She cursed. She said, “Bloody hell, Thomas. Get us out of here.”

He gave no reply. But he made the virtue of being a longtime Londoner apparent when he began to take side streets, coolly, as if in possession of the Knowledge. He finally parked as Isabelle’s mobile rang again.

Philip Hale’s voice said, “There’s a church at the southwest end of the square.”

“Has he gone inside?”

He hadn’t, Hale said. In front of the church was a garden and he had begun to play there, in the middle of the central path. There were benches lining this and people were listening and, “Guv, there’s quite a crowd gathered.”

Isabelle said, “We’ll be there.” And to Lynley, “A church?”

“That would be St. Paul’s Covent Garden.” As they came into the vicinity of the old flower market, he took her arm briefly and pointed her towards it. She saw the building over the heads of the crowd, a classical structure of brick with quoins of pale stone. She headed towards it, but the route wasn’t easy. There were buskers everywhere and hundreds of people enjoying them: magicians, balloon sellers, tap dancers, even a group of grey-haired women playing marimbas.

Isabelle was thinking it was the perfect spot for something dreadful to happen-anything from a terrorist attack to a runaway vehicle-when a sudden commotion to one side of the church caught her attention just as her mobile rang. A shout went up, and she snapped, “What’s going on?” into the phone. For it was clear to her that something was happening and it wasn’t what she wanted to happen and even as she thought this, she saw Yukio Matsumoto tearing through the crowd, his violin in one hand and sheer unmitigated panic on his face.

On the mobile Philip Hale said, “He clocked us, guv. Don’t know how. We’ve got-”

“I see him,” she said. “Get in pursuit. If we lose him here, we’ve lost him for good.” And to Lynley, “Damn. Damn,” as the violinist broke into a crowd. Cries of protest were followed almost at once by shouts of “Police! Stop! Stop that man!” and afterwards a form of madness ensued. For part of the dark history of the Metropolitan police in pursuit of anyone was a history that included the shooting death of an unarmed and innocent civilian in an underground train, and no one wanted to be in the line of fire. No matter that these plainclothes cops were not armed, the crowd wouldn’t know that. People began running in all directions as mothers grabbed children, husbands grabbed wives, and those individuals with a score to settle against the police did what they could to get in the way.

“Where’s he gone?” Isabelle demanded of Lynley.

He said, “There!” and indicated roughly the north. She followed his gesture and saw the bobbing head of the man and then the black of his tuxedo coat, and she set off after him, shouting into her phone, “Philip, he’s going north on…What is it?” to Lynley.

“James Street,” Lynley said. “In the direction of Long Acre.”

“James Street,” she repeated. “In the direction…where?” to Lynley. And then, “Bloody hell. You talk to him.” She thrust her mobile at Lynley and began to run, forcing her way through the crowd with shouts of “Police! Police! Get out of the way!”

Matsumoto had made it to the top of the street, charging down the middle of it with no regard for whom or what he ran into. Fallen children, one upended kiosk, and trampled shopping bags lay in his wake, but to her cries of “Stop him!” no one did a thing.

In pursuit, she and Lynley had the advantage over Philip Hale and his men. But Matsumoto was fast. He was driven by fear and by whatever demons were inside his head. In front of her, she saw him dash directly into Long Acre, where the blast of a horn told her he’d nearly missed being hit by a car. She redoubled her speed in time to see him go roaring up another street. He ran as if his life depended upon escape, his violin clutched to his chest, its bow long discarded. Isabelle cried, “Where does that go?” to Lynley. “Where’s he heading?”

“Shaftesbury Avenue,” Lynley told her, and into the phone, “Philip, can you head him off by another route? He’s about to cross Shelton Street. He’s not attending to where he’s running or what’s around him. If he makes it as far as Shaftesbury…Yes. Yes. Right.” And to Isabelle, “There’ll be uniforms somewhere nearby. He’s got the Met on it.”

“Christ, we don’t want uniforms, Thomas.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

They raced after him. Matsumoto knocked pedestrians right and left. He stumbled against a placard for the Evening Standard. She thought they had him because the vendor jumped forward and managed to grab his arm, yelling, “Just you bloody wait.” But he shoved the irate man into the window of a shop front with tremendous force. The glass cracked, then exploded and showered the pavement in shards.

He made it into Shaftesbury Avenue. He veered to the right. In vain, Isabelle hoped for a uniformed constable or anything else because as she and Lynley rounded the corner, she could see the danger, and she understood in a flash what was likely to happen if they didn’t stop him at once.

Which they could not do. They could not do.

“What is this place?” she called to Lynley. He’d gained upon her and was surging ahead, but she was close after him.

“High Holborn, Endell, New Oxford…” His breathing was heavy. “We can’t let him cross.”

She saw that well enough. Cars, taxis, lorries, and buses were all debouching into this one spot and from every direction.

But cross he intended and cross he attempted, without a glance to the right or the left, as if he were running in a park and not upon a congested street.

The taxi that hit him had no chance to stop. It came from the northeast, and like every other means of transport in the vast confluence of streets that hurled vehicles by the dozens and in every direction, it came fast. Matsumoto flung himself off the pavement, intent upon crossing, and the taxi slammed into him, sending his body in a horrifying arc of flight.

“Jesus God!” Isabelle heard Lynley cry. And then he was shouting into her mobile, “Philip! Philip! He’s been hit. Get an ambulance at once. Top of Shaftesbury Avenue, near St. Giles High Street,” as everywhere round them the screech of brakes and the blaring of horns filled the air, as the taxi driver burst out of his vehicle and-hands to his head-ran towards the crumpled body of Yukio Matsumoto as a bus driver joined him and then three others, till the violinist was hidden from view as Lynley shouted, “Police! Keep back! Don’t move him!”

And as she herself realised, she’d made the wrong decision-the very worst decision-to have a team go after the man.

WHEN HE’D AGREED to be part of Isabelle Ardery’s murder squad for this investigation, the last spot Lynley would have considered as one of the locations in which he might have to put in an appearance was St. Thomas’ Hospital, Accident and Emergency, the very rooms and corridors in which he’d had to make the decision to let go of Helen and their child. But that was where the ambulance took Yukio Matsumoto, and when Lynley walked through the doors into the hushed urgency of the casualty ward, it was as if no time at all had passed between this moment and the aftermath of what had happened to his wife. The smells were the same: antiseptics and cleansers. The sights were as they had been before: the institutional blue chairs linked together and lining the walls, the notice boards about AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and the importance of frequent hand washing. The sounds remained universal: the arrival of ambulances, the rush of feet, exigent orders being barked as trolleys wheeled the injured into examining areas. Lynley saw and heard all of this and was swept back to the moment he’d walked in and learned that his wife had been shot on the front steps of their house, that help did not arrive for twenty minutes, and that in that time Helen had gone without oxygen as her heart pumped blood uselessly into the cavity of her chest. It was all so real that he gasped, stopped abruptly, and did not come round till he heard Isabelle Ardery say his name.