Gilly’s dead, Gilly’s dead. But Nell is clean, clean, clean, Scrub her hard, dig in deep, make her clean, clean, clean!

“I’ve got to come in, Nell. Do you hear me? I’m going to break the lock. Don’t be frightened.”

Come on, Gilly girl. I want nothing serious tonight. Let’s laugh and be wild and be absolutely mad. We’ll have drinks, dance till dawn. We’ll find men and go to Whitby. We’ll take wine. We’ll take food. We’ll dance nude on the abbey walls. They can try to catch us, Gilly. We’ll be absolutely wild.

Pounding louder now. Pounding hard, hard, hard! Bursting ears, bursting heart. Rub her skin all clean.

“That’s not going to work, Mr. Clarence. I’m going to have to-”

“No! Shut up, damn you!”

Late at night. I said goodbye. Did you hear me? Did you see me? Did you find it where I left it? Bobby, did you find it? Did you fi nditfi nditfi ndit?

Shrieking wood, splintering wood. Never safe anymore. One last chance before Lot finds me. One last chance to make me clean.

“Oh God! Oh my God, Nell.”

“I’m going to phone for an ambulance.”

“No! Just leave us alone!”

Hands gripping. Hands sliding. Water pink and rich with blood. Arms holding. Someone crying. Wrapping warm and holding near.

“Nellie. Oh God. Nell.”

Pressed against him. Hear him sobbing. Is it over? Am I clean?

“Bring her out here, Mr. Clarence.”

“Go away! Leave us alone!”

“I can’t do that. She’s accessory in a murder. You know that as well as I. If nothing else, her reaction to all this should have-”

“She isn’t! She couldn’t be! I was with her!”

“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

“Nell! I won’t let them. I won’t let them!”

Weeping, weeping. Aching tears. Body racked with pain and sorrow. Make it end. Make it end. “Jonah-”

“Yes, darling. What is it?”

“Nell’s dead.”

“So he broke down the door,” Havers said.

Lynley rubbed his throbbing forehead. The last three hours had given him an appalling headache. The conversation with Havers was making it worse. “And?”

There was a pause.

“Havers?” he demanded. He knew that his voice was abrupt, that it would sound like anger instead of the fatigue that it was. He heard her catch her breath. Was she crying?

“It was…She had…” She cleared her throat. “It was a bath.”

“She’d taken a bath?” He wondered if Havers was aware of the fact that she was making no sense. Good God, what had happened?

“Yes. Except…she’d used brushes on herself. They were metal brushes. She was bleeding.”

“God in heaven,” he muttered. “Where is she, Havers? Is she all right?”

“I wanted to phone for an ambulance.”

“Why didn’t you, for God’s sake?”

“Her husband…he was…It was my fault, Inspector. I thought that I should be tough with her. I…It was my fault.” Her voice broke.

“Havers, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together.”

“There was blood. She’d used the brushes all over her body. He wrapped her up. He wouldn’t let go of her. He was crying. She said she was dead.”

“Christ,” he whispered.

“I went to the phone. He came after me. He-”

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“He pushed me outside. I fell. I’m all right. I…It was my fault. She came out of the bedroom. I remembered everything we’d said about her. It seemed best to be firm with her. I didn’t think. I didn’t realise she would-”

“Havers, listen to me.”

“But she locked herself in. There was blood in the water. It was so hot. There was steam… How could she have stood the water that hot?”

“Havers!”

“I thought I could do something right. This time. I’ve destroyed the case, haven’t I?”

“Of course not,” he replied, although he was absolutely unconvinced that she hadn’t blown their chances right into oblivion. “Are they still at their fl at?”

“Yes. Shall I get someone from the Yard?”

“No!” He thought rapidly. The situation could not possibly have been any worse. To have found the woman after all these years and then to have this happen was infuriating. He knew quite well that she represented their only hope of reaching the bottom of the case.

No matter the reality that insinuated itself from the pages of Shakespeare, only Gillian could give it substance.

“Then what shall I-”

“Go home. Go to bed. I’ll handle this.”

“Please, sir.” He could hear the despair in her voice. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t worry about it now.

“Just do as I say, Havers. Go home. Go to bed. Do not ring the Yard, and do not return to that flat. Is that clear?”

“Am I-”

“Then get a train back here in the morning.”

“What about Gillian?”

“I’ll worry about Gillian,” he said grimly and hung up the telephone.

He gazed down at the book in his lap. He’d spent the last four hours dredging up from his memory every single exposure he’d had to Shakespeare. It was limited. His interest in the Elizabethans had been historical, not literary, and more than once during the evening he had cursed the educational path he had taken all those years ago at Oxford, wishing for expertise in an area that, at the time, had hardly seemed relevant to his interests.

He had found it at last, however, and now he read and reread the lines, trying to wring a twentieth-century meaning from the seventeeth-century verse.

One sin, I know, another doth provoke.

Murder’s as near to lust as fl ame to smoke.

He gives life and death meaning, the priest had said. So what did the words of the Prince of Tyre have to do with an abandoned grave in Keldale? And what did a grave have to do with the death of a farmer?

Absolutely nothing, his intellect insisted. Absolutely everything, his intuition replied.

He snapped the book closed. It was imprisoned in Gillian: the meaning and the truth. He picked up the telephone and dialled.

It was after ten when she trudged down the ill-lit street in Acton. Webberly had been surprised to see her, but the surprise had faded when he opened the envelope Lynley had sent. He glanced at the message, turned it over, and picked up the phone. After barking an order for Edwards to come at once, he dismissed her without a question as to why she had suddenly appeared in London without Lynley. It was quite as if she didn’t exist for him. And she didn’t, did she? Not any longer.

Who gives a shit, she thought. Who bloody cares what happens? It was inevitable. Fat, stupid little pig, snorting around trying to play the detective. Thought you knew everything about Gillian Teys, didn’t you? Heard her humming in the next room and even then you weren’t smart enough to figure it out.

She looked up at the house. The windows were dark. Mrs. Gustafson’s television blared from next door, but not a sign of life glimmered from the interior of the building in front of which she stood. If its inhabitants were disturbed by the neighborhood noise, there was no indication. There was nothing.

Nothing. That’s really it, isn’t it, she thought. There’s nothing inside, not a single thing and espe cially not the one thing that you want to be in there. All these years you’ve been incubating a chi mera, Barb. And what a bloody waste it’s been.

She steeled herself against the thought, refused to accept it, and unlocked the door. In the quiet house the smell assailed her, a smell of unwashed bodies, of trapped cooking odours, of dead air, of ponderous despair. It was foul and unhealthy, and she welcomed it. She breathed it in deeply, finding it fi tting, finding it just.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Here it is, Barb. It all began here. Let it bring you back to life.

She put her handbag down on the splintered table next to the door and forced herself towards the stairs. But as she reached them her eyes were caught by a flash of light from the sitting room. She walked to the door curiously to fi nd the room empty, the fl ash only a brief flicker of a passing car’s lights hitting the glass of the picture. His picture. Tony’s picture.