'Never mind, darling! Don't sound so cross about it. We can make it tomorrow. I was just hoping-'

'Look!'

'For God's sake stop saying "look"!'

'I'm sorry; but I can't see you again next week, Jenny. It's getting too risky. Yesterday-'

'What the hell is this?'

Charles felt a rising tide of despair engulfing him as he thought of her long, blonde, curling hair and the slope of her naked shoulders. 'Look, Jenny,' he said more softly, 'I can't explain now but-'

'Explain? What the hell is there to explain!'

'I can't tell you now.' He ground the words into the mouthpiece.

'When shall I see you then?' Her voice sounded brusque and indifferent now.

'I'll get in touch. Not next week, though. I just can't-'

But the line was suddenly dead.

As Charles sat back breathing heavily in his black leather swivel chair, he was conscious of a hard, constricting pain between his shoulder-blades, and he reached into a drawer for the Opas tablets. But the box was empty.

That day the Oxford Mail carried a page-two account (albeit a brief and belated one) of the death of Anne Scott at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho; and at various times in the day the account was noticed and read by some tens of thousands of people in the Oxford area, including the Murdoch family, George Jackson, Elsie Purvis, Conrad Richards, Gwendola Briggs, Detective Constable Walters, and Chief Inspector Morse. It was quite by chance that Charles Richards himself was also destined to read it. After three double Scotches at the White Swan, he had returned home to find the Rolls gone and a note from Celia saying that she had gone shopping in Oxford. 'Back about five-pork pie in the fridge.' And when she had returned home, she'd brought a copy of the Oxford Mail with her, throwing it down casually on the coffee table as Charles sat watching the football round-up.

The paper was folded over at page two.

The inquest on Ms. Anne Scott was one of a string of such melancholy functions for the Coroner's Court on the Tuesday of the following week. Bell had spent the weekend arranging the massive security measures which had surrounded the visit to Oxfordshire of one of the Chinese heads of state; and apart from exhorting Walters to 'stop bloody worriting' he took no further part in the brief proceedings. He had already been informed of the one new-and quite unexpected-piece of evidence that had come to light, but he had betrayed little surprise about it; indeed, felt none.

Walters took the stand to present a full statement about the finding of the body (including the one or two rather odd features of that scene), and about his own subsequent inquiries. The Coroner had only two questions to ask, which he did in a mournful, disinterested monotone; and Walters, feeling considerably less nervous than he'd expected to be, was ready with his firm, unequivocal replies.

'In your opinion, officer, is it true to say that the jury can rule out any suspicion of foul play in the death of Ms. Scott?'

'It is, sir.'

'Is there any doubt in your own mind that she met her death by her own hand?'

'No, sir.'

The hump-backed surgeon was the only other witness to be called, and he (as ever) delighted all those anxious to get awayfrom the court by racing through the technical jargon of his medical report with the exhilarating rapidity of an Ashkenazy laying into Liszt. To those with acute hearing and micro-chip mentalities it was further revealed that the woman had probably died between 7 and 9.30 a.m. on the day she was found-that is, she had been dead for approximately eleven hours before being cut down; that her frame was well nourished and that her bodily organs were all perfectly sound; that she was 8-10 weeks pregnant at the time of death. The word 'pregnant' lingered for a while on the air of the still courtroom as if it had been acoustically italicised. But then it was gone, and Bell as he stared down at the wooden flooring silently moved his feet a centimetre or two towards him.

Only one question from the Coroner this time.

'Is there any doubt in your own mind that this woman met her death by her own hand?'

'That is for the jury to decide, sir.'

At this point Bell permitted himself a saddened smile. The surgeon had answered the same question in the same courtroom in the same way for the last twenty years. Only once, when the present Coroner had just begun his term of office, had this guarded comment been queried, and on that occasion the surgeon had deigned to add an equally guarded gloss, at a somewhat decelerated tempo: 'My job, sir, is to certify death where it has occurred and to ascertain, where possible, the physical causes of that death.' That was all. Bell was sometimes surprised that the old boy ever had the temerity to certify death in the first place; and, to be fair, the surgeon himself had grown increasingly reluctant to do so over the past few years. But, at least, that was his province, and he refused to trespass into territory beyond it. As a scientist, he had a profound distrust of all such intangible notions as 'responsibility', 'motive', and 'guilt'; and as a man he had little or no respect for the work of the police force. There was only one policeman he'd ever met for whom he had a slight degree of admiration, and that was Morse. And the only reason for such minimal approbation was that Morse had once told him over a few pints of beer that he in turn had a most profound contempt for the timid twaddle produced by pathologists.

The jury duly recorded a verdict of 'death by suicide', and the small band of variously interested parties filed out of the courtroom. Officially, the case of Ms. Anne Scott was filed and finished with.

On the evening of the day of the inquest, Morse telephoned the hump-backed surgeon.

'You fancy a drink in an hour or so, Max?'

'No.'

'What's up? You stopped boozing or something?'

'I've started boozing at home. Far cheaper.'

'No licensing hours, either.'

'That's another reason.'

'When do you start?'

'Same time as you, Morse-just before breakfast.'

'Did this Scott woman commit suicide, Max?'

'Oh God! Not you as well!'

'Did she commit suicide?'

'I look at the injuries, Morse-you know that, and in this case the injuries were firm and fatal. All right? Who it is who commits the injuries is no concern of mine.'

'Did she commit suicide, Max? It's important for me to have your opinion.'

There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line, and the answer obviously cost the surgeon dearly. The answer was 'yes'.

A little later that evening, Detective Constable Walters, in the course of his variegated duties, was seated by the bedside of a young girl in the Intensive Care Unit of the John Radcliffe Two. She had swallowed two bottles of pills without quite succeeding in cutting the thread-sometimes so fragile, sometimes so tough-that holds us all to life.

'It's getting dreadful, all this drugs business,' said the sister asWalters was leaving. 'I don't know! We're getting them in all the time. Another one besides her today.' She pointed to a closed white door a little further down the corridor, and Walters nodded with a surface understanding but with no real sympathy: he had quite enough to cope with as it was. In fact, as he walked along the polished corridor he passed within two feet of the door that the sister had pointed out to him. And, if Walters had only known, he was at that very second within those same two feet of finding out the truth of what was later to be called The Case of the Jericho Killings.