struggling against a blanket thrown over her in a
car, but I think it's more likely she picked them up from walking
barefoot indoors on a carpet."

"Her ankles were still loose when she was discovered," Yeadings
reminded them, 'and we're assuming she was carried into Shotters Wood.
If so, why not elsewhere?  What reason can you see for making her walk
on carpet?"

"She was too heavy for the first person involved, but someone stronger
disposed of the body when they'd got it to the wood?"  Beaumont
suggested.

"She was alive at one point and dead at the other," Z said sombrely.

Eyes closed, Yeadings was visualising aloud.  "She is indoors
somewhere.  Her mouth is taped so she can't cry out.  Her hands are
secured behind her back, and she is being led, not carried."

He was clearly seeing her while he described this.  "I rather think-'

They waited, curious to see where the vision was taking him.

"Yes," he decided, 'there were other partygoers in the vicinity who
mustn't see her being abducted.  Even at night you'd not want to risk
carrying off a grown woman over your shoulder or in a sack.  It's so
much more reasonable to help her out to a car on her own two feet.  We
know she's masked, and if she stumbles it's easily accounted for a
little over-indulgence: because even the nicest people can find they've
drunk more than is good for them.  If anyone saw and with luck no one
would it would hardly seem significant, especially among sophisticates.
They would perhaps smile and look away.  No vulgar rubbernecking."

"How are we with the timing on this?"  Mott queried.  "She was found
shortly before 11.48 on Friday night, and rigor hadn't begun to set in.
We need to find the last person to see her on Friday evening.  The
previous day Hetty Chadwick would have cleaned at her house," Z, you'd
better see her again.  Also find out where Leila Knightley went on both
days and who saw her."

Z was turning back pages in her notebook.  "I looked through the fridge
and freezer at Knollhurst," she said.  "There was some salmon in its
original dated wrapping.  She or another went shopping at Tesco on the
first.  That was Thursday, the day before she was killed.  It looked
like stocking up for the weekend.  Did anyone come across the till
receipt?  It should have on it the time of day she went through the
check-out."

Mott nodded.  "If not, and she wrote a cheque or used her Club Card, we
can get the information from the store's computers.  But try the house
first.  Her receipt could be in the paper bin for recycling.  And
Beaumont, I want you to' Mott was interrupted by his pager, pulled it
from a pocket, read it and grunted.  "The Knightleys' daughter is
booked for a flight due in at Gatwick about noon."

"Right," Yeadings approved.  "Angus, I'd like you to meet the daughter
off her plane yourself and escort her home.  With a WPC, of course. And
I'll take over at the house.  It could be useful if I familia rise
myself with the territory.  So I'll follow you across there, Z. We can
have another look around before the daughter cramps our style."

He busied himself with a file on his desk, to avoid the DI's pointed
stare.  "It's important to get the child's angle on the marriage," he
claimed, 'before she thinks to clam up."

"Wouldn't Beaumont handle a teenager better?"

"Possibly, though he's not so used to girls.  Comfort her.  Act the big
brother.  Besides, you're allocating Beaumont elsewhere.  It leaves me
idle.  When Z has talked to Hetty Chadwick again we'll have another
look at the house, then you can take the girl there and settle her in.
By that time her great-uncle should have arrived from Scotland."

"And me, Guv?"  Beaumont reminded Mott hopefully.

"Hang in at the Shotters Wood end.  They haven't finished their
fingertip search, and you'll need to check on what's already turned up.
So breathe down Forensics' necks.  Also tell them I want every detail
they can get out of those fibres.  House carpet, car rugs, whatever."

Yeadings began to clear his desktop.  "I think that's all for the
moment.  I needn't stress how important the first forty-eight hours are
in a murder investigation.  This is the point where we mustn't overlook
any detail however apparently trivial.  So good hunting."

He turned to Z. "We'll take separate cars.  Lead the way and I'll
follow."

At the house they found blue-and-white police tape closing off the
driveway, with a constable stolidly repelling a handful of local
sightseers.  A brief mention on television news had left 'the body of a
woman' anonymous; but closeness to Mardham, and the obvious
scene-of-crime preparations, had sent tongues wildly wagging.

They gained entry from the rear, using a key for the newly fitted lock.
Already, by mid-morning, the house had an overheated staleness.

"Better get doors and windows open," Yeadings advised.  Today's likely
to be another scorcher."

While Z walked down to the little flint and brick cottage to question
the cleaner he made a leisurely tour of all the rooms, beginning
upstairs, and then installed himself in the study, systematically
emptying everything with latex-gloved hands from the old-fashioned
roll-top desk.  With the cat away this particular mouse had free
access.  The paperwork included credit card slips, insurance receipts,
a batch of old cheque stubs bundled together in an elastic band, bank
statements, various receipts from a builder-decorator, several unpaid
bills, photocopies of the house deeds and a heap of unsorted
correspondence and notices concerning its purchase.

Nothing remarkable there to justify a superintendent taking over a DCs
routine duties.  Yeadings might have found more excitement in
accumulated paperwork on his own desk back at base.  Presumably more
sophisticated information would be filed in the computer against the
adjoining wall.  Unfortunately, Yeadings found, access was denied for
want of a password.

But weren't all children computer wizards these days?  Hopefully
Yeadings entered "CHLOE1 but without result.  So the girl was
restricted to her own machine in her bedroom.  How about her
stepmother?

Keying in "LEILA1 opened the system.  The files on offer were headed

ADDRESSES, BIRTHDAYS, DOMESTIC, EXPENSES, FAMILY, INVESTMENT,
RECIPES;

SHOP.  Yeadings sat back and stared.  Did this sum up the dead woman's
whole life?

So what had he expected?  other files labelled HOPES & FEARS; SECRETS;
even LOVERS?

Mott would be putting some lowly nerd onto sifting all this
information, but for now he could switch it off and return to what he
was more familiar with.  He started to replace bundles of paper in the
roll-top desk in the order he had found them.

He hadn't seen Z since she took selected items out to her car and
locked them in the boot.  That was some ten minutes ago.  Now he called
and she came in from the back garden.  "Well?"  he demanded.

"I thought I'd check.  Nobody seems to have stuck a fork in the ground
since the hot weather started.  In fact it's a bit neglected. Certainly
nothing's been buried there recently."

"And the cleaner?"

"She was here all right.  Leila let her in at 8.30 on Thursday morning.
She'd overslept and was still in her night clothes.

She took a bath, dressed and went out about ten, telling Hetty to slam
the door on leaving.  She hasn't a key of her own yet.  Leila hadn't
returned when she left at 12.30."

"And she never saw Mrs.  Knightley or her car again after that?"

"So she says."

Yeadings cocked his head.  "Is that a car now?"

Crossing the hall Z saw a taxi draw up beyond the gate.  The girl who
got out stared up at the constable guarding the open front door, and
the vehicles drawn up alongside.  The cab driver dropped her cases on
the pavement and stared in his turn, barely checking as she handed over
the money clutched ready in her hand.

It had to be Chloe.  She had travelled alone, having somehow slipped
past the escort Mott had laid on for her at Gatwick.

Superintendent Yeadings completed his paper-shuffling and closed
Knightley's desk.  He listened to the murmur of voices as Z explained
that her boss was waiting to meet her.

He went out into the hall and joined them.  "Chloe, come in," he
invited, nodding her into the study.  He explained who he was.  "We
didn't expect you quite so soon."

She sat with a tote bag at her feet and a light raincoat over one arm,
stiffly as if waiting for a train.  Her freckled, heart shaped face was
taut, framed by dark red hair that fell straight over her shoulder
blades.  She wore the teenage uniform of loose T-shirt, blue jeans and
white trainers.

"There was a vacant seat on an earlier flight to Heathrow, so I took
that," she explained.  She sounded almost aggressive.  "How's Leila?"

Her abruptness didn't surprise either of them.  Only twenty minutes
after Mott had phoned the news to her grandmother, Chloe had called
back asking the DC on duty for confirmation of her stepmother's
reported accident.  He had given her this without details and she had
demanded none.

It was as if she suspected Mott's call was a hoax.  Her voice,

DC Silver had said, was tensely controlled.  She looked the same now to
Yeadings.  He would have described her as petrified.

He approached her gently, Z seating herself in a corner behind him.
"I'm very sorry indeed about your stepmother.  I'm afraid that later I
shall have to ask some questions which may sound insensitive, but you
could help us in finding out quite what has happened."

"D'you mean why she ran off, or'

Yeadings waited.  When the girl didn't come out with the alternative he
risked being frank.  There was a challenge in the way she stared at
him, chin held high, that made him sure she detested evasions.

"Or whether she could be a woman we found in Shotters Wood," he said
gently.

Her breath came out in a barely suppressed hiss.  "Why should she be?
What would she be doing there?  I thought you meant she'd run off and
crashed her car.  How badly hurt is she?"

"I'm afraid she's more than hurt, Chloe."  The tone of his voice must
surely save him from putting the whole truth into words just yet.

"She's dead!  You mean she's dead, don't you?  No!  Leila, dead?  She
can't be!"

Z went across to the child's chair and reached out her arms but Chloe
pushed her off.  "Why does everyone lie to me?  They just said that she
was in an accident."

"Your grandmother wasn't well enough to travel with you.  We knew you'd
be coming alone so we sent someone to meet you.  Because you boarded an
earlier flight it's been left until now for you to get the full
story."

He went on talking, quietly on a level tone, giving her time to face
the unbelievable.

But Chloe was suspicious of him.  "Who else is here?  Janey?  Uncle
Charles?"

"You'll see them soon.  They've been touring in Scotland.  We hoped
they would arrive before you."

The child closed her eyes and was silent a long moment.  Yeadings was
appalled by her stiff self-control.  When she looked at him again it
was with something like loathing in her eyes.

"You you aren't going to make me see?  Identify her, I mean."

"That won't be necessary.  Once we trace your father he will be able to
do that."

"You mean you don't know where he is?  He'll be in Reading somewhere.
Have you tried asking at the University?  Someone must know where he's
holed up."

The bitterness in her voice was unexpected.  Nor was "holed up" quite
the expression of a respectful daughter.  She had a stepmother whom
she'd suspected of "running off'.  So where did her loyalties lie?  If
any.

"We're still making inquiries.  Nobody seems to have seen him for a few
days.  We shall be advertising for him to come forward."

She closed her eyes again the better to take this in.  "He's gone
missing?  But you haven't called me home for that.  They simply said
Leila had been in an accident.  Now you say she's dead.  But you don't
think he's dead too.  Or do you?"

Trying so hard to make sense of it, she stared at him with wide,
frightened eyes.  "You really do believe it's Leila you've found.  What
makes you think that?"

"We're going by photographs in the house here.  And we've examined
records of dental work she had done in Mardham."

The girl leaned forward in her chair, hands gripping the seat to either
side of her tensed thighs.  She looked transfixed.

He gave her a moment to absorb the clinical detail.  A grown woman
might have burst out with "Oh, my God!"  but not this disciplined
child.  Perhaps over-disciplined?  She was doubting and testing every
new fact.  Yeadings felt for her; and there remained so much more for
her to face.

"But Leila's really fit.  There's nothing wrong with her.

Ill

Granny said an accident.  How could she have an accident in Shotters
Wood?  There's no road through.  People don't even ride horses there.
Who was with her?"

"We don't know."  He could answer only the last question.  And then
there was no avoiding the full brutal truth.  "It wasn't an accident,
Chloe, and she wasn't unwell."

He watched her work out the truth on the level of logic.  An
intelligent girl, she arrived there by herself: not a natural death and
not an accident, so what else remained?

"Chloe, I have to tell you.  It appears that someone attacked her. That
is why we're so concerned, and why we need you to help us find out
everything we can."

But still she wouldn't believe.  She had gone stubbornly into denial.

"No!"  she ground out.  "No, not Leila!  Nobody could do that!"

Rosemary Zyczynski moved again towards her but the girl sprang up.
"Don't touch me!  Leave me alone."

Out in the hall there were voices," Z walked past her and went to see
who had arrived.  It was a sallow-faced young woman from Social
Services accompanied by a great bear of a middle-aged man.  She
introduced him as her senior officer.

"We can probably do with both of you," Z assured them as he seemed to
hang back.  "Chloe is through there with Superintendent Yeadings. She's
only just learned it was murder, so you'll find she's in shock. I'll
make some tea for us all."

"You haven't been questioning her?"  the woman demanded sharply.

Her companion beat Z to the denial.  "Don't worry.  Mike Yeadings knows
better than that.  We'll give him a couple more minutes with her before
we interrupt."

When Z took in the tray with four cups and a tumbler of lemonade from
the fridge she found Chloe sitting straight-backed and pale under her
freckles, listening to the Boss.  "Visitors?"  he asked, looking
round.

Z nodded.  "Social Services."

"I won't see anybody," the girl said fiercely.

"We are obliged to have someone here," Yeadings said calmly, 'to
represent your family."

"I'll wait for Uncle Charles.  And Janey.  They're written into Leila's
will, in loco parentis in case anything happened."  The Latin came out
in a brittle, adult voice.  She was trying so hard to command
reality.

"They should be arriving in London at any time now."

"Maybe they're back.  I'll ring them."  She went across to the phone on
her father's desk, turned away, took a deep breath, and while she began
to dial Z let in the two social workers.  They gave their names to
Yeadings as Ms Maggie Martyn and George Claydon.

The double birr of the dialling tone continued, clear to all in the
room, until an amplified male voice took over, inviting a message to be
left.  "Oh no!"  Chloe cried, almost despairing.  "Why is nobody there?
Uncle Charles, it's me.  I need you.  I need you, right now.  Please,
speak to me!"

Painful to witness as Yeadings found it, he had to leave her a free
rein.  That way she might feel she had some influence over events.  And
then, thank God, at last she broke down, standing there abandoned,
still fiercely clutching the receiver while dry sobs racked her.

He went across and gently took it from her stiff fingers.  "They'll
come.  I know they're on their way."

I hope to God they do, Z told herself.  Such wholesale desertion was
unbearable.

Chloe refused the drink.  "I'd be sick," she said shortly, exhausted by
sobbing.

"Can you tell us who your doctor is?"  Maggie Martyn asked.

"I don't need a doctor.  We haven't registered with one yet.  We've
only been here a few weeks."

"Is there someone from where you were before?"

"Caversham," the girl said almost contemptuously.  "And no there isn't.
I'll wait till Uncle Charles and Janey come."

Z looked meaningfully at Yeadings.  Chloe needed to rest before they
spoke to her further, but she couldn't be left alone.  "How about your
nextdoor neighbours?"  Z asked, mainly to cover the Boss's voice as he
spoke quietly into his mobile phone across the room.

"The Piggotts.  I don't know them."  She seemed determined now to
insist on isolation.  Then impulsively, "Look, I have to phone Gran.
She'll be expecting me to.  Only I don't know how to... explain."  Her
head twisted in horror from side to side.

"Can I help?"  Z offered.

"Would you?"  It sounded breathless.

"Give me her number and tell me what you want her to know."

Chloe looked baffled.  "Just that I'm here, I suppose.  I've arrived.
And thanks for having me."

Less truculent, Yeadings noticed.  This was progress of a kind,
habitual good manners surfacing through the nightmare.  But shock had
prevented her seeing that some explanation was due.  Mrs.  Knightley
senior would demand to know what kind of accident Leila had suffered.

"You can leave it with me.  I'll explain everything," Z told the girl.
"What if she insists on coming over?"

"She won't.  Gran doesn't go anywhere now, she's so arthritic.  Don't
tell her please don't say there's nobody here."  At last there was a
faint note of panic in her voice.  "II think if you don't mind I'll go
and lie down.  Is that all right?"

"Of course."  Yeadings looked pointedly at the social workers.
"Rosemary, help Chloe up with her luggage, will you?"

Z followed her.  "Smart room," she commented as the girl wearily
dropped her jeans and kicked her trainers under the bed.  She turned
back the bedcover and Chloe slid in, turning her back on the world.

"Thanks' hollowly, and still polite, the ingrained civility functioning
at surface level whatever churned beneath.

Z drew the curtains to block out the brilliant midsummer light.  She
left Chloe lying flat and staring frozen-faced at the far wall.

"This is appalling," the male social worker had burst out as the door
shut behind them.  "It's absolutely essential to locate the father at
once.  She must have personal support."

Yeadings caught the flicker in the woman's eyes and saw she shared his
misgivings.  "We're hopeful he's not involved in the murder," he said
quietly.  "Either as a further victim or the killer.  Chloe hasn't
asked for him and she assumed at first that her stepmother had 'run
off'.  We may find the marriage was far from a happy one."

"That's all she needs at a time like this," wheezed George Clay don. "A
dysfunctional family background."

Charles Hadfield made his call to the house on his cellular phone.  A
background noise of slamming car doors and distant shouting reached Z
the typical scrimmage for taxis at a major railway station.  Hadfield
gave his estimated time of arrival as 1.20pm.

Z handed the receiver to the Boss who identified himself and added that
Chloe had already arrived from France and was resting in her room.

"Superintendent?  Good, good," Yeadings' rank gratified the man, as it
should.  Maybe he was familiar with police matters and knew that
normally a sergeant or DI was the most he'd be meeting initially.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Yeadings told himself, replacing the
receiver.  Since he'd been more or less caught out abandoning his desk,
he'd carry on and meet the main characters.  Certainly until Mott
managed to get back from Gatwick.  Not that there was any hurry to
inform him that Chloe had slipped through his net.  When Uncle Charles
put in an appearance would be soon enough for Z to ring the DI and call
him in.

Chapter 12

The social workers having left, promising to keep in touch, Yeadings
and Rosemary Zyczynski were examining the main bedroom when they heard
the Hadfield pair arrive.  While Z slid shut the doors of Knightley's
wardrobe her boss went to the head of the stairs and watched the dead
woman's uncle blunder through the open front door and head for the
dining-room.  There followed a chink of glass on glass and the man's
throat clearing.

A smaller, oddly dressed woman followed quietly, sighted Yeadings on
the shadowed gallery, stopped short and stood looking up at him.  He
went down.  Despite her cool stare the grey eyes were red-rimmed.  She
was mourning the dead woman.  "Superintendent Yeadings?"

"Yes.  Chloe is resting.  She'll be relieved you're here.  She needs
someone she can trust."

The corners of the woman's mouth quivered.  "Doesn't she think much of
the police then?"

"Not yet."

She nodded, as if his reply had pleased her.  "So her father's still
not available?  We decided, if that was so, we'd move in.  I had the
luggage stacked outside in case you're examining the house."

"We shall be sealing the main bedroom and study.  Beyond that, I think
we've seen all we need for the moment.  When you feel ready I should
like to ask you a few questions about the family."

He was aware of her looking past him and then Charles Hadfield came up
behind, a whisky tumbler in one hand.  "Has Knightley not shown up
yet?"  he demanded.

Yeadings turned and took him in: tall and heavily built but leaning on
a hand-cut blackthorn.  He had a large, squarish head with
close-cropped white hair, strong features and startlingly blue eyes
made more so by contrast with his ruddy cheeks.  Pale skin above the
eyes showed a red indentation made by a tight hat brim.  The cream
panama, pushed to the back of his head, made Yeadings think of a
cricket umpire.

"We're still looking for the Professor," he said.

'1 see.  So how can I help?"

"By suggesting where else we should look.  And particularly by telling
us anything you know about your niece that could explain what she got
herself caught up in."

"Caught up in," the man repeated.  "So you don't think this is a random
killing?  There's method in it?"

Which was precisely what Yeadings did feel in his bones, but he'd no
explanation for it as yet.  "We have to cover every possibility, keep
an open mind."

"Yes, yes."  He sounded impatient at the cliche.  "Leila was nobody's
fool, Superintendent.  Yet I always felt..."

"Yes?"

'there was something of the innocent about her.  Not that I'm that good
a judge of women.  Been deceived by them too often-.  You'd best ask
Janey what she was really like.  They seemed to have an understanding.
If you want me I'll be in the garden."  At which he abruptly raised his
hand with the stick to draw the panama back over his eyes, and limped
off in the direction of the kitchen.

Their voices had reached Chloe who had been barely asleep.  She came
out on the landing and gave a sharp cry, "Janey!"  Then she was flying
down, barefoot, with a cotton robe still undone, and was hugging the
little woman in the long bunchy skirt.

Over the girl's head Yeadings nodded towards the drawing-room.  "I'll
give you a while together," he offered.  Janey met his eyes briefly,
her face screwed with distress, then the two moved off, their arms
round each other.

It was a risk.  He knew he could miss something vital passing between
them.  But this was no time to put on pressure.

He sat down on the third stair, resting elbows on knees,

and was conscious of Z upstairs moving from the main bedroom into
another.  He guessed it was the one that Chloe had just come from. Good
move on Z's part.  The child might have left something significant open
to view.  He went outside and ordered the constable on guard to fit a
seal to the room Leila had presumably shared with her husband.

In the drawing-room the low voices continued, the words lost to him.
Chloe was having the most to say; Janey's voice a mild murmur briefly
punctuating the flow.  He strained his ears but could get no meaning
from it.

Z came downstairs with a man's plastic-wrapped suit over one arm, went
out, and he heard her locking it into her car boot.  She had just
returned as Janey came to the drawing-room door.  "Chloe" s ready to
see you," she said, and the two detectives followed her in.

The girl looked defensive.  The older woman's face was unreadable.

Yeadings sat opposite them, addressing Chloe.  "There's a possibility,"
he said cautiously, 'that your stepmother was caught up in the
unsavoury business of some new acquaintance she didn't know very
well."

It was pure guesswork.  All he had to go on was intuition fed by Z's
impression that Leila's cleaner scented fresh scandal.  '

He had caught their attention.  They seemed to be waiting for more.
Right: he'd wade further in.

"Even something illegal."

"Leila's not like that," Chloe protested quickly.

"So what is she like?  Tell me.  We need to understand.  It could lead
us to discover who might want to harm her."  He had followed her into
the present tense and the girl hadn't noticed.

"Nobody would.  She she's gentle.  She doesn't let people rattle her.
She puts up with almost anything rather than make a fuss."

His eyebrows twitched.  "Won't complain?  More tolerant than you,
perhaps?"

"Too damn true!  She lets people' Chloe fought to contain herself,
fists clenched and tight-lipped.

"Walk over her?"

"Lets people get away with things."  The words came out reluctantly.

So much anger, he thought; but already she was beginning to retreat,
wouldn't give much more away without being shocked into it.

"Yet someone deliberately killed her."

Chloe stiffened, her eyes shut, and he watched the colour drain from
her face.  She couldn't speak.

"So these people she never complained about, who are they?"

"Just people."  As she forced out the whispered answer her face burned
and she turned away from him.

Answer enough: she meant her father.  And perhaps sometimes herself?

"People are so bloody awful, if you don't stand up to them."  She spoke
with passion.

"They certainly can be.  Thank you, Chloe.  I'm sorry I had to
probe."

The hands in her lap turned helplessly palms upward.  "It's your job."
She appeared reluctant to allow that much, but relieved that his words
sounded final.

"That's all for the present, then.  But I may need to bother you again.
Later on."

Chloe nodded, rose and made for the door.  There she stood with her
back to him and fought against tears, took a deep, sighing breath and
ground out, "She was so nice, a really good person.  You have to know
that."  And she was gone, not waiting for Janey.

Leila submissive and a peacemaker?  That wasn't the impression given by
the body found in Shotters Wood.  Leila Knightley had fought like a
tiger for her life.

Just before Chloe's arrival there'd been a call on his mobile from
Forensics.  They'd analysed something further: under Leila's
fingernails microscopic flecks of black suiting, wool and cashmere mix,
luxury quality.  And Forsyth, the expert on fabrics, had said they were
lucky it hadn't been pure wool super 120-twist, or the fabric's surface
wouldn't have scratched off.

Which was why Yeadings had had Z take out Knightley's dinner jacket in
its plastic cover, to send on to the lab for comparison.

janey he already thought of her as that stood regarding him, dumpy but
strangely impressive.  She waited until he acknowledged she was still
there.

"So you got what you were after.  Leila was the family shock-absorber.
All right; the learned Professor is a bully and lives only for himself.
But you're wrong if you assume he was the one who killed her.  He
hasn't the bottle.  Aidan is just a woman ising wimp."

She turned away and the scorn had left her voice.  "It's a less
civilized world now.  There's little kindness left."  She looked
suddenly crumpled.  Then she left.

Kindness?  What had kindness to do with the case?  Yeadings asked
himself.  Yet she was right: we live in an age of anger.  With more
kindness there'd be less rage.  Only where is this kindness suddenly to
spring from?  There has to be security first.  Peace of mind: there
wasn't a lot of that about either.

And if Leila Knightley had been kind, what good had it finally done
her?

I'm showing my age, Yeadings thought.  I should leave the armchair
philosophy to others.  Our job's keeping the peace.  Or at best
grabbing wildly as it fast goes down the plug hole.

To the team he often summed up his first impression in a single word.
For Janey he chose 'pragmatic'.  Now for Leila he had been offered
'kind'.  From the brief sight he'd had himself of her alive, she
probably had been.

He looked up to see Charles Hadfield standing again in the hall.  He
hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his stout blackthorn.  "I just
can't believe it," he confessed.

The weathered face, with its fine broken veins over the cheekbones,
showed an underlying pallor.  Despite the bluff voice, body language
said something else.  Leila's death had truly shaken him.

"No one who knew my niece could ever want to harm her."

"So you think it must be a stranger who attacked her?"

"Was she... I mean A man, was it?"

"She wasn't raped.  The attack wasn't sexual."

The policeman's crudeness shocked him, even as he took comfort from the
knowledge.

"Sit down, Mr.  Hadfield," Yeadings invited.

"I'm not a bloody cripple, Superintendent."  But he took the chair
indicated and stretched one leg out painfully.  The ankle was heavily
bound with crepe bandage.  "Went north for the heather and a good malt
whisky.  Both conspired to bring me down."

Yeadings nodded, almost smiling.  "I'm hoping you can help us.  We know
nothing of the family.  Except that Mrs.  Knightley was your niece."

"I'm her only blood relative.  She was my sister's daughter.  Her
parents are dead, lost in their yacht off Agadir.  She came to me as a
little girl.  Knightley was a recent widower when they married.  That
would be nine years back, when Leila had done a year at university.
Both children are her husband's.  Leila was a wonderful mother to
them."

Good: brusquely informative, he was co-operating.  But then, why
shouldn't he?  Possibly because by nature he was an awkward cuss; had
long chosen that role and revelled in it; lived it as a private joke.
Yeadings had met his kind before.

Tell me what your niece was like."

Hadfield thought for a moment.  "She was a good girl, dignified,
dutiful.  Too dutiful.  There wasn't much juice in that marriage."

A curious phrase.  It seemed even to faze the man who'd used it.

"I mean she gave all she had.  He was an unmitigated bastard."

"Was?  Do you think he's dead then?"

Hadfield was silent, the blue eyes hooded.  He rested his chin on
thickened knuckles grasping the blackthorn's carved knob.  The stick
was planted firmly upright, less as a prop than a device to explode him
to his feet.  Despite the closed eyes his whole pose was spring-loaded.
This was a very angry man.

"You didn't like him," Yeadings prompted.

Hadfield opened burning eyes.  "I hated his very guts.  If he hasn't
killed himself already, I'll be first to claim the' honour

So, speaking apparently without collusion, the family had a single
opinion, that Leila was more sinned against than sinning.  Yet who ever
knew what went on in a marriage beyond the couple themselves?  And even
they could find it a right old conundrum.

"I was responsible for her upbringing," Hadfield admitted.  "I was a
middle-aged bachelor when she was sent back from Africa, an orphan.
Never had any children of my own, that I know of.  So I sent her to
boarding school and saw her briefly in the holidays.  That's if she
didn't go off camping or pony trekking, or something of the kind.

"When Janey first moved in with me she gave me no end of a telling-off;
said I'd deprived the child of a sense of family.  So she took it on
herself to act the surrogate mother.

"I think now it may have been too late by then.  Why else would Leila
have taken on a disagreeable husband with a couple of ready-made
children, the first man who ever showed any real interest in her?"

"Perhaps she was in love with him."

"She thought she was.  But once the knot was tied she seemed to'

Yeadings was good at waiting.  He found that the longer the silence
drew out, the greater the compulsion for it to be filled.  But the man
opposite him wasn't holding anything back.  He simply found it hard to
find the right words.

"It was like one of those dimmer switches.  Her light didn't go right
out, but she wasn't the same.  She would laugh less, and her smile
never reached her eyes.  She'd been so animated before.

"But she never said she was unhappy.  Of course, I'd warned her
beforehand not to give up her freedom, her own academic aspirations.
You should always be prepared for marriage going sour on you.  Not that
we knew then of his unsavoury reputation."

Hadfield beat against the floor with his blackthorn.  "How he is
allowed to work among impressionable young people I'll never
understand.  I suppose it's overlooked because of his exceptional
qualifications.  Some people only see what they want to see.  And he's
well thought of in his speciality."

"Which is what precisely?"

Hadfield waved a hand vaguely.  "Physical Chemistry; Biophysics.  These
distinctions are all a bit beyond me.  That's what he likes, of course:
dazzling lesser mortals with his science."

"You're speaking of him now in the present tense.  Does that mean you
have changed your mind?  He hasn't done away with himself?"

Hadfield nodded slowly.  "I have to admit: suicide isn't his line. He'd
never see himself sufficiently in the wrong.  And whatever he did know
he was guilty of, the arrogant bastard would always expect to ride it
out."

Through the open windows there again came the sound of a car engine
followed by men's voices," Z left her post and went through the hall to
check on it.  Not one but two taxis had drawn up by the kerb and the
constable on duty was endeavouring to block a double dose of demands
for information.

From the first cab the Piggott family spilled out to stare in amazement
at the incident tape and the police presence," Z recalled that they'd
left on the previous day in a new-looking white Mercedes; so what had
become of that?

The parents seemed aghast, but the prospect of new excitement was
bringing the boys out of their subdued state.  The zoo visit, like
yesterday's trip to Brighton, hadn't proved one of unalloyed
pleasure.

Taken up with observing their reactions, Z was slow to remark the
smaller man who slid from the second cab and stood staring fiercely at
the doorway behind her.

She turned to see that Charles Hadfield had limped out, leaning heavily
on his stick.  From fifty feet apart the two men confronted each other
like stags at rutting.

The defiantly up-thrust goatee beard, the gingery hair and pinched
features were familiar from a portrait in the study.  This newcomer was
the missing Professor Knightley, alive and clearly in anything but a
co-operative mood.

He advanced on the older man, fists clenched.  "What the hell are you
doing here?"  he demanded.

Chapter 13

Piggott stared at the two angry men through slitted eyes.  His fingers,
biting into Madeleine's arm, made her gasp.  "Who's that?"  he
demanded.

Her head was bent over her purse, locating her house keys.  She screwed
round to look.  "Which one?"

"The little ginger runt who's just arrived."

"That's my new neighbour."

"The professor?"  He put into it all the scorn he felt for the
over-educated.  And something else besides.

"That's right."  Madeleine hooked out the keys and became aware of him
paying off the cabbie.  That was strange, because he normally turned
tail the minute he'd dropped the kids off.

"You're not coming in again."  It was somewhere between a question and
a protest.

"We have things to settle."  He scowled at the boys.  "You two clear
off down the garden."  He aimed a swipe at Duncan as he passed.

Madeleine looked affronted at the way her husband appeared to be
settling back in.  He needn't think she was going to offer him coffee.
On the other hand her own nerve ends were shrieking for caffeine, and
with her hands busily occupied she'd feel less vulnerable.

They went straight through to the kitchen and, relatively secure on her
own ground, she opted for frontal attack.  "I'll be needing more money
for the school holidays.  There'll be outings and fresh clothes for
Dunkie even if I pass his old ones on to Patrick.  It costs twice as
much as in school term."

His little currant eyes went meaner.  "You'll get same as usual.  It's
more than ample.  And if either boy gets a new outfit it'll not be that
dickhead Duncan."

She knew it was hopeless trying to explain how the younger boy
manipulated his brother into the wrong.  Jeff would only say you
shouldn't let anyone make a fool of you.  Yet that's what he was doing.
Or else he enjoyed egging Patrick on in his mischief-making.  And if
she defended Dunkie, Jeff'd start shouting about her turning him into a
mummy's boy; why didn't she go ahead and let him do the cooking?

Due to yesterday's lost trainer he'd had a miserable time today
breaking in a stiff pair of new shoes.  His skin was sensitive and he
tended to get blisters.  But the trouble had started long before Dunkie
acquired his limp.  It was when Jeff drew up at Regent's Park with the
Merc's wheels half on the pavement.

"I suppose it's all right to leave the car here?"  Madeleine had
doubted.

"There's nothing to say we shouldn't."  Nevertheless her uncertainty
reminded Piggott of the car's value and its recent purchase.  It would
be a blow if some marauding kids fancied it for joy-riding.  A customer
last week had had his brand new Porsche wrapped around a lamppost after
a police chase.

"I'll just shove it in over there."  Piggott opted for safety by
reversing the Mercedes into the forecourt of a sizeable block of flats
with the name Flambard Court above the impressive doorway.

The zoo part of the day went fairly smoothly, irritation being mainly
avoided by the party splitting into three.  Madeleine found a shady
spot and some magazines to keep her entertained, while Jeffrey mooched
off to appreciate the mandrills' coarser activities.  The boys stayed
mainly together, Duncan circulating in his normal amiable haze while
Patrick, having tired of banging on the bars outside the big cats'
enclosure and having been repulsed by a spitting camel, experimented
with pieces of discarded sandwich and various animal droppings as ammo
in his spud gun.  This kept him out of worse mischief until a keeper
observed him firing near the penguin pond and he was compelled to beat
a hasty retreat.

They reassembled for lunch, which wasn't a bad meal and left them, at
least temporarily, glazed and less antagonistic.  By 3pm Jeffrey
considered his duty done and rounded up the others for the journey
home.  It was then that he found the Mercedes was no longer parked in
the forecourt of Flambard Court.

A tight-lipped approach to the duty porter brought him out to observe
the empty parking place.  The man allowed the heated flow of complaint
to wash over him with the air of one accustomed to being misunderstood,
before pointing out the notice warning: vehicles not displaying the
Flambard permit were likely to be wheel-clamped and removed.

"But it's Sunday," Piggott roared.

"Yes," the man agreed mildly.  "We get a lot of it on Sundays."

Piggott wasn't going to lose face in front of the others by chasing up
where the car had been taken.  He had minions for that, and tomorrow
was another day.

They straggled along the pavement to a bus stop and waited in surly
silence.  Decanted twenty minutes later at Baker Street Underground
station, Jeffrey felt the last of his patience snap and he hailed a
passing taxi.

By the time he had its passenger door open wasn't Madeleine, stupid
cow, queuing for train tickets.  The boys were even further ahead.

"C'mon, dithers," Patrick shouted, standing by the down-escalator.
Duncan hopped obediently on.  He'd been carried five or six stairs down
when Patrick's crowing laughter reached him.  He spun round and stared
up at his exasperated mother, and his redfaced father gesticulating
towards something outside.

His heel twisted painfully as he turned.  He lost balance, falling
against a fat man trying to pass alongside.  Both went staggering for a
yard or two, grabbing at the moving handrail.  At the foot of the
stairs the man held him at arm's length, bitingly sarcastic.

Duncan tore himself free and made for the up-escalator.

When he arrived at ground level his mother hauled him off like a
two-year-old.

In Baker Street the cab driver was fuming and a traffic block building.
As Duncan made to get in the cab Jeffrey reached out and struck at him
with the back of one hand.  Duncan felt the slash of his signet ring
and warm blood start running down his cheek.

"Bloody imbecile!"  his father roared.  "You've been nothing but a
fucking disaster all weekend!"

And a disaster it had been for everyone, Madeleine agreed now as with
shaking hands she started filling the kettle.  And Jeff hadn't really
taken notice of her demand for holiday cash.  There was something else
eating at him.

This professor."  You couldn't miss the contemptuous pause before the
title.  "What did you say his name was?"

"Knight, I think.  No, Knightley.  They delivered his post here by
accident once, so I saw it.  We've never actually met."

"Knightley."  Nearly another bloody title.  You could see the little
shit thought he was God's gift to the universe.  A small man.  They
often behaved like that.  Pompous little squirt.  Well, it wouldn't
take much to puncture his balloon.  And with the police on his doorstep
it could be that trouble was catching up already.

"Why the interest?"  Madeleine asked with suspicion.  "What's he to
you?"

"Nothing.  Less than nothing.  Just thought I'd seen him somewhere
before."

"Not in your shop.  He'd hardly be the betting sort."

Piggott gave a throaty chuckle.  "That's what you think, eh?  And
you're an expert on the punters!  He's on the books.  Clever he may be,
but he can't pick a horse.  Too bloody high-and-mighty to come in
himself after the first time.  Runs a Special Account.  Uses the
pseudonym Vector, whatever that means."

He swung himself into a chair at the formica-topped table.  "So what
else, family has he?"

'1 told you once before but you never listened.  They've two kids.  The
boy's left school and the girl's fifteen or sixteen.  You'd best ask
Duncan, since it seems he's been in there."

Piggott spun to his feet, opened the back door and roared for his elder
son.  Duncan wandered in from the terrace, a split grass stem between
his two thumbs.  He blew on it to produce an ear-splitting shriek. Jeff
cuffed him into the house, closing the door again for privacy.  At the
garden's far end he'd glimpsed Patrick perched high in the old pear
tree, binoculars trained on the garden next door.  Well, at least one
of the kids was awake.

As he might have guessed, Duncan could tell him nothing.  Just that the
Knightley's house was 'nice' inside, not modern, and Chloe was 'all
right really'.  He'd met her mother too.  She'd been washing china in
the conservatory and had asked him about school.

"The girl goes to a private school.  Fancy uniform with a purple
blazer," Madeleine put in, adding some body to the skeletal
information.  She couldn't think why Jeff was interested at this point.
He hadn't been when she told him what a helluva lot the house was sold
for.  He'd simply said that some people had more money than sense, and
that anyway all she knew was the asking price: it could have changed
hands for a lot less.

But Sally Ellis who sold it said the new people hadn't quibbled. They'd
paid in full, for fear of being gazumped.  So then Sally wished they'd
slapped another ten thousand on, except that admittedly there were a
number of repairs to be done, one or two of them structural.

Patrick slid in from the garden, his face puckish with gossip ready to
spill.

"There's been a right barney going on next door," he said happily. "But
then a big man made them all sit down and I couldn't hear anything.
But he was giving them a real pi-jaw."

The white-haired one with the stick?"  Piggott asked sharply.

"No, another one.  I think he was a plain-clothes policeman.  He had a
woman with him, with a notebook."

"So it's not just a traffic inquiry.  I wondered why that copper was on
duty outside.  Maybe they've been burgled."  Piggott eyed his son with
suspicion.  "You making this up?  How could you see all this from the
tree?"

"Some I could.  But there's a big knot-hole in the fence by their
conservatory.  You can see right through into their lounge from
that."

"Patrick, it's not nice, spying on people," Madeleine limply scolded.
"That's how trouble can start between neighbours."

"Maybe they've started enough for themselves," said her husband with a
smirk.  He pulled his mobile phone from a pocket.

Patrick watched enviously as he rang one of his minders to come and
pick him up.  The man's name was Walter Pimm, a weasely man whose party
piece was making his knuckles crack.  He shared a flat with a massive
bloke called Big Ben.  Dad called them his heavies and made it sound
like a joke.

Patrick wondered what chance he'd have if he asked for a mobile himself
for his next birthday in October.

If Piggott had stayed on ten minutes after Pimm whisked him off he
could have watched yet another car pull up at the neighbouring house
and a tall, fair-haired man whom he knew as DI Angus Mott arrive to
take Professor Knightley away for questioning.  It was done without
fuss and the three remaining Piggotts were unaware of it, being
inelegantly draped around the kitchen, feasting on chilled lemon squash
with cheese 'n onion crisps and defrosted doughnuts.

Superintendent Yeadings was glad enough to extract himself from the
Knightleys' troubles and even on a Sunday return to check on a desk
load of other serious crimes.  He left Z behind to await experts who
would take apart the sealed bedroom.  It wasn't an obvious scene of
crime, but at this juncture you couldn't be certain.  Leila had been
kept tied up somewhere before her body was dumped in Shotters Wood, and
that was only half a mile away.  Carpets in all the rooms would also be
combed for fibres to match the microscopic threads already at the
lab.

He was relieved that Mott had taken over the investigation.  It was his
call-out anyway, possibly the last case Angus would handle before the
threat of tenure caught up with him.  Already he'd run over his
five-year stint as DI.  The coming change would mean welcome promotion
for him, but it meant the team's break-up.

Angus was a good detective, with a decent record for putting together a
convincing case.  He'd chafe at being returned to uniform and removed
by rank from the sharp end of investigation.  Yeadings couldn't see him
taking kindly to admin or hobnobbing with community leaders.  Maybe his
good looks and law degree would even get him shoved into PR.

But with the Knightley case it was less on account of Angus and more
for himself that he was conscious of a strain easing.  Because of the
victim.  It was nothing new to come upon a body of some person he'd
known alive, but here there was a difference.  This wasn't someone with
a criminal record, a hard-nosed loan shark who squeezed his debtors
beyond endurance or a sleaze-bag running a string of prostitutes, or
even an up market lady-of-the-night herself for all that this victim's
get-up had given that first impression.

It seemed now, from the opinion of those who surely must know, that she
was an ordinary, well-meaning housewife with family commitments and a
respectable part-time job.  Which put her in the running to be one of
those random victims that stalkers or indiscriminate killers happen
upon.

Horror enough.  But what made it more poignant to him was how he'd met
her in the context of his family life, at a moment when he was feeling
bad about letting Sally down.  While they conversed he had known she
recognised him in his police capacity, and had almost acted upon it.

Preoccupied with his own petty problem, he'd walked away; and so he had
this disquieting sense that he should somehow have been able to shield
her.  Which was totally illogical.  Who was he to guarantee
invulnerability?  Didn't his job sometimes risk the reverse for those
near him?

To be truthful, what bugged him was simple frustration.  He'd not
stayed and listened to her, and so he had no idea of the importance of
what she would have said.  It might have been no more than a minor
query he could have set her mind at rest on.  Or if the killing wasn't
random and she was under threat already it could have proved of use now
as vital evidence.

That could implicate someone in her circle; possibly one of those he
had already met that day.  And since statistically the odds were always
on a domestic murder, it seemed inevitable that in Interview Room 1
Professor Aidan Knightley and DI Mott would be getting down to a
serious discussion.

He was tired; he had not realised how weary until, after half an hour
of paper-shuffling and scribbled memos at the office, he reached home
and sprawled at ease in his rattan chair on the patio, a tumbler of
Nan's homemade lemonade close at hand.  The overgrown ash tree, which
he had long intended to cut back, stirred lacy fans overhead,
alternately dazzling and dappling his upturned face.

Gently its susurration faded into the sigh and suck of water at a sea's
edge.  He found himself wandering barefoot along a shoreline.  It was
the time of evening when only overhead is the sky still blue.
Gradually, towards the horizon, it shaded to an indeterminate yellow
like the flesh of a pear, and finally flushed to meet the dark sea.
Above him craggy cliffs caught the lowering sun, bunched like an
enormous arthritic fist.

At the water's edge he was quite alone.  Down here the light was
already slipping away.  Only gentle ripples and the rim of wet sand
showed a faint phosphorescence.  He moved his weight slowly from foot
to foot, watching water press up between his bare toes, then briefly
stay pooled in the imprint as he lifted each foot away, until the sand
slid back and no trace remained.  He knew that behind him nothing
marked that he had come this way.

The thought brought a mild kind of grief, but then ahead phantom
pressure marks began to appear in the wet sand.  Traces left by finer
feet than his own, long-toed and delicate.  But with no one there to
make them.

Then these imprints too began to vanish.  He heard himself cry out in
an urgent protest.

He fought himself awake and felt Nan's hand on his shoulder to calm
him.  "Mike, you were dreaming."

He couldn't speak, lying limply sweating, anguished.  At what?  A
memory rather than the dream.  It was a place he'd once visited as a
young sergeant with the Met, taking solitary leave in Cornwall.  It had
been at a turning point in his life as he worked out whether to stay in
the job or try for something with better pay; because he'd fallen in
love with Nan and he wanted to offer her so much more.

He remembered pledging his feet there at the edge of the warm sea, with
his jeans rolled up to the knee.  A mud lark sensation, pleasurable and
totally physical for the moment.

That was the point where the dream had started to outstrip reality,
because it hadn't mattered then that the foot marks must disappear.  It
was what happened; something acceptable and accepted.  So why the angst
of the dream?  Some Jungian indication that he feared impermanence?  A
warning he was getting older, due some day to wear out and himself
vanish?

That wasn't what disturbed him.  Already the dream's outlines were
fading.  Losing the action, he was still transfixed by the sense of
sadness.

Something about those foot marks  He stared into the dark behind his
eyelids, and patterns of feeble light started flickering and taking
shape.

Then they came back.  Not the phantom imprints, but bare feet he had
seen elsewhere; on the peaty floor of Shelters Wood.  And on
Littlejohn's steel table: fine, arched feet slanting upward and outward
in the total relaxation of death.  Pathetically toe-tagged.

He stirred in his chair, passed one hand over his dry mouth.  Perhaps
not so much Jungian as Freudian then?  Had Leila Knightley called on
his libido from beyond the grave?

Only it wasn't lust he felt; it was more like guilt.

While Superintendent Yeadings relaxed at home, Z awaited the
scene-of-crime experts.  She agreed with her chief that it wasn't an
obvious murder scene, but they could not afford to ignore that Leila
Knightley had been kept tied up somewhere before her body was dumped in
Shotters Wood.

As well as Knightley's dinner jacket she had also removed the computer
from the study to pick over its contents at her convenience.  Now she
had a tussle with her conscience over having commandeered Chloe's stack
of disks as well.  She decided it was better to be over-cautious, and
transferred them all to the car, using a grocery carton she found in
the utility room.

With Knightley's departure for questioning, the Hadfields had moved
their luggage in, Janey collecting it from beside the front doorstep
and transferring it to a twin-bedded guest room at the rear.

"If Aidan comes back and needs somewhere to sleep," she decreed, 'he
can use Eddie's old room or make up a fresh bed for himself.  I don't
mind cooking but I don't intend waiting on him."  She then took over
the kitchen and started preparing an evening meal.

Charles Hadfield had been curiously silent since Yeadings intervened in
the flare-up on Knightley's arrival.  He had been content to listen and
ponder.  Now, with Chloe pottering about at the far end of the garden,
he voiced his opinion that if the police had any sense at all they
needn't expect her father back that night.  He appeared to have changed
his mind yet again about Knightley's guilt.

They'll keep him as long as permitted without charging him.  Isn't that
thirty-six hours?  By which time he'll have broken down and admitted
the killing.  I suppose I should get in touch with his solicitor, if
only for Chloe's sake.  And we may need someone ourselves to keep those
social workers at bay.  Not to mention the Press once they're on to
this.  Can't have them upsetting the poor girl."

For a long time Chloe had stayed crouched on the edge of her bed with
her head in her hands.  Elsewhere in the house there were sounds of
comings and goings.  She thought at one point she heard her father's
voice.  A little later the front door had closed noisily and a car
drove away but she didn't bother to look out.

It didn't matter.  Nothing did.  It was awful, this swirling void.
Whenever she closed her eyes she seemed to be moving in a vortex.
Needing air she slipped out into the garden.  The ground seemed to be
tipping under her.  Lying flat she had to dig her fingers into the lawn
to keep herself from sliding away.

She pulled herself up on to the stone bench by the garage wall.  Now at
least she had her feet against the ground but still there was movement,
and she knew it was inside her head.

Janey had asked if she would 'like something'; meaning aspirin, she
supposed.  She had refused because it was both too little and too much.
She had feared being any more confused than she already was.  What she
needed was to go out like a light.

Back at Granny's she'd believed she was beginning to get herself
straightened out, and now total disaster.  Leila gone.  Leila killed,
for God's sake, by some maniac in Shotters Wood.

There was no sense in anything any more.  She had almost made up her
mind to tell Leila everything once she got home, in maybe two or three
weeks' time, but now She found she was rocking forward and backward
over her knees.  Like a madman in some gothic film, she thought.  She
had to force herself to stop and sit stiffly straight with her arms
wrapped about her.  And still her brain felt to be sloshing to and fro,
knocking against the bony inner skull.

Someone came out on to the patio.  Janey, calling her name.

"Not now," she cried desperately.  "Leave me alone!"

But that was the opposite of what she wanted.  It scared her being
abandoned.  She wanted Leila there, close, holding her, talking in that
low, level voice that could turn the worst nightmares normal.

Janey wouldn't do.  How could she understand, being so old and so odd?
Things like this didn't, couldn't, happen to Janey.  But Leila who knew
men could be shit and still remained sane Leila just might have
understood.

At first the very idea of admitting what had happened was impossible, a
grotesque extension of the original horror.  But by getting away she
had achieved a sort of perspective, if only a slightly skewed one.
She'd had time to draw breath, believe that she'd almost escaped,
survived without permanent damage.  But still there were decisions to
be made.  She had to put a finish to it forever or she couldn't live
with herself again.  And Leila might have helped her there, although it
wasn't clear just how.  Now she had no one.  How could so many hideous
things crash down on her at once?

She shook her head wildly, angry at seeing herself at the centre of
this new horror.  It was Leila it had happened to, Leila abused, done
away with.  Something that left her outside.  It made her hate herself
more.

"I want to die," she growled through stiffly clenched jaws.  But she
knew she didn't: there was too much anger boiling away under the
shame.

She wanted to forget, yes.  Only there'd been so much confused blurring
of her mind already, with patches of time gone missing, that she'd
thought she was going insane.

No; what she fervently wanted was for none of it ever to have happened:
to go back to that afternoon of the French orals.  It had been a
Friday, so afterwards she'd walked to the Uni's Faculty of Science to
beg a lift home with her father.  Leila had gone north for the weekend,
to the annual trade fair, so there was no one at home, and Chloe hadn't
yet been given a door key for the new house.

That had been the beginning.  That was the last moment life had been
normal, without unnerving distortions.  The afternoon that she'd got
involved with Beryl Ryder.

Chloe

Chapter 14

I had admired Beryl Ryder from afar.  She was one of those willowy,
superior blondes worshipped by some of the juniors at my girls'
day-school.  My own respect wasn't so sloppy, but I would have given a
lot to be like her.  What I most envied, beyond her tall beauty, was
her obvious lack of concern for any of the people or things which
cramped my own horizons.

She had no idea who I was.  Her gaze was far above the level of someone
with the main subjects of GCSE still to master.  She had already
survived those exams to reach the Sixth Form.  Although automatically a
prefect through seniority, she had somehow steered clear of other
student chores -School Captain, Head of House or Games Captain.  If the
positions had been elective and not from the Head's choice she would
probably have filled them all, but I could never see such a brazenly
free spirit organizing school charities or team lists.

When she swarmed into my father's room that afternoon I assumed she'd
become one of his students, and I realized then that I hadn't seen her
about the school corridors for some months.

She stood draped in the doorway, one hip exaggeratedly jutting,
fabulously slim almost anorexic and sneered at me.  "For god sake she
challenged, 'lectures ended at four.  What the hell are you doing still
here?"

She sounded so officious that I bobbed up from my chair and explained I
was waiting for my father.

She took one look at my uniform and placed me as a student applicant
due to be picked up after an interview.  I didn't trouble to put her
right because her lofty attitude was beginning to make me bristle.

She brushed past me with assumed authority, seated herself at Miss
Morris's empty desk and began opening drawers and riffling through
them.  On Fridays my father's secretary left soon after lunch, and I
wondered if Beryl was appointed to replace her part-time.

After a minute or two of silence she picked up the internal phone.
"Joanne," she complained, 'have you any idea where Aidan's got to?
There's a schoolgirl here who's expecting to be picked up by her
family.  D'you know anything about it?  Well, can you...?"

And it was then that he walked in.  My father.  Clearly her lover.
Their eyes locked with such indecent familiarity.

If he felt wrong footed at sight of me he covered it well.  With
practice, I suppose.  He instantly picked up on the cross-purposes we'd
been at and sorted us out with casual introductions.  "My daughter
Chloe," he explained me away.  But "A student here who's helping me
with the paperwork," he offered for Beryl.

"She was at my school," I told him.

"Oh."  He looked at her, then back at me.  "So you know each other,
good."  He went through to his inner room and I expected him back with
his briefcase, but after a few scrabbling sounds in there he called,
"Beryl, I can't seem to find my-'

She swayed in with her long-legged stride and closed the door behind
her.  I heard their voices, mainly his, but couldn't didn't want to
make out any words.

They came out together and faced me.  "Look," my father said, "I've got
stuff here to clear up, so I could be another half hour.  Why don't you
both trot off and have tea somewhere in town?  Then later Beryl can
give me a buzz, so I know where to pick you up."  He had obviously
forgotten he was to drive me home, and there was no enquiry about how
the French oral had gone.

The last thing I wanted was Beryl Ryder's company, although at that
point I chose to see her as someone who'd been through the examination
mill ahead of me and might offer some lowdown on tackling the next
stage.  As for Beryl, she seemed almost amused, certainly recovered
from the distaste she'd shown on finding me in Father's outer office.

She had a little car, a blue Fiat, and drove leaning back as if it were
a sun lounger, both hands at the top of the wheel.  I couldn't miss the
weird variety of rings she wore.  She wouldn't have been allowed them
at school; and certainly not the pearl-mounted one piercing her left
eyebrow.  Her style in clothes had changed too, ultra-mod, just short
of punk.  I thought her make-up was too harsh for a blonde, but it
certainly made you see her.

She drove out of town and pulled up in the yard of a country pub.
"Right," she said, sounding no end chuffed, 'let's get to know each
other.  You can leave your school blazer in the car.  And you'll find
it cooler if you pull your shirt out."

I don't like anyone bossing me over my appearance, but I thought twice
about arguing with an erstwhile goddess, however much she seemed to
have changed.  So I did as she suggested and did feel cooler.

The pub had a little garden round at the back with a scrappy lawn and a
couple of overgrown rose arches.  We settled at a rough, creosoted
bench which had a matching one facing us with a wooden table between.
The whole set looked crude, like furniture in an illustration from
Goldilocks: surfaces suited to wild bears immune to splinters.

Beryl brought us out long glasses of something chilled with a ball of
golden sorbet floating at the top.  I asked what flavour it was and she
said passion fruit, then laughed.  To make conversation I said I'd sat
the French oral that afternoon, and she stared as if I came from an
alien planet.

"Didn't you?"  I asked.

"Suppose I did," she granted.  "A long time back.  Seems so, anyway."
Then she switched on some appearance of interest.  "How did it go?"

"All right, I think.  Except when we got on to politics."

"I thought that was banned: politics, sex and religion.

Dangerous stuff for the innocent young mind."  She was mocking me.

"It was about the European Union.  I said I hadn't much interest in the
idea of a super state and was happier with literature.  So then we got
on to something I knew a bit about."

"Good move; manipulate the bastards.  Anyway, why work at French?  I
suppose you'll turn into a scientist like your father."

"No, I shan't."

She gave a scoffing laugh.  "You can't help it.  It's in the genes.
Like your red hair."

"Actually I'm more like my mother."

She looked hard at me, one eyebrow stagily raised.  "But she's only a
stepmother, isn't she?"

Beryl started lighting a cigarette from the butt of her previous one
and didn't catch me staring back.  I couldn't believe she'd be so
undiplomatic, but that wasn't what jarred me.  Although back at the Uni
she'd had no idea who I was, yet she knew about my actual relationship
with Leila.  How could she, unless from my father having discussed it
with her?

How much intimate family information had been passed on as gossip?
Would she even know how I'd persuaded Leila to henna her hair, so we'd
look like real mother and daughter?  I'd meant my father to know that,
to hurt him, but I hadn't thought he'd noticed.

There followed a silence which had to be filled.  "Have you met my
brother?"  I asked.

She was sucking in smoke, her eyes lazily half-closed.  "No idea.
What's he called?"

"Edward."

"I know three Edwards.  The name's common enough.  How did he get into
the conversation?"

I wasn't quite sure myself.  The lowering sun shone full in my eyes and
seemed to leave swirling disks in the dark when I closed them.  "He's
going to be a scientist," I said.

"How frantically exciting."  Her drawling tone said the opposite.

I considered.  She was right: as conversation it was pretty limp.  But
then so would be any topic I had to offer.  She'd apparently forgotten
her suggestion that we get to know each other.

We had sat there quite a lot longer than the half hour my father had
mentioned.  Beryl had twice renewed our drinks.  A number of cars had
driven into the inn's yard, and the saloon bar behind us was noisily
beginning to fill up for the evening.  Others came outside with their
drinks and I hoped no one would think to question my age.  Beryl had
been wise to make me leave my blazer in the car.  There was nothing
specifically schoolish about my plain white shirt and grey skirt.

I must have been dozing when her mobile phone started warbling.  She
pulled it out of her shoulder-bag and murmured into it, "About time
too."  And then, "Oh no!  Shit!  I'm not sure I can."  Her voice had
turned sulky.  "Well, all right then, but it's a bloody bore all the
same.  You'd better make it worth my while."

She snapped the phone off and stuffed it back in her bag.  "He wants me
to see you home."

I supposed she meant my father, but it made no difference one way or
the other.  I was already past caring who said what, where I went, what
I did.  It would be good, I thought, to find somewhere soft to lie down
and sleep.

I vaguely remember getting to the car, being helped in and its stored
heat hitting me.  For security she had left all its windows tightly
closed and it was facing into the sun.  My head lolled forward on the
fascia which bobbled disagreeably as she started the car and we lurched
out on to the road.  At some more distant moment she was shaking me,
demanding something, then shouting again into her phone.

The last I was conscious of was her exasperated swearing.  "Now he's
shut the fucking thing off!  How can I get the little cow home if I
don't know where she lives?"

At some time after that the nightmare must have begun to build, but I
had no recollection of it when I awoke at last in my own bed.  Early
light was beginning to show at the edges of the curtains.

I knew I'd been in the pub garden and that I'd unknowingly drunk
something strongly alcoholic.  In the past I'd had wine in small
quantities at home with special meals, and it had never affected me.
This was different.  I hoped I hadn't been sick or objectionable to
anyone.

I remembered Eddie coming home drunk once, back at Caversham.  Father
had been away, and Leila helped the cabbie get Eddie indoors and
upstairs to his room.  Disturbed by the shouted abuse and horrible
retchings I had lain sweating in my bed, until a flaming dawn was
breaking over the Chilterns, and I was convinced that something
horrendous had changed our lives forever.

But Eddie had recovered; Leila had put me right.  "We all make
mistakes," she said.  "It's best not to dwell on them.  I'm sure Eddie
will have a word with you about it."

And he had.  He apologized.  "I'm sorry if I frightened you," he said.
"I never knew the state I was in."

I'd told him it was just the noise that woke me: a bit of banging and
crashing on the stairs.

He made a lemon-sucking face.  "Well, there's one thing I do know now,"
he said.  "Drink's something I can't take.  Perhaps it's just as
well."

What he'd said then, about not being able to take it, stayed in my
mind.  So I guess I'm the same with alcohol and it's a family thing.

I slept in late that Saturday after my meeting with Beryl Ryder, only
waking properly in mid-afternoon feeling headachy, sick and confused.
Over the next couple of days tender red patches on my flesh gradually
went purple and later greenish yellow.  They felt like bruises.  On my
upper arms dark finger marks showed, so I guessed I'd been unsteady on
my feet and needed firm holding; but the patches of bruising on my
inner thighs were bigger and quite painful.  They frightened me,
because I couldn't account for them.  When Leila came home and
suggested we went swimming I had to cry off.  I didn't dare let her
see, for fear of what they might signify.  I don't think Father had
mentioned the episode to her, and I was too ashamed to.

The effects weren't only physical.  My mind was affected.  I guess it
was like one of those ancient cinema films Granny called 'the flicks'.
From almost total darkness a shutter kept opening on slits of light and
fragments of images.  These terrible flashes came when I least expected
and were gone before I could account for them.  And there were alarming
sensations following certain movements.  I felt vertigo as I tried to
rise from a chair or walk across a stretch of floor.

Often after sleep I've been conscious of having dreamed but can't
remember specifically what happened, yet the certainty is there because
the dream's atmosphere hangs on.  I know I've been to a frightening
place, or been worried, or experiencing delight or been warmly
comforted: the glow or the unease remains as I come awake.  And
sometimes I know exactly who I've been with, yet have no idea of any
incident we were involved in.  It was the same now: the sensation that
came back in waves was one of absolute terror.

Now I tried to explain away these flashes of confused dream as a
chemical effect, the action of alcohol on my hormones.  I'm adolescent,
so surely my body chemistry is still dodgy.  But that doesn't excuse,
doesn't account for, everything that disturbed me.  As well as the
physical evidence of bruising, there were strangers' faces, or
part-faces, that flashed up without warning.

The most terrible and recurrent was of eyes pressing so close over me
that they had merged into a single black beetle-shape.  And then they
would reappear less close, separate, with pinpoint dark irises set in a
strangely mottled pale blue, which made me think of tie-dye jeans with
the colour washed out.

Off and on came a partial face which was familiar.  My father's, livid
with fury, hanging over me, mouthing, but his words never reached me. I
supposed he must have fetched me home and been disgusted at the state I
was in.  But home from where, I had no idea.

By the time I felt well enough to show my face that Saturday evening my
father had left the house, so there was to be no explanation required
from either of us.  Before Leila went north she had left a number of
pre-cooked dishes in the freezer to be heated up, and Mrs.  Chadwick
was coming in over the weekend to look after us.  Not that I felt much
like eating.

Since Father was out there was little for her to do.  I told her I
would clear away and load the dishwasher, to prevent her staying to see
me empty my plate into the trash bin.

From then until Leila got back from Yorkshire on Sunday evening I spent
much of the time on the garden swing or face down in the overlong grass
making a pretence of reading.  I slept a little, but that was no more
restful than my wakeful unease.  It seemed more and more likely that
there was something wrong with me, in my brain.

Unexpectedly my father returned that Sunday about a quarter to eight.
For some reason I had thought he wouldn't be back.  I suppose it was
because of seeing him with Beryl.  Although they'd both tried to give
the impression she worked at the Uni, I wasn't fooled.  Quite when I'd
first known about his 'little friends' I'm not certain, but I knew
there was always someone there in the background, important to him but
outside the family.  A mistress, but only of sorts, because he'd always
have to be the master.  She would be something less.

How Leila felt about this was unclear.  I suppose she accepted it,
expecting nothing better from him.  I couldn't be like that, not with
anyone I'd ever loved.  She was always so calm.  She should have
shouted at him or thrown things, like deceived wives in televison
plays.  It would do him good to feel afraid of someone.

He arrived as I was helping unload goods from the boot of Leila's car:
boxes of fancy stationery, novelties and heavy albums containing
samples of new greetings cards.  She was tired from long hours of
driving and he made the most of grumbling that she took on so much. Not
that he was concerned for her, just for himself, because he had always
to be in control.

That's how it would have been on Friday night too.  He was furious with
me for stepping out of line, but he wouldn't care at all how I was
feeling now.  As they went indoors he was still quibbling over some
detail of the route she'd taken.

Leila had passed me her key-ring.  Since we'd come to this house she'd
been letting me put her car away in the garage.  It would be eighteen
months before I could appply for a licence, but I took every chance I
could get of practice off public roads.  I was specially proud of my
skill in reversing, to park exactly level with the BMW and dead centre
in the allotted space.

Tonight, however, the BMW wasn't there.  Either my father had taken a
cab home or someone had dropped him off.  With my head bent over the
Volvo's boot I hadn't noticed his arrival.  Perhaps it had been in
Beryl's little Fiat.  So had Leila picked up on it?  It all seemed
tedious and unnecessary.  I would leave them to the routine exchanges,
he bickering, she silently shock-absorbing.

My old Raleigh bicycle was leaning against the garage's inner wall
where I'd left it after the nextdoor boy fixed the chain for me.  I
wheeled it out and stood astride it facing the roadway.  The lamp was a
bit dodgy but it came on after I hit it once or twice.  Perhaps by now
indoors they'd reached the subject of my misdemeanours and Leila was
getting the flak off it.  Better I shouldn't be there.  They might even
think I'd slunk off to bed.  It seemed a good time not to be around.

Chapter 15

All day the oppressive heat had been building.  Evening brought no
relief.  Dark bands of cloud were closing over the yellowed skyline and
the sultry air was disturbed by quirky little gusts of wind.  One
moment all was totally still, and then dust eddies were swirling across
the surface of the road.  I stood on my pedals and looking up saw the
early stars blacking out in twos and threes overhead around a half-moon
in tatters of smoky cloud.

Our house stands high on a thickly wooded ridge that falls steeply
towards open farmland.  At the drive's end I turned left to free wheel
downhill towards where the Chess snakes out to the Thames.  There was
no sound but the soft whirring of the bike's spokes and once the faint
two-note hoot of a distant turbo train with its tantalizing hint of
travel.  I would have given anything then to get right away.

Halfway through the tunnel of arched beeches my headlamp flickered
three times and went out.  Now the darkness was total until, between
sparser trees, lit windows became visible pricked out like stars.  Then
to either side were sloping fields that gleamed dully under fleeting
moonlight, with hedgerows black and flat as stage scenery.

Between me and Mardham Village in the hollow straggled a few small
cottages showing yellow, uncurtained windows.  Then came the halogen
glare of a farm's floodlit stockyard.  A diffused orange glow over the
distant town was reflected on the underside of felty overcast clouds,
and strung out towards the horizon a receding double strand of sodium
lights marked out the curving motorway, diminishing with distance like
an exercise in perspective.

Ahead, occasional white scuts of rabbits flickered as they caught the
whirr of my bike, and instantly, like juggled balls, they were bouncing
away, behind invisible bodies.  The road began to flatten.  I braked
towards level ground and then, before the river's hump-backed bridge,
the first fat raindrops spattered my bare arms.  Lightning instantly
lit the sky from behind.  There were a hundred new scents released by
the rain.

The storm came on fast with a sheering downpour and heavy thunder.
There was no shelter but the occasional tree and I'd sense enough not
to go for that.  If I returned by the route I'd come the steep gradient
would force me to dismount and push uphill for most of the way.  The
alternative was to pedal fast through Mardham and take the more gently
rising loop back to the far end of our road.  A further half-mile, but
in the long run it must be quicker.

Already my cotton shirt clung like a second skin to my back.  Water was
trickling down my forehead.  I'd been a fool not to take account of the
weather; but at least this was a normal kind of disaster, one I'd be
capable of handling.  No challenge to my sanity.

There was no let-up.  If anything the deluge increased.  Thunder
doesn't worry me, but the vivid flashes set my heart racing.  Fork
lightning flashed against the blackness like gigantic incandescent
roots, violet-white.  One strike was close, exploding with a violent
hissing, and the air was filled with an acrid tang like cordite after a
gun's been fired.  Somewhere not far off a tree flared like a beacon.

With my head down, I pedalled on through a cowed village where all
windows were close-curtained and the street lamps' pale globes had
little effect.

Beyond it, for even the gentler climb, I should have dismounted because
the lane fast became a gulley with storm-water gushing down between
raised banks.  My front wheel went suddenly from under me and I was
pitched into the flow, an elbow grazing on invisible flints.

I sat up in the lane which had turned into a stream and I shouted with
anger.

One moment I was alone and then next there was this man looming over
me, motionless.  He looked immense, tall and sinister in a black
mackintosh that reached down over his rubber boots.  On his head a
wide-brimmed rain-hat kept his face obscured.

"Should I help you?"  he asked doubtfully.

"What do you think?"  I spat back.  "I'm not sitting here for
pleasure."

He disentangled the bike from my legs and hauled me up.  "One can't
tell," he said mildly, 'quite how independent ladies require to be
these days."

It sounded too bland and I suspected irony.  His grip on my arms in
lifting me had been vice-like.  I didn't dare let him see how scared of
him I was.

"I suggest," he said, 'we give up on the lane and take to the higher
fields."

Anything would be better than the ankle-deep torrent we were standing
in, but I remembered the stranger I'd always been warned against as a
child.  Although I'd mocked the idea then, it didn't seem so
melodramatic now.

But it was sordid inner cities where thugs and perverts existed, not
the rolling Chiltern countryside.  Here they were as improbable as
vampires.  And outrages happened with a different sort of people, not
the kind we lived among.

That's what I'd believed until... Until what?

Despite the hot anger of a moment before, there came a flash of terror.
It was illogical, but for a bare instant my mind lurched with a sort of
half-memory.  Something terrifying from the past, although I didn't
know what.  But I could no longer believe I was invulnerable.

No one knew where I was.  If anything happened I was on my own.  If I
disappeared who would think to go looking for me, supposedly safe in my
own room at home?  Not my father.  He hadn't brought his car back today
and he detested any kind of rain.  Not that it would cross his mind to
check on me unless he needed something.  Now that Leila was back that
was less likely.

What was the matter with me that I should get this fit of nerves?

I tried to shake off the fear but a disturbing resonance hung on:
danger.  I could become a victim.

The man stood waiting sideways on to the steep bank, one leg braced
ready to climb.  His heroic stance made me think of a highwayman.  The
wind flicked open the ends of his long coat.  I could see now that,
like the hat, it was of black leather, the sort I connected with old
war films and the Gestapo.  He held my bicycle almost effortlessly
under one arm.  The front wheel looked mangled.  Perhaps he was
burdened enough to be incapable of violence.  Unless he hurled the bike
at me.

I had to do something; used the edges of my trainers like skis to dig
into the soggy grass, and staggered, sideways-on and slithering, to the
top.  And there I turned to run straight into barbed wire.  Some
bastard farmer had thought fit to break the country code here.

The man reached out to where my shirt and jeans were caught fast.  The
more I pulled away the more I tore them and slashed my arms.  I could
feel warm blood running down one to the wrist.

Then I heard the bike dropped.

"Stand utterly still," he ordered.  "Each barb has to be unhooked
separately."

A brilliant flash of lightning lit the figure bent over me with his
fingers in my clothes.  I saw a lean, curved profile like Mr.  Punch,
brows knitted in concentration, a prominent nose with deep lines etched
from bridge to chin.

"You're in a real pickle."  His fingers stilled as he considered his
own words.  "That's a curious expression, when you come to think.
Soused in vinegar and onions: you're hardly that."

He was unbelievable.  I started laughing, uncontrollably.

"Steady," he warned.  Did he know I was almost screaming inside?  He
gripped my upper arms tightly a moment, hurting the bruises already
there.  I hiccuped into silence.  Then he began again plucking the torn
cloth off the wires.  "You must shout if I hurt you," he said.  "I
can't properly see what we've got here."

Then a humorous snort.  "If it's any consolation, you weren't the first
to be hooked.  And he handed me an oily wad of sheep's wool he'd
untangled with my shirt.

"You chose a fine night for a cycle ride," he commented drolly.

I didn't explain that I'd simply had to get away from the house, so
turned it on him.  "What were you doing out here anyway?"

"Needing fresh air.  It's been a helluva day."

"Doing what?  I mean, what are you?"

There was a pause while he decided how truthful to be.  "I'm - a
company director.  It was my bad share day."

So he chose to joke, but it was evasive.  Any fool knew the stock
exchange wasn't open on a Sunday.  Besides he didn't look the part:
more stagey, like an actor in a thriller film.  I asked no more
questions and volunteered nothing about myself.

We located a gate in the barbed wire fence and squelched through wet
meadow-grass that whipped my bare ankles, then circled a field of
ripening maize.  By now the thunder sounded more distant and the rain
had lessened, but the damage was already done.

Finally we reached the top, gaining level ground through a spinney
where a beaten path led off to the road, my road.  When I recognized
where we'd come out I managed an ungracious, "I'll be all right now,"
as a brush-off.  "Thanks for helping."

"You can't go home like that," he said.  "You'll scare your folks to
death.  My sister can put something on your scratches and lend
something to cover you up

"I don't need'

But we had arrived right opposite his cottage and a woman was
silhouetted in the brightly lit doorway.  "Is that you at last?"  she
called.  "What on earth are you doing with that old bike?"

She sounded so normal that I shrugged off any remains of fear.  Just a
little resentment hung on, at having publicly made such a fool of
myself.  And I didn't want my father to catch me looking like this.
Especially after Friday's mess-up.

Inside, the cottage was tiny and bright with unframed colour sketches
taped to the whitewashed walls.  There were bean bags to sit on, or
disappear in, and funnily they didn't look out of place against the
antique furniture.

The sister, whose name was Morgan, conjured up a fluffy bath towel and
almost pushed me through to the shower room.  "A period piece," she
excused it.  "You pull a chain here to get the water.  But it's hot and
there's plenty.  I'll just go and rustle up some dry clothes for
you."

I stood a long while under the deluge until the gravel rash and the
rips on my arm were cleared of blood and mud.  The skin smarted afresh
and I noticed that the bruises which came up yesterday had darkened to
a rich plum colour.  I was wrapped in the warm towel when Morgan passed
me the clothes round the screen: a red silk blouse and snugly fitting
jeans which for me just needed the ends turned up.  I emerged feeling
more human.

The blouse was sleeveless and I couldn't miss her glancing at my
bruised arms and then meeting her brother's eyes with something like a
nod of affirmation.  It made me wonder what each had been saying about
me while the shower had drowned out all sound of voices from the
adjoining room.  She insisted on smoothing antiseptic cream on the new
cuts, her pretty face puckered with mild concern.

Her brother I still didn't known his name and felt embarrassed about
asking was making coffee in the minute kitchen.  I'd meant to leave at
once but the coffee smelled so good I was won over, so we all ended in
the bean bags, Morgan neatly, and her brother's long body making an
angular zigzag, his splayed knees above the level of his head.

Now I could observe him more closely.  It was a long, humorous face
with a baroque mouth, but, even without that

Gestapo leather coat, I still found him formidable.  I had let him get
away with a lie over his profession, but I felt I'd best not stray far
from the truth in anything I told him.

It was tempting to stay on.  The old cottage was snug and comforting. I
didn't look forward to the chill newness of Knollhurst and possible
further encounters with my father.  Without saying as much, I found I
was explaining myself a little.  They asked the usual questions about
school, then about the move here from Caversham; which in turn brought
up my father's transfer to the University of London.

"Our father was a professor too," Morgan said.  "An archaeologist, so
even in the holidays we didn't see a lot of him.  He was always away on
digs.  I'm afraid we both found that sort of thing rather slow and
preferred travelling to more racy places with Mother.  She's a doctor
of sorts."

So then I told them about Leila, how really cool she was, although
strictly only a step-mum.  I didn't remember my biological mother
except as an invalid in a nursing-home.

"Are you an only?"  Morgan asked sympathetically.

Being proud of Eddie and his brilliant A-levels, I told her about his
year off before Cambridge, how he'd been sponsored to sit in on
American space research, observing biomechanics and robotics.

"M'm, impressive," she said.  "So do you take after your father too?"

"No."

Even to myself it sounded abrupt.  I rushed in to cover up.  "Eddie
doesn't either, not as a person.  Just in the brains department.  I'm
not so bright.  If I go to college it will be on the Arts side.  My
best subjects are Languages and History.  I'm taking French and Italian
GCSEs this year in advance.  As soon as as those exams are over I'll be
free of school until September.  Two years of sixth form after that."

"Then what?"  Morgan's brother asked from the depths of his bean bag.

"I don't know.  I'd like to go abroad.  Granny Knightley lives in
Provence.  Leila might work it for me to go out there."

"Good practice for your French.  Will your father agree to it?"

"He doesn't think Granny would be much... I mean, they aren't all that
close.  Anyway it's not a good time to ask him at the moment."  I was
embarrassed at having to explain that much, so said no more.  The very
thought of approaching him when I was in disgrace brought back the
confusion of Friday.

It wasn't really fair to blame me for getting drunk.  I hadn't known
the stuff was so strong, though I should have guessed Beryl Ryder was
out to make mischief.  The moment she had clapped eyes on me there had
been a sort of spark between us.  Of malice, I was sure now.

Morgan had set up a low Moorish table between us with a beaten brass
top and a matching tray with coffee and biscuits.  "It's decaff," she
said, 'in case you're afraid it might stop you sleeping tonight."

"I don't think anything would do that."  In fact my eyelids were
already heavy.  I seemed to have done little else but sleep since
Friday, when whatever had happened happened.

I was taking a bourbon biscuit from the plate offered me when I caught
the intense look in her eyes and I knew, just knew, I had seen her
before, recently; seen that same piercing expression on her face.  Only
she had looked different then in some way.  "Have we met before?"  I
blurted out.

She hesitated, as her brother had done when I asked him what he was.
"That's not likely is it?  You've only just moved here from Caversham,
you said."

It wasn't a direct lie like his, but she was turning my question off. I
wondered what they had to hide, and I was quite certain now that I had
met her before, even been involved with her in some way.  There was
this stupid business of forgetting and only half-remembering what had
happened late They took it all right when I abruptly said I had to go.
157

Morgan insisted I borrow a plastic mackintosh although it seemed to
have stopped raining.

"Your bike," her brother reminded me.  "I'll let you have it back when
it's fixed."

"Please don't bother.  I mean, I'll get it seen to."

"My pleasure."

I was sure it wouldn't be.  He didn't look the sort to be any good with
fiddly jobs.  His fingers were long and slender, for all that, like his
face, they were suntanned to a rich mahogany.

He had risen.  "I'll see you to your door."

"No thanks."  It was one occasion when he'd have to accept female
emancipation.  He picked that up at once.  "Well, see you around," he
compromised.  Morgan handed me my own wet things in a plastic
carrier.

The air outside was fresher now, the moon only momentarily obscured by
moving cloud.  The front of our house was in darkness except for the
porch lantern which burned all night.  I still had Leila's key-ring so
I slipped noiselessly in, listened to locate where the others were and
decided that, at eleven-fifteen, they'd retired early.

Leila would have assumed that I'd discreetly withdrawn from any
threatening row with my father.  I wondered what account of my
drunkenness he'd given her.  Or if he'd even bothered.

Chapter 16

She bent close over me and I screamed, lashing out with my fists.  But
it was Leila.  I didn't see how it could be.  Leila wouldn't hurt me.

"Chloe, it's all right.  You were having a nightmare."

From the next room she must have heard me call out.  Because I was
threatened.  With a tumbler of something salty being poured down my
throat.  And the face!  not hers but Morgan's, yet looking different,
with the fair curls scraped tightly back into a bun under a starched
white cap.

"What was the dream about?"

"I was in a sort of hospital, I think.  Oh, it was all confused."

"But you aren't.  You're at home.  There's nothing wrong with you, is
there?"

"No.  I - I'm fine."

"So go to sleep again.  You've another four hours.  Tomorrow we'll go
swimming.  How's that?"

"Lovely."

Leila knew, because I'd once told her, how sometimes in good dreams I'm
blissfully cutting through turquoise water, butterfly stroke, with the
sun glistening on my wet arms.  She thought I had only to close my
eyes, think of that, and then any dream would be a happy one.  Perhaps
she'd forgotten that tomorrow I'd be sitting my last two exam papers.

She squeezed my shoulder and went quietly away.  I was afraid to relax
because asleep something bad lurked just out of sight to get at me.  It
was like moving in the dark through an unfamiliar room, knowing someone
stood behind a curtain there waiting to leap out.

It was not just Morgan.  Another face, a man's, seemed to come and go,
emerging and fading in a fog.  Someone younger, pale, gaunt-eyed,
suddenly there in a subliminal flash, the features frozen
expressionless, his very blankness horrific.  An unknown.  He hadn't
any place in my life, yet he had me deadly afraid.  I was far outside
the safe world Leila wanted to wrap me in.

Had I actually agreed to her suggestion?  Stupid, stupid!  I couldn't
let her see me in a swimsuit because of the bruises.  Tomorrow, after
school, I'd have to make excuses, and hope she didn't guess I'd
something to hide.

I switched on the table lamp by my bed and reached for a book.  From
the page where I'd left the marker I read empty words, sentences,
mechanically turned pages, but it all passed my eyes without reaching
my mind.  Again I was seeing flashes that I couldn't account for,
incidents from some violent film I don't ever remember watching.

Eventually I must have fallen asleep.  I awoke to hear the house
stirring to life, and my bedside lamp was still on.  I felt heavy and
sluggish, in no way prepared to face my Italian Composition paper.
Leila insisted on my eating a breakfast of grapefruit and marmalade
toast.  Then she dropped me at my bus stop on her way to the shop.
"Don't worry about the exam.  You'll be fine.  We'll swim this
evening," she promised.  So in the night it hadn't been said just to
calm me.

Being with the other girls, letting their chatter wash over me, helped;
but still it was an effort to pull my mind together.  It was only half
an hour into the first paper that I began to tackle it as if it was
real.  I forced myself to eat some lunch: shepherd's pie with green
beans, and much too heavy for another steamy day.  Last night's storm
had done little to break the heatwave.

The afternoon paper was Comprehension, which I found easier to get
into.  Afterwards I joined in the others' moans and groans as expected,
although I knew I'd made quite a good job of it.  And then there yawned
a great void ahead: the extended summer holiday, because public-exam
candidates were allowed to skip the rest of term, and my few papers had
been early ones.  I decided to drop into the town library and pick up
something to focus my mind on.

We were a group of five as far as the council offices and after that I
continued alone.  Crossing by the fish market I had the silly idea that
someone was following me.  It was so strong that I stepped inside among
all the smells of dead flesh and disinfectant, the rattling of buckets
and robust slapping of scaly bodies on wet chopping blocks.

I pretended to be examining the bright pink steaks of salmon, then
turned quickly and looked all around behind.  Monday's not a busy day
for selling fish, and most people shop there in the morning anyway.
Among the small number there I should have been able to pick out anyone
I knew.

No one appeared out of place or interested in me.

"Yes, miss.  What'll it be then?"  demanded the man in a striped apron
and straw hat.  I mumbled that I was only looking, and moved off.  I
glanced back once as I left, and it seemed that a shadowy figure
slipped away behind one of the hall's iron pillars.

Not a real sighting.  Just another of those flashes that kept bothering
me; either half-memories or overexcited fancy.  When I reached the
library I would look up epilepsy in a medical dictionary.  There was
something called petit mal but I didn't know exactly what it was, or
how it started.  I wondered if that was what my mother had suffered
from.  Nobody had ever explained to me why she'd been an invalid or how
it had started.  It could be one of those genetic things.

In the library Philip, the dishy young assistant, wasn't on duty at the
desk.  Instead, when I'd chosen three books at random from the fiction
section I took them with my card to Miss Humphreys.  She was a
massive-fronted dragon whom I usually managed to avoid.  She barely
looked at me until she was taking my card from the key slot.  Then she
fixed me with her severe wire-framed gaze and said, "I think we have
some property of yours, Miss Knightley."

She reached for a package farther along the counter and handed it to
me, a quite fat A4 envelope.  Before I could deny it was mine she
launched her reprimand: I should really take better care of my
belongings.  The library staff had more than enough to do without
scurrying round tidying up after the public.  I was lucky it hadn't
been locked away in Lost Property, since it hadn't my address on it.

She was right; it hadn't.  But my name was there, typewritten with a
new-looking black ribbon: Chloe Knightley.  She tucked it firmly
between two of my books, looked past me and said, "Next, please," as
friendly as a flatiron.

There seemed to be quite a lot inside the envelope.  I knew I had never
seen it before, so someone had left it, intending it to be handed to me
next time I came in.  And since it hadn't yet reached the Lost Property
cupboard, that person must have left it a matter of minutes before.

Out in the torrid street I hugged my books to me and squatted on the
low wall by the bus stop, with the park railings hard against my back.
One bus must just have gone because there was no queue waiting.  So
with twelve minutes or so to spare I laid the books down and eased the
envelope open with a fingernail while the traffic droned past, building
towards rush hour.

Inside were six glossy black and white photographs and no note to cover
them.

I had never seen porn before, but that's what these must be.  No way
could you call it Art.

The shots were of a woman's naked body squirming in obscene positions,
brightly front-lit.  Two of them showed the photographer's squat,
cruciform shadow projected across her white flesh.  Long hair, tangled
and rat-tailed, barely allowed a glimpse of her eyes closed in mock
ecstasy.  The rest of her face was in deep shadow.  The last shot was
every bit as obscene, although she wore a filmy, translucent dress.  It
was long and seemed to have a snaky pattern.  In only this picture was
the face revealed.

With horror I found I was staring at my own.  I appeared to be
asleep.

Automatically I boarded the bus, showed my pass, found a seat.  I felt
nothing, except some difficulty in breathing.

Time must have passed as I sat there unbelieving.  And yet it made
sense now.  It accounted for so much: the confusion, the film-clip
flashes of memory, the bruising.

I didn't think any more that I'd been drunk.  This was due to more than
alcohol.  I'd read sometime in a newspaper about what they called the
date-rape drug.  I could even remember its commercial name: Rohypnol.
Dentists sometimes used it, and there was a similar veterinary product
which sometimes got loose on the market.

There had been women who innocently accepted drinks from a stranger.
Perhaps as much as a day later they'd woken to the sort of state I'd
been in, with whole passages of time missing from their lives.  They'd
suffered the same symptoms.  The friendly stranger as they'd thought
had drugged and abducted them, then raped them while they were
helpless.  To anyone watching as they left the bar, the women had
seemed a little drunk, not unwilling to be led away.  Even
co-operative.

Now it had happened to me.  I'd been given something like that, when
I'd been with Beryl Ryder.  How could she let it happen?  And why would
she?

But she hadn't been alone.  I recalled the shadowy sightings - a man, a
decadent with pale eyes like washed-out blue denim, the pupils
pinpoints.  And Morgan, dressed to look like a nurse.

How much of that was nightmare fantasy, and how much real?  And I'd
thought I'd seen my father looking furious.  Perhaps that was a memory
escaped from some earlier time I'd offended him.  How would I ever
know?

But then I didn't want ever to know.

I found the bus had gone past my stop and I rushed to get off,
clutching my library books and the package with the revolting
photographs.  Now I'd nearly a mile to walk back.

I'd need all of that to get a grip on myself before facing Leila.  She
hadn't offered to pick me up today expecting us to hang about after the
last exam or go off to discuss it over milkshakes.  That was one thing
to be glad of.

I started to walk, and to try sorting things in my mind.  My mind which
I'd thought I'd been going out of.  Now I knew I wasn't sick in quite
that way.

But there were other horrors every bit as bad: what had actually
happened.  I could have been made pregnant.

Bile came up in my mouth.  Whatever had happened was too far back now
for any precautions to work.  I knew there was a 'morning-after' pill
but it was too late even for that.  And what about AIDS?  HIV?  I
should really see a doctor, but I didn't dare.  I would just have to
wait and see what happened.  How could I, though, with so much hanging
over me?

I had to find Beryl Ryder.  She had a lot to answer for.  She had
certainly laced my drink at that pub.  Where had she dropped me off
afterwards?  Maybe she'd taken the photographs too.  The idea shamed
me.  I wasn't sure I could trust myself to get in touch.

Was I imagining the way she'd looked at me once she knew who I was?
With silent amusement.  Could she be so coldly malicious, the
sixth-former I'd admired because she was beautiful and, as I thought,
sophisticated?

I still wasn't ready to face Leila by the time I reached home.  I
couldn't believe I ever would be.  She was in the front garden planning
where she'd plant a Viburnum hedge.  She saluted me jauntily with a
soily trowel but I went right past.

"I'm going for a shower and then early bed," I said shortly.  "I
couldn't face going out tonight."

"Whatever you like," she offered.  I'd worried her, but she doesn't
fuss.

I'd reached the foot of the stairs when I thought of something and went
back to her.  "Do you think I could borrow your mobile?  I've a couple
of calls to make.  I promise I won't run you up an immense bill."

"Of course.  The phone's in my shoulder bag in the kitchen."

I helped myself to it and to the current area phone directory from the
study.  Then, as I'd said I'd do, I showered; but no amount of standing
under the water and soaping myself off would ever get rid of what had
happened to me.

In bed I looked up the Ryder number.  There were only two entries for
that name and one was for Truck Rental, so I chose the other.  It still
took me a long time to get round to ringing it.

It must have been her mother who answered; a languid, rather artificial
voice.  "Beryl's not here," she told me.  "Who shall I tell her
called?"

When I gave my name and was halfway through my number she snapped back,
"She has it, as you must know.  I'm quite sure she won't want to
trouble you by ringing back, Mrs.  Knightley."  Then the line went dead
and the dialling tone returned.

It rather stunned me, but her mistake was understandable.  So Beryl's
mother knew about her affair with my father and had probably heard her
ringing him at this number.  She'd taken me for Leila, not knowing her
first name.  Now she might not pass on to Beryl that I'd rung.  Perhaps
that was a good thing.

But it seems that she did.

I was lying sleepless at a quarter to eight when the downstairs phone
rang and Leila called up that it was for me.  "Beryl someone," she said
as she passed the handset across.

The voice on the other end sounded a little breathless, and something
more, perhaps uneasy.

I made certain the kitchen door was fast closed on Leila before
speaking.  "I want to know," I said as firmly as I could, 'exactly what
you were up to on Friday.  And as for the photographs, you've no hope
of blackmailing me.  I've no money of my own.  You must realise
that."

There was a silence.  I tried to picture her face and couldn't.  Then,
"What photographs?"

It sounded like genuine incredulity.  But with someone like Beryl how
could I tell?

"Listen," she said threateningly.  "It's not my fault you got sloshed.
You ought to be thanking me for what I did for you."

It was unbelievable.  "Did what for me?"

"Got your dad to come out and pick you up.  I even undressed you and
put you to bed at home.  I'm not surprised you don't remember.  You
were out cold at that point.  He was disgusted.  Lucky it was your
mum's weekend away.

"And don't forget I want the dress back.  It cost somebody a helluva
lot of money.  Make sure it's dry-cleaned, in case you puked all down
it."

I didn't know what she was talking about, any more than she'd appeared
to know about the photographs.  I put the receiver down and went,
sickly, back to bed.

The thought of Beryl here in my room, touching my things, undressing
me, filled me with added disgust.  And then, remembering how uneasy
she'd sounded at first, I knew why: because of the little sachet of
white powder I'd found in my bedding.  It could have been in her pocket
and dropped out when she manhandled me.  Maybe some of my bruises had
happened then.  But she wasn't sure she'd lost it here.  As far as she
knew it could be anywhere.

Next morning I knew I had to get away.  I would tell Leila I'd arranged
with Granny to stay with her for a week or two.  I might even do that,
but only after I'd been for a medical check-up.

I couldn't trust any local doctor not to gas to Leila or my father, so
it would have to be in London or even further away.  I'd have to go
private and use an assumed name.  And the fee must come out of my
holiday money.

Meanwhile I saw no point in pushing Beryl any further,

but there was someone else who might be more forthcoming.  I wasn't
fooled anymore by her apparent niceness when she'd offered me coffee
and dry clothes after my drenching.  She'd been anything but a friend
to me the first time I saw her, forcing that salty drink on me.  The
image had hardened in my memory and I knew for sure now that it was
Morgan.  Morgan who might, or might not, be a nurse.  And nurses had
access to all kinds of drugs.

So that was why I dressed and went out, saying I needed fresh air.
Which was how I came to get really involved with the Gregorys, all
three of them, just trying to get myself sorted out.

Investigation

Chapter 17

Sunday 4 July

Chloe wandered out into the darkening garden and sat on the broken
stone seat they'd retrieved from a tangle of brambles.  Through the big
windows she could see Janey moving about the kitchen illuminated like a
stage set by the harsh strip lighting.

Leila had intended changing it, re jigging completely with new cooker,
fittings, the lot.  Now it would never happen.  Everything had been
struck dead.  A part of her, Chloe knew, had gone the same way.

At Granny's she'd been getting over the shame and the shock of what had
happened in her own life, sorting herself out and facing up.  Then this
unbelievable horror of Leila's killing.  Today was the worst ever, so
immeasurably long, starting in Nice and then ending in nightmare.

She tried not to see the physical murder in her mind, but that was
impossible.  It had happened in only one actual way, but a hundred
dreadful images of it overwhelmed her.  To break free of them she
needed to know exactly who, and how, and the full agony of the reality.
But she didn't yet dare face up to it.  Oh God, not yet.

The sight of Janey getting on with life was offensive.  Yet she was
showing guts.  No one could deny Janey had loved Leila.  As I did,
Chloe admitted.  It was terrible to think did, not does.  Because the
love was still there, in the great gap that had appeared.

Janey seemed to be hunting for something, pulling out a kitchen chair
and climbing up to peer in the top cupboards.  Chloe brushed grit off
the seat of her jeans and went in to help.

"Ah," Janey said.  "That big brown pottery thing she does the
casseroles in; have you any idea where it's been put?  I thought I'd
start tomorrow's steak off tonight; let it cook slowly for an hour or
two."

"Does the casseroles in..."  She was having the same trouble with
tenses.

Chloe went through to the conservatory and retrieved the pot from where
the cleaned china had been stacked.  Under the trestle table Leila's
yellow rubber gloves hung over the edge of a bucket, plumped out as if
her hands were still curled in them, but weirdly collapsed.

She hugged the pot to her, its bright highlights on the heavy brown
glaze comfortingly familiar.  Continuity: that was something.

"Anything you'd like me to do?"  she asked Janey, back in the
kitchen.

"Could you trot down to Hetty Chadwick's and say I'd like a word with
her when it's convenient.  I could phone but it's better face to face
since we barely know each other."

"Right."

Passing the first of the old cottages she noticed the absence of
lights.  No sign of Morgan or her brother.  Next-door the chenille
curtains had been closed but sounds of the television escaped from an
open casement.  She recognised the opening music of the Sunday evening
serial.  Mrs.  Chadwick wouldn't care to have her regular viewing
interrupted.

Chloe hadn't accounted for the woman's priority of the real world over
the screen one.  Or perhaps it was just unhealthy curiosity.  "I'll
come right away," she offered.  "Just a sec while I put me shoes on."

She riffled through a bulging handbag for her key-ring which she
dropped in her skirt pocket.  Time was," she said, 'when you never
needed lock your doors.  That's long gone.  So how're you all bearing
up, dearie?  What a terrible thing to happen.  I couldn't believe me
ears when they told me."

She slammed the door and they turned into the lane.  Chloe was glad she
wasn't expected to interrupt Mrs.

Chadwick's flow.  The sky was growing overcast, like a lid pressing
down the day's stale heat.  Because the unmade edges of the road were
tussocky and shadowed, they walked together in the middle.

"Gotta nasty bunion on me left foot," the woman confided, to account
for her hobbling.

"I hope it doesn't stop you..."

Chloe broke off, dazzled by headlights instantly switched on by a car
racing towards them.

As she left she'd been vaguely conscious of a vehicle parked beyond
Knollhurst with its engine idling.  The speed at which it was roaring
at them now was terrifying.  She grabbed Mrs.  Chadwick by one arm and
dragged her towards the verge, almost made it, but the woman tottered
and was on the point of falling as the car struck, tearing her from
Chloe's grasp.  Falling, the girl saw in slow motion the big pale
figure strike the bonnet and seem to leap off into the night as the car
screamed past, its red rear lights swallowed up in the dark.

In the awful silence after it she gazed around.  Grit in her eyes made
them stream and she couldn't see.  Hetty Chadwick had disappeared.

Then she made out a dim shape heaped against the far verge.  There was
no movement, no sound.

Chloe crawled across on hands and knees.  She took the heavy, ungainly
body in her arms, rocking over it, lifted her head and howled like a
dog.

Over breakfast on Monday Superintendent Yeadings paused after the first
bite into his marmalade toast and wondered al bud where the proverbial
prejudice against stepmothers had sprung from.

"Fairy tales," Nan supplied.  "Snow White and the Wicked Queen, that
sort of thing.  Or maybe it goes further back, to the Ancient Greeks.
They were pretty smart about funky families."

She reached out to retrieve young Luke's yoghurt spoon which had
unaccountably come sailing across the table in a wide parabola.  "I
hope you aren't considering a replacement for my useless self."

That'd be the day," her husband said, grinning fiercely.  "I just hoped
you could shed some light on the stepchild's point of view."

Nan planted her elbows on the table, earning a squeak of priggish
protest from their daughter.  "Well, at best a new mum means comfort
and support for a lonely little person who's rather adrift.  For an
older child who's into independence it can seem an invasion, a rupture
of a standing relationship with the father, as well as an insult to the
memory of the real mother.  That leaves a sizeable area in-between.

"Does this sudden interest stem from the two boys who killed themselves
in the stolen car?"  She meant the case which had made front-page news
in last week's local paper.

"No.  Both had a full complement of biological parents, however
inadequate they may have been.  You recall the incident in Shotters
Wood that we came across on Friday night?  Nine years back the dead
woman had married a widowed professor with two young children.  The
son's abroad at present, but I've met the daughter and she gives every
sign of being devoted to her late stepmother.  In fact she's devastated
by her death."

"How old?"

"An intelligent fifteen."

"It's not simply shock at the idea of murder?"

"I'm sure it's much more."

"In that case the new mother could have replaced her own early on when
she needed basic nurturing.  Or else the girl's at odds with her father
and welcomed the new mother as an ally."

"Or both," said Yeadings.  "Thanks, Nan.  That backs up the impression
I get from the whole set-up."

Nan made a grimace of distaste.  "Will the murder turn out to be a
domestic?"

"Could be.  It depends what Angus has made of the husband overnight,"
Yeadings allowed, rising from the table.  "Then again it could be a lot
more complicated than that.  There are some definite undercurrents that
make me wonder."

"Are the Press on to it yet?"

They will be shortly.  The PR office is putting out a brief statement
today after I've checked it.  So the Evening Standard will give it a
para or two tonight, the morning dailies tomorrow."

So she could read about it there, and that would be her lot.  She could
see Mike wasn't going to loose-mouth on this one.  Not at this juncture
anyway.

He brushed off his toast crumbs, solemnly kissed his way round the
table, wiped the resultant stickiness off his mouth and went with Nan
to the door.  "What's for tonight?"

"I'd better make it lamb, slow roast.  Safest when I can't be sure how
late you'll be."

"Right.  New case: lots'a spadework."

She watched him drive out on to the road and reflected that any digging
was rightly the team's.  But Mike was no slouch when it came to active
policing.  No way was his desk the full-time obsession the top brass
had meant it to be.

Mott was in early and Yeadings stopped off at the CID office. "Anything
promising with Knightley, Angus?"

"Nothing worth charging him with.  I took it gently, but I'll be
pulling him in again today.  Why is it that clever people are often so
stupid?  He doesn't seem to realise how serious this is.  He's scared
for himself, but he doesn't really believe he could be in the shit.  He
refuses to give an account of where he's been for the past four days.
If ever anyone was qualified for a doctorate in arrogance..."

"So you sent him home?"

"Yup.  Silver dropped him off at his gate.  Not exactly welcomed by the
Hadfields, it seems.  The cat among the pigeons, hopefully.  Something
useful might come out of that."

"A woman ising wimp, according to Janey.  That's a line we'll need to
follow up.  It seems to have been generally accepted, but by now the
family may have decided to close ranks and cover up his philandering.
Anyway, however much the others may slate him on that count it's too
late to help the dead woman."

"We've no reason to think she was any better than her husband," Z
picked up a hint from the cleaner..."

"Not in so many words.  Body language and then a suddenly buttoned-up
mouth."  Yeadings realised he was defending Leila's reputation and
pulled up short of taking sides.

"Staying stumm out of loyalty to her employer?  That's an old-fashioned
principle.  Is it possible the woman expects to use her knowledge
elsewhere?"  Mott offered .

"Small-town blackmail?"

"Probably not.  But if there's any truth behind the hint..."

"Cherchez I'homme?"  Yeadings' black eyebrows shot up to his
hairline.

That's something I'll check on anyway.  If Z doesn't get any further
with Mrs.  Chadwick she can try having a word with Leila's
neighbours."

Yeadings grunted agreement.  "The Piggots.  I spotted one of the lads
yesterday up in a tree, with field-glasses trained on the house."

Mott hummed.  "Right; I'll send her round after school hours.  You'll
find a tape of my interview with Knightley on your desk, sir."

"Thanks."  Yeadings knew that when Mott called him 'sir' it was as good
as a dismissal.  He grinned wryly.  "Bring the others along when they
get in and you can rough out your general briefing."

In his own office Yeadings skimmed through the newspaper resumes and
cuttings which the PR office had extracted from the morning papers.
There was a leader on the handling of juvenile crime from the local
Clarion, but the two teenage joyriders' bloody end merited only a
couple of paragraphs in most London sheets.

Max Harris, Z's columnist friend, had an article headed Where's the Joy
in Joyriding?  in which he considered the police chase as a reaction.
At least he saw two sides to the problem and dwelt on the courts'
inability to deal with eleven-year-old habitual offenders.  It was a
problem to hand back to Parliament.  The legislators, he insisted, had
failed to respond to current needs.

From that consideration Yeadings progressed to the coffeemaker, spooned
liberal quantities of ground Mocha mix into a filter paper, topped up
with Highland bottled water and switched on.  The machine's gentle
burbling accompanied his running of Mott's taped interview with the
widower Knightley.

The man managed to sound at the same time pompous and offended.  He had
refused the offer of a duty solicitor to represent him and clammed up
when the questioning became personal, even when warned that present
silence might be prejudicial.  One thing he had denied outright was
having accompanied his wife to any private or hotel party during his
four-day absence.

As he eventually realised that he could be setting himself up as prime
suspect to murder, he had querulously pleaded shock, grief and loss of
sleep.  At that point Mott had let him go.  Timed at 20.47.

Not at all bad, Yeadings thought.  The man had been given plenty to
ponder.  The release was a bit of a bungee jump: he'd be coming back
time and again, on each occasion with a little less bounce.  The
resultant tension could ensure a more co-operative mood in future.

At a knock on his door Yeadings shouted, "Ready."  At present it amused
him to use the same cry that young Luke gave when welcoming either
parent to a successful potty session.

Mott ushered in the two sergeants, and Beaumont produced three mugs
while the others found seats.

"Well," Yeadings invited, 'what's today's menu?"

Beaumont reeled off a list of hotels and country clubs which he had
contacted regarding a masked entertainment on Friday night.  "Negative
throughout," he confessed, 'so I checked what stage or cabaret shows
had been put on, in case Leila K was an exotic dancer or suchlike.  So
far no joy, but there are three clubs I haven't got to yet.  Not to
mention the unlimited London list."

"Did the dead woman have any history of involvement in show business?"
Mott demanded.  "I doubt it.  And we still have to look into private
parties.  I've got Davidson's Traffic Department checking for unusually
heavy street parking over that period, and patrol officers are
collating the same.  Also at the general briefing we may collect stray
observations from off-duty officers circulating in the area.

"Uniform branch are continuing a search for the cut-off hair, with no
success as yet.  SOCO did the same in rubbish containers at the
Knightley house.  We need to extend it to outdoor containers at other
houses in Acrefield Way where access would have been easy from the
road.  And one street away there's a builder's skip opposite some minor
demolition work.  That has been sealed for examination and will be gone
through today."

"Knightley's car?"  Beaumont enquired of the DI.

"Has proved elusive.  He claims it had a recurring electrical defect.
For a scientist he was surprisingly unspecific.  Nor does he know which
garage it's been sent to.  He left it at a friend's house to be picked
up and will inform us when he knows the firm's name.  I expect him to
ring me this morning."

"By which time he will have removed all traces of anything naughty it
carried," Beaumont said bitterly.

"Only he doesn't know our boffins, does he?"

"However much or little they may find," Yeadings reminded them, 'we
could have difficulty proving who was responsible for its presence in
the car or who drove it Friday night after so much shifting it
around."

"Which is nothing to the shiftiness of the professor," Z suggested.

Beaumont gave his puppet grin.  "Just like Cluedo: Professor Plum, in
the car, with a ligature."

"So prove it," said Yeadings shortly.  "Who is working through the
Knightley address book?"

"DC Silver," Mott claimed, 'together with all references taken from the
computer.  Doubtless there'll be an almighty complaint from Knightley
when he discovers we've helped ourselves to it."

"Then he'd better have it back," said Yeadings mildly.  "We don't want
him unnecessarily upset.  I might trot along there with it while you're
giving the briefing, Angus; see how nervy its absence has made him.  I
assume everything in it has been downloaded by now?"

"Everything," Mott admitted.  "Silver has turned into Superhacker.  It
was worth losing him to that computer course.  He eats, breathes,
dreams nothing else these days."

Better he than I, Yeadings thought.  Young Silver was clearly a man of
the future.  From such might Chief Constables one day be chosen.  He
regarded his select team.  Beaumont could get back to chasing up the
party cabaret or gins Z was itching to check on Leila's love life, if
any.  For himself he'd like a private word with Mott before he went off
to brief the extended murder team.

"Right.  On your respective ways then, except Angus perhaps."

"Boss?"  the DI said, when the other two had departed.  "I'm due
downstairs in ten minutes."

"This should take only five.  Have you done any thinking about your own
situation, Angus?"

The future, you mean?"  At Yeadings1 nod he pulled a sour face.  "The
original plan's in abeyance, if not permanently junked.  As you know,
Paula's boss has put off his intended early retirement and she's
staying on as his junior, building quite a reputation at the Bailey
when he gives her the chance.  Even at her present level there's a lot
more money in defence than prosecution.  And with promotion, I still
doubt if I could make up the difference.  So it seems the wedding is on
hold."

"I was thinking more about your career options.  I get a whiff of
something in the wind."

Mott hunched, silent with bowed head.  Then he stirred and sat
straight.  There are three options, as I see it.  One, as Paula
suggests, I quit here, transfer to the Met and we marry, take a flat in
London.  Two, I stay put with Thames Valley, take promotion and am put
back into uniform.  She stays on in London."  He stopped at that
point.

"And three?"

There's this need for an expanded international contingent to help
train the new mixed-race Bosnian police force.  A friend out there says
the Brit group badly needs strengthening at the top, if only to counter
more brutal versions of the job being introduced from Eastern Europe
and beyond.  I thought I might have a bash at that."

"That would certainly be to the Bosnians' advantage.  What about your
own?"

Mott stood up, tight-lipped.  "It's option three I'm favouring, Boss.
It'll broaden my experience and it won't be forever.  Paula's coming
over this evening and I shall explain to her then.  I meant to tell you
tomorrow."

Yeadings' spirits sank.  Angus deserved more than to end as a sniper's
target or from stepping on a leftover land mine  He managed a shrug.
"I'd the team would lose you in any of those options.  Can't you wait
to see whether the tenure ruling gets changed?  There's considerable
pressure for CID service to be extended from five years to eight."

"I have to make a decision now.  I've faffed about long enough,
Boss."

"I see.  It's your choice, Angus.  Thanks for letting me know."  He
watched the tall Dl pick up his papers and go off stern-faced.

Yeadings knew it wasn't just a boyish yen to be a hero; an updated
version of flouncing off to join the Foreign Legion.  It owed more to a
horror of becoming Paula's poodle.

Separation and their opposing career needs had meant that the
relationship had been dragged out like a string of dough, so far that
it was thinning to break-point.  Despite their promising start Angus
and Paula seemed fated to go the way of so many police partnerships.

There but for the grace of God... thought Yeadings.  He made a mental
note to buy flowers on his way home that evening.

There was a knock on his door and a constable looked in with a note
from Traffic: Tsn't this one of yours, sir?"

Apparently the joyriders' deaths hadn't put other thrill-seekers off.
Yeadings glanced through the copy of a Traffic report: a further
incident last night.  Two women mown down in a hit-and-run in Acrefield
Way.

Coincidence?  When you had something specific on your mind, you started
seeing it pop up all over the place.  One woman's condition critical,
now in the ITU at Wycombe: named as Hetty Chadwick.

He whistled between his teeth.  This was the cleaner for Knightleys.
The other joyrider's victim, a teenager Chloe Knightley had sustained
only minor injuries.

Yeadings roared down the corridor for a constable and had the
Professor's computer loaded into the Rover's boot.  He revised his
original plan.  He didn't see Acrefield Way as a dedicated joyrider's
racetrack and skid pan  It was too rural and twisting to offer high
speeds, and disappointingly short of the needed hyped-up crowd of
spectators.

So this could be a different breed of driver, one burning rubber while
escaping from some crime.  Or more germane to present interests an
attempt to eliminate a witness with information on the Knightley
murder?  An attempt which could yet prove successful.

He knew well the statistics Traffic quoted for pedestrian casualties:
at SO mph nearly 50% were killed; at 40mph nearly all were
fatalities.

It might not be possible to get anything yet, if ever, from the
critically injured woman, but Chloe was another matter.  A bright
youngster, she could have spotted the driver; was probably well
clued-up on cars.  So to Wycombe Hospital first.  Her father and the
computer could wait.

Chapter 18

At the hospital Yeadings met with stalemate.  Hetty Chadwick lay in a
heavy coma in a shuttered area of the ITU.  Chloe, kept in overnight,
had received orthopaedic manipulation and was already on her way home,
still under light sedation but insisting on being discharged.  The ward
Sister said she had rung an aunt to come in and collect her.

A uniformed constable seated outside the ITU had been provided with a
generous provision of magazines.  "You can bin those," Yeadings told
him.  "Stay alert.  I want everyone who goes in or out of that room
checked against their ID photos: doctors, nurses, porters, the lot.
There could still be an attempt on her life.  Get yourself a leak now,
while I'm here.  Then hang on till your relief turns up.  I'm having
surveillance doubled."

He put the order through by mobile, then slid the car into gear and set
off to the Knightley home.

Driving along Acrefield Way, Yeadings observed Z's blue Ford Escort
parked opposite one of the ancient brick and flint cottages.  At the
adjoining one the nose of a green open-top Alfa Romeo was emerging from
the side drive.

A pony and trap might have been more fitting, he thought; but it wasn't
unknown for modern opulence to be enjoyed alongside the romantically
historical, especially if finances restricted choice.  For himself, he
would rather go for comfort at home.  A car, after all, was a mere
means of transport.  He took in the floppy-haired, old-young face
behind the steering wheel and wrote the man off as a fancy-free
bachelor visiting an elderly relative.

He drew in to the kerb, braked and stared back at the Chadwick cottage,
curious to know why Z was calling there when the occupier was away.

Just then the front door opened and the woman DS

appeared carrying a travel bag.  Double-locking the door, she had her
back to Yeadings.  When she came down the path she saw him and pulled a
gruesome face.  "I had permission, sir."

"From whom, since the owner's unconscious?"

"When I couldn't get an answer here, her neighbour came out and
explained she was in Wycombe General.  So I went there, got turned away
but offered, as a friend, to bring her some things in from home.  It
seems she could eventually come round.  Her house keys had been in her
skirt pocket, so they let me have them."

Yeadings sucked in his cheeks.  "Better you, perhaps, than whoever ran
her down.  So what did you find?"

Z's eyes went round with innocence.  "Her clothes, sir.  Nighties,
tissues, wash pack fluffy slippers, handbag and small change."  Then
she grinned.  "Nothing of special note, sir."

He gave her a thin smile," Z wouldn't have missed out on the chance to
give the cottage a good turnover.  "We appear to have lost a source of
informaHon for the moment, but there are still the Knightleys' nextdoor
neighbours."

"I'll be calling there as soon as school's out, sir."

"Good."  He drove off, readjusting his mind to face a grieving
household if not the unsavoury background to a domestic murder turned
in at the gates to Knollhurst and pulled up before the open front
door.

Before he could knock or ring, the inner glass door burst open and
Knightley stood there, unshaven, flushed of face, his hands balled into
fists.  "Can't you leave us alone?"  he ground out.  "Isn't it enough
that I should be questioned at a police station, but you must chase me
out to my own home?  And my phone never stops ringing now you've
dragged the Press into it."

"I thought," Yeadings put in mildly as the other man drew breath, 'that
you might care to have your computer back."

"My God, did you even help yourselves to that?"  So he hadn't been up
long enough to check on his study.

"My team had a warrant to search the empty house," the superintendent
said calmly.  "Which includes all contents.  Under those terms a
computer ranks as an electronic filing cabinet."

"That is an unpardonable invasion of my privacy!  And I have no
intention whatever of saying anything beyond the statement I have
already made to your Inspector."

"If you have somewhere clear to put it I will bring it in."  Yeadings
ignored the outburst and went back to the rear of his car.  When he
returned with the heavy computer Knightley tried to snatch it from him,
but too late discovered it wasn't so easy.

"In the study," he snarled.  "First door on the left."

"Perhaps you will check that you've received it in good running order,
Mr.  Knightley."

The man was torn between defiance and protection for his property.
Truculently he thrust plug in socket and switched on.  The screen lit.
"It will take longer than this to see whether any data's been
irrevocably lost

"You have my guarantee that nothing has been obliterated."  The urbane
tone was enough to goad Knightley further.  Obliterating'Yeadings
reflected happily, was not quite the same as downloading.

"It's actually your daughter I'd like to have a word with at the
moment," he told the professor.

Knightley looked stricken.  Not perhaps entirely on behalf of the
girl's feelings.  "There is no call for that.  You should know by now
that Chloe was abroad until you you assumed the authority to have her
recalled.  There is no way she can provide any information germane to
your inquiry.  In any case she's not available at present.  She was
involved in a serious road accident last night and is in need of
rest."

"She has my sympathy," Yeadings assured him, 'but I must remind you
that we are investigating a violent death, Mr.  Knightley.  Who is to
say at this point what may prove to be germane?"

Knightley turned on his heel and, left to wait, Yeadings reflected that
even a violent death can be less a momentary act than a process.  Once
born we are all on a journey towards one end.  Our nearest and
should-be dearest have the ability to accelerate or delay that process.
In several claustrophobic families he'd dealt with in homicide, the
victim had been slowly murdered over years before the final vicious
act.  And often cumulative torture, mental or physical, had driven the
killer himself to that point.

When Chloe came Janey was with her.  "I'd like my friend to stay," the
girl said and nodded when asked if she felt up to seeing him.

They took chairs on the far side of the room.  Yeadings looked at the
girl's father.  "Mr.  Knightley?"  He indicated the door.  Knightley
stood his ground, affronted.

"Chloe has chosen a responsible adult to be present, as required."
Yeadings nodded again towards the door, saw an unwilling Knightley
through and closed it firmly after him.

"What did you want to ask me?"  Chloe challenged.  Whatever sedative
they'd given her, she was fighting it off.

Yeadings wandered back and stood leaning with both hands on a chair
back  "I'm not altogether sure.  I just have the feeling you can help
me if you will.  It's a question of observation really."

"You know about last night's accident?"  Janey demanded.  "It's
disgraceful what these young hooligans get up to.  Can't you police do
more to stop it?"

Yeadings treated the question as rhetorical and expressed his sympathy.
"Chloe, I'm afraid we need to trouble you for an account of what
happened."

She sat straight-backed and spoke in a cold, controlled voice.  "I told
the policeman at the hospital.  We were run down by a car.  It turned
its headlights up and came straight for us.  I guess Hetty was dazzled.
I know I was.  She'd got a bad foot and stumbled.  I tried to pull her
to the side but she fell and that made me let go.  I'm so sorry."

She shook her head, took a deep breath and went on.  "It was only a
glancing blow on me but she she hit the bonnet and then sort of bounced
off and disappeared.  When I got up I couldn't find her.  She must have
been on the opposite side, but I don't remember getting to her.  A
neighbour a man I hadn't seen before came rushing out of his house and
then there was quite a crowd.  I must have blacked out then and came to
for a while in the ambulance.  It's no good asking if I saw the driver.
It all happened too fast, and I was blinded by the headlights."

"You had no impression of the driver's age or sex?"

"None at all,"

"And the make of car?"

"I've thought about that.  It was big.  Powerful.  I got the impression
it was pale: maybe white.  Not a Volvo anyway."

Yeadings stiffened.  "How can you be sure of that?"

"Because a Volvos' lights come on with the ignition.  And I remembered
afterwards I'd had this impression of an engine idling when I came out
of the house to go to Hetty's cottage.  There was a car parked at the
far end of Piggotts' front, near where the wood begins.  I suppose it
didn't mean anything to me then because couples sometimes park there
with the lights off, but usually later at night."

"Thank you, Chloe.  There's nothing else you remember?  A familiar
engine sound?"

"Nothing.  It revved up like a racing car.  I've never heard an engine
roar so, except on TV."

"I see.  Well, if you think of any other detail later, please ring me
or Inspector Mott."  Trust the formality of the words to reduce the
tension, he thought.  From Chloe's description it would seem the
hit-and-run had been no accident, but he was unwilling then to suggest
to the women why the older victim might have been targeted.

As if she read his mind, "It was deliberate," the girl said shakily.
"He meant to kill us.  One of us, anyway."

"How is Mrs.  Chadwick?"  Janey asked quickly.

"Her condition's unchanged.  Still critical, but there is hope."

"I feel responsible.  If I hadn't sent Chloe with a message to her none
of this would have happened."

"You asked for her to come to Knollhurst?"

"Yes, but at her convenience.  We need more help in the house.  I
thought we should discuss it."

"It was Hetty's idea to come right away," Chloe said.  "So nothing was
planned.  Whoever ran at us wouldn't have been expecting to see her. He
was just waiting about on the off-chance."

She stared at Yeadings with fear in her eyes.  "Right by our house.
That's why I think it was me he went for.  To kill me."

It might appear so to her, and there was logic in her reasoning, but he
couldn't accept that.  She'd been away at the time of her stepmother's
death.  It was the cleaner who had been on the spot as observer.  This
was an attempt to silence a witness.

"I don't think so," he countered.  "As you say, the driver wouldn't
have expected you.  You've heard about the joyriders, I'm sure.  I
think we may find it was someone like that.  But there's another way
you can help me if you will.  Again it's a question of observation, and
you're good at that.  Sometimes adults don't realize just how much the
younger family members are picking up from their actions."

"Regarding what exactly?"  She didn't quite trust his change of
subject.

"How happy they are, or worried, or lonely."

Chloe looked down at the twisted hands in her lap, suddenly darted a
glance at Janey and said, "You mean Leila.  I don't see how she can
have been particularly happy.  None of us made enough of her.  I guess
she felt really lonely inside."

"I know too that I let her down," Janey confessed in a rush.

Yeadings looked out of the window, his back to them.  "As we all feel
when anyone dies: because it's too late.  Guilt over not having done
enough: kinder things we might have said or done; begrudging, when we
might have smiled and offered help.  I've had all that, when my own
father died."

"But Leila didn't just die!"

He turned back at the protest in the girl's voice.  "You're right.
However unbelievable, someone wanted to take her life.  How can that
be?"

"Some madman."

He watched her with pity, unhappy that he must push her further.  "You
said your stepmother might have felt lonely.  Is it possible she found
someone to fill that gap in her emotional life?"

"You mean a man, a lover.  No; she wasn't like that."  Chloe was
scornful.

Janey sighed and shook her head.  "Leila didn't set great store by men.
The only two she came close to condemned her to triviality, Aidan
regarding her as an airhead, Charles by setting her up in the shop. She
was worth more than that.  There was nothing trivial about her
mothering of the children."

"No despairing lover, then?  So we're left with Chloe" s "madman".  Or
could she have been seen as a threat to someone, because of what she'd
seen or knew?"  he suggested.  "You see why it's essential for me to
understand how she seemed in those last few days; where she went; who
she spent time with."

Chloe was looking puzzled.

"Can you suggest any circumstances in which she might have seemed a
threat to another person?"  Yeadings probed.  "No?  A barrier, then,
preventing some course of action?"

All the blood drained from the girl's face and she started to tremble.
Janey put out a hand to her.  "They're going to find out, Chloe.  Maybe
know already."

"Janey, I can't..."

"You don't have to."  The older woman turned to Yeadings.  "Leila's
husband I've told you already there was always some girl.  It seemed he
couldn't keep his hands to himself that way.  Leila knew.  We all knew,
and did nothing to help.  Charles would have taken it up with him but I
begged him not to.  She would have hated it.  I think she forbade him
to say anything.  It was a sort of family truce.  We all pretended to
be blind.  For the sake of peace and quiet."

"But he wouldn't have hurt Leila.  Not physically," Chloe begged.

"Not unless he was driven into a corner," Janey admitted.  "I'd thought
at first he wouldn't, because I didn't believe his feelings could be
that deep, not for any young girl.  I think he's one of those men who
need women and rather hate them for it.  But then, if he was desperate
to have someone and she was holding out for marriage, say, and Leila
could block a divorce who knows how crazy it might have driven him?  He
can get very angry.  The male menopause they call it, don't they?  He
could have been out of his mind."

"But she wasn't holding out," Chloe shouted, then clapped her hands to
her mouth.

Yeadings hid his excitement.  The girl was appalled at what she'd given
away.  It was clear she knew the identity of her father's present
lover.  Maybe he should leave it for now and hope to extract the name
less painfully through Janey later.

But it seemed not.  "Who then?"  the older woman insisted.  "Do you
mean you know who he was was '

"Was shagging," Chloe said in cold fury.  "I do, and I'm not telling
anyone."  She stopped abruptly and her face hardened.  "But if she had
anything to do with what happened to Leila, I hope you do catch her.
Whoever did it, I just wish they'd bring hanging back!"

Such passion, Yeadings thought.  The child she wasn't much more burst
into a storm of crying.  No tears, but a terrible dry, racking sound
that he'd only heard before at grave sides  He had to leave her to
Janey and just go.

In the hall he ran into Charles Hadfield at a total loss what to do.
"If you've threatened her..."  he began.

"Dear God, that's the last thing..."  Yeadings lifted his hands in
exasperation.

"It's catching up with her," the man said wretchedly.  "She's been too
controlled up to now.  Holds it all in.  Can't do her any good.  D'you
know what she said last night?  "I'm on my own now.  I'm in the front
line."  And now this other shock, the accident..."

"She'll be all right.  Your wife's with her."

"My ?  Oh yes.  Quite.  Very decent woman, Janey.  Practical, you
know."

Yeadings offered his hand and the older man grasped it.  "Anything at
all I can do?"

"Back-up.  Just be there for them both."  Lord, Lord, Yeadings muttered
silently as he got into his car: why hadn't he left this to Mott, to Z,
even to Beaumont.  He was a paper-shuffler himself and should stick to
the Olympian desk he'd been promoted to.

Clumsily he'd brushed against the rearview mirror on getting in.  Now
as he straightened it he saw Knightley approaching from the drive.  He
wound down his window expecting abuse.

But the professor had recovered his dignity.  He had also used the
intervening time to shave himself.  "If you are returning toer to base,
perhaps..."

"You're still without transport, Mr.  Knightley?"

"Quite so."  He was covering embarrassment with a sort of pompous
bonhomie, a poor parody of Charles Hadfield.  "Struck me I should have
another word with your Inspector Mott.  Save him a further journey out
here."

For a brief moment when Yeadings waved towards the nearer rear door he
stood undecided.  Perhaps the memory of travelling so with Mott brought
back the sense of being in police hands.  He gave a little barking
laugh, walked round the car and climbed in beside Yeadings.

All buddy-like, the Superintendent thought; on equal terms, in case
anyone was watching.

Chapter 19

Yeadings left Professor Knightley to cool his heels or work up a hot
flush on a bench overlooked by the duty sergeant, while he wandered off
to find Mott.  He found him in the CID office reading printouts from
the Incident Room's computers.

"Coffee?"  the Boss enquired.  "You can bring those along with you."
They settled into his office where Yeadings removed his tie, eased his
collar, refilled the percolator and invited Mott to bring him up to
date.

"These are all negative," Angus said in disgust.  "Interviews with the
assistants from the PARTY FUN shop, the Mardham news agent her previous
neighbours back at Caversham.  It seems Leila Knightley kept her nose
clean and wasn't the confiding sort.

"Her staff said she was a decent boss, fair to them about swapping
duties, but she kept her distance and was strict about politeness to
customers: no personal chat while any were in the shop."

"Discipline," Yeadings approved.  He remembered her warning glances at
the blonde assistant who was nattering on about her boyfriend.

The only mentions of any private life came from Leila's hairdresser,
who must practise the same technique my barber tries on.  But those
referred to purely family occasions."

"Which were?"

"In her last three weeks she'd had a hairdo for a Saturday outing with
her husband: Trooping the Colour, viewed from Carlton House Terrace.
They went as guests of the Royal Society.  Then a repeat shampoo and
blow-dry a few days later for Ascot.  Her uncle had bought a share in a
racehorse."

"Quite a social round.  This makes her sound rather more than the
down-trodden housewife."

"Vicky that's the hairdresser thought Leila regarded the

Royal Society lunch as a duty.  But she'd been excited about the races.
Her uncle took her once to a steeplechase at Auteuil when she was a
teenager, but this time it had the extra cachet of the Royal
Enclosure.

"That's all I've got.  We really need some gossip from that cleaner,
who's still non compos."

"Well, let's hope Z gets lucky with the boy snooper nextdoor.  By the
by, I've left Professor Knightley out front for you.  I went to see
young Chloe and he was acting surplus to requirements.  He wants a word
with you, but don't feel obliged to rush at him.  It seems he still
hasn't his own wheels.  Did you get anything on his car?"

"That's probably what he wants to talk about.  Odd, this scarcity of
cars in that neighbourhood.  On Sunday evening Piggott was without his
too."

"And then suddenly there's one nobody needs running down Hetty
Chadwick; though young Chloe claims the driver was out to get her."

"Why's that?"

Yeadings explained about the idling engine she recalled just beyond her
gateway.  "But I think she's wrong.  The driver made no move while she
was walking down to the cottage; then revved up as both women were
coming back.  Of course, it might have been that he didn't see her
clearly until she was facing that way."

"M'm."  Mott tapped his pen on the printouts in his hand, reached for
his coffee and drained it.  There was no doubt in his mind that the
driver had been a tear away in a stolen car.  "I doubt it had anything
to do with the murder.  Let's leave it for the present.  Guess I must
let Knightley have his say now."

He rose, stretched stiffly and reached the door before turning back.
"There's one thing, Boss.  I hadn't realized Charles Hadfield had only
just gone to Scotland.  He must have been around here recently because
he took Leila to Ascot.  We could have overlooked his importance.  I'll
see to it."

"Is that necessary?"  Knightley said testily as Mott's DC slid a tape
into the recorder.

"This isn't an interrogation," Mott told him blandly, 'but we need to
be sure that any item of information you offer isn't overlooked.  You
might, unknowingly, mention something that could give us a lead.  So we
date and collate everything.

"We've only just heard, for instance, that your wife accompanied you to
a Royal Society lunch recently."

"I was invited for the Trooping ceremony.  Didn't see much of it
myself.  Too busy consulting with colleagues."

"And your wife?"

"She' He waved a hand airily.  "circulated  Socialized/

"With whom?"

"I have no idea, but it can have no connection with a random attack on
her nearly two weeks later.  You'd do better to check on local thugs
and vagrants."

"Believe me, sir, we are doing so.  But your wife's interests interest
us.  Did you accompany her later to Ascot?"

"Yes, but that was Charles's outing.  Horses don't really appeal to me.
I'm not a compulsive gambler."  He smirked and something made Mott
wonder if this was true.  "I deal in facts, Inspector;
practicalities."

"A scientist, yes."  Mott observed Knightley's smug acknowledgement.
"Perhaps," he said, 'you could fill us in a little more about your
wife.  The sort of person she was.  We're short of a detailed
description."

Knightley, seeming more exasperated than grieving each time her name
was mentioned, took off his spectacles, held them up to the light and
started to polish them rapidly on a square of chamois he took from his
breast pocket.  It gave him time for a shift of perspective.  His
reply, when he'd prepared it, was waspish.

"The reason you haven't a good description is that she didn't leave
much impression.  She was quiet; never took much of an initiative."

"Reclusive, then?"

Knightley bridled.  "I wouldn't say that.  As I explained, she could do
the social thing, talk to people, so long as it all stayed at a mundane
level.  Just as well she did really, since I never could suffer fools
gladly.  Leila did.  She even seemed to like them, no matter how
boring."

"Not being an academic like you."

"Quite.  More of a homely little woman."

"Not in the American sense, surely.  She appeared quite exotic on the
night she was found."

That startled him.  "Leila?  Exotic?  But II saw her, in the
mortuary."

He meant naked except for a body sheet.  Mott decided on shock tactics.
"You were never shown the scene-of-crime photographs?  I'm going to
fetch you one now."  He rose, nodded to the DC and left the room.

"I came in simply to explain about the car," Knightley complained
irritably to the young detective, who said nothing beyond a murmur into
the tape before switching off.  He watched coldly as the man patted a
folded handkerchief across his sweating upper lip.

Mott came back with a large manila envelope from which he slid a number
of glossy 8 by 10s.  He made a card-player's fan of them.

"This one, I think."  He lifted it out and pushed it across the table
to Knightley, who stared in disbelief.

"You see?"

"That's my wife?  Macabre!  What's that bird thing on her face?"

"A carnival mask.  Didn't she ever show it to you?  How about the
dress?"

The colour drained from Knightley's face.  He looked transfixed.  "But
that's not..."

"Not her style?"

"Certainly not.  It's - vampish."

"We think she was bound for a party.  Or possibly had been to one
earlier."

"This is the first I've heard of it.  You might have..."

"At the time you weren't available for us to inform, Mr.  Knightley.
And since then you have never asked for details.  Which strikes me as
curious your being incurious."

Knightley looked dazed, as if the full truth of the killing had just
come home to him.  "I saw a paragraph in the Times.  It simply said the
body of a woman had been found in woodland near my new house.  There
was nothing to make me think then that it might be anyone I knew.  It
was Charles Hadfield who broke it to me when I got home."

"Back from where, Mr.  Knightley?  Don't you think it's time you came
clean about that?"

Knightley's back straightened.  "Clean?  I resent your implications,
Inspector.  When I spoke to you earlier, I was distraught at news of my
wife's death.  I hardly knew where I was.  Otherwise I would have
explained fully.  I have no taste for obfuscation

Mott waited.

"This is a delicate matter.  The fact is that I have been extremely
busy at the university, terminating my connections, both professional
and personal.  That is to say, with my colleagues.  In addition I have
been at some pains to deal with a rather embarrassing situation which
arose from a stupid misunderstanding."

"This involves a woman?"

There was a brief silence.  Then, Tn a way.  Yes."  An icebox voice.

Mott listened sceptic ally while the man ploughed through the sort of
excuses that he'd heard used so often.  There was one minor variation
it was a misunderstanding by the mother of a young student in whom he'd
taken a purely academic interest.  Then the need to placate a Fury,
which necessitated staying on until the matter was satisfactorily
cleared up.  And he was adamant now that naming the family would be an
unpardonable breach of their right to privacy.

The DI was unimpressed.  Such discretion sounded foreign to Knightley's
social code.  "When we do identify the young woman, as we certainly
shall, you may regret not having been totally open.  Now, about your
missing car, sir."

"Yes, yes.  That's what I came to tell you.  It was sent by a colleague
to Mcllroy's garage on South Road, Reading, where he has a discount
account and suggested I make use of it.  I shall be picking it up
today.  If that is all, Inspector, I really must be on my way."

Mott left him with the DC, ostensibly to await an official stamp before
initialling the tape-recording a fictional requirement, but Knightley
wasn't familiar with police procedure.

It did, however, allow Mott time to phone and prevent the car's release
from Mcllroy's until SOCO could inspect it.  He needed a specimen of
its carpet fibre.  Not that that would fix the killing on Knightley.  A
third parry could have driven it to the wood to dump Leila's body, with
or without his knowledge.

Knightley's shock at sight of his wife's party get-up had been
convincing enough.  He was actually more shaken than Mott had expected.
Which made him a poor prime suspect.  His bumbling attempt to gloss
over the sexual 'misunderstanding' showed he'd never win a Best Actor
Oscar.

Mott returned to the interview room convinced that at their next
meeting Knightley would be rescinding much of the garbage of the
present statement.  All these petty evasions just made the job harder,
piling on the need to chase up false trails.

When they began to put pressure on, Knightley would need to produce a
genuine alibi, if he possessed one, because no way had he spent time at
the university sorting his 'misunderstanding'.  Not short of starring
as the Invisibe Man.

With the professor sent on his way, albeit earless, Mott returned to
his office to find a note on his desk from the lab.  A second, more
detailed examination of blood spots taken from the mask had produced
evidence of a second type differing from the dead woman's.  Although in
the same AB general group this was rhesus negative whle Leila
Knightley's had been rhesus plus.

When Rosemary Zyczyinski looked in again at Wycombe Hospital to drop
off Hetty Chadwick's things she found that although the patient was
still unconscious her prognosis was more favourable.  The absurdly
boyish houseman hoped that she would be coming round within a matter of
hours.  She was, he said, an exceptionally tough old bird.

From there Z drove out to Acrefield Way and parked at the foot of
Piggott's drive.  After some twenty minutes the two boys appeared on
foot, Duncan bowed under a bulging backpack; Patrick, less laden,
kicking a crumpled lager can along the gutter.  She waited while the
older boy produced a latchkey on a cord from round his neck and opened
up the house.  It seemed that Mrs.  Piggott was not at home.

Patrick streaked indoors but Duncan stood in the doorway as Z
approached.  "Detective-Sergeant Zyczynski," she announced.

"Yes.  I remember you.  Ma's out, though."

"I'll wait then.  Will she be long?"

He thought not.  They went through the house, leaving all doors open,
circulating the stale air, and arrived in the back garden.  Patrick was
already swinging crazily in a rubber tyre suspended from an ash tree.

"Fruit juice?"  Duncan offered.  He brought out a tray with a full jug
bobbing with ice cubes, and three plastic tumblers.  Patrick flung
himself ostentatiously on to the grass, performed a parachutist's roll
and joined them on the terrace.

"Nice garden," Z commented.

A horticultural gem it wasn't, being totally child-centred and
harbouring several heaps of what an adult might write off as scrap.
Sheets of corrugated iron formed a stockade in one hollow, its walls
bristling with aggressively outward-pointing lengths of lead piping to
represent machine guns.

"Have you got a tree-house?"  Z asked and was taken by the younger boy
on a voyage of discovery.

"Ackcherly," he confided in a patronising tone, 'it fell to bits, but
I'm going to make a new one.  Twice as high."  He shinned up an
overgrown pear tree and posed like a pirate in the rigging.

"Can you see far?"  Z asked and climbed up to join him.

To one side, across the wattle fencing, was dense woodland.  On the
other lay the Knightleys' garden partly hidden by the roof of their
double garage, but with the terrace, lawn and conservatory in full
view.

"They're out."  Patrick was disappointed.  "The woman before them used
to sunbathe topless.  And they gave parries with coloured lights in the
trees."  He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.  "Brilliant
nosh.  I used to nip over the top of the garage and sneak some back."

Z smiled.  "Don't this new lot entertain?"

"Nuh.  Not yet.  Except her fancy man."

The expression was un childlike quaintly gossipy.  Picked up, she
wondered, from his mother or the cleaner?  "Who's that, then?"  She
made her voice sound casual.

Patrick spoke over a pear twig gripped between his teeth.  The words
came out scornfully with a spray of spit.  "The Frenchy from down the
road."

"I don't think I've met him."  Still a throwaway line.

"Pascal.  He's got a smashing car.  One day I'm going to have one like
that, only red.  Green's for wallies."

"Right."  Z let herself down to the rough grass and brushed off her
slacks.  She wasn't happy about leading him on.  Kids had to be
questioned with an approved adult present.  But where did idle chatter
stop and questioning begin?  She hoped Mott wouldn't split hairs over
it.

Still Mrs.  Piggot hadn't returned, so Z thanked the boys for looking
after her and escaped to her car.  As she went to unlock it the
Hadfield Peugeot drew up with Janey at the wheel.

Z followed it up the drive on foot.  She noticed Chloe look back
towards her with a frown before slipping from the car and disappearing
quickly into the house.

"Sergeant, is there anything fresh?  How's Mrs.  Chadwick?"  Janey
demanded.

Z explained there was hope of her recovering soon.  Standing at the
open front door, she heard the girl's furious cry from upstairs, then
Chloe came rushing down.  "We've been burgled!"

Janey stared around in amazement.  Nothing seemed disturbed.  "Where?"
she said.

"My room's trashed."

"Shall we?"  Janey invited Z grimly.  They found the wardrobe doors
open, clothes dragged across the floor, drawers pulled out and their
contents piled untidily on the bed.

"What on earth did he think he was doing?"  shouted Janey.  "Where is
the bloody man?"

"Who?"  shrieked Chloe.  "You don't mean Father?"

"Who else?  There was never any break-in."  She was getting herself
under control.

"In my room?  How dare he?  How dare he?  He's gone mad, Janey.  Oh,
Janey!"

"Chloe, calm down.  I'll help you put everything straight, but just now
we'd better find out where he is and demand an explanation."

There was no mystery as to his whereabouts.  He came in shouting from
the back garden.  It was clear he'd been drinking.  "Where's the bloody
Volvo?"  he roared.  "I went to get it and it's not there!  Goddammit,
don't say those bloody police have taken that one as well."

The Volvo is Leila's," Charles Hadfield declared sternly, appearing
from the drawing-room.

Knightley blundered past them and started upstairs.

"My room!"  Chloe wailed.

"He wouldn't be fit to drive, anyway," Hadfield offered irrelevantly,
bemused by the hubbub.

Z put a hand on the girl's arm.  "Chloe, was there anything in your
room he might have been looking for?  Will you check if anything's gone
missing there?"

On the gallery Knightley turned and beat on the banister rail with both
fists.  That damn dress.  That's what's gone missing.  I should have
burnt it!  What in the name of God did Leila mean by wearing it?"

The dress?"  Chloe faltered.  She took a step towards the staircase.
"Oh my God!"  and she crumpled on the hall tiles.

Chapter 20

Z helped Janey carry the girl to a sofa in the drawing-room, Hadfield
trailing anxiously behind.  Even Knightley seemed sufficiently appalled
to come back downstairs and hang over Chloe's limp body.  "What's the
matter with the girl?"  he demanded.  "I never meant to..."  Z resisted
an urge to flatten him.

"I think it's better if you disappear," Hadfield decided, as near as
dammit dismissing the man from his own house.

"I'm all right," Chloe managed to get out.  The faint had only been
brief and she was trying to sit up.  "I need to go and..."

Janey stifled her protests.  "You're staying right here while I get you
a hot cup of sweet tea.  You need sugar."  She nodded at Z to stay on.
"Come along, Charles."

Given a free rein to talk with the girl, Z was loth to upset her
further.  "I'm afraid your father's under a lot of stress at
present."

Chloe didn't pick up on it.

"So he was looking for something in your room?"

"The dress.  You heard what he said.  But it's not mine."  She clasped
her head.  "And what did he mean about Leila?  She never takes things
from my room."  The girl closed her eyes.  "Never took."

"Perhaps he's not making good sense at the moment."

"He's been drinking."  Chloe herself seemed confused.

That may account for it."  Only it didn't.  Knightley had been fully
focused on what he was raising the roof about: some dress of Chloe's
that Leila had worn?  Or vice versa?

"What dress was it he meant?"  Z pursued.

"I don't know."

And that, Z saw, was a flat lie.  Chloe had already said it wasn't
hers.  A specific dress that belonged to someone else, then.  It all
seemed so trivial to be causing a family crisis.

"Here," Janey said, arriving to deposit a filled mug alongside the
sofa.  "Drink up and we're going to leave you in peace and quiet.  Give
a shout if there's anything you need."  She ushered Z out of the
room.

"Well, did she explain what that was about?"

"No, I think she's more likely to confide in you.  I'd better make
myself scarce."

They walked towards the open front door and then Z remembered what
Patrick Piggott had told her.  "Have you met any of the neighbours,
apart from nextdoor?"

"Not formally, though a number introduced themselves at the cricket
match."

"When was this?"

Janey explained about the two sides of the road and the twice-yearly
contest.  "We met several people there.  They seemed very friendly.
There was a plump girl called Holly who kept the scoreboard and an
eccentric Frenchman.  I can't remember his name.  And Charles was quite
taken with a couple of old codgers sporting school ties to keep up
their flannels.  The Piggotts weren't there.  Maybe they're not into
cricket."

"A Frenchman lives in Acrefield Way?"

"Apparently.  In one of those old flint and brick cottages, next to
poor Hetty Chadwick.  What's so special about him?"

Z shrugged.  "Seemed funny, that's all a Frenchman at a cricket match.
I wonder what he made of it."

She left Janey staring after her and probably marvelling at her
butterfly-brained curiosity.  But that would be only one of the kinky
things the afternoon had turned up.

Z drove off in the direction of town and slowed to observe the cottage
Janey had spoken of.  On an impulse she got out, went up the path and
knocked.  There was no answer, so she walked round the side, peering in
the diminutive windows at white, roughcast walls lit in places to warm
ochre by the late afternoon sun.  They appeared to have coloured
sketches attached haphazardly.  Three beanbag seats were lined up
opposite as if for an absent audience.  At the back door her toe
clinked against glass on a flagstone half-hidden under a lavender bush.
A note folded in the neck of a milk bottle read, "None until Friday,
thanks."

There was also a small triangle of white paper showing under the door's
edge.  The milk deliveryman's bill?  Or some advertising bumf?  But it
was worth checking," Z risked an index fingernail, scratching to
retrieve it.  The folded paper was lined and had been torn from an
exercise book.  On it was written, I must see you.  Please ring me.
It's urgent.  Chloe.  She slid the note back where she'd found it.

Back at base Z found Beaumont in the canteen and learned that the Boss
had been called out to Kidlington.  For some flak from the ACC Crime,
Beaumont supposed.  It was easy for these off-stage characters to
demand the impossible of troops in the firing line.  With a domestic
murder Statistics expected a clear-up rate of forty-eight hours.  In
this case at this rate they'd be lucky to make it in as many days.

Angus Mott was in his office when his two sergeants looked in.  He
waved them to seats.  "What's new?"

Beaumont reported on the missing cars.  "Knightley's was where he said.
SOCO were plastic-wrapping it ready to take away when the professor
horned up.  He went ballistic."

"The outcome of which I witnessed at his home," Z put in.  "Doubly
ballistic when he discovered his wife's car was missing too.  He
assumed we'd taken it."

Beaumont beamed.  "I checked on Piggott's Merc for good measure.  It
was parked round the back of his betting shop.  I put a modest fiver on
the 3.30, gave a wink and watched it go into a private pocket.  He's a
sly dog, that Walter Pimm.  Piggott's put him in as manager.  I'd
rather have his other heavy, Big Ben Carter any day.  For the price,
Walter didn't give much away.  He'd had to pick the car up Monday after
it was clamped and removed from a hotel's forecourt in

Regent's Park on Sunday.  It seems Piggott had parked it there for
safety while he took his family to the Zoo.

"Next, I pushed the lab for anything on the fibres.  They'll be
examining a sample of the carpet in Knightley's car to compare with
what Littlejohn found between her toes.  And Knightley's dinner jacket
wasn't responsible for the fluff under Leila's nails.  No cashmere in
it."

"No progress, then."  Mott sounded gloomy.

"Depends what you're after," Beaumont comforted him, leering somewhat.
'1 checked on who'd brought the Knightley car in to Mcllroy's.  It was
a woman, name of Ryder, forties to fifty, a bit of a dog.  She ordered
an engine-oil change and said it would be picked up by the owner."

"Where does that get us?"

"Knightley said he had trouble with the electrics.  Maybe we've
"trouved la femme".  We know he's a womaniser, but he told you a
colleague dumped the car off to get a discounted bill.  The garage has
no such arrangement with the woman, but an apprentice knew where she
worked.  So I went along to her travel agency and picked up some
holiday brochures.  Her desk-keys were lying beside her handbag and the
silly woman had attached a tag with her address on.  It's a semi out on
the Sulham road.  So I tootled out there for a looksee and had a word
with the old biddy next door."

"And?"  Mott pursued.

"I said my friend had left his BMW there earlier to be picked up.  So I
got chapter and verse from her.  It seems he's done it before at
weekends.  This time there'd been a terrible row there Friday night
when madam came home and found her daughter entertaining a man
upstairs.  Eventually the man drove his car off with the daughter in as
passenger.  She took an overnight bag with her.

"This worthy Mrs.  Crane said the couple came back the following
evening.  The mother let them in and that's when she first saw the man
properly.  Her description sounded exactly like the prof, and he was
carrying an enormous bouquet of cut flowers.  The car stayed there
overnight.  Next morning we're into Sunday now the man and young Beryl
definitely not Mrs.  Ryder went off in her Fiat, while she was out in
the garden hanging up some washing.  That on the sabbath, to Mrs.  C's
horror.

"Knightley's BMW was left in the drive.  Mrs.  Ryder drove it out after
lunch that day, coming back after dark.  Then she left in it on Monday
morning half an hour earlier than she usually went to work.

"This confirms what Mcllroy's mechanic said about the car being dropped
off there at 8.30am."

"Useful neighbour, this Mrs.  Crane.  Is she reliable?"

"Without doubt.  A widow, living alone: I'd say she gets her kicks from
peeping through net curtains.  Probably makes diary entries on her
neighbours' doings.  It helps that she disapproves of the Ryders who
"let down the neighburhood".

"Sorry, Guv; but it seems that Knightley had more on his mind this
weekend than murdering his missus.  Or, if he did, he took the Ryder
girl along with him to share the entertainment.  We can at least fill
her in as his present love interest."

Mott grunted.  His OS's account seemed to square with the professor's
quoted 'misunderstanding'.  If the mother had caught him out in a spot
of nooky with the daughter that could have sparked the 'terrible row'
the neighbour overheard.  But by the following night all had apparently
been smoothed over and Knightley stayed on.  The car-swapping on Sunday
sounded complicated but there was probably a reason for it.  Perhaps
Mrs.  Ryder had wanted to impress a third party with the BMW.  So had
Knightley actually talked her round and bought her compliance by
lending it to her?

"Does this totally eliminate Knightley from the murder?"  Z asked.

"Possibly," Mott said heavily.  "We'll have to check times and places
for the whole alibi.  I already had my doubts.  His reaction to the
crime-shot in Shotters Wood was genuine shock.  He'd not seen her
geared up like that before.  He was knocked back, doubted who was under
the mask.  It's all on the interview tape."

"Geared up?"

"In that dress.  He called it "vampy"."

"Dress," Z echoed.  "I have some follow-up on that."  She told them of
the scene after Knightley searched Chloe's room, and the girl passing
out at mention of what he was after.

"Write it all out," Mott ordered.  "I want it verbatim.  We could have
something here."

He sent Z off while he and Beaumont re-ran the taped interview with
Knightley.

"Stop it there," Beaumont suddenly hissed.  "Knightley was starting to
say something and you cut him off."

Mott wound back and replayed the words; his own voice prompting "How
about her dress?"  Then Knightley: "That's not..."

"You see?"  Beaumont insisted.  "That's when you suggested, "Not her
style?"  and Knightley lapped it up.  But suppose he'd been going to
say, "It's not her dress," meaning he thought it was Chloe's.  He had
seen it before and remembered, because it was quite unsuitable for a
kid.  Like he said, it's vampish."

Mott thumped the desk.  "Then from seeing the murder-scene photo and
finding we'd taken his car, he went straight back home and trashed the
girl's room looking for the dress he'd seen earlier on Chloe.  He
couldn't find it and now he thinks his wife had taken the dress from
the girl's wardrobe'.

"I want the Boss to hear all this," Mott decided.  "I'll ring
Kidlington and have him drop by before he goes home."

"Is it all that important?"  Beaumont doubted.  "Don't mothers and
daughters swap clothes all the time?"

"Not the way Z tells it.  Let's wait for her write-up, but I thought
she said that Chloe denied it was hers."

"Right, so it was really the mother's, but she'd hidden it from her
husband.  It was sexy and pricey, after all.  Something to fascinate
the lover with

"There's something I don't get.  When had Knightley seen it before? And
why did he still expect to find it in his daughter's wardrobe when he'd
just learnt that Leila was killed wearing it?"

Mott looked up as Z came in with a printed sheet in her hand.

"I know," she admitted.  "It's a labyrinth.  While you're reading this
through I'm going for three doughnuts.  As Janey would say, we all
badly need sugar."

Superintendent Yeadings took longer to get in touch because the message
he received from Headquarters switchboard was ambiguous: "DI Mott would
like you to drop in on your way home, sir."

Since the DI's flat lay on his route and the uncurtained windows showed
lights, he pulled into the space before Mott's garage.  When he rang at
the door it was opened by Paula, looking gorgeous.

He remembered then that tonight was scheduled for an emotional workout
and he could find himself stepping in as unintentional referee.  It was
even more embarrassing since she appeared appalled to see him.  "Mr.
Yeadings!  Is something wrong?"

She'd mistaken him for the bearer of bad news!  "No,no.  Angus is fine.
He's not here then?"  Obviously not: he was making a thorough sow's ear
out of this.

"I'm sorry, Paula.  Our paths seem to have crossed, mine and his I
mean."

She looked relieved.  "Well, come in anyway.  I've just put some supper
out."

"I'm not staying, thanks.  Angus must have got hung up at the nick.
I'll send him along right away.  Good to see you, Paula.  You're
looking great."

"You too."  She seemed amused at his confusion as he backed out.

Her car hadn't been out front, so she'd have come by train.  Did it
mean she was staying over, or on a day-return ticket?

No concern of mine, he warned himself, driving off.  But Mott's future
did concern him.  Thames Valley could lose a good officer as the
outcome of a barney tonight.  And he'd lose a colleague he valued as a
friend.

He walked into Mott's office to meet the conundrum of the dress.  He
heard it through; then, "Leave it to Z," he told the DI shortly and
explained he'd mistaken the message to drop by.  "Paula's waiting at
the flat for you," he warned.  "So knock off now."

Mott muttered something as he started to clear his desktop.  Yeadings
thought it sounded like "Oh shit!"  but he hoped not.

At Knollhurst Janey had set the table for a late dinner, laying only
two places.  "You men," she told Charles Hadfield, 'can have a formal
meal, so try to behave civilly to each other.  Chloe and I will snatch
something in the kitchen.  We can't expect her to face her father yet
across the table."

"Good, good.  I shall be formality itself.  I will even make stilted
conversation if you require it.  Whether Knightley is capable of
appreciating it or your excellent cooking is another matter."

He hrrrmped and fixed her with the gaze of a chided but hopeful
spaniel.  Tell her we er, all love her a lot, you know."

Janey squeezed his hand and went to call the professor.  He came in
stiff-faced, glanced at the table settings, hesitated and then seated
himself facing Hadfield.

Having already served the hors d'oeuvre, Janey went to call Chloe. "The
men are at table," she said.  "We'll be earing in the kitchen."

"I don't want anything."

"Well, keep me company then."

As the girl stood and stretched, the phone rang.  Janey took it in the
hall.  "It's for you," she said as Chloe passed.

Chloe took the receiver, shook her head and tried to pass it back, but
Janey had gone.  She drew in breath.

"Hello/

There was a small shuffle of movement at the far end of the line.  Then
a wispy laugh.  "Chloe?"  whispered.

A pause.  "You don't remember, do you?"  It was barely voiced.  She
couldn't tell if it was male or female.  Would Beryl sound like this if
she kept her chin tucked under?  It was mocking enough to be her.

"Who is this?"

"No; you don't remember.  He said you wouldn't."

And then she knew.  The voice went with a face seen in a nightmare:
slack-mouthed; sharp cheekbones slanting over blue-grey hollows;
centre-parted hair falling lankly over dead eyes, the pupils pinpoint.
Male?  Indefinitely, but she thought so.  Scary.

And he had a name.  She'd heard Beryl use it.  "Neil," she said
tremulously, but already the phone was purring.  He'd hung up.  Leaving
her shuddering.  Angry and afraid.

Chapter 21

He let the phone drop to dangle on its cord, swinging against his knee
as he crouched at the foot of the stairs.  He felt better to have heard
her.  Warmer, excited.  He'd waited until the stuff started to kick in
before he dared to ring.

But it was all right.  She didn't remember anything bad.  Her stuff had
worked like the weasel promised.  It should do at that price.  She had
been his doll, and would be again.

At the memory a delicious shiver passed down his spine.  Such exquisite
risk.  Her fine, soft flesh, faintly scented, salty on his tongue.  He
could taste it still.

It wasn't enough just the once.  There had to be more.  He d waited,
and the waiting made it more vital.  More wonderfully dangerous than
ever, now that the drongos had messed up with that other woman.

He wasn't sure what happened that time.  Afterwards they'd caught him
in the garden and hustled him off without explaining.

They'd said they'd see her home, pay her off.  He'd made a bad trip
that night and she'd confused him, made it too hard for him.

The first time was different, perfect.  He remembered it, all the
thrill through; the girl yielding, like a velvet doll under his
fingers.  Only he hadn't come.  He didn't any more.  But there were the
photos.  He got there looking at them.

He'd sent her some prints and she'd come back for more.  That's what
she said: she'd buy the negatives.  She couldn't think he'd be such a
fool as to give them up.

Only, that time it didn't seem the same girl.  She'd tried to trick
him.  So he'd had to get rough.  He'd tied her up to keep her quiet,
and cut off her hair as punishment.  Stupid bitch gate crashing the
downstairs party, done up like his real doll, but with that weird mask
so she looked like some cruel bird.

She should never have tried to frighten him.  She was supposed to give
in like the time before.

But it was the right one he'd talked with just now: his Chloe.  She'd
answered to her name, and after her voice he'd put a finger on the
button and cut her off, like the other one's hair.  He had shut her up
there inside the phone, ready for another time.

He heard his own name called.  His hand jumped, knocking the cord and
cracking the receiver against the newel post.  He sat curled up and
silent, but someone was coming down for him.

"Neil, can you come now?  Your mother's read}' for bed.  She wants to
say goodnight."

Ready for bed?  She lived in the bloody thing, was dying in it.  And
anyway she couldn't say goodnight: would just slaver and make those
farmyard gruntings, clawing at him with her one good hand.  And he'd
have to bend over and kiss her.

If she had any humanity left she would know it was too much for him.

Not that it was she who demanded it.  For that he must thank his
father, because he believed her poor brothy brain still grasped that he
was her golden boy, her darling son, petted and possessed into becoming
a life-serving prisoner.

Which he was.  There was no way out since he'd given up at college, and
he needed the man's money to pay for his habit.

The real, white habit; not that pathetic substitute they doled out like
it was platinum dust, too little, too seldom.  It was lucky he had
other resources.  And that was ironic, supplied right under the old
bugger's nose, using the man he employed to bring his silly games.

This evening it was the dark-haired nurse on duty, but she was as
cautious as the other one.  She treated him as if he might leap out on
her and have his wicked way.  She didn't know he wasn't that kind of
wicked.  He'd never raped, not even the sickly rabbit that had been his
first patient.  Or the collie bitch drowned in the lake.

No, the nurses were safe enough.  Different if either had been a
redhead.  Then they could have played together, like with Chloe.  But
he didn't do rape.  It would have shocked Mother to death.

The stuff was kicking in at last.  It seemed to take longer each time;
or was that imagination?  Imagined, like the way he was gradually
growing taller, stronger, more beautiful.

He stood up and dropped the receiver back on the phone.  Its buzzing
had become annoyingly louder.  Nothing must upset him now, spoiling his
good time.

"Coming," he shouted up.  He didn't attend because they required it. He
would choose to put in an appearance, go through the disgusting
actions, perhaps tonight even lay his head beside hers on the pillow,
stroke the hair of the imposter who'd replaced the pretty woman of his
childhood.  God, what a bitchy world it was.

"Look, Janey," Knightley said as she cleared the table, 'this is all so
petty.  Just a dress, for God's sake.  You'd better explain to Chloe.
It would come better from you."

"Explain exactly what?"  Her face was as frozen as her voice.

"That Leila was wearing it.  When she was killed.  Didn't you know
that?  I didn't myself until the police showed me the photograph."

"What has that to do with Chloe?  Am I being stupid or something?"

"It was Chloe" s dress, though I don't know where it came from.  You'd
better ask her.  I only saw it the once, the night she came home
drunk."

Janey put the dessert dishes down and reached for a chair-back.  "Chloe
drunk?  When was this?  What has been going on here?  I think it's you
that has to do some explaining."

"It was about three weeks ago, on a Friday.  After school she went off
with a friend who had a car.  I was hung up at the university or I
would have brought her home.  They rang me to say where they were..."

"Where were they?"

He bit at his lip.  "At some other friend's house.  They seemed to be
having a party.  I was to come and pick her up there."

"Did you know these two friends?  Were they girls from school?"

"The first one was.  I hadn't met the other."  He seemed to be picking
his way with some care.

"They brought her to the front door, and she was in a terrible state,
could hardly stand up.  I thought -I was afraid..."

"She'd taken drugs?"

They swore she hadn't.  Just gone at the drink too hard.  She said as
much herself next day.  She had a frightful hangover."

"You took her home?  Not to hospital?"

"It wasn't necessary.  There was a nurse there.  She'd given her
something to make her sick.  Anyway this isn't about her getting drunk;
it's about the dress.  She was wearing the one Leila was found dead in
a few days ago.  Leila must have taken it from Chloe's room while she
was abroad at her Granny's.  I suppose my mentioning the dress reminded
Chloe how she'd misbehaved.  That accounts for the fuss and fainting
fit.  Guilt, you see."

Janey let him run on, thankful that Charles had left the dining-room
and hadn't to hear all this.  She couldn't quite grasp it.  There were
so many details missing.  "Where was Leila while all this was happening
to Chloe?"

"She'd gone up north for the shop.  To the annual trade fair.  They
always put next Christmas's stuff on show in June, to get advance
orders.  She must have told you about it.  She drove up to Harrogate
Friday morning and brought some samples back Sunday."

"What did she do when you told her about Chloe?"

"I didn't."

"But for God's sake why not?"

To save any fuss," he snapped.

"I don't understand you.  The child must have been in an awful state.
What did you do for her?"

"I think that's my business, Janey.  She is my daughter, and I did know
the girl she was with.  When they went off together I had no idea of
the state she'd get into."

"Some fine friend!  I hope Chloe" s had the good sense to drop her."

"Never mind that.  What I want you to do is explain to the girl why I
was checking whether hers was the same dress as in the police
photograph."

"I?  Explain why you were trashing her bedroom?  I suggest you do so
yourself.  I think you've been treating her appallingly, Aidan.  It's
time you tried straightening things out."  She picked up the dishes in
hands trembling with anger and retreated to the kitchen.

Chloe was out on the terrace whittling savagely with a kitchen knife at
a soft piece of wood.  Aidan made no attempt to find her.  When Janey
opened the kitchen door to the hall she heard him phoning for a taxi.
Running away again when things got too hot for him.

Chloe abandoned the carving, dropped the knife in the dishwasher as she
passed and announced she was going for a walk.  From the drawing-room
window Janey watched her turn right and disappear in the town's
direction.  Then she retrieved the card with Miss Zyczynski's phone
number and decided that she at least deserved some explanation of the
madhouse goings-on.

Z was away from her desk.  The constable guarding Hetty Chadwick at the
hospital had rung in to report that she was off the ventilator and
there was a chance she might come round.  In Mott's absence the Boss
decided Z should try to have a word with her.  So, although he was
overdue at home himself, he stayed on and was the one Janey's call was
put through to.

She kept it brief.  "It's possible that Leila was wearing a dress of
Chloe's when she was killed.  You were asking about it earlier."

"That's right, because it's quite eye-catching.  I understand too that
there was an upset at the house this evening, concerning the dress.  I
have DS Zyczynski's report here.  She seemed uncertain who had borrowed
it from whom.  Chloe denied it was hers."

"Her father says it was.  I couldn't sort that out without asking Chloe
again."

"And she is the only one now who would know."

"I got a long rigmarole from her father about seeing Chloe wearing it
once."

Janey took a deep breath and explained what Aidan had said about
Chloe's condition when he picked her up to bring her home.  She sighed.
"It must have shocked him when he was shown the police photo of Leila.
Not, I suppose, that it matters whose the dress really was.  I just
wanted to put it right with Miss Zyczynski, since she witnessed the
embarrassing scene here."

Yeadings thanked her and she rang off.  The dress could be irrelevant,
but it gave him an excuse to ring Z on her mobile for further news.
Then he recalled the ban on cellular phones near hospital equipment and
decided on a detour there on his way home.

Z was leaving the hospital car park as he drew in.  She had been
allowed two minutes with Hetty who was awake but had no memory of the
hit-and-run.  She did, however, know 'the Frenchy' young Patrick had
mentioned.  He was her nextdoor neighbour, actually half-Swiss.  He
lived alone and yes, he'd struck up a friendship with Mrs.  Knightley.
She'd invited him to the house one Thursday, which was Hetty's cleaning
day, and had been out a few times with him in his car.  She couldn't
say where he'd be if he wasn't at the cottage, but they could try the
studio.

Was he an artist?  Z had asked.

"No.  He owns a firm that makes television films.  They've just
finished one that's going to make them a fortune."

"One hopes," Yeadings commented.

"There's something else," Z remembered.  "When I checked the outside of
his cottage I found a note from Chloe Knightley tucked under the back
door.  She wanted to see him urgently about something."

"Then we'd best find him fast.  I have news on her for your ears too,
but we can't stand out here talking.  Are you free to follow me back?
I'm sure Nan would be happy to fix us some supper."

The smoked salmon salad Paula Musto had set out at Mott's flat was to
be wasted.

He knew if he didn't speak out at once he wouldn't get through what had
to be said.  Sitting opposite her, making conversation, wasn't on; so
he'd broached it abruptly without finesse, trying to ignore the
overnight bag she'd dropped by the bedroom door.  And Paula had
listened silently, arms folded, farther distanced from him at every
moment.

"You must have expected it," he said at the end.

"Not a bald ultimatum."

"It isn't that.  We've three options.  One: I stay on with Thames
Valley, you join Crown Prosecution here and we get married.  Two: I
give up here, transfer to the Met and we marry.  Or three: I join the
international policing team in Bosnia and you carry on as you are."

"No.  We don't have those three options.  You have.  In your mind
you've already decided.  Where does my choice come in?"

"To be my wife; or not."

"You see?  An ultimatum."

"One of us has to make a career change or we continue exactly as we are
which is going nowhere.  I'm trying to be reasonable, Paula.  A
relationship has to grow or it's dead."

"And ours is stagnating?  Thank you.  I thought I meant more to you
than that."

"You know you mean almost everything to me."

"Almost."  Her voice was a whiplash.

"Can you say more than that?"

She stalked about the room, flushed and tight-lipped.  "Why now?  Can't
you wait a while?  Why rush me?  As for throwing yourself at the Bosnia
thing, that's petty.  Like threatening you'll walk under a bus if you
don't have your own way.  Petty and vicious

"Paula, don't push me too far.  Can't you see how difficult it would be
for me in London, painstakingly building a criminal case, then watching
you work to demolish it?  It might not happen that way, but it could.
That's why the Met's impossible for me.  You've admitted it bugs you to
win a case when you know the defendant's guilty as hell.  So give up.
Darling, come here and use your skills on the other side."

"The police side.  You're wonderful, d'you know?  playing hard cop and
soft cop with me, both at once."

His reason ran out.  He was breathing hard, towering over her.  "A cop
is what I am.  It's the only thing I know how to be.  And I'm bloody
good at it.  If you can't take it, you know what to do."

She stared back as if he had hit her.  Seconds ticked by, then she
struggled to pull the ring off her finger.  It landed on the supper
table, rolled and fell to the floor.  Without another word she turned,
swept up her bag and left.  Mott stood staring at the blank panels of
the door.

In the CID office Beaumont was the only one remaining.  Not
dissatisfied with his own efforts over building up Knightley's amorous
background, he was still weighing the possible outcome from Forensics
on the cars.

When the call came the voice he heard was one he didn't know.  Young
and uncertain at first, then displeased that Z wasn't to hand.

"I'm afraid she's gone home.  My name's Beaumont.  I work alongside
Zyczynski," he told her.  "We're partners."

"Well, would you tell her Chloe rang?  Chloe Knightley.  I've
remembered something about the car that ran us down."

"That's great, Chloe.  Can you tell me?"

"Well, it was the front grill, the radiator.  When I close my eyes I
keep getting flashes of Hetty's body hitting the bonnet.  And I see the
grill's squarish chrome with that circle on top and a sort of
three-pronged cross in it.  It was a Mercedes.  I'm sure of that
now."

He thanked her.  She sounded relieved to have made the call.  A
Mercedes.  Now where had he come across one just recently?  He returned
to the printouts and the word jumped out at him.  From his own notes.
He'd seen the car himself, parked round the back of Piggott's betting
shop.  And it was white.  It had been facing the wall, so he hadn't
observed the state of its front.

Piggott, of course, lived right next to the Knightleys.  It wouldn't
have been strange at all if he'd been sitting there Sunday night with
the engine idling after Walter had returned it from being carted off
and wheel-clamped.

But Pimm claimed he retrieved it on Monday.  Which he might well have
said if his boss had paid him to lie.

Chapter 22

Sir Arthur Waites left the car by the colonnaded entrance, collected
briefcase and Evening Standard from the passenger seat, and went into
the silent house.  A dim light reached the hall from a passage leading
to the domestic quarters.  He followed it and found the kitchen
neon-lit with the dark-haired nurse seated at the large scrubbed table
with her supper on a tray.

She looked up from an open book and smiled coolly.

"Evening, Nurse," he said and, as ever, "How's your patient?"

"Just the same, sir.  She's settled down for the night."

He nodded at the expected answer and went across to inspect the
fridge's contents.  It seemed well supplied.  He supposed Piggott's
heavies had stocked up.  Which meant they would be staying over to set
up the tables.  He felt curiously flat about the prospect of tomorrow's
gambling.  Perhaps if he cared about money it would be different, but
it was the way the numbers behaved that mattered to him.  And at
present so much gloom overshadowed a purely intellectual pleasure.

"My son about?"  he asked.

"In his room, sir, watching the telly."

"Right."  Feeling dismissed, he left her to her supper and reading,
returned to the hall, dumped briefcase and car keys, then mounted the
stairs to check on Neil.

He found the boy half-dressed, sprawled in an easy chair facing the TV.
Whether he'd been preparing for bed and given up, or had only just
struggled into his underclothes and then lost energy for more, wasn't
obvious.  He was nocturnal much of the time now.

Cool air stirred the gauzy curtains at the open sash window.  Beyond
the dark cumulus of the garden's trees the undulating Chilterns swelled
to a clouded sky under lit in the distance with diffused orange from
the motorway's sodium lamps.

After London's incessant rumble and hum the country always struck
Waites at first as still.  But not silent.  There were minute rustlings
and sighings, evidence of hidden night creatures and the slower pulse
of rooted things growing.  Only this house was paralysed, hopeless.

The screen that held Neil transfixed was dimly blue-lit, showing narrow
inner-city alleys and dark warehouses with the glint of greasy water
between.  Feet were pounding on cobbles: flight and pursuit; hot breath
panting.

Too much excitement for the young man.  Waites reached for the remote
control and selected another channel.  Neil never stirred as the screen
lit brilliantly for the end of Crimewatch.  Nick Ross was gently
recounting the details of an armed robbery some two months back in
which a security guard had been clubbed to death.

"And more recently," he said, Thames Valley Police want to know if
anyone recognizes this dress.  It's very unusual, made of fine silk
chiffon and was worn by the murder victim found last Friday night in
Shotters Wood, South Buckinghamshire.  It has an Italian label, but the
firm no longer exists.  If anyone has seen such a dress, or if you saw
the victim on the afternoon or evening of the same day, Friday July
2nd, please get in touch with our team here or ring 01865 846000 for
Thames Valley Police.  This was a particularly callous killing and the
police are anxious to find the person responsible before he can repeat
the crime.  Finally, in West Yorkshire..."

Waites snapped off the remote control and the screen went blank.  There
was a little gasp of protest from Neil but his father took no notice,
shocked to the core at the face he had seen flashed up: Leila,
Knightley's wife, whom he'd chatted with not three weeks back at
Carlton House Terrace.

Leila, dead?  Murdered in a wood?  Good God, how could that be?  She
was so ordinary, so nice.  Who in his right mind would want to harm
such a woman?

"Chloe," Neil muttered.

"What?"

But the young man shook his head, bemused.  His father looked at him.
It had taken little more than a year on drugs to make a zombie of him,
ruining a promising career.  Depriving him, Arthur, of the only member
of his family left fully alive.  Before Alice's accident he'd been
dabbling in hash, as most kids did nowadays.  But since then, away at
college, he'd gone the whole hog, irretrievably damaging a fine brain.
Yet another foul-up from that car crash which had left Alice shattered
and his own life in ruins.

He was as much to blame himself because, cut off in private grieving,
he'd given little thought to how his son was coping with the shock.
Alice and their only child had been unusually close, although she had
originally longed for a daughter to share her love for music and pretty
things.  She was so feminine herself that he'd once feared she'd make a
milksop of the boy, petting him and encouraging him to play with her
collection of dolls.  Once even he'd come home and found the toddler
Neil rigged out in a frilly pink frock and white socks.

He sighed.  Even that, to grow into a cross-dresser, would have been
better than this present wreck of a young man.

He looked down at the over-elegant, now emaciated, body sprawled in
string vest and boxer shorts.  The boy was running his fingers over his
eyes in the habit he had when distressed.  Waites put a hand on his
shoulder in comfort but Neil shrugged it off.

"I'm going for a shower," Waites said.  "When I've changed I'll see
about something to eat.  How's that, eh?"  There was no answer, and he
left Neil facing the darkened screen.

His own room was at the house's rear, so he knew nothing until Nurse
Howe came running up and rapped on his dressing-room door.  "Sir
Arthur, can you come, please?  It's an emergency."

In his bathrobe he opened up.  "Alice?  My wife?"  he demanded
sharply.

"It's your son.  He must have taken your car keys.  There's been a
slight smash.  He's all right, I think, but I can't get him out on my
own."

He reached the front drive to find that Piggott's men were there before
him and had the boy stretched out on the gravel.  There was blood on
his forehead and his eyes were closed.  The car's bonnet was crushed
against the brickwork of the archway to the gardens.

Nurse Howe had already collected the First-Aid box.  Now she brought
out a kitchen chair.  Seated on that Neil opened his eyes, whimpering
as she applied disinfectant swabs and taped the cuts.  "It's not
serious," she said.  "He can hardly have got the car moving when it hit
the wall."

"Should we get him to X-ray?"

"I shouldn't think we need to.  But Dr.  Parrish, perhaps?"

"Yes, of course.  I'll ring her."  He turned to Ben and Walter.  "Could
you get him upstairs to his bed?"

The men exchanged glances.  Walter hung back while Ben bent his huge
frame and lifted Neil like a baby in his arms.

Dr.  Parrish was playing Bridge at Bix and un regretfully passed over
her disappointing hand.  She'd drawn an ineffectual but garrulous
partner and was finding no pleasure in the rare evening out.  It took
only fifteen minutes to charge in her Mini through the empty country
lanes to oblige Sir Arthur.  When they went upstairs together they
found Neil out of bed again and on his feet.

"Say goodnight," he insisted, and turned towards his mother's room. Dr.
Parrish regarded him keenly, then shrugged.  They followed the young
man and were joined by Nurse Howe at the top of the stairs.

Neil went ahead into Lady Waites' bedroom, bent over the still form and
laid his face against the cool cheek.  She was quiet now.  No more of
those earlier snorts and throaty gurglings.  He had done well to let
her rest.  Only the slightest pressure on her nostrils, and the heel of
his hand over the closed mouth.  She had barely noticed.  More peaceful
now, quite pretty again.

Dr.  Parrish walked to the other side of the bed, bent over and felt
the woman's neck.  "She's slipped away," she said quietly.  "Not
entirely unexpected.  I'm sorry, Arthur.  It's fortunate you called me
out for Neil.  I'll drop by with the certificate tomorrow."

She wouldn't stay for a drink and, having checked on Neil and declared
him only in need of rest, she passed the open door of the drawing-room
on her way out, noticing the tables set up for roulette and cards.  One
of the helpers the burly one saw her glance in and hied to cover the
gap with his substantial body.

Interesting, she thought: so that's how the great mathematical brain
relaxes.  Rather more of a busman's holiday, to her mind.

She wondered who came here to play, and how much money passed through
the house on these occasions.  Arthur would do better to find less
hazardous pastimes.  Now that he was widowed like herself she might
persuade him to take the Hellenic cruise she'd been considering off and
on.  There were a couple of suitable places where Neil could be well
looked after temporarily, and an eye kept on what substances he was
indulging in beyond the prescribed methadone.

Anything to get them both out of this dreary old house with its
depressing background of tragedies.  It was time it was pulled down and
the land put to good use.

At the front door Waites stood tongue-tied for an instant.  "There will
be things to arrange," she reminded him gently.

"Yes, I suppose."  He frowned.  "Doctor, you must have heard about Mrs.
Knightley.  The murder, I mean."

"The woman over at Mardham, yes.  It was in yesterday's papers.  Did
you know her?"

"Slightly, through her husband.  A thoroughly nice woman.  I only heard
tonight."

"I'm sorry, Arthur.  So much happening to upset you all at once.  They
say bad things often come in threes."

"Threes?"

"Yes.  Hearing of the murder; your son's accident; now Alice.  At least
Neil's not badly hurt."

"I see.  Yes.  Threes."  He watched her get into her little car,
reverse and drive off with a wave.  Another nice woman, and she
appeared to have some feelings towards numbers.

It was true what she said: the happenings seemed to make a set, even a
sequence.  But there was something that troubled him.  He'd been hardly
aware of it at the time but it came back now with startling clarity.
The dress they'd shown on Crimewatch before flashing up Leila's
photograph: the dress she'd been found dead in.

He knew it, had bought one like it some twenty-five years ago in
Venice.  On their honeymoon he'd had it made up for Alice from an
Italian fabric she'd fallen in love with.  And for sentimental reasons,
he supposed, she'd never got rid of it; wore it on special
anniversaries which they'd shared alone.

It was impossible, because Alice had chosen the style, so there should
only have been the one.  And yet he knew he wasn't mistaken.  Hers must
be here still, in one of her wardrobes.

He went back upstairs, passing Neil's room, the door of which stood
wide open.  This was unusual.  He always shut himself in, hermetically.
The boy waved a languid hand now from his chair as his father looked
through.  Sir Arthur nodded back and went on.

He spent a long time searching wardrobes in the room next to the one
where Alice lay.  There was such a crush of dresses, but not the one he
was looking for.  Some had dropped off their hangers and lay on the
floor of the cupboard, swirled into a sort of nest as though a large
creature had crept in there for asylum.  He knew who that must be.

The connections sprang into his mind.  Alice's dress; Leila Knightley
who, however unlikely, had acquired it; then -through Neil?  But how
would he ever have met her?  He had a few young friends who still
visited here, but surely no one of Leila's generation.

His mind swung back to Dr.  Parrish; her mentioning a threesome of bad
news : what had happened to Alice, Neil, Leila.  The same three, but in
a separate connection.

He went into the next room and asked Nurse Howe to leave for a few
minutes.  Then he bent over the bed and searched the insides of his
dead wife's arms for any sign of a puncture.

Nothing.  It was all right.  He'd imagined a horror that didn't exist.
It had been an illogical leap of the mind.  Alice had, as Dr.  Parrish
Nancy said, just slipped away after prolonged, exhausting suffering. He
felt ashamed of his suspicion, and immeasurably relieved.

Walter Pimm reversed the silver Mercedes from the crushed masonry and
went round to survey the damage, brushing brick dust and cement rubble
off the dented bonnet.  Not too bad.  Broken left headlamp, twisted
grill, a few scratches.  A couple of thousand to repair and repaint.
Waites could afford that, and anyway they could try the insurance.  No
one need mention that the driver was debarred.

It could be fortunate in a way.  He decided to make Waites an offer. He
wouldn't after all want to swan around in the car the way it was. So,
get it repaired for him and arrange a temporary substitute.

Simple enough.  No pong of suspicion coming off it.  Lucky they'd come
out to set up the tables tonight for tomorrow's flutter.  It gave him
something to use to his advantage.  And Piggott's.  He'd have to call
on Ben to help, but then Ben already owed him one.  By the time it was
all worked out the boss would be in his debt forever.

Ben Carter sat in the shadowed angle below the staircase, worrying
about Neil.  For some reason he had always felt for him, perhaps
because like himself the boy seemed so alone and everyone had given up
on him.

At the same time he was angry at Walter, so greedy making money from
his sideline that he didn't care what damage the stuff could do.

He watched him come back from outside, then heard him in the kitchen,
raking around in the fridge which they'd restocked today.  It was only
for the household's use: tomorrow caterers would bring the party stuff
in a refrigerated van unless the affair was cancelled now.  With a
death in the house you often got police nosing round.  Whatever Mr.
Piggott decided, Walter wouldn't want anything putting a brake on his
private dealing.

The fridge door slammed.  Walter came hurrying through with something
in his hands.  Ben caught the glint of a plastic bag with redness
inside and lumbered to his feet to follow.

In the driveway he saw the Mercedes had been reversed and stood again
opposite the entrance.  Walter was bending over a smashed headlight and
appeared to be wiping something into the rims and through the twisted
grill.

Walter always claimed he was the brains of the partnership, which
consisted, to Ben's slower mind, of thinking up twisty ways of doing
things the big man had been taught as a child were wrong.  But it made
Walter feel superior, even though physically he was the runt of an
unhealthy litter.

The first time he'd shouted, "Come on, Carter, get carting!"  it had
struck Ben as clever, but by now he was tired of it, hearing the
contempt behind what wasn't a real joke.

He watched Walter straighten, looking pleased with himself.  When he
half-turned and saw Ben there he attempted to cover up what he was
holding.  Obligingly Ben looked away.  "You want me to get it
repaired?"

"You're not to touch it.  I'll take it in myself."

Ben nodded slowly, wondering why there was a cloth over the steering
wheel.  Walter was careful sometimes about wiping his fingerprints off
things he'd touched.  But now he seemed to have forgotten to remove the
duster.

Walter followed the direction of his gaze, flicked the cloth off,
slammed the driving door, locked it and pocketed Sir Arthur's keys.
"Tomorrow," he said, 'is another day'

Back at Knollhurst the phone rang.  Charles Hadfield lowered his
newspaper and stared at Janey over it.  "Hadn't you better answer the
thing?"

It continued to ring.  "Aidan went off in a taxi, and Chloe's gone
walking."

"I'd better then.  But it's probably from some newspaper."

The caller was a man apologizing for ringing after hours.  His, Janey
supposed; because she functioned for twenty-four.

"I'm calling from Pettifer and Jolly, Mrs.  Knightley.  Well, actually
from home, but on the firm's business."

He gave a little high-pitched bark of laughter.  Janey started to
explain that she wasn't who he supposed her to be, but he was off again
at full steam.

"Now it's short notice I know, but I have a very promising offer here
and I'd like to bring the client round to view tomorrow at eleven if
that suits you.  Otherwise he could make it at 2.30pm."

To view?"  Janey echoed faintly.

"Yes.  Knollhurst.  I assured your husband it would meet with a lot of
interest at the new price, and I was right.  Now, is 11 am suitable,
Mrs.  Knightley?"

"Well, I suppose so."

She stood there gripping the handset after the man rang off. "Charles,"
she said faintly, 'that dreadful man has put this house on the market.
The children's home.  And Leila not buried yet.  That was an agent
wanting an appointment to view."

Hadfield roared and hobbled across.  "Ring him back," he ordered. Janey
obtained the number from 1471 and pressed 3. She handed the phone
across but Hadfield shook his head.  "Tell him he can't come.  And ask
the fellow the price."

She spoke, listened and made a face at him.  "That's thirty thousand
less than he paid."

"And the date it went on the market?"

"Thank you," Janey said to the man on the end of the line.  She was
pale when she faced Charles again.  "Last Friday, the second."

"That's the day Leila was killed."

"Yes."

Aidan Knightley returned home to meet judgmental stares.  The three of
them faced him out about his intention to sell, although Chloe alone
was silent, hunched in her chair as though she had stomach cramps.

He was taken aback that they knew, but specious as ever.  He claimed he
was under no necessity to answer to them for his actions, but must take
stock and look to new requirements under changed circumstances.

"What circumstances?"  Charles thundered.

"In view of being widowed," he pointed out stiffly.

The date of his decision hung unspoken in the air between them.  "You
said," Janey whispered, 'that you didn't know Leila was dead until you
arrived back here on Sunday."

He saw at once the mistake he'd made and began to bluster.  "It was a
decision I'd already come to.  Neither of us found the place came up to
standard."

They had no sympathy for him.  Had he expected any?  Janey demanded.
What sensitivity were they to expect of him when he acted so
precipitately, without consulting wife or children?  Where were they to
set up home again, and who was to look after Eddie and Chloe?

"I have had unexpected expenses," Knightley ploughed on.

"It is a question of husbanding my resources to do the best for us all.
For them in particular.  One must be forward-looking."

"Resources," Hadfield barked at him.  "Husbanding resources!  When did
you ever properly husband Leila?  Or is that too far past?  Who do you
intend to husband in future?"

"Nobody if I can help it!"  The words came out of themselves in a
vicious burst of frustration.  He flushed with anger.  "I am not
answerable to you.  It is for me to decide what I do, where my children
shall live."

"Don't, don't!"  pleaded Chloe.  "Please stop.  All of you."

Janey put her arms round the girl.  "At least give yourself breathing
space," she said over her shoulder.  "This is not the right time to
make fresh decisions.  Let a little time go by, for things to
settle."

Settle, he thought bitterly.  That's something I'll not be able to do,
unless I release the house value to get Piggott off my back.  Those
bloody horses.  They're as perverse as women.

Chapter 23

Yeadings took one look at his DI when they assembled next morning and
knew that Mott's engagement to Paula was off.  Intensive work being the
best remedy he knew for anguish, he threw all decisions for that day on
to the younger man's shoulders, opting out of active policing himself
to catch up with paperwork.  It irked him to need to, because he felt
in his bones that they were nearing a solution, or at least some
recognition of the tangled web of deception that had been set up.

Mott waded in hard-mouthed, assigning duties, setting priorities: Z to
accompany him on the immediate pursuit of the dead woman's presumed
lover, one Pascal Gregory, British citizen with a Swiss mother, and
owner of a green Alfa Romeo tourer, present year's registration.

Beaumont was smarting at being sidelined into chasing up the car that
had run down Hetty Chadwick.  He felt it the more keenly because
there'd been a rumour flashing round the canteen over breakfast that
Mott was considering an offer to go as an instructor on this
international police-training malar ky in Bosnia.  That would leave a
gap at DI level, with himself and Z as candidates in line for
promotion.

A few years back there'd have been nothing in it.  He had seniority by
length of service.  But Z was a woman and PC
-political-bloody-correctness as well as Police Constabulary -had
ordained that sexual equality should be interpreted with a hefty
advantage granted to the weaker sex.  Which, to add to the overloading
of top ranks with academics, social scientists and blacks, already
resulted in poorer performance in thief-taking and proactive policing.
He was certain that if Z got the leg-up, instead of the leg-over she
needed, he wouldn't be staying on in Yeadings' team.

Sourly then he delegated to DC Silver the task of checking through
owners of all light-coloured Mercedes in Berks, Bucks and Oxon, while
the other two departed on what looked like a promising trail.  Leaving
Silver to liaise with Traffic on the computer check he set off at once
to take a look at Piggott's car.  He found it parked much where he had
seen it before, this time backing on to the rear wall of the betting
shop, its front resplendent in gleaming, pristine glory.  Which seemed,
on the face of it, to eliminate the car from suspicion.

But there had been time since Sunday for a well-rewarded mechanic to
make any necessary repairs to the body work  Although there was no
visible evidence of it he was considering having it hauled in for
forensic examination (thereby incurring the wrath of the almighty
budget-keepers if the result was negative) when Walter Pimm appeared at
the shop's back door, a wet cigarette stub attached to his bottom
lip.

"Admiring the boss's motor?"  he asked matily.

"It's not yours then?"

"I should be so lucky!  Get to drive it though.  Old Piggott likes to
lord it on the back seat."

"Is he a decent boss?  Plenty of perks?"

"He sees I'm all right.  Like he should, seeing we was at school
together."  Walter was bragging.  "Stinker, we used to call him.  His
dad owned the fish and chip shop, and they lived over the top.  There
wasn't no way you could sit next him for the stench of rancid fat."

"He's come up in the world since then.  Nice line in pearl grey mohair
suiting," Beaumont tempted.

"Yeah.  Flashy, for all that his flat's like a pigsty.  One thing he
could do was Maths.  Him and me, we was always top of the class for
figuring.  Real quick he was.  His dad was a mug, went bust over the
gee-gees.  Didn't take young Jeffrey any time to see where the real
money was.  With the touts, not the punters.  So he got his self
apprenticed to a bookie down Epsom way.  When he'd made some dibs he
set up here and of course he remembered me."

"So now you're his manager here, and well on the way up yourself?"

Pimm closed his eyes, looked sneaky.  "I'll do bloody better than him
before I'm through."

"Actually," Beaumont confessed, deciding to risk all on reading the
man's features, "I'm checking on Mercs at the moment.  For crash
damage."

He'd have sworn there was no flicker of reaction, and yet the man's
mean little features looked suddenly sleeker, as though his ears had
lain back like a nag's when nervous.

"Check here all you want.  This old girl's fine.  Not a dent, not a
smear.  In tip-top condition."

Now who said anything about smears?  Beaumont asked himself.  Maybe
Walter had over-played himself there.  "You polish her?"

"Nuh.  We have muscle for that.  Have to find something to justify Ben
Carter's wages."

"Ah.  The big guy."

"A bit simple but he's handy.  Thinks he's Jeffrey's bodyguard.
Especially Walter's voice took on a spiteful edge.  '-since your lot
run the boss in for carrying a knife.  Shoulda turned a blind eye.  Get
a lot of nasty threats from the lowlife when you set up as a turf
accountant."

"Guess so.  Where is Ben, by the way?"

Maybe he'd sounded too innocent.  Walter's ratty eyes narrowed.  "Sent
off on a job somewhere.  Carter by name, eh?"  He ended on a leer.

Not a great partner to work alongside, Beaumont decided.  He wandered
off, took a tour to satisfy himself that Ben wasn't in the vicinity and
settled in his car to consult by phone with Silver.

He learned there were no less than seven Mercedes in the near
neighbourhood, three of them white.

While Z drove his Saab, Mott called the number for Pascal

Gregory's cottage.  On the third ring a man's voice answered.
"Gregory."

It couldn't have been simpler.  He agreed to stay at home and put
himself at their disposal.  He sounded more curious than alarmed.  When
he opened the door to them, however, he seemed at least cautious.

"We're making inquiries," Mott said after they'd shown their IDs, 'into
the new people who've moved into Knollhurst, along the road from you.
No doubt you've heard that the lady of the house was found murdered
about half a mile away."

"I read it in the papers, yes.  And there was a mention on Crimewatch
last night.  It's terrible."

"Had you met the family?"

"A number of them, yes.  Briefly."

"One of them less briefly?"

"Leila."  His breath came out unevenly.  He left his seat and went to
stand by the window, looking out.  "It was totally unexpected.  I meant
only to get to know her because of Chloe.  I thought she might be what
one hears of stepmothers, neglectful, perhaps worse, although Chloe
implied she was fond of her."

"But-?"  Mott insisted.

"She was delightful.  Natural, warm, sympathetic.  I found her very
attractive."

Mott scowled at him.  From the man's manner he could only suppose that
they'd begun an affair.  "Were you lovers?"

Pascal turned back to face him.  "Yes.  It seemed inevitable.  She was
not a happy woman, Inspector.  I wanted to give her everything.  I'm
not inexperienced, but no one had made me feel like that before."

Mott's mouth twisted," Z, watching him, thought he looked bitter.  "Did
you kill her, Mr.  Gregory?"

The man was appalled, shattered by the brutality of it," Z was
dismissed to the kitchen to make hot drinks while the other two spoke
together.  She could barely hear the low voices, one hesitant, the
other pressing him further.  She wanted to believe that the one
questioned was being open and genuinely as broken as he seemed.

When she carried the tray through they seemed to have reached some kind
of truce.  Mott had removed his tie and loosened his shirt.  She
wondered for the second time that morning whether he was sickening for
something.

"You said at first," Mott reminded the other, 'that you were curious to
meet her because of Chloe, her stepdaughter.  How did you come to meet
her?"

"In a rainstorm.  You remember the deluge that night some weeks ago?  A
cloudburst, and she was out in it with her bike.  We were both caught
and she was in a bad way.  My sister Morgan was staying over that
night, a nurse, and she insisted Chloe should shower and borrow some
dry clothes.  Then we started to talk."

"Wasn't that intervention unnecessary, since she lived only a few doors
away?"

"Chloe was in a strange mood, reluctant almost afraid to go home.  It
made us curious, especially as'

He stopped and they waited for him to continue.  He picked up his cup
and drank before going on.  Choosing what not to say, Z thought.

It was an incredible story, or would have been if they hadn't so much
experience of similar incidents.  The reason Pascal knew so much of it
was because his sister, Morgan, had been on hand at the time, although
Chloe hadn't recognized her out of uniform.

A few days earlier, the girl Beryl Ryder, whom they took to be
Knightley's girlfriend, had taken Chloe out drinking.  Unused to
alcohol she was deceived by the innocent flavour of the passion fruit
concoction.  But at the house they'd stopped off at later, something
else had happened of which Chloe had only partial and fleeting recall.
Morgan believed that some other substance had been used on the girl;
something like Midazolam or Rohypnol the 'date-rape' drug.  But being
unsure and not knowing who was responsible, Morgan had simply given her
an emetic to reduce the effect.

The Ryder girl had phoned Chloe's home and by then the father had
returned.  He left at once to collect her, promising she should be
taken straight to A&E at High Wycombe hospital.  Which, it seemed, she
wasn't.

"Your sister will need to confirm all this.  It's useless as
hearsay."

"Useless in court maybe, but it should put you on the right path.
Morgan hoped it could all be settled at family level, without scandal
to innocent parties."

"It doesn't sound," Mott said witheringly, 'as if there are any
innocent parties.  Your sister, for instance; how did she become
involved?  I'll need the address of this house and to know who'

He was interrupted by the house phone ringing.  Gregory stared at him
and raised his shoulders expressively.  "Answer if you wish.  It may be
for you.  No one would expect me to be here after 10am."

Mott strode across and lifted the receiver.  Without waiting for
acceptance a woman's voice rushed at him.  "Pascal, thank God you're
there.  I've tried everywhere else.  Listen, we'll have to talk to the
police.  There was a Crimewatch programme last night..."

Mott crashed through.  "Am I speaking to Miss Morgan Gregory?  This is
Detective-Inspector Angus Mott, Thames Valley Police.  Can you come to
your brother's cottage at once?  We have a lot to straighten out
between you both."

She couldn't, being on duty and involved in arrangements for an
unexpected funeral.  She sounded almost distraught.

Mott's reaction was electric.  "Then we will come to you.  Will you
give me the address?  Yes.  Havelock House, Stonor, near
Henley-on-Thames.  Has your local police station been advised of the
sudden death?  Right.  Please ask the coroner's officer to wait there
for us."

"Who's died?  Do you want me to come?"  Gregory asked when Mott had
hung up.

As Mott hesitated he said, "I want to.  Morgan may need my support."

"In that case my sergeant will accompany you in your car."

Beaumont had run Ben Carter to earth at last.  The big man was in the
cellar at the Three Tuns organising a spirits, wine and beer order.  It
was impressive the effortless way he lifted full barrels around.  Bill
Preston, licensee, stood at the top of the stairs to ensure the
detective took no liberties with his stock once he'd let him go down.

"I just want a word," Beaumont began, squatting on a metal barrel and
finding it struck a chill through his terylene pants.  Ben Carter wiped
his hands on his trousers.  "What about, Mr.  Beaumont?"

"Jeffrey Piggott's car.  You keep it all smart and shiny, don't you?"

"He's got two."

"It's the Merc I'm interested in.  You clean it, yes?"

"Most times.  He likes it kept nice."

"It looked great when I saw it this morning.  When did you last do it
over?"

"Friday.  He wanted it next day to take the two kids to Brighton."

"Oh yes, I remember now.  That's a long time for it to stay so
spotless.  Today's Wednesday.  You must use something special on it."

Ben looked puzzled.  "No, it must be real mucky.  Always gets spotty at
the seaside.  It's the salt, see?  Then it got left in London,
wheel-clamped, on Sunday and I haven't seen it since."

"So who tar ted it up?"

"I dunno.  It wasn't about yesterday.  I asked the boss and he said
Walter'd borrowed it.  Mr.  Piggott was running the Citroen."

"Mr.  Piggott had the Citroen and Walter Pimm had the Merc.  That
right?"

"Like I said."

"So Walter would have cleaned it."

"That'd be the day!  You wouldn't get him driving through a car wash.
Anyways the boss makes sure it's hand-polished.  We don't trust them
gritty cloths at garages."

Thanks, Ben.  You're right to take care of a beautiful car like
that."

The licensee had been called away to duties at ground floor level.
Beaumont readjusted his cooled buttocks and grinned at the big man.
"Looks like a real party you're setting up, with all that booze."

Ben arf-arfed like a cartoon dog.  "One of Mr.  Piggott's specials over
at Henley.  We go over and help, me and Walter.  Real toff clothes with
black bows."

"Dinner jackets and black ties?  I bet you look good."

"Mine had to be made special because I'm big, but Walter's got Mr.
Piggott's old one cut down."

Parties and quality dinner jackets, Beaumont registered.  Weren't they
just the things he'd spent hours fruitlessly trying to hunt up over the
Leila Knightley murder?  He took a deep breath.

"And the guests all dress up, wear masks?  Things like that?"

Ben was nodding, his heavy face transformed with a vast smile. "Lovely,
the ladies are.  Some play the tables and some dance."

"So who gives these parties, Ben?"

"A gentleman Mr.  Piggott's partners in it with.  Sir Arthur
something."

"Oh, I see.  Posh people

"I'll say."

Sir Arthur, near Henley: that ought to be enough for the local nick to
come up with an address.  Beaumont slid off his barrel, satisfied.  He
reached the stairs to go up when Ben said reminiscently.  "He's got a
nice one too.  Sir Arthur."

Beaumont turned back.  "A nice what?"

"Merc.  Only his is silver.  And it's usually got mud splashes."

He disapproved.  But Beaumont was in seventh heaven.

Chapter 24

Beaumont received an odd look from the desk constable at Henley when he
made his request.  The name of Havelock House and its owner was ready
to hand.  "Lotta activity out there today.  What's up?"

"You tell me."

"Second request for info from your lot today.  You're on Mr.  Yeadings'
team, aren't you?"

Beaumont treated him to his wooden puppet stare.  He didn't intend
trading questions all day.  He simply needed directions.  The constable
got the message and produced a local map.

"Take no notice of these lanes," he advised, running a pencil point
through them.  "Go straight out towards Wycombe to this cross, then
take a left turn and left again.  It's longer but it's quicker, and
less chance you'll get lost."

For starters that wasn't entirely encouraging, and when he did turn in
at the open gates of Sir Arthur Waites' home his spirits sank at sight
of the cars drawn up before the doors.  Central to the group was Angus
Mott's Saab.

Tipped at the bloody post," Beaumont told himself in disgust.

A fiftyish woman in a willow green trouser-suit came out of the house
and went to delve inside a battered Mini.  She emerged with what looked
like a doctor's bag.  Beaumont accosted her with his ID open.

"Ah," she said, 'another.  I do hope you'll take a discreet line.
Everyone is naturally upset."  Behind her two almost identical men in
black started bringing out a coffin.

Beaumont felt his hunter's blood stir in his veins.  "Before you start
sedating anyone," he said sternly to cover his bluff, 'we need to know
exactly what happened here."

She wasn't impressed.  "That is presently the concern of your Inspector
Mott.  Excuse me.  I have a patient to attend to."

He followed her in.  On her way upstairs she passed Rosemary Zyczynski
coming down.  "Hi," Z greeted him, surprised.  "What brings you here?"
She came out to the door.

"Waites' Mercedes."

"But it's out of action."

He looked at her sadly.  It wasn't his day for getting things straight
the first time.  He explained why the car was his subject of interest.
"Are you telling me it isn't here?"

Z gazed around.  "Behind the undertaker's van."  She waved towards
where the coffin was being slid into a windowless vehicle with a high
top.  "But it's had quite a dent."

"Splendid.  So who's the stiff?"

"Lady Waites," she said, glaring.  Then to cut off whatever gaffe his
delighted expression threatened, "Natural death after a long
illness."

"So where's His Nibs?"

"Which one?  Angus is with Sir Arthur.  So Sir Arthur's with Angus.
Look, if you want the car, shouldn't you take a look while it's still
here?  It's due to be sent for repair."

Beaumont hesitated.  He had a fancy to sneak in on whatever Mott was
about.  The DI certainly wasn't following up a death from natural
causes.  But the sooner the Merc's damage was checked the sooner he
could get it plastic-wrapped for forensic examination.  At any moment
now some oaf might try to get in and drive it away.

He wove his way between the parked vehicles and went round to the
front.  It looked promising: damage at the right level for the accident
as Chloe had described it.  What he wasn't keen on was the faint
powdering of brick dust in places.  Which might be a cunning attempt to
explain away the broken headlamp and twisted grill: cover an accident
with an accident.

The condition of the nearby archway suggested it had featured in some
cosmetic rearrangement.  But if any trace of blood lay underneath, the
lab experts would find it.

He used his mobile to call up Traffic support and reconciled himself to
indefinitely standing guard.

Z collected her tape recorder from Mott's car, relocked it and returned
indoors.  She found the atmosphere in the upstairs sitting-room tense.
Sir Arthur, seated by the window, looked ashen; Dr.  Parrish, hovering
protectively over him, forbidding.

"I can only say," the man admitted in a stricken voice, 'that it's not
impossible.  But I know nothing about it myself."

Mott placed the recorder on the table beside him.  "Tell us again about
the dress.  When do you last recall seeing it?"

Dr.  Parrish tried to intervene, but Sir Arthur was quite willing to
produce what facts were available.  At the end he raised his hands,
palm upwards.  "You've already spoken to Nurse Gregory.  She must be
able to explain better than I could.  I didn't know until now that this
girl had been here."

"The nurse has confirmed that you weren't present on the evening of
Friday, June twelve.  Which is why we wish to speak to everyone who
was.  I understand that late that night Professor Knightley called here
to pick up his daughter who was in a semi-comatose state.  Was he
familiar with the house?  It wouldn't have been easy to find for the
first time in the dark."

"I had entertained him here twice before."

"With his wife, perhaps?"

"No.  He came in a group of academics interested in mathematical
equations."

Euphemism for Piggott's gambling set-up, Mott assumed.  "He was
unaccompanied, then?"

"The second time there was a young woman with him."

"Do you know her name?"

"He referred to her as Beryl.  That's all I was told.  She also
appeared to be known to my son, but was not a family friend."

"So has Mrs.  Knightley ever been here, to your knowledge?"

"Not to my knowledge."

It went on painfully, painstakingly, with Waites holding nothing back.
But with every answer he was clearly more disturbed.

"Thank you, Sir Arthur, for your help."

"That's all?"

"I may need to speak with you again.  Now I should like to see your
son, then the two casino ushers who were present the night Chloe
Knightley was brought here."

"I'm not sure about Neil," the doctor put in quickly.  "His mother's
death has shaken him badly, however long expected."

"Is he sedated?"

She hesitated.  So concerned for Arthur, she hadn't checked this
morning on the boy.  He could be hungover, stoned afresh or simply
shattered.  Anything she could offer him might well form a dangerous
cocktail.

"I should like to be present."  Waited raised a haggard face and Mott
wondered again.  "How old is he?"

"Twenty."

"Legally of age.  There is no requirement for a responsible adult to be
present.  So we'll see what he feels about it."

Waites rose, uncertain what state the young man's room might be in, but
afraid that interviewing him elsewhere in alien territory could provoke
an unhelpful reaction.

"I'll see how he is," Dr.  Parrish offered.

"Nancy, thank you."

The affection in the man's voice alerted Mott's baser suspicions.  Was
the widower truly grieving, and would the lady doctor's death
certificate be genuine?  How many nasty creatures would crawl out as
all the stones were turned over in this case?

Henley nick had already provided some general background: that Havelock
House had been in the dead woman's family for generations.  Doubtless
there had been money too on that side of the alliance.  In which case
Waites stood to inherit.

Mott moved across and held the curtain aside to peer down into the
driveway.  A blue pick-up containing a number of large potted plants
had just driven up and with surprise he recognised the car parked ahead
of it as Beaumont's.

As he watched, the pick-up's driver, a small man, swung down and went
to the rear to unload.  Mott's DS stood up from crouching in front of a
silver Mercedes and went jauntily to confront the man.  Through the
closed window Mott was unable to hear what they said.

"Mr.  Pimm," Beaumont greeted the newcomer expansively.  "What an
unexpected pleasure."

"Mister Beaumont."  Irony wasn't the man's natural style and it came
out bitterly.  He wasn't unloading, just releasing the truck's rear
gate.  Ben Carter came shambling out of the house to take on the heavy
stuff.

"Both of you."  Beaumont beamed.  "How very fortunate.  Is Mr.  Piggott
inside as well?  It's good to play with a full deck.  I see you're into
horticulture."

"A few plants on hire to brighten up the place," Pimm excused them.

"A celebration with potted palms?  Rather unusual for a wake, I'd have
thought."

"Wake?"

"You haven't heard.  There's been a death in the family."

"Who?"  demanded Pimm.  Again Beaumont had the sense of the man's ears
flattening against the sides of his head.

"Her Ladyship," Ben mumbled.  "She passed away last night."

"Never met her," Pimm grunted, relieved.

"So Mr.  Piggott's little casino party may have to be postponed.  Never
mind.  I take it you're familiar with the place.  And the people.  Not
to mention their cars.  Now why didn't you?  mention the cars, that is,
and one in particular, when you knew I was interested in Mercs."

A sly look passed over the weasely features.  "Didn't want to make no
trouble, did I?  Anyways, it's silver, not white."

"Much the same to look at, in a dark lane when you're leaping for your
life."

"So you've had a dekko at it."  Pimm was probing.

"And it seems to fit the bill.  It's a tad bent.  Not so much as some
people I know, but enough to qualify."

Beaumont had time to register the flash of satisfaction on the man's
face before Ben broke in.  "That happened last night.  Young Mr.  Neil
ran it into a wall.  I had to get him out.  His head was bleeding."

"In the driving seat, yes?  But not over the radiator grill?"  He
watched them both and wondered if his bluff had come off.  Pimm had
frozen, ready prepared, but Ben had a weird expression of puzzlement,
shaking his head.

"Let's go indoors," the DS suggested, 'and I can take down your
statements."

Neil's 'room' was in fact a suite with sitting-room, study and bedroom
connected by broad archways.  As Mott entered, the young man was seated
unnaturally upright in a chair facing him with the grim-browed doctor
behind, a hand on his shoulder.

"My son, Neil," Waites said flatly.

One glance at the pale flesh, sunken cheeks and haunted eyes gave Mott
a fierce upsurge of excitement.  This was it.  Here was the reason for
Waites' defensiveness and the woman's truculence.  He would need to
proceed carefully.  He shook his head at Z's questioning eyes and she
put away the recorder.  Not now; later, in a different place.

"Neil," he began pleasantly, 'we're here to talk about Chloe.  Do you
remember where you first met her?"

He looked up.  "Saw her.  In the library."

"Here, at Havelock House?"

"He means the public library," his father interrupted.  "I take him
there sometimes.  Or he goes by taxi."

"So you don't drive a car, Neil?"

The young man stared back, uninterested.

"He lost his licence after an accident eighteen months ago," Waites
explained.  "He hasn't driven since."

To your knowledge."  He turned back to Neil.  "You drove your father's
car last night, though."

"Going to see her."  There was a little more life in the eyes now.

"You didn't get far.  That was unfortunate.  Better, perhaps, if she
came to you here."

"Chloe' He went quiet again, lethargic.  Mott wondered if the doctor
had slipped him a sedative before they met up.

"Did you go out to her house on Sunday night?  In your father's car?
She was walking with a friend in the dark, wasn't she?"

Again no reaction.  Try another tack, Mott told himself.

"A lovely girl.  Did you meet her mother?  Her stepmother actually."

Neil shook his head.

"She was lovely too," Mott reminisced.  "Another one with red hair, but
dyed, I think."

"Dyed.  She died," Neil echoed.  "Cheat, cheat!"

Mott's eyes met Z's again.  She went out into the corridor and phoned
for back-up to take the young man in.

Superintendent Yeadings received the news that Leila Knightley's killer
was in the building as he strove to put order and a modicum of good
grammar into DC Silver's report on his computer researches.  A
promising technocrat the lad might be, but basic English had apparently
escaped his curriculum.

Patting his pockets before remembering that pipe and tobacco were now
consigned to history, Yeadings made his way down to Interview Room I.
The sight of Neil Waites shocked him.  He had seen many before reduced
to wrecks by concentrated use of illegal substances and he knew the
lengths of amoral behaviour they were capable of.  He thought he
recognised here a victim-criminal.

He didn't doubt for a moment that Mott had picked the right man, but in
his present state he would surely be found unfit to plead.  Then, after
the long delays of the law, by the time he was finally detained at Her
Majesty's pleasure, something of the original man might have been
rehabilitated.  But the damage was done, the crime still committed and
a life lost.  The psychiatrists wouldn't consider that when they
eventually declared him fit to be let loose again among innocents in
the community.

He sat listening for only a few minutes to Mott's careful questioning
with Z alongside before he left," Z intoned, "Superintendent Yeadings
is leaving the room," for the benefit of the tape.

A middle-aged couple he took to be the parents were sitting in
Reception.  Almost as a penance he introduced himself and escorted them
to his office, offered coffee and a willing ear.

"I can't believe it," Waites said.  "Neil's such a gentle boy."

The woman explained she was the family doctor, but not how she came to
have neglected the young man's physical condition.  "The damage was
already done at Oxford," she said, seeing his disbelief.

"Nobody at home knew anything until after he was sent down and we heard
he was living in a squat in Reading.  They were a group of drug
addicts, thieving to support the habit, the girls employed as
prostitutes.  Believe me, he is much improved from then.  At least he
keeps himself clean and takes a little nourishment.  He is prescribed
methadone as a heroin substitute, but I fear he's using other
substances.  Whoever is dealing to him has an eclectic taste in drugs.
I suspect that person must have access to hospital supplies.  I've
found a positive reaction to one or two medical speciali ties as well
as to diamorphine, which you'd know better as heroin.  It makes it very
difficult to treat him safely."

"I'm surprised you didn't insist he was sent as an in-patient to a
drugs rehabilitation centre."

"There was an extra problem."

"His mother," Waites explained.  "My wife had been almost totally
incapacitated after a car crash just before Neil went to university.  I
believe that was behind his sudden collapse of morale.  She was making
no progress in hospital and I had her moved home, with nurses in
attendance.  Neil and she had always been particularly close, so we did
all we could to keep them together.  I still believe we made the right
decision.  Nancy Dr.  Parrish has been a tower of strength to me."

"Your wife's nurses, could they be supplying the drugs to your son?"

Dr.  Parrish intervened.  "I vetted them myself and they have
impeccable reputations.  Also they were well aware of the dangers of
contact with Neil and the need to stay above suspicion.  In any case,
since Lady Waites passed away yesterday evening, they will not be
returning to the house once they've cleared up after their patient."

Nor, sadly, will Neil, Yeadings thought.  Which can prove nothing.  "My
inspector mentioned an accident that also happened last night," he
prompted Waites, 'when your son received an injury to his forehead."

"That happened just as we found my wife had had slipped away.  Our
attention was entirely on that and we didn't notice what Neil was up
to.  He'd taken my keys from the hall table and driven my car straight
at an outside wall.  It was no accident, Superintendent.  I think in
his head he wanted to kill himself, in the same way that had eventually
killed his mother."

There was little more Yeadings could do for them, except take them
downstairs again to wait until such time as Mott was through with the
questioning.  Then, he promised, they should see Neil for a few
minutes.

In the hall, waiting on the same bench they'd used, was a large
ungainly figure in overalls who rose at sight of them.

"Why, Ben," Waites said, 'what are you doing here, man?"

"Young Mr.  Neil, sir, is he all right?"  The man was distressed.

"He's with the police now, Ben.  They're having to talk to him."

"But he's done nothing wrong!"

Waites' face twisted bitterly.  "They think they have enough to charge
him."

"What with?"  Ben Carter looked at Yeadings.  He shook his head.

Bitterly Waites opted to list the alleged of fences as he understood
them.  "Abduction of a young person and murder of a woman by
strangulation.  The police have found a length of the woman's hair in
Neil's room.  Also although it's impossible he's suspected of attempted
murder by running two other women down with my car.  It's being
examined now, apparently for traces of blood

"No," Ben Carter exploded.  "He never did and it wasn't your car.
They'll be able to tell, won't they, that the blood's not human?"

If it isn't," said Yeadings quietly, 'what is it?"

"A deer's.  My boss went out poaching and brought back a young one to
cut up.  You'll find some of the venison in the fridge at Sir
Arthur's/

"Who is your boss?"  Dr.  Parrish demanded.  "Did you know, Arthur,
what was going on under your roof?"

"Not the half of it, apparently.  You mean Piggott's been illegally
shooting game?"

"But how did its blood get on the car?"  Yeadings wondered aloud.  "Did
someone run a deer down?"

"No, it was put there, so the police wouldn't look elsewhere for
another Merc."

"I think," Yeadings decided firmly, 'this needs sorting out."

Chapter 25

Mott was confident they needed to look no farther for Leila's killer.
In a written statement Neil had wretchedly agreed that a woman wearing
a bird mask and "Chloe's dress' had visited Havelock House on the night
of the Venetian carnival.  He was less clear what had happened to her
subsequently.

A blood sample taken from him by the duty police surgeon had proved to
be of the same general group as the second type found on the mask.  DNA
would later determine whether the two samples were identical.  Neil
admitted that he had somehow cut his left hand on a broken mirror that
night but seemed not to understand that this had any special
significance.

It remained now to find witnesses who had seen Leila in his company.
For this Mott referred to the Boss, who was involved with interviewing
both of Piggott's men alternately in separate rooms.

After his first outburst about the blooding of the Merc, Ben had
clammed up.  While he was eager to exonerate Neil, he wouldn't point
the blame elsewhere.  Pirnm was uncooperative from the start, snapping
out, "No comment!"  cockily after each question.  Both had declined the
offer of a brief, but Pimm had used his permitted phone call to contact
Piggott, who arrived half an hour later with Paddy Mellor in tow.  The
lawyer pleaded non-involvement for his client and Pimm was allowed to
leave.

Recognizing the solicitor as an age-honoured opponent, Mott decided to
sit in on the recorded interviews.

"We haven't had a lot of assistance from your employees so far,"
Yeadings greeted the bookie sweetly.  "So it is good of you to
volunteer your help."  Which is how Piggott came to be requiring the
brief's support for himself.

He blusteringly denied poaching deer.  He had no idea how venison came
to be in Sir Arthur's fridge.  He had done nothing whatsoever to Sir
Arthur's car, not having been near Havelock House since overseeing the
tables at the previous Friday's gaming.  He had a cast-iron alibi for
last night.  He'd attended a Rotarian dinner, arrived back at his flat
at 2am and allowed a buddy to kip in a sleeping-bag on his sitting-room
floor.

Reassured by so much denial, Yeadings assumed an air of innocent
surprise.  "Then if you didn't interfere with the car, who did?"  he
asked.

Paddy Mellor requested a moment to consult with his client and the pair
were left together to concoct a suggestion.

As Yeadings had expected, Piggott opted to cover himself by sacrificing
another.  "Pimm borrowed my gun a week back," he claimed.  "I didn't
know what for until he dumped all this meat on me and said he'd buried
the animal's head, feet and offal in the woods.  And I still don't know
anything about any-bloody-body's Merc except my own."

"Which had body work repairs carried out during the night of this
Sunday-Monday."

The man's indignation wasn't feigned.  He roared denial and accused the
police of stitching him up.

Then to prove your point, you won't object to forensic examination of
the vehicle?"

Piggott, aglow with anger, was forced to concede the point.

"One down; two to go," Z murmured as Piggott left, to be replaced by
Carter.  "Not getting Pimm back, sir?"  Z queried.

"We're saving him for the sweet course."

Ben Carter was shaken at having however briefly seen the inside of a
police cell.  He knew it shouldn't happen to a law-abiding person like
himself.

"That's what comes of keeping bad company," Yeadings said sadly.
"Though it's hard to avoid when you're obliged to work together."

Ben considered this and decided the Superintendent was referring to
Walter Pimm.

"It's all right, Ben.  Mr.  Piggott has been in with his solicitor and
made a full statement.  Your partner Walter Pimm will be charged later
today.  All we need now is your confirmation of what he's been up
to."

The big man's face lost all its puckered lines.  "That's a relief, Mr.
Yeadings.  I wouldn't want to grass on him, but if my boss says so, I
will."

"Right.  The deer's blood first then."

"Well, we had all this meat Mr.  Piggott had shot, see?  So he said let
Sir Arthur have a load.  Then last night, after young Mr.  Neil had run
his dad's car into the wall I saw Walter smearing venison blood on it
out of the fridge.  Not a lot, mind.  He wiped some on and then he
wiped it off.  Left a bit round the broken headlamp."

"Why do you suppose he did that?"

"He wanted it found with blood on.  So Neil would get into trouble.
There'd been a hit-and-run Sunday night.  I heard it on local news.
That's when Walter had brought back Mr.  Piggott's Mercedes from
London.  And it was away until the evening after.  It came back all
shiny-bright and new.  I knew I hadn't polished it.  I reckon Walter
knew sommat about that accident."

"What if I told you we don't think it was an accident?"

Ben shook his head in disbelief.

Two women were the victims.  A Mrs.  Hetty Chadwick -know her?  No? And
young Chloe' Knightley."

"Chloe!"  The word exploded from him as if he'd been stung.  "That's
young Mr.  Neil's friend.  He'll be that upset."

"So why should Walter Pimm deliberately want to hurt a nice girl like
that?"

"So she wouldn't talk."  He seemed to have answered without thinking.

"Exactly," Yeadings agreed, still uncertain but bluffing like mad. "And
we all know what about, don't we?"

Ben looked puzzled.  "But Mr.  Piggott can't have told you that.  He
didn't know about what Walter was doing on the side.  Walter said he'd
slit my gizzard if I said anything.  And he would, if his job was at
risk.  He can be savage when his blood's up.  I guess he uses as well
as deals.  He goes crazy sometimes.  That's how I think '

"Yes?"

' how the other one died."

"The other one?"

Tn the mask.  She was all right when Mr.  Neil left her to get his fix.
He won't use a needle when anyone's there.  Then Walter went into his
room and I heard them shouting, the woman and him.  She sounded a bit
drunk-like, talking about some white powder her daughter had been
given.  I moved off a bit so I couldn't hear.  Then Walter came
storming out and said he wished he'd left her gagged, because when he
tore the tape off her mouth she gave him an earful, threatening him. So
he'd shut her up."

"You never actually saw her?"

"Not then."

"So when?"

"A bit later.  Some guests had started to arrive for the party.  Walter
said we had to get rid of her before she upset everyone.  So he closed
the door on the gaming room and we walked her out between us.  She'd
passed out by then.  He was going to leave her in the spinney to sober
up, only then we found her car under the trees and he put her inside.
He said he'd drive her home later and that's the last I saw of her."

"When did you realise she was dead?"

"When I heard it on the news.  "The body of a woman..."  I started to
wonder.  Then yesterday, in the Star it said about a bird mask.  So I
knew for sure it was her.  Poor lady, she'd had all her lovely hair cut
off.  Walter said Neil had done that in a temper."

"And he couldn't let her live to tell about what he'd done to her
stepdaughter?  I see."

"No!  Not Mr.  Neil.  He wouldn't kill anyone.  It had to be Walter,
because she'd guessed he was dealing."

"So where was Neil when you both took the woman away?"

"He'd jumped out the window.  I found him crying in the shrubbery when
I came back from putting her in her car."

"The car's still missing.  A red Volvo.  So will Walter have destroyed
it?"

Ben thought a moment.  "No.  He wouldn't waste it.  He'd want to sell
it on.  He knows some car dealers."  Who would do a repaint job, swap
licence plates and have it on the continent within hours, Yeadings
appreciated.

"Thank you, Mr.  Carter.  This young lady will take you to the canteen
now for some lunch, while I get the recording typed up for you to sign.
And we'll need your signature there too on the tape, with the date. And
here's your copy."

Ben stood up, still a little uneasy.  He pocketed the tape.  "There
won't be anybody there as I know, like?  In the canteen?"

"Don't worry.  Walter Pimm will be closeted with me.  We'll use
separate doors."

Z enjoyed watching Ben eat.  He put the food away as if a great burden
was off his mind.  There was only one piece of information she pursued
with him between mouthfuls.

"I expect they'll have cancelled the gambling for tonight."

"Yes.  Because of Sir Arthur's wife, poor soul."

"All those preparations for nothing.  You probably enjoy dressing up
for these party nights.  Where do you keep your posh gear?"

"We use a gardener's room out at the back for changing, Walter and me.
So we always leave our dinner jackets there and Sir Arthur has them
vale ted for us."

Right, Z marked up invisibly: one item of concrete evidence to be
picked up asap.  The large suit would be Ben's made-to-measure.  The
smaller one, cut down from one of Piggott's, so probably of superior
quality, would be the one which Pimm had worn when he gar rotted Leila.
And, almost certainly, it would also provide fibre identical to that
found under her nails.

"Oh, one other thing," she remembered to ask.  "What was Neil wearing
that night, when you found him in the shrubbery?"

A flood of red travelled up Ben's neck and suffused his face.  He
avoided her eyes to answer.  "Nothing.  He was as naked as the day he
was born."

Mott too was now on the track of evidence.  Interviewing Pimm along
with Beaumont, his eyes narrowed.  "Are you a religious man, Mr.
Pimm?"

Walter's reply was blasphemous by any standard.  Then, "Why?"  reeking
with suspicion.

"I thought you might be wearing a cross round your neck

Pimm's hand darted to the grubby cord barely discernible at the edge of
his open collar.

"What, this?  I carry me key there.  Ben Carter and me share rooms,
see?  And I get to hold the key.  Wouldn't trust it to a numbskull like
him

Understandably he would want to keep control.  That was the sort of
him.  Mott rasped a hand over his chin.  "One moment

Beaumont murmured for the tape, "DI Mott is leaving the room. Interview
suspended 14.40."  He switched off the recording.  "You want a mug of
tea or something.  No?"

Andrew Beale was custody sergeant.  He nodded as Mott gave his
instructions.  Ts this kosher, sir?"

"It will be, if the Super's on the right line.  We'll hold Pimm until
the lab has checked.  If it's spot on then his stay could be more
permanent

Beaumont ushered out a protesting Pimm wild at the idea of being
'banged up'.  He emptied his pockets with a bad grace.

"Rings, watch, money, jewellery," Beale intoned, not looking up.  "You
get a receipt and can check when your stuff's returned."  He reversed
the pad for Pimm to sign the form.  "What's that round your neck?"

"Me bloody key.  You're not having that."

"Believe me, Mr.  Pimm.  We are.  Let's have your shoelaces too while
we're about it."

Pimm was assigned to Cell 4 and his name chalked up on the slate
outside.  Then Beale returned to inspect with distaste the greasy knot
he was obliged to undo.  An inch of the cord would be enough for the
lab, Mott had said.  Then DS Beaumont was to borrow the key for a quick
shufty round the man's rooms when the search warrant came through.

At a little after 4pm a trace came in on Beryl Ryder and her mother.
Dublin Gardai faxed through that the two women sought as witnesses had
booked into the Phoenix Park Hotel there.

"We need Beryl's angle on what happened when she handed Chloe over to
Neil Waites on that first occasion," Yeadings told Mott.  "If you
suddenly turn up at her hotel when she's holidaying on Knightley's
handout it could be shock enough to squeeze the truth out of her.  I'll
authorise your flight.  You can team up with an Irish WPC at the other
end."

Which left only the Knightleys to speak with before he settled to
building up the case on paper.  Beaumont had relieved Z of Ben Carter's
company and was taking him as witness to his search of the rooms he
shared with Pimm.  The hoped-for object of this was a drugs cache, but
if they also turned up a length of cord identical to the sample held,
and tallying with microscopic marks on Leila's neck, then that would be
a bonus.

Through the drawing-room window at Knollhurst, Charles Hadfield saw
Yeadings' Rover draw up, and went himself to let the detective in.

"Superintendent, what news?"

"We've arrested a man on suspicion of attempted murder, but he's not
yet been charged."

"Attempted?  I don't understand."

"Concerning the hit-and-run.  We believe now that Chloe was the
intended victim but she was nippy enough to get clear.  Nearly pulled
Hetty free too, brave lass."

Hadfield looked appalled, then disappointed.  "That's splendid, but I
was hoping you'd got someone for killing Leila."

"Between ourselves, Mr.  Hadfield, we're hoping to press more serious
charges when material evidence is substantiated.  Rest assured; it's
all in hand.  How is Chloe now?"

"I'm all right," said a cool voice from the doorway.  "I've had another
session over the phone with the Gregorys' mother in Montreux and that's
helped a lot.  She's a shrink, you see."  She pulled a childish face.
"Must've cost the earth but I don't care any more about running up huge
phone bills."

"A sense of proportion," Yeadings agreed, beaming.  "That's what a
quiet life's really about.  I was hoping to have a word with you if you
felt up to it.  There are one or two missing patches in your story that
I might be able to fill in now."

"I'd like that.  The blanks have been bugging me.  Once it's all
properly come back I want to forget it entirely this time."

"Did you ever meet Neil Waites before that night?  He said he'd seen
you first in the public library."

She shook her head.  "He used to leave messages there later.  That's
when I felt I was being stalked."

"It won't happen again.  He's going voluntarily into a nursing home for
treatment, though it's doubtful he'll ever completely recover.  The
drugs have damaged his brain irreversibly.

"If he comes out, and if you wish it," Yeadings suggested, 'he can be
charged with abducting and holding you without your consent, and sexual
assault.  That would mean your having to give evidence in court and
live through it again."

Chloe shuddered.  "No.  I want it to be over.  It's enough living with
what happened to Leila.  I'll never get over the awful gap she's left.
She was my real mother, you know; no matter who birthed me."

Janey stayed with the girl while Hadfield saw him out.  "D'you
remember," the older man said on the doorstep, 'once calling Janey Mrs.
Hadfield?  I've decided it's time I put that right.  It'll make a
better case for claiming the children.  Actually Chloe's the only one
underage, and it's unthinkable leaving her with her father.  Then when
Eddie comes back from America he'll want to share a home with his
sister.

"Knightley's had a sort of breakdown; confessed to me this Beryl girl
was blackmailing him to marry her.  Claimed she was pregnant, but he
had his doubts.  He had to buy her off, on top of gambling debts.  It
leaves him short of cash, so I've offered to buy the house.  Leila
liked it and that's good enough for me.  Can't go uprooting the child
any more, eh?"

Yeadings grasped the man's hand.  "I wish you all the best."

He found Beaumont and Zyczynski had taken over his office and presumed
to get the coffeemaker going.  "We saw your car drive in," Z said in
excuse.

They were both grinning like monkeys.  There was nothing like success
to give the team an infusion of good fellow-ship.  Jeffrey Piggott had
just been charged with illegal slaughter of a deer.

"Is Walter Pimm talking yet?"

"Silent as the grave," Beaumont assured him.  "But we've got him on the
lot: dealing; attempted murder of Chloe; strangulation of her
stepmother; and attempting to pervert the course of justice."

Yeadings sighed."  "That man's silence is wonderful to listen to," he
quoted.

He saw Z grasped the quotation but couldn't place it.

"Under the Greenwood Tree," he supplied.  "Hardy."

Beaumont looked more wooden.  "That'd be a Laurel then?"

Good, Yeadings thought, watching Z wince, then smile: Beaumont's in pun
ny form again.  Team harmony's restored.

But heaven help us when Mott pulls out.  That's when the sparks will
really start to fly.