'IT'S NOT my fault,' said Pam, holding out her hands and rubbing the wrists. 'If you want me to stay tied up, it's your responsibility to make sure the knots work.'

'It's no use using pieces of film, they're not flexible enough.' Barwick threw the celluloid strips on the floor in disgust. He was tired of being everyone else's caretaker. If Pam escaped, he would doubtless be blamed and punished.

'He's the big mastermind, him upstairs, isn't he?' She pointed to the ceiling. 'He should take responsibility, not leave it all to you. The truth is obvious, he doesn't care what happens to anyone.' She spoke urgently, sure that someone would appear any minute to accuse her of having sent Xavier on a wild goose chase.

If Barwick had not been such a coward, he would have been able to admit how much he hated Sebastian, Caton-James and the rest. He had been thrust in their path for years, through school, through college, through family ties, and now through blood. He would never be free of them, any of them, ever.

'You don't understand,' he said miserably, 'nobody chooses to join the League, and nobody can ever leave it. Membership is by birth, and for life. That's what they tell you.'

Sometimes Barwick sat on the bench at the top of Primrose Hill and looked down across the sprawling city, and felt like a visitor from another planet. He had nothing in common with the people who walked the streets below, and wished he had. He was not quite good enough for the people of his own class. Caton-James and the rest thought him too slow, too lacking in style, too fat, too dull. But he would never be able to fit in anywhere else, no matter how hard he tried. Sometimes he thought of himself as a lift stuck between floors. He would always be an alien, awkwardly cemented into limiting social strata by his background. Pam wore her lower-middle class origins as proudly as a designer label, but in her case it fitted beautifully. She was beautiful.

'I don't want to escape and get you into trouble,' she was whispering to him, 'but let me make a phone call, just to a friend who can help Vince, that's all.' She threw him a pleading look. 'That's all.'

Her mobile phone was still in her handbag. If he took her to the alcove beneath the stairs, nobody would be able to hear her. Half of his colleagues were asleep in the big armchairs upstairs. Sebastian and the others had no reason to come down. 'All right,' he said finally, taking her hand. 'I'll be with you, but if you say one word about where you are, we're done for. Understand?'

She nodded thankfully.

'Follow me.'

Tucked safely in the shadows, Xavier Stevens watched and waited. Christ, what a night, he thought. The others were so panic-stricken about its events that they had lost all sense of its sport. Of course it was a serious matter, deadly serious, but Sebastian saw it simply as some kind of power-game to be played out, a way of scoring against his father. He saw right through Sebastian. Like all bullies, the man was a coward at heart. He always found someone else to do his dirty work.

Wells had done some dirty work tonight. He had not enjoyed killing the agent; it seemed unnecessary, but it was what Wells had wanted, and he was willing to pay. He smiled grimly. You could do anything in this city and get away with it, if you were familiar with the right routes.

Stevens moved forward and peered around the corner. Vince was still standing there by the shop window of Rymans, utterly immobilised. Why wasn't he phoning, asking his friends, taking action? Could it be that Wells had misjudged his stamina after all? He longed to step up to Vince and goad him into action, push him, shove him, stab at him, make him do something. Instead, he was forced to crouch and watch and wait while he arrived at his own independent conclusions. Come on, he urged him silently, you can do it, work it out. Stevens checked his watch. Not much time left now. Three more challenges and then the dawn. He wanted to be there when the fireworks began.

I can do this, Vince thought, I don't need anyone else's help. Time to show them what you're made of. He dried his hands as best as he could and reopened the page with numb fingers.

Opened after Defoe's 'Year. The capital letter on 'year' was a giveaway. Defoe had to be Daniel Defoe. One of his most famous works was A Journal of the Plague Year, so he was looking for something that opened the year after the Great Plague ended, presumably in 1666, the year of the Great Fire. Defoe was a famous Nonconformist, so that was the title of the challenge taken care of.

Blake and Bunyan make a show. He didn't know what to make of this, beyond the fact that they were all writers.

Paradise was founded here conceivably referred to Milton and his Paradise Lost, which was contemporary to Defoe.

Seek the Elf King, go below was gibberish. Instinctively he felt drawn to the old inner City of London, but could find no logical justification for his choice. The hand that touched his shoulder while he was attempting to solve the conundrum shattered the page and nearly made him drop in his tracks.

While Masters was rooting about in the attic looking for his notes and clippings, the phone rang again downstairs. Maggie Armitage answered it on the second ring. She listened for a minute, then cupped her hand over the receiver and mouthed 'Who are all these people?' to Stanley Purbrick. This one was called Pam, and she also wanted to know where Vince was.

'I wish we knew, dear,' said Maggie, 'but he hasn't called us in over an hour, and we have no way of contacting him. Yes, I'll let him know you're safe if he rings again. Can he contact you? No, I see.'

Maggie replaced the receiver, puzzled. 'Sounded like she was calling from inside a cupboard,' she said.

The walls of the fuliginous cupboard were coated with coal dust, and once Pam started sneezing she could not stop. Barwick held the door open for her, his clumsy fantasies of seduction thwarted.

'Look here,' he began, starting towards her as she fished about in her bag for a handkerchief, 'suppose we just left, you and I, quickly and quietly by the servants' entrance? We could be far away from here before they find us gone.'

'Okay, but won't you get into trouble?' she said, trying to think through this new development as she blew coal from her nose.

'It'll be a lot worse than that,' said Barwick, grimacing. 'You can't leave the League, not once you know its secrets.'

'Tell me, Horace, why are they making Vince do this?' she asked. 'It's more than just a series of games, isn't it?'

'Oh, much more,' he agreed. 'You have no idea…'

'If you don't agree with what the League is doing, you should tell me. Perhaps we can do something about it.'

'I agree in principal, what with the way the country is going and everything. But what he's planning is simply too dangerous to contemplate. The WBI is a government organisation. He can't do it without Vince, you see…'

'I don't understand,' she persisted as they headed for the stone staircase at the rear of the building. 'You have to tell me what he is going to do.'

'I can't do that. Too risky,' Barwick gasped, the effort of fast movement clearly having an adverse effect on him. 'He would have to kill me – and you. It's better that you don't know anything more.'

'And we just sit back and let this – thing – happen? Can't you go to the authorities? Someone with power?'

'How, when our families are the authorities?' he wheezed. The spiral staircase they had entered turned to the ground floor and a basement beyond. The people with power, we're all related one way or another.'