There was a vehicle parked in the middle of the grove, almost hidden by the saplings. A jeep of some kind.

Perfect for the terrain in the Chater valley, he thought.

LASER ACQUISITION, the photon amp display printed.

"Royan?"

THAT'S YOUR ECM DETECTOR WARNING. MACLENNAN IS FIRING THE PARADIGM IMPRINTER AT YOU. ONE MOMENT.

The image fluttered then reappeared. A bright red dot was flashing ten metres to the left of the jeep.

THAT'S THE EMISSION POINT

"Right. Give me targeting mode."

The blue circles sprang up. Greg shifted the rifle until they were centred on the jeep. He pulled the trigger. Five shots into the bonnet, three into the front tyre, another five into the bodywork.

MacLennan stopped firing the paradigm laser.

Greg pumped another ten shots into the rear of the jeep. He heard the unmistakable dull thud of an explosion. The back of the jeep rippled, opening up like a flower, jagged metal petals lunging jerkily for the blank sky.

"Cancel targeting mode." He started to jog towards the jeep. No way could he run: as it was, he had to try and remember what was immediately ahead at each footfall. The wall between him and the grove seemed to lurch towards him in two-metre increments.

A nimbus had engulfed the jeep, altering in size each time the picture updated, never the same shape twice. Flames, he guessed.

He reached the wall and clambered over, moss squelching below his gloves, ignoring the erratic images as the rifle shifted about, working by touch.

LASER ACQUISITION.

He landed on the spongy grass in the grove, and automatically rolled to one side. Paratroop training. Furious flames from the jeep were making a loud crackling.

"MacLennan?" he bellowed. "It doesn't work on me, you shit!" He stood up, pointing the rifle ahead.

LASER ACQUISITION.

The red dot was flashing from behind some saplings away to his left, dancing about like a firefly caught in a hurricane. MacLennan was moving away from the jeep. Greg started to jog towards the dot, ducking under the low branches, swerving round the trunks.

"Greg?" It was Philip. "The crash team will be with you in two minutes."

"Keep them in the air until I give the all clear."

"All right, boy, it's your show."

The laser picked out MacLennan running down a row of saplings, about eighty metres ahead. A clockwork humanoid, legs and arms pumping in a fractured rhythm. Slender grid lines chased after him coiling round his limbs and torso.

DO YOU WANT TARGET MODE???

"Not yet. I have to be sure."

SURE SURE SURE? WHAT KIND OF BLOODY SURE? HE TRIED TO KILL YOU.

Greg ran out into a tractor lane, four metres wide, the branches arching overhead, not quite meeting. It made the going a lot easier; he risked increasing his pace. "Sure about Clarissa Wynne."

MacLennan vaulted over the fence at the bottom of the grove, and sprinted over the field towards Hambleton Wood.

Gotcha, Greg thought. He arrived at the fence, scaling it quickly.

MacLennan reached the boundary of the wood, and charged through the waist-high fringe of undergrowth. He suddenly fell forwards, disappearing from sight below the nettles. Greg heard a distant curse.

The grass underfoot was awkward, shifty and slippery with rain. He had to slow down again, especially as he was cutting down the slope. There was that distinctive sound of brittle wood snapping up ahead as MacLennan thrashed about in the dead hawthorn bushes.

Christ, I hope it is MacLennan after all this! But his intuition was giving him a powerful high, as if he was just going through the motions. The outcome was already decided.

MacLennan's upper torso reappeared amid the bushes. He was flinging himself desperately at the knotted tangle of vines strung between the old trees. It wouldn't do him any good, you needed either a tank or a bulldozer to break into the wood. He jerked round, right arm coming up. Red dot.

LASER ACQUISITION.

Greg slowed to a halt thirty metres from the wood, raising the rifle to his shoulder. "Give me targeting mode, and expand the magnification." He ordered his cortical node to increase the neurohormone secretion level.

ABOUT BLOODY TIME.

Blue circles clicked into place. The targeting laser sweep contracted around MacLennan. It was as though he was standing two metres in front of Greg, the warped network of red lines bright enough to give off a faint coronal hue. An oversized pistol was gripped in his right hand, nozzle blazing. His espersense encountered the mind inside the reticulated head. It was MacLennan.

Greg aimed at the pistol and fired.

MacLennan howled, convulsing, right arm hugged to his chest. His pistol tumbling away. A hot throb of pain lanced into Greg's mind. Behind it came the raw malevolence, the near-frenzied fear, and the abhorrence.

"Hold it," Greg commanded as MacLennan began to look around his feet for the imprinter, the tendrils of desperation uncoiling in his gibbering mind. He walked forward until he came to the edge of the nettles. "Why did you come here, MacLennan? Why did you set them on me?"

"Because it was you!" MacLennan bawled. "You! Mindstar freak. You found the paradigm."

"How did you know that?"

"You were from the Home Office, you burnt into the memory core. You! It was you. Freak fucker."

"Oh shit." The rush of energy which had carried him out of the house and across the grove suddenly bled away. There was no determination left in him. No pride at completing the case, only weariness. He just wanted this over. Finished.

MacLennan started sobbing.

"Shut up!" Greg yelled.

"It hurts me! It hurts. You've burnt my hand in half, you bastard. Get me to a hospital, for Christ's sake."

Every emotion reached rock bottom. Greg felt dangerously calm. "It hurts, does it, MacLennan? How did Clarissa Wynne feel do you think? When you pushed her head under the lake. Did she hurt, MacLennan?"

"Clarissa?" It came out like a whinny.

"You killed her. Didn't you? Eleven years ago, you shot her full of syntho and killed her."

"She was going to claim all the credit!"

"Even now you're lying! It was her work."

"Wasn't!"

Guilt corrupted every thought in MacLennan's head. And there was nothing left to say.

Greg took a laboured breath. "Royan, shoot it over."

The grid snapped off for an instant as the targeting laser stabbed at MacLennan's eyes.

He heard the paradigm as it came surging through the communication link, a near-ultrasonic wheee in his earpiece, a blast of photons encapsulating the essence of Liam Bursken, accompanied by a monomaniac hatred for one man.

Poetic justice, or intuitive inspiration; Greg didn't know which, only that it was right. It fitted.

He pulled the photon amp strip from his face, twin circles of skin around his eyesockets pinching as it came free. The real world rushed back in on him, dark and dank, awash with human failings. The clean simplicity of the laser return virtual graphics was almost preferable. Somewhere behind him flames were soaring up into the night from the wreck of the jeep. Rain pattered down, beating the dusky vegetation towards the muddy ground.

MacLennan's prim face was contorted with pain, hair plastered down into a straggly cap. His jaw was working silently, as though he was choking.

"Do you know who you hate, Liam?" Greg asked quietly. "Do you?"

MacLennan stared back at him with insane eyes, mouth screwing into a joyous smile. "Yes. Me. It's me. Me!"

"That's right." He took the vibration knife from his belt, switched it on, and dropped it at MacLennan's feet.

MacLennan snatched it up with his good hand. "Redemption. He has granted me redemption." He laughed rhapsodically as he shoved the blade into his stomach. Blood foamed out. He sank to his knees, teeth clenched with effort, cheeks bulging, and pulled the blade up towards his sternum. "Yes. Oh, yes. My Lord."