“I don’t care about his God damn parents!” Hillier’s voice rose precipitately. “He’s got a story and I want it told. I want it seen. I want that to happen and I want you to ensure that it does.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You bloody well-”

“Wait. I’ve said it wrong. I won’t do that.” And Lynley went on before Hillier had a chance to respond, telling himself to stay calm and to stay on message. “Sir, it was one thing for Corsico to dig round about me. He did it with my blessing and he can go on doing it if that’s what it’ll take to help our position here at the Met. But it’s another thing for him to do that to one of my men, especially one who doesn’t want that happening to himself or to his family. I’ve got to respect that. So do you.”

He knew he shouldn’t have said that last, even as his lips formed the words. It was just the remark Hillier had apparently been waiting for.

“You’re God damn out of order!” he roared.

“That’s your way of seeing it. Mine is that Winston Nkata doesn’t want to be part of a publicity campaign designed to soothe the very people who’ve been betrayed by the Met time and again. I don’t blame him for that. I also won’t fault him. Nor will I order him to cooperate. If The Source intends to smear his family’s trouble across the front page some morning, then it’s-”

“That’s enough!” Hillier was teetering on the edge. Whether what he fell into was rage, a seizure, or an action they both would regret remained to be seen. “You God damn bloody disloyal piece of…You come in here from a life of privilege and you dare…you bloody well dare…you to tell me…”

They both saw Harriman at the same time, standing white faced in the doorway that had been left open when Hillier entered. No doubt, Lynley thought, every ear on the floor was being assaulted by the strength of the animosity that the AC felt for him and he for the AC.

Hillier shouted at her, “Get the hell out of here! What’s wrong with you?” And made a move to the door, likely to slam it in Harriman’s face.

Incredibly, she put out a hand to stop him, doing just that as they both reached for the door at once.

He said, “I’ll see you in-”

Which she interrupted with, “Sir, sir. I need to speak to you.”

Lynley saw, unbelievably, that she was talking not to him but to Hillier. The woman’s gone mad, he thought. She means to intervene.

He said, “Dee, that’s not necessary.”

She didn’t look at him. She said, “It is,” with her eyes fixed on Hillier. “It is. Necessary. Sir. Please.” The last word came from somewhere in her throat, where it caught and seemed nearly to lodge.

That got through to Hillier. He grabbed her by the arm and took her from the room.

Then things moved, both quickly and incomprehensibly.

There were voices outside his office and Lynley headed for the door to see what in God’s name was going on. He got only two steps in that direction, though, when Simon St. James came into the room.

St. James said, “Tommy.”

And Lynley saw. Saw and somehow understood without wanting to begin to understand. Or to give St. James’s purpose in his office-arriving unannounced to him but certainly announced and fully forewarned to Harriman…

He heard a cry of “Oh my God” from somewhere. St. James flinched at this. His eyes, Lynley saw, were fixed upon him.

“What is it?” Lynley asked. “What’s happened, Simon?”

“You must come with me, Tommy,” St. James said. “Helen’s…” Then he faltered.

Lynley would always remember that-that his old friend faltered when it came to the moment-and he would always remember what the faltering meant: about their friendship and about the woman whom both of them had loved for years.

“She’s been taken to St. Thomas’ Hospital,” St. James said. His eyes reddened at the rims, and he cleared his throat harshly. “Tommy, you must come with me at once.”

OUTSIDE BERKELEY PEARS’ FLAT, BARBARA HAVERS CONSIDERED her next move. It appeared to be a nice little visit with Barry Minshall in the Holmes Street station to see what else she could scoop out of the cesspool that was his brain.

She was heading off to do just that, making her way along the corridor towards the stairs, when she heard the sound. It was something between a howl and the cry of someone in the throes of death by strangulation, and it stopped Barbara in her tracks. She waited to hear if the cry would repeat itself, and in due course it did. Throaty, desperate…It took a moment for her to realise that she was listening to a cat.

“Bloody hell,” she murmured. It had sounded exactly like…She attached the sound to the shriek that someone in the building had heard the night of Davey Benton’s murder, and when she made that leap, she realised that everything about her journey to Walden Lodge might well have been an exercise in pure futility.

The cat cried again. Barbara knew little enough about felines, but it sounded like one of those cracked-voice Siamese types. Malevolent little furballs though they were, they still had a right-

Furballs. Barbara looked towards the door behind which the cat sounded another time. Cat fur, she thought, cat hair, whatever the bloody hell it was. There’d been cat hair on Davey Benton’s body.

She went in search of the building manager. A question to one of the Moppits directed her to a ground-floor flat. She knocked on the door.

After a moment, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, please?” in a tone that suggested she’d opened the door more than once to an unexpected visitor.

Barbara identified herself. Several locks were disengaged and the building manager stood before her: Morag McDermott, she was called. What did the police want this time round because God only knew she’d told them everything she could think of last time they’d come seeking information about “that dreadful nasty business in the woods.”

Barbara saw she’d interrupted Morag McDermott in the midst of an afternoon snooze. Despite the time of year, she wore a thin dressing gown through which her skeletal body showed, and her hair was pancaked on one side. The unmistakable pattern of a chenille counterpane had lumped her cheeks like facial cellulite.

She added sharply, “How on earth did you get into the building? Let me see your identification at once.”

Barbara fished it out and explained the situation with the front door and the Moppits. In response to this, the building manager pulled a sticky pad from a tabletop nearby and scribbled furiously upon it. Barbara took this as invitation to enter, and she did so as Morag McDermott slapped her note onto the wall next to the door. This was already aflutter with two score similar notes. The wall resembled a prayer board in a church.

It was for her monthly report to the management firm, Morag informed Barbara as she replaced the little yellow pad in a drawer. Now, if the constable would step this way, into the sitting room…

She made it sound as if the room in question required directions to get to when in fact it was less than five feet from the front door. The flat’s floor plan was identical to that of Berkeley Pears but reversed so that it faced not the woods but the street. Its decor, however, was utterly dissimilar to the flat Barbara had been in earlier. Where Berkeley Pears would have passed a drill sergeant’s inspection, Morag was a poster child for clutter and sheer bad taste. Mostly, this was due to horses, of which there were hundreds on display, on every surface, in all sizes, and of all possible composition: from plastic to rubber. She was National Velvet gone berserk.

Barbara edged her way past a tea stand of Lippizaners poised to perform their airs above the ground. She trod the sole path available into the room, which led to a sofa burdened with perhaps a dozen equine cushions. There she deposited herself. She’d begun to perspire, and she understood why the building manager was wearing so thin a dressing gown in the middle of winter. It felt like a Jamaican summer in the flat, and it smelled as if the place hadn’t been aired since the day of Morag’s advent in the building.