For a few moments Nicola watched a gangling dog rummage through the rubbish in a side street. It seemed oblivious to the people pa.s.sing by, methodically inspecting each dustbin in turn. Nicola saw its head bob up and down, and could hear an occasional snort of interest above even the rush of the cars and the dance music thumping out from the pub jukebox.

The dog turned to look at Nicola, its jaws flecked with saliva and cardboard shreds. A car turned on to the main road, the headlights briefly illuminating the creature's eyes.

Startled, the dog vanished into the shadows.

Nicola pushed open the door of the pub. The air smelled of cigarettes and sweat, of perfume and salt-and-vinegar crisps.

Some girls, stinking of alcohol, pushed past Nicola and towards the exit.

Nicola found her friends cl.u.s.tered around a small table in an alcove away from the bar. She sat down gratefully, mopping up some spilled drink with a beer mat. 'It's busy tonight,' she said. 'Mine's a vodka and orange. Loads of ice.'

One of the young women grunted and got to her feet, tugging a purse from a jacket pocket.

'You OK?' asked Tina, glancing up from the table with concern. She had known Nicola since school, and recognised the signs of tired anguish in her friend's face.

'Yeah. I'm fine. Just knackered, that's all.'

'Heard your dad on the radio this morning,' said Jane, who'd never been known for her tact.

'Oh, don't,' said Nicola.

'Let's get slaughtered, then,' said another friend, as she downed half a gla.s.s of white wine.

'There's this great place on Lime Street,' offered Jane.

'It's a dive,' said Nicola.

'Oh, go on,' said Jane. 'The lads there are just gagging for it. You could string 'em along, Nicks, get some free bevvies.'

'I don't think so.'

Jane delved into her handbag, pulling out some cheaply printed slips of paper. 'I've got free tickets...'

Nicola sensed that she had already lost the argument.

'Where'd you get them?' she queried in desperation.

'She's just a tart, love, didn't you know?' laughed Tina.

It had been a bad day in the Mother of Parliaments. The opposition had really laid into Defence Minister Hatch as he tried manfully to defend the government's recent relaxation of arms embargoes placed upon a number of unsavoury totalitarian regimes.

'Would the Right Honourable Member,' he asked one former friend and ally, 'like to be the one to tell voters in his own const.i.tuency, working in the shipbuilding industry, that their jobs are to be sacrificed to satisfy his l.u.s.t for political correctness and ideological dogma?' That had set the cat among the pigeons. They came at him from all sides, probing and pushing and reiterating the same inane points over and over again until he lost his temper. Hands gripping the dispatch box tightly, he bellowed at them that he was a member of a government with a majority of one hundred and twelve, and what the h.e.l.l did they think they were going to do about it?

Even the Speaker's voice had been drowned out by the near riot that ensued.

Now, pushing his way past television crews and lobby journalists outside the House, Hatch still felt that anger seething within him. It was a relief just to climb into the ministerial limousine and shut the door on the whole d.a.m.n lot of them.

'Thought you were very good today, sir,' said his driver as he pulled away from Westminster and into Pall Mall.

'Thank you, Ian,' replied Hatch wearily. Not that he was particularly interested in what some civil service lowlife thought about anything, anything, but politeness cost nothing. but politeness cost nothing.

'Straight home, sir?'

'No,' said Hatch. 'The Wellton clinic, Ian.'

'Right you are, sir.'

The oncoming twilight seemed to darken Hatch's mood, and they drove in silence towards the motorway. His driver knew well enough when to flatter him, when to ask a few questions, and when to shut the h.e.l.l up.

Hatch had once overheard Ian Slater talking about him to some of the other government chauffeurs. 'Hatch is a twenty-four-carat b.a.s.t.a.r.d who wallows in his own c.r.a.pulence,'

Slater had said, with a straight face. Hatch knew praise when he heard it, and he decided there and then that the man could be trusted.

Ian Slater had been with Hatch when the politician negotiated a major Third World arms deal on behalf of Trevor Winstone. And Slater had accompanied Hatch on Spanish holidays with Shanks, the drugs and p.o.r.n king of Liverpool.

And Ian Slater knew something about the Wellton clinic and the reason for Matthew Hatch's frequent visits to the private medical research facility.

Most importantly of all, Slater knew where the bodies were buried. Literally.

Slater negotiated the M3 to Chertsey, and they reached the Wellton clinic shortly after 9 p.m. The light from the setting sun cast ominous shadows across the path of the car.

'I'll be about twenty minutes,' said Hatch, stepping out of the limousine. 'If my wife should ring, we're stuck in traffic, and I'mon the other line. Understand?'

'Absolutely, sir.'

Hatch strode towards the building, glancing back once to see Slater, cap down over his eyes, already fast asleep. The MP brushed through the reception area without a word, and marched into an office without knocking. A white-coated man smiled briefly as Hatch entered, immediately sweeping paperwork on to the floor to allow the politician to sit. The room was typically cluttered and, it seemed to Hatch, overlit.

'You said you had some news, Nick,' said Hatch.

'Indeed,' said Dr Nicholas Bevan. 'We're close to isolating the D47 gene. The next few days form the most important period in the entire project.' He removed a gla.s.s from a drawer, and poured the politician a whisky. 'Are you feeling all right, Matthew?' he asked.

'I'm fine,' said Hatch, pa.s.sing a hand across his brow. It came away slick with perspiration. 'I'm sweating like a pig, that's all. The weather.'

'Our main concern now,' continued Bevan, 'must be to progress to the next phase of the fertility programme.'

Hatch picked up the whisky gla.s.s, and toyed with it in the harsh glare of the strip lights above his head. 'You know,' he said, 'I can remember when I first came to you, when I told you about the Hexen "curse". You said it was a scientific impossibility...' There was an ironic detachment in Hatch's voice.

'I said, if you remember, that the chance of there being a genetic strain that causes sterility in a group of human beings when they leave the area in which they were conceived was...' Bevan paused, searching for a tactful way of putting his conclusion. 'Well, it's unlikely,' he said at last. 'There are parallels in nature of course. The salmon, for instance, must sp.a.w.n in the river where it was born...'

'Nick?' interjected Hatch. 'Do shut up.' He took another sip of whisky. 'How soon until we're ready to go? That's what I need to know.'

'Soon,' said Bevan.

'It's always "soon",'

'We've come a long way.'

Hatch snorted. 'I should think so: five years and getting on for two million quid.'

'Which reminds me...' said Bevan in a quiet voice.

Hatch stood, patting his pockets. He brought out a padded envelope, and tossed it on to Bevan's desk. 'There's eight thousand there,' he said. 'I can get more if you need it, but you'll have to give me a week or two. I've got a few monkeys on my back at the moment.'

'Yes,' said Bevan, 'I listened to the debate today. They're really after you this time, Matthew.'

'Well, I won't give them a chance to get me, will I? Anything else you need?'

'The usual,' said Bevan. 'Somebody from Hexen Bridge who's not sterile. Preferably female, because if the insemination technique works then it's safe to a.s.sume we can synthesise the actual sperm components. You got any strapping young Hexen la.s.ses hidden about your person?'

'What would you say if I were to tell you I could supply one?'

Bevan was taken aback. He'd been looking for a live donor for some months, but Hatch had always resisted, citing family and other ties to most of the suitable candidates. 'In the age range? Fifteen to twenty-nine?'

'Just,' said Hatch.

'Then, I'd ask if you consider her expendable. You know how risky this procedure is.'

'And how painful,' said Hatch, with the beginnings of a cruel smile playing on his lips. 'Yes,' he continued, 'she's expendable all right.'

By the time the effects of the drug began to wear off fully, the sun was setting in the west. Shanks untied his captive, his strong hands moving with surprising dexterity over the knots. 'Make yourself at home,' he said, turning to leave with his female companion. 'Don't try to escape, though. There's twenty stone of prime-cut thug outside the door, and he's got orders to snap your spine in two if you so much as think about it!'

'Where am I?' the Doctor asked, still confused.

'You're on my home turf now, la,' said Shanks with a cheerful grin. 'G.o.d's own country. There's drink in the cabinet, and the remote control for the telly's lying around somewhere. I've got to go and see a man about the considerable amount of money he owes me.'

'Drug money?' queried the Doctor darkly.

Shanks tugged at the cuff of his jacket. 'That's libellous! I'm a respected businessman. If I weren't so busy, I'd take you on a guided tour.'

'Perhaps some other time,' said the Doctor, watching as the door closed behind Shanks.

The Doctor sat alone, gratefully savouring the still quietness and his limited freedom. Then he got to his feet, walking through the sliding doors and on to the apartment veranda. He remembered having been in the city one Christmas with Stephen and Sara. It seemed so long ago.

He reached the wrought-iron railings and glanced over the edge, feeling a momentary sensation of vertigo as the ground, twenty storeys below, seemed to rush up towards him. The Doctor stepped back, almost tripping over his own feet.

'You've lost one life that way,' he muttered to himself, and sat down on one of the flimsy canvas-and-metal chairs. He closed his eyes, and let his thoughts a.s.semble.

The universe was an enormous jigsaw puzzle, with only the edges completed. Billions of other pieces sat in a huge pile, waiting to be sorted out. Order from chaos.

Hexen Bridge was at the centre of this part of the puzzle, but even the remaining pieces were out of reach.

The Doctor looked around the room. There had to be a connection between Shanks and Hexen Bridge, beyond the obvious fact that he had been educated there. He strolled over to the television, and noticed that what he had taken to be a video recorder beneath it was in fact a computer terminal. A cable extended from the back of the machine and towards a telephone socket in the wall.

'Ah, the wonders of modern technology,' said the Doctor, kneeling. He looked closely at the machine, wondering if Shanks were devious enough to b.o.o.by-trap the terminal, knowing that the Doctor would be drawn to it. He dismissed the thought with an irritated shake of the head. He was like a fish out of water, and it was making him paranoid.

Working as quietly as he could, the Doctor reconnected the computer, and switched it on. It wouldn't contain any information itself, but perhaps there was a way of looking at communications sent or received from within other rooms in the apartment, the electronic equivalent of picking up an extension phone to listen in on a private conversation.

The television's remote control would also operate the Internet terminal, but the Doctor couldn't find the device anywhere. A swift search of the cupboards revealed the computer's small keyboard, still in its original wrapping. The Doctor tore at the cellophane with his teeth, then plugged the device in.

He closed down the garish user interface and began tinkering with the underlying text-based operating system. In ten minutes he had written a stealth program from scratch. It was like using a clockwork toy to launch a s.p.a.ce shuttle, but he hoped it would work.

Data from a science lab somewhere in the building was flowing over the screen. A sequence of formulae, followed by a starburst of unintelligible information.

The Doctor was searching his pockets for his notebook when the elevator began its noisy climb up the building towards the penthouse. He hastily switched off the terminal, and pulled the lead from the telephone socket. He turned, expecting to see his host returning, but instead he found himself facing Trevor Winstone and six men carrying wooden crates.

'Put them down,' said Trevor to his companions. 'And be careful.' He turned to the Doctor, and inclined his head to one side, curiously. 'You really must must be his friend. Not many people hang around Kenny Shanks for long and live to tell the tale.' be his friend. Not many people hang around Kenny Shanks for long and live to tell the tale.'

'I obviously have a lucky face,' said the Doctor, sitting on the leather sofa, and then standing again quickly as something sharp stuck into his rump. 'Ah,' he said brightly.

'The remote control. We've been looking for that...'

'Great,' said Trevor sarcastically. 'If Match of the Day's Match of the Day's on later, I'll get the beers in. We'd better hang on for Kenny, though: his party trick is naming Holland's 1974 World Cup squad.' on later, I'll get the beers in. We'd better hang on for Kenny, though: his party trick is naming Holland's 1974 World Cup squad.'

The Doctor ignored Winstone and moved towards the pile of crates, now neatly stacked by the lift. 'A consignment of arms for Shanks's private army of thugs and drug-pushers, no doubt?'

'Hey, man, what can I say? It's my job.'

'He's a bully, and a rogue. A third-division crook with inflated ideas of his own importance.'

'Possibly,' replied Winstone, indicating that the men should leave. 'But in this life, it's sometimes difficult to choose your friends.'

'You're an intelligent man -' began the Doctor.

'd.a.m.n right I am!' exploded Winstone. 'And in Hexen Bridge that's a curse worse than meeting the hollow men.'