Dunstan was nodding vigorously again.

“You put things very clearly, my dear. Your mathematical training, I suppose. Except that you have not brought motivation into the equation. I wished to protect my son. He was a child too. Back then we did not have the complex network of counselors and child psychiatrists we have today. What we did have was the Church, and it was to the Church’s care in the form of a Catholic boarding school that I committed Gerry in the hope and belief they would steer him right, and enable him to mature into a decent and moral man, which all the evidence suggests they have done.”

He paused as if to invite comment on his argument. There was the noise of an engine outside and through the window Mig saw a pickup arrive. On it, supported by the Gowder twins, lay the Other Wolf-Head Cross. Its huge eye seemed to leer into the kitchen, as if deriding what was happening there. Thor Winander was driving. He swung the wheel till the vehicle faced the kitchen. Catching Mig’s eye through the window, he gave a cheerful wave, then began backing the pickup up the slope to the scooped-out niche which Mig had noticed as he walked down from the Moss. So, no marble Venus but something equally pagan.

No one else in the room seemed to have noticed. Dunstan resumed talking.

“As for the girl, little Pam, I did exactly the same for her as I did for Gerry. I committed her to the Church’s care, in the honest belief that removing her from the scene of so much distress and helping her start a new life under the tutelage of the Church’s officers and agencies would bring her to a healthy and prosperous womanhood.”

This was breathtaking stuff, thought Mig. Hadn’t the man said he’d read Law at Cambridge? What an advocate was lost when he opted not to practice!

“You really fucking got it wrong then, didn’t you?” exclaimed Sam.

“Yes, I really fucking did,” said Dunstan.

The echo of her profanity came across not as reproof or parody but as another strut in the bridge he was trying to build between himself and his accuser. And the process continued as, with his unblinking gaze fixed on Sam, he repeated his pleas in a low, urgent voice, discarding flowing periods and fancy turns of phrase.

“I admit my first priority was always my own family. I had no idea the child was pregnant. It never crossed my mind. But I don’t need to tell you this, do I? Your own powers of reasoning will have got you there. I put my family first, and if I’d thought for one moment Pam Galley might be carrying Gerry’s child, then she would have been family too. As you are, my dear. As you are. And, hard though it will be for you to believe it at this moment, I cannot tell you how much that knowledge delights me.”

This beat all. And it wasn’t mere advocacy, thought Mig. He means it! He loves Frek, but when he looks at her, he sees a dead end. Now he sees those same unblinking Woollass eyes looking back at him from the face of a woman whose sexuality he knows, courtesy of my schoolboy blushes, is not in doubt. And he doesn’t just want to defend himself, he wants to conquer.

He glanced across the table at Frek and read in her face that this was how she understood the situation too. Did she care? That he couldn’t read.

Behind her through the window he saw that Thor had got out of the cab and was supervising the Gowders as they maneuvered the Wolf-Head off the pickup. Still no one else at the table seemed to have noticed what was happening outside. In Sam’s case this was probably as well. Sight of the twins could only be a distraction, and she had plenty on her plate dealing with Dunstan.

He could see that the old man’s response had to some extent wrong-footed her. He guessed there was a lot of her priest-decking father in her. In a tight spot he didn’t doubt Sam could throw a damaging hook too. But neither violence nor mathematics was going to see her through this present situation.

He wanted to speak to her, but knew it would be a mistake. Later perhaps there would be a time for words of comfort and advice, when they were alone and close…

His heart swooned at the prospect.

Dunstan had bowed his head as if in prayer. Now he sat up straight. His eyes bright, his voice firm, he did not look a man in his eighties.

He said, “You will want to think about what you’ve discovered, what I have said. And from what I’ve learned of you in the short time of our acquaintance, you’ll want to confront Gerry. My son. Your grandfather.”

“Too true I will!” snapped Sam. “He can run but he can’t hide.”

Mig saw Dunstan wince slightly at the banality, but all he said was, “I don’t believe he’s doing either. I know for a fact that after your revelations in the Stranger, he suffered a great perturbation of spirit. He spent much of last night in prayer with Sister Angelica. In our faith only a priest can administer the sacraments, but there are times when a troubled soul needs the ministrations of a wise and spiritual woman.”

“You mean he screws nuns as well as little girls?” snapped Sam.

Mig was shocked, but mingled with the shock was a degree of admiration and pride. She is indomitable! he thought.

Dunstan, however, threw back his head and snorted a short laugh.

“I don’t believe that is a habit he has got into, if you’ll forgive the tasteless pun.”

Unexpectedly he stood up and moved round the table as if he wanted to take a closer look at Sam. She rose too and, head tipped back to compensate for the disparity of height, met his gaze unflinchingly, diamond striking against diamond.

“Do not take it amiss, great-granddaughter, if I say that in you I see something of myself,” he said softly. “You will pursue an end no matter what gets in the way. You will not rest till you have worked everything out, no matter where it takes you, or how long.”

“Right to the last decimal point,” she said.

“And if it is one of those what I believe you mathematicians call irrational numbers which have no last decimal point?”

“Then I’ll keep going till what I believe you call God says it’s time to stop.”

“That’s a voice we all need to listen out for,” he said gravely. “I am truly sorry for everything that has happened, and for all of its consequences. Except for yourself. I cannot say I am sorry for that. I do believe that’s Gerry arriving now.”

The transition from intense emotion to casual comment was perfect, denying Sam the chance to offer any sharp, puncturing response. Instead she turned as they all did to look out of the window.

The Range Rover was drawing up alongside the house. Gerry Woollass got out. He didn’t look into the kitchen. All his attention was concentrated on the activity up the slope. He walked toward the three men who had managed to slide the Wolf-Head off the pickup. Presumably its base was now over the prepared site and all that remained was to raise it into position. This was no easy task even for three strong men. There was only room for one of the twins to stand at the front and push while Winander and the other hauled at the ends of a canvas sling wrapped around the huge bole.

Later Sam and Mig learned from Winander what was said.

Gerry, in Thor’s words, looked like death warmed up.

As he approached, he growled, “I see you’ve brought that abomination then.”

“Thought you and Frek had got all that sorted,” replied Thor.

“No. I gave in weakly, as I have always done. But that’s at an end. You and your minions can take it away. And that will be the last time I ever look to see you Gowders on my property. You’re finished here, you understand what I’m saying? It’s over. Now you must answer for yourselves. To God and to man. If the Law doesn’t punish you, then surely the Almighty will.”

It was, theorized Thor when he knew the whole story, mere rhetoric, spoken by a man dizzy from lack of sleep, his emotional being a maelstrom of guilt and remorse, and fear too at the path of confession and penitence which lay ahead. There was in fact and in law no case for the Gowders to answer. Even if some kind of charge could be devised after all these years, at the age of eleven in a rape case they were below the threshold of criminal responsibility. But such subtleties were not a part of the twins’ thinking. Their measure of what they had done was not a legal still less a moral one. It was the reward they had reaped from their silence, the patronage of Dunstan Woollass without which they would almost certainly have ended up, in their own outdated term, “on the parish.”