Bobby seemed moved and upset. 'This is crazy,' he kept repeating. 'One, yes, you can explain. Some thug with a grievance decides to cut up his victim. Two, and it's a whole different thing. Major problem.'

'Who did you say he was?' Sieverance asked.

'A Corporal Braun.'

'Two soldiers. Got to be insurgents, surely?'

'Except the only insurgents left are three hundred miles away on another island being chased by thousands of American troops.'

'I suppose so,' Sieverance frowned. 'Yes. Fair point.'

'A major problem.'

In the theatre Braun's washed and naked body lay in a pool of brilliant light on the operating table. Both Sieverance and Bobby seemed more impressed by the gleaming chrome and general cleanliness of the room than anything else as they moved around investigating the equipment.

'This is quite an establishment, Doctor,' Sieverance said. 'No disrespect, I mean, I feel I could be in the US.'

'Well, you'd have to be somewhere very special,' Carriscant said. 'Not all of this equipment is commonly available.'

'I'm not surprised,' Sieverance nodded appreciatively. 'When I think of Wieland's surgery. The filth, the primitiveness – '

'We got co talk about Wieland, Colonel,' Bobby said. 'Seriously.'

Carriscant approached the body while they conversed briefly in low voices. Braun had been a stocky man, in his late thirties, with a sizeable paunch. His chest and belly were covered in a thick growth of springy grey hair. Carriscant selected a thin probe from his tray of instruments and inserted it into the wide wound in the chest.

'The heart has gone,' he said.

'What?' both men answered simultaneously and strode co the table.

'The heart – and the right hand, obviously. Removed competently but with no great skill.'

Sieverance turned away, paling, his fingerbacks to his lips. 'That make any sense? Is there some sort of native cult out here? Sacrificial cult or something?'

'Not that I know of,' Carriscant said.

'And what about this L-shape?' Bobby said. 'Are the other organs there?'

Carriscant duly opened up the wound. There was some displacement of the intestines, as he had expected, but otherwise everything else seemed to be as normal as possible.

'And the last one was stitched up,' he said, 'but the heart was there. This time the heart is removed and the wound left open. It makes no sense to me – I can't see any reason behind it.'

'But it can't be a coincidence,' Bobby said. 'We know that it must be the same murderer. Or murderers.'

'Where was he last seen?'

'He went out the back of a Sampaloc cathouse to take a leak. Nobody noticed he never returned. Figured he was upstairs.'

'What's in the back of these places?' Sieverance asked.

Carriscant coughed and cleared his throat, they both looked at him expectantly but he raised his spread palms in apology. Bobby shrugged.

'Some yards, few shacks, vegetable plots, open country,' he said. 'Anyone can get in or out.'

Carriscant and Bobby left Governor Taft's office in the Malacanan Palace and walked down the wide corridor in silence to the central stairway. Taft, a vast genial man, sweating copiously in a white suit, had been suitably grateful for Carriscant's help and, in confidence, had asked him for his professional opinion of Dr Wieland. 'An incompetent and diehard quack,' was Carriscant's candid verdict. On their leaving Taft had asked for his compliments to be presented to Mrs Carriscant, a request that had taken Carriscant somewhat by surprise until he remembered Annaliese's social connections with the Governor's wife.

Standing beneath the lofty porte-cochere waiting for their carriages Bobby said, 'You know, Corporal Braun used to be in Sieverance's regiment as well.'

'Odd. He didn't say anything.'

'I guess "Brown" sounds a common name. Can't tell how it was spelled. Didn't realise.'

'Didn't recognise, either.'

'I wouldn't recognise you with your head split to your bottom teeth,' Bobby said with sardonic levity. 'Got to shake him up some, though, when he finds out.'

Carriscant thought. 'You think it was someone who was in the unit? Some grudge?'

'That's one explanation.' Bobby smoothed his wide moustache with his thumb and forefinger. 'And here's another thing, your colleague, Dr Quiroga-'

'What's he got to do with this?'

'One of his uncles is General Elpidio. Esteban Elpidio. The one who led us such a merry dance in Tabayan this spring.'

'What are you saying? You captured Elpidio.'

'No, it was something you said about the organs in Ward's body. The disturbances. Now a heart's missing -"competently removed" you said-maybe a professional's hand was-'

'Just stop now, Bobby. This is ridiculous. If you're going to start suspecting any Filipino related to an insurrecto you're going to -'

'I'll suspect anyone I fucking want, Carriscant, anyone.' Bobby looked at him fiercely, irritated by his tone, then his shoulders slumped and he smiled, apologetically.

'Sorry, sorry… ' Bobby said, laying a hand gently on his sleeve for a moment. 'I don't know, my head's just spinning with this one. Spinning.'

'You have no right, no right at all to address me this way,' Carriscant said, trying to keep the tremble of fury out of his voice. There was an air of hostile self-assurance in the room, an unpleasant, potent complacency in the atmosphere. These two men, Carriscant thought – promising himself that he would remain absolutely calm no matter how he was provoked – these two men think they hold the balance of power, feel sure the dealt cards favour them. What did they know, he wondered? What could explain this smug and threatening confidence?

Dr Isidro Cruz and Dr Saul Wieland sat stiffly like magistrates in chairs in Cruz's office. Cruz had just come from an operation: there was an exclamation mark of bright blood on his stiff collar, like a brooch, and his clothes carried with him an odour of something frowsty and corrupt. Wieland, cold, blank-faced, scrutinised the cuticles on the nails of his right hand, then his left, affecting disinterest. Carriscant had refused a seat-he did not intend to linger – and stood in the centre of the silk rug in the middle of Cruz's office, a gloomy place with dark polished floors and heavy, over-elaborate furniture. Only the privileged knowledge that those few leather-bound books in the glass fronted bookcases were medical texts would have alerted you to the fact that you were in the consulting rooms of a once eminent surgeon.

Carriscant began again, moderating his voice, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. 'None of this is at my instigation. Chief Bobby has only called me out whenever Dr Wieland has been, ah, unavailable.'

'But you accepted the invitation to the Governor's palace,' Cruz said, unable to keep the note of sneering triumph out of his voice.

'Exactly,' Wieland echoed.

'For heaven's sake, what else was I meant to do? The Governor himself asked-'

'You should have come directly to me. As medical director of the San Jeronimo it is my responsibility. You are on my staff. I speak for the board, for the institution.'

'These killings have nothing to do with the hospital.'

'The American corpses are being kept in my hospital and I am the last to know. It's intolerable!' He banged his fist petulantly down on the arm of his chair. 'And what is more,' he went on, acidly, 'Dr Wieland, a close friend and colleague, has been officially reprimanded by Governor Taft as a result of testimony you provided.'

Wieland rose to his feet, the studied neutrality all gone. His eyes were heavy with resentment and distaste. 'I demand to know what you said to the Governor.'

'And I order you to tell him,' Cruz added.

Carriscant felt his jaw muscles knot and his shoulders bunch. He deliberately waited a few seconds before replying, adding a drone of bureaucratic indifference to his voice now, the better to goad them. They had just handed him the advantage with their hectoring pomposity; they no longer unsettled him.