Most of the audience drifted back to the bar; some of them left; and one of them resumed his seat on the dais. In five minutes the girl would be repeating her routine, Edward was aware of that-as he was also aware of someone who had just sat down beside him.

'Fancy another pint?' asked Morse.

Edward looked as guilty as someone just accused of stealing from a supermarket; but he nodded: 'Yes, please.' Morse was a little surprised at this; and as he stood waiting for two further pints he wondered if the boy would take his chance to get away. Somehow, though, he knew he wouldn't. He just managed to beat the second lunge of bodies to the dais, where he managed a considerably closer view of a now more sinuously synchronized Fiona. The beer, too, was beginning to encourage a rather more positive reaction amongst the ringside viewers, for this time there was even a smattering of applause as she finally turned away to find her cloak.

'Do you come here often?' asked the boy.

'Not every lunch-time,' Morse said lightly. 'What about you?'

'I've been once or twice before.'

'Shouldn't you be at school?'

'I've got the afternoon off. What about you?'

Morse was beginning to like the boy. 'Me? I do what I want to do every afternoon: watch the girls, drink a pint or two-anything. You see, I'm over eighteen, like you, lad. You are over eighteen, aren't you? For those who aren't, you know, "the girls and pints are out of order"-if you see what I mean. It's an anagram. "Striplings"-that's the answer. You interested in crosswords?'

But Edward ignored the question. 'Why did you follow me here?'

'I wanted to know why you lied to me, that's all-'

'Lied?'

'-about the note Ms. Scott left for you.'

The boy took a deep breath. 'Hadn't we better sit somewhere else?'

For a start he was evasive; truculent even. But he had little chance against Morse. In some strange way (the boy felt) Morse's eyes were looking straight into his thoughts, alerted immediately to the slightest deviation from the truth. It was almost as if the man had known this truth before he'd asked, and was doing little more than note the lies. So, in the finish, he told Morse everything about Anne Scott: told him about his brother's boasts; about that week before she died when he'd seen her semi-naked and lusted after her; about the note he'd found on the door-mat; even about his own thoughts, so adolescently confused and troublous. And, progressively, he found himself liking Morse; found himself taking to a man who seemed humane and understanding-a man who listened carefully and who seemed so ready to forgive. Perhaps he was almost like a father… and Edward had never known his own.

Two things surprised Morse about his time with Edward Murdoch. The first was to discover what a pleasant and engaging lad he was, and to realise that others must have found this, too: his mother, his friends, his teachers-including Ms. Anne Scott… The second cause of Morse's surprise was a more immediately personal one: during the energetic gyrations of the fair Fiona, he had felt not the slightest twinge of mild eroticism-and what would Freud have made of that? On second thoughts, however, he didn't much care; he'd come round to the view that Freud would have been a far more valuable citizen if he'd stuck to his research on local anaesthetics. Yet it was a bit worrying, all the same. As a boy, the apogee of any voyeuristic thrill had been the static nude, demurely sitting sideways on, and found about two-thirds of the way through the barber's copy of Lilliput. But now? The nudes were everywhere: on calendars, on posters, in fashion adverts, in newspapers-even on the telly. And the truth seemed to be that the naked female body was losing its magic. Understandable, yes; but for Morse, most disappointing. After all, he was only just past his fiftieth birthday.

The boy had gone now, and Morse debated whether he should stay on for Act V of the stripper's scheduled stint. But even the anticipation had now grown as cold as the experienced reality. And he left.

At eight thirty that evening, George Jackson was crouching behind a hedge, his bicycle lying a few yards away in the dark undergrowth. He had carefully reconnoitred the area, and chosen a large house standing well back from the western side of the Woodstock Road. No lights had shown in the front of the house on his two previous visits, and there were none tonight. No dogs, either. The hedge was high and thick, but where it reached the adjoining property it grew more thin and bedraggled. Ideal-affording a perfect view of the entrance to Field House Drive about thirty yards to the right and the telephone kiosk about twenty yards to the left, both illuminated adequately by the street lamp immediately opposite. Occasionally a solitary person strolled by. Once a young couple, their arms round each other's waists. A few cyclists, and an intermittent flow of traffic either way.

The light blue Rolls Royce appeared from the direction of the A40 roundabout, travelling slowly along the bus lane. Jackson could see the driver fairly clearly, and he felt the pulses jumping in his wrists as he moved slightly forward and watched intently. The Rolls was doing no more than 10 m.p.h. as it passed the kiosk and covered the short distance to Field House Drive, its left blinker startlingly bright as it turned into the Drive and stopped-still almost completely visible. The driver got out, slammed the door to, and locked it. With the car keys still in his hand, he walked to the boot of the car, unlocked it, peered inside, and closed and relocked it, without removing anything. Then he disappeared (though for no more than a few seconds) from Jackson's view, and must obviously have opened something on the obscured nearside of the car, for almost immediately another door was closed with an aristocratically engineered 'clunk'. The man was in full view again now, and this time he carried a brown carrier bag in his right hand. He appeared quite calm, glancing neither to his left nor right in curiosity or apprehension.

As he came directly opposite, Jackson could see him plainly beneath the street lamp: a thickset man of medium height, about forty to forty-five, his thick, dark hair going grey at the temples. He was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit, and looked exactly as Jackson thought he would-fortunate and prosperous. Not for a second did the staring eyes behind the hedge leave the man as he walked up to the kiosk, went inside, lifted the receiver, came out again, thrust a hand in his pocket as if to find loose change, and then re-entered the kiosk as a grey-haired woman went slowly by with her white-haired terrier. Jackson's body suddenly felt numb with panic as the man in the kiosk appeared to be speaking into the telephone receiver. Was he ringing the police? But, just as suddenly, all was normal again. The man came out of the kiosk, thrust the carrier bag swiftly into the ivy behind it, and then walked back to the Rolls, fingering his car keys as he did so. The Rolls turned in a slow and dignified sweep and, with a momentary flash from the polished silver of the bonnet's grill, accelerated away and disappeared towards the northern roundabout. The road was as still as the grave.

Jackson was now in a dilemma which his limited mental capacities had not foreseen. Was he to leave his vantage-point immediately, grab the bag, and cycle off as fast as he could down the nearest back streets into Jericho? Or was he to wait, take things coolly, saunter over the road when he could convince himself the coast was completely clear, and then cycle sedately down the well-lit reaches of the lower part of Woodstock Road as if nothing were amiss? He decided to wait. Five minutes; ten minutes; fifteen minutes. And still he waited. Suddenly a light flashed on in the front room of the house behind him, and he crouched down further as a young woman pulled the curtains across the window. He had to move. Feeling his way carefully along the inner side of the hedge, he reached the gate and walked down the grassy slope to the pavement. Cold sweat stood out on his brow, and he felt a prickling sensation along his shoulders as he crossed the road and walked the few yards to the kiosk. No one was in sight, and no car passed as he put his hand behind the kiosk and found the bag at once. He recrossed the road, put the bag inside the fishing-basket secured to the rack on his cycle, and rode down towards Jericho. Below South Parade the traffic was busier, and Jackson felt his confidence growing. He turned round as two youngsters behind him zoomed nearer on their L-plated motor-bikes, and saw them almost force off the road a middle-aged don-gown billowing out behind him, his left hand clutching a pile of books. But they were soon gone, searing through the streets and leaving a wake of comforting silence behind them. At the Horse and Jockey Jackson turned right and rode down Observatory Street; then straight over Walton Street and down into the familiar grid of the roads in Jericho. Outside 10 Canal Reach he padlocked the rear wheel of his cycle to the drain-pipe, unfastened the fishing-basket, and took out his door key. It had been more nerve-racking than he'd expected; easier, though, in a way. He looked up the Reach briefly before letting himself in. A few youngsters were fooling about outside the Printer's Devil, one of them jerking the front wheel of his cycle high into the air as he circled slowly round; two women pushed their way through the door marked 'Saloon'; a man was trying to back his car into a narrow space. Quite a bit of activity, really. But none of them had noticed him Jackson was confident of that. And what if someone had!