I left three messages for Tager, the bail bondsman, but he didn’t return my calls. His office was up in the Bronx, close by Yankee Stadium. Tager, too, would be tomorrow’s work. Someone had asked him to post bail for Alice. If I found out who that person was, I would be one step closer to discovering those responsible for her death.

As Angel and Louis made their way to the Delta terminal at JFK, a man who might have been able to answer some of their most pressing questions passed through immigration, collected his baggage, and entered the arrivals hall.

The cleric had arrived in New York on a BA flight from London. He was tall and in his late forties, with the build of a man who enjoyed his food. His unruly beard was lighter and redder than his head hair and gave him a vaguely piratical aspect, as though he had only recently ceased tying firecrackers to its ends in order to frighten his enemies. He carried a small black suitcase in one hand and a copy of that day’s Guardian in the other.

A second man, slightly younger than the visitor, was waiting for him as the doors hissed closed behind him. He shook the cleric’s hand and offered to carry his case, but the offer was declined. Instead, the visitor handed the newspaper to the younger man.

“I brought you a Guardian and Le Monde,” he said. “I know you like European newspapers, and they’re expensive over here.”

“You couldn’t have brought a Telegraph instead?”

The younger man spoke with a faint Eastern European accent.

“It’s a little conservative for my liking. I’d only be encouraging them.”

His companion took the Guardian and examined the front page as he walked. What he saw there seemed to disappoint him.

“We’re not all as liberal as you are, you know.”

“I don’t know what happened to you, Paul. You used to be on the side of the good guys. They’ll have you buying shares in Halliburton next.”

“This is no longer a country for heedless liberals, Martin. It’s changed since last we were here.”

“I can tell that. There was a chap back there in immigration who just stopped short of bending me over a table and poking me in the arse with his finger.”

“He would be a braver man than I. Still, it’s good to have you here.”

They walked to the parking lot and didn’t speak of the matters that concerned them until they were out of the airport.

“Any progress?” said Martin.

“Rumors, nothing more, but the auction is in a matter of days.”

“It will be like putting blood in the water to see what it attracts, but fragments are no good to them. They need it all. If they’re as close as we think, they’ll bite.”

“It’s a risky business you’ve involved us in.”

“We were involved anyway, whether we wanted it or not. Mordant’s death ensured that. If he could find his way to Sedlec, then others could too. Better to retain a little control over what transpires than none at all.”

“It was a guess. Mordant was lucky.”

“Not that lucky,” said Martin. “He broke his neck. At least it looked like it was an accident. Now, you said there were rumors.”

“Two women disappeared from the Point. It seems that they were present when the collector Winston was killed. Our friends tell us that both have since been found dead: one in Brooklyn, the other in Arizona. It’s reasonable to suppose that whatever they took from Winston’s collection has now been secured.”

The bearded man closed his eyes briefly, and his lips moved in a silent prayer.

“More killings,” he said, when he was finished. “That’s too bad.”

“That’s not the worst of it.”

“Tell me.”

“There have been sightings: an obese man. He’s calling himself Brightwell.”

“If he has come out of hiding, it means that they believe they’re close. Jesus, Paul, don’t you have any good news for me?”

Paul Bartek smiled. It was a grim smile, but he was still worried that the next piece of news was affording him a degree of pleasure. He would have to confess it at some point. Nevertheless, it was worth a few Hail Marys to pass it on to his colleague.

“One of their people has been killed. A Mexican. The police believe he was responsible for the death of one of the prostitutes. They think her remains are among those found in his apartment.”

“Killed?”

“Shot to death.”

“Somebody did the world a favor, but he’ll pay for it. They won’t like that. Who is he?”

“His name is Parker. He’s a private detective, and it seems that he makes quite a habit of things like this.”

Brightwell sat at the computer screen and waited for the printer to finish spewing out the final pages of the job. When it was done, he took the sheaf of papers and sorted through them, ordering them according to date, starting with the oldest of the cuttings. He read through the details of those first killings once again. There were pictures of the woman and child as they had been in life, but Brightwell barely glanced at them. Neither did he linger on the description of the crime, although he was aware that there was a great deal that remained unsaid in the articles. He guessed that the injuries inflicted on the man’s wife and daughter were too horrific to print, or that the police had hoped at the time to hold back such details in case they encouraged copycats. No, what interested Brightwell was the information on the husband, and he marked with a yellow highlighter those parts that were particularly noteworthy. He performed a similar exercise on each of the subsequent pages, following the man’s trail, re-creating the history of the preceding five years, noting with interest the way past and present intersected in his life, how some old ghosts were raised while others were laid to rest.

Parker. Such sadness, such pain, and all as penance for an offense against Him that you cannot even recall committing. Your faith was misplaced. There is no redemption, not for you. You were damned, and there is no salvation.

You were lost to us for so long, but now you are found.

David Sekula occupied a suite of modest offices in a nice old brownstone on Riverside. A brass plate on the wall announced his status as an attorney-at-law. I pressed the button on the intercom by the door. It gave out a reassuring two-note chime, as if to convince those who might be tempted to run away in the interim that everything would be all right in the end. Seconds later the speaker spluttered into life, and a female voice asked if she could help me. I gave her my name. She asked if I had an appointment. I confessed that I didn’t. She told me Mr. Sekula wasn’t available. I told her that I could sit on the steps and wait for him, maybe open a Mickey’s Big Mouth to pass the time, but if I had to take a leak, then things might get messy.

I was buzzed in. A little charm goes a long way.

Sekula’s secretary was spectacularly good-looking, albeit in a vaguely threatening way. Her hair was long and black, and tied loosely at the back with a red ribbon. Her eyes were blue, and her skin was pale enough to make the hints of red at her cheeks look like twin sunsets, while her lips would have kept a whole Freudian symposium going for a month. She wore a dark blouse that wasn’t quite transparent yet still managed to hint at what appeared to be very expensive black lace lingerie. For a moment, I wondered if she was scarred in some way, because it seemed like there were irregular patterns visible on her skin where the blouse pressed against it. Her gray skirt ended just above the knee, and her stockings were sheer and black. She looked like the kind of woman who would promise a man a night of ecstasy unlike anything he had ever previously imagined, but only as long as she could kill him slowly immediately afterward. The right man might even consider that a good deal. Judging by the expression on her face, I didn’t think she was about to make me that kind of offer, not unless she could bypass the ecstasy part and get straight to the slow torture. I wondered if Sekula was married. If I had suggested to Rachel that I needed a secretary who looked like this woman, she would only have agreed if I signed up for temporary chemical castration beforehand, with the threat of a more permanent solution always on the horizon if I ever felt tempted to stray.