"I'm asking you if you gave anyone this information, for any reason." Annie softened her tone. "Look, Liz," she said. "You might have had good intentions. Perhaps you knew one of the victims' families, or someone who had been damaged by the Paynes? I can understand that. But we need to know. Did you tell anyone about Lucy Payne being registered at Mapston Hall under the name Karen Drew?"

"No."

"Did you know about it?"

Dr. Wallace sighed, put her needle and thread down and leaned on the edge of the table. "Yes," she said. "I knew."

In the silence that followed, Annie felt a growing tightness in her chest. "But that means"

"I know what it means," said Dr. Wallace. "I'm not stupid."

Annie noticed that before she spoke Dr. Wallace had exchanged her needle for a scalpel and was moving away from the body on the table.

"Good to see you again, Alan," said DI Ken Blackstone, meeting Banks at the front desk of Millgarth and escorting him through security. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"It looks as if we've got Hayley Daniels's killer." Banks explained about Jamie Murdoch's confession and the hidden way out of the Fountain.

"Just one more to go, then," said Blackstone. "I was sorry to hear about Kev Templeton."

"We all were," said Banks.

"Anyway, what can I do for you?"

"Did you get the Chameleon files out for Annie Cabbot?"

"How are you two doing, by the way?"

"Better, I think. At least we're working together again. I'm still not sure what's going on with her, though."

"You're not...?"

"No. That's been over for a long time."

"Anyone else?"

"Maybe. Ken, about those files?"

Blackstone laughed. "Yes, of course. Getting quite nosy in my old age, aren't I? Sorry. The files are in my office. Most of them, anyway. There isn't room for everything. Not if I want to sit in there, too. Why?"

"Mind if I have a look?"

"Not at all. It was your case. Partly, at any rate. Anything I can do?"

"A cup of coffee would go down a treat, Ken. Black no sugar. And maybe a KitKat. I like the dark-chocolate ones."

"Your diet's terrible. Anyone ever told you? I'll send down. Want me out of the way?"

"Not at all."

They went into Blackstone's office, and Banks saw immediately that he hadn't been exaggerating. They could hardly move for boxes.

"Know where everything is?" Banks asked.

"Not exactly." Blackstone picked up his phone and called for two coffees and a dark-chocolate KitKat. "After anything in particular?"

"I got to thinking about the Kirsten Farrow case," said Banks. "Anyway, I seemed to remember that the wounds were rather similar in both cases, and I wondered if that was what had set her off again after eighteen years. That and finding out where Lucy Payne was hiding out. It might have acted as a trigger."

"But what about the other woman you mentioned? Maggie Forrest?"

"She's not out of the picture yet. There could even be some connection between her and Kirsten Farrow. There are a number of odd links in this case, strange tangents, and I won't rest until I get them sorted."

"So you'll be wanting the pathologist's reports?"

"That's right. Dr. Mackenzie, I believe it was."

The coffee and KitKat arrived while they were digging through the boxes. Blackstone thanked the constable who brought them and got back to helping Banks. At last they unearthed the pathology reports, and Banks started reading through them while Blackstone left the office for a while.

It was as he had thought. Many of the bodies were badly decomposed, as they had been buried in the dirt of the cellar or the back garden. But Dr. Mackenzie had been able to identify slash marks to the areas of the victims' breasts and genitalia in all cases, probably made with the same machete Terence Payne used to attack and kill Janet Taylor's partner. They were similar to the wounds Kirsten Farrow had suffered, though the weapon was different, and they were wounds, unfortunately, not uncommon to vicious sexual assaults. They showed a deep hatred of the women men felt had betrayed, humiliated and rejected them all their lives, or so the profilers said. Of course, not all men who had been betrayed, humiliated or rejected by women became rapists and murderers, or the female population would be a lot smaller and the jails would be even more full of men than they already were, Banks thought.

Twenty minutes or more must have passed as Banks read the grisly details, most of which he remembered first-hand, then Blackstone returned.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"It's as I thought," Banks said. "Now I just need to find out how much of this was reported in the press at the time."

"Quite a lot, as I remember," said Blackstone. "Alan, what is it? Have you found something?"

Banks had let the last file slip out of his hand to the floor, not because the details were any more gruesome than any of the others, but because of a sheet of paper he had seen clipped to the end of the pile. It was simply a record of all those involved in the preparation of the reports and post-mortems, including the men who had transported the bodies to the mortuary and the cleaners who had cleaned up afterwards, initialled beside each name, partly kept to ensure continuous chain of custody. "I can't believe it," said Banks. "It's been staring me in the bloody face all along, and I never knew."

Blackstone moved closer. "What has? What is it?"

Banks picked the papers up off the floor and pointed with his index finger to what he had read. On the list of those involved with the Chameleon victims' post-mortems were several lab assistants, trainees and assistant pathologists, and one of them was a Dr. Elizabeth Wallace.

"I should have known," said Banks. "When Kev Templeton went on about patrolling the Maze for a would-be serial killer, Elizabeth Wallace was the only one who was as adamant as he was that we were dealing with a killer who would strike again. And she tried to convince us that the weapon was a razor, not a scalpel."

"So? I don't get it."

"Don't you see it? She was there, too. Elizabeth Wallace was keeping an eye on the Maze, and she had easy access to sharp scalpels. Much better to have us believe the weapon was a razor that anyone could have got hold of. They were at cross-purposes, her and Kev. They didn't talk to one another. Neither knew the other was going to be there. Elizabeth Wallace thought Kev Templeton was going to rape and kill Chelsea Pilton. She couldn't have recognized him from behind. It was too dark. And there can be only one reason why she was there."

"Which is?"

"To kill the killer. She's Kirsten Farrow. The one we're looking for. She was a trainee on the Chameleon victims' post-mortems. That means she knew at first-hand about the wounds. They brought back her own memories. She knows Julia Ford, and Julia must have let slip about Lucy Payne being at Mapston Hall under a false name. It fits, Ken. It all fits."

"She killed Templeton, too?"

"Almost certainly," said Banks. "By mistake, of course, the same way she killed Jack Grimley eighteen years ago. But she did kill him. Her MO is different now, but she trained as a doctor since then, so that makes sense. And do you know what?"

Blackstone shook his head.

"Annie's going to see her today to push about her past and her friendship with Julia Ford. Alone. She may be in danger." Banks took out his mobile and pressed the button for Annie's number. No signal. "Shit," he said. "She wouldn't have turned it off, surely?"

"Why don't you try the station?"

"I'll ring Winsome on the way to Eastvale," said Banks, heading for the door. He knew he could do it in about forty-five minutes, less if he really put his foot down. He hoped that would be fast enough.

"Kirsten, what are you doing?" said Annie, getting up from her stool and edging towards the door.

"Don't move. Keep still." Dr. Wallace waved the scalpel in her hand. It glinted under the light. "Sit down again."

"Don't do anything foolish," Annie said, returning to the stool. "We can work this out."

"You do speak in cliches and platitudes, don't you? Don't you realize it's too late for any of that now?"

"It's never too late."

"It was too late eighteen years ago," said Dr. Wallace.

"So you're Kirsten," Annie whispered. Somehow, she had known it, at least in some part of her mind, since she had talked to Dr. Wallace in the Queen's Arms the previous evening, but that knowledge didn't do her a lot of good now.

"Yes. Elizabeth is my middle name. Wallace is from an ill-advised marriage that I should never have entered into. A marriage of convenience. An American student. At least I got the name from him, and he got his British citizenship from me. Needless to say, the marriage was never consummated. If you'd have dug deeper, you'd have uncovered it all. It's a matter of public record. All you really had to do was check the registry of marriages. I didn't even try very hard to hide it, really. When I went to medical school, I simply enrolled as Elizabeth Wallace. A new life. A new name. It caused one or two problems with my old records, but the university was patient, and we managed to get it all sorted out. I told them I was trying to avoid an abusive husband and would appreciate their discretion. But they would have told you in the end."

"So you moved on, changed your name, became a doctor."

"I didn't know what would become of me. I had no plans. I'd done what I set out to do. A terrible thing, really. A murder. No matter that the victim didn't deserve to live, was the worst kind of excuse for a human being you could imagine. And it wasn't my first. I'd also killed an innocent man and harmed a silly boy."

"I've talked to Keith McLaren," Annie said. "He's all right. He recovered. But why him?"

Dr. Wallace managed a tiny, tight smile. "I'm glad," she said. "Why? The Australian recognized me in Staithes, even though I was in disguise. I had to think fast. He'd been with me in the Lucky Fisherman, where I saw Jack Grimley. If they ever questioned him..."

"I've been there," said Annie. "The Lucky Fisherman. Why Grimley, too?"

"A mistake. Pure and simple. When I remembered what my attacker looked like, I found I had an even stronger memory of his voice, his accent, what he said. That was what led me to Whitby. Once I was there, I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd find him. Nothing else mattered. Grimley sounded like the man who attacked me. I led him to the beach. That part was easy. Then I hit him on the head with a heavy glass paperweight. That was hard. I had to hit him again. He wouldn't die. When he did, I dragged his body into a cave and left it for the sea to lick out. The tide was due in. Oh, I can justify it all to myself, of course. I was on a mission, and there were bound to be mistakes. Casualties. It's the cost of war. But I got there in the end. I got the one I was after. The right one. And when it was over everything felt different. Do you know St. Mary's Church, in Whitby?"

"The one on the hill, near the abbey?"

"Yes, with the graveyard where you can't read the names. Inside it's divided into box pews. Some them are for visitors, and they're marked For Strangers Only. After I pushed Greg Eastcote over the cliff, I went there and got into one of those pews, and I curled up in a ball. I was there...oh, I don't know how long. I thought, if they come for me now and catch me, it's okay, I'm not running, it's fine, that's how it's meant to be. I'll just wait here until they find me. But nobody came. And when I left that pew, I was a different person. I was calm. Totally calm. Can you believe that?" She shrugged. "I left what I had done behind me. I felt no guilt. No shame. So the name change seemed natural. I'd used different names all along, anyway. Martha Browne, Susan Bridehead. It was a sort of game as much as anything else. I was an English student. My name was Elizabeth Bennett for a while after that, but my husband's name just happened to be Wallace."

"But how did you find Greg Eastcote? How did you know who he was?"

"Like I told you, I remembered things. Partly it was the hypnosis." She paused. "He said things, you know. All the time he was doing it to me, he talked, said things. I remembered. He named places, the work he did. And there was a smell I could never forget. Dead fish. I put it all together in the end. I did make mistakes, but I got there. I got him. The right one. I made him pay for what he did to all of us."

"What did you do afterwards?"

"First I went back to Leeds, to Sarah, then back to Bath, to my parents. I tried to pick up the threads, but I was different. I was no longer one of them. I'd cut myself off by what I'd done. So I went away. I travelled a lot, all over the world. In the end, I decided to put the past behind me and become a doctor. I wanted to help people, cure people. I know it sounds odd, after what I did, but it's the truth. Can you believe that? But in my studies I was drawn to specialize in pathology. Funny, isn't it? Working with the dead. I was always nervous around the living, but I never had any qualms about handling dead bodies. When I saw the wounds on the Paynes' victims six years ago, I couldn't help but revisit my own experiences. And then it just fell into my lap. Julia told me one night after dinner, when she'd had a few drinks. She had no idea, of course, who she was telling."

"Look," said Annie. "Please put the scalpel down. Let's stop this before someone else gets hurt. People know I'm here. People will come."

"It doesn't matter now."

"I can understand why you did it, all those years ago. Really, I can. I was raped once and almost killed. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I felt such rage. I suppose I still do. We're not that different, you and I."

"Oh, but we are. I actually did it. I didn't feel rage. And I didn't feel guilt."

"Now I try to stop people from doing it, or bring them to the justice if they do."

"It's not the same. Don't you understand?"

"Why did you kill Lucy Payne? For God's sake, she was in a wheelchair. She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything. Why did you kill her? Wasn't she suffering enough?"

Dr. Wallace paused a moment and stared at Annie as if she were crazy. "You don't get it, do you? It wasn't about suffering. It was never about suffering. Certainly not about her suffering. I never cared whether she suffered."

"So what was the point?"

"She could remember, couldn't she?" Dr. Wallace whispered.

"Remember?"

"Yes. That's what they do. Surely you know that? That's the whole point. They remember every moment, every cut, every thrust, every feeling they experienced, every ejaculation, every orgasm, every drop of blood they shed. And they relive it. Day after day after day. As long as she could remember it, she had all she wanted." She tapped the side of her head. "Right there. How could I let her live with the memory of what she'd done? She could do it over and over again in her mind."

"Why not just push her over the edge?"

"I wanted her to know what I was doing and why I was doing it. I talked to her the whole time, just the way Eastcote did to me, from the moment the blade touched her throat until...right up to end. If I'd pushed her, something might have gone wrong. Then I wouldn't have been able to get down there and do what I had to. She might not even have died."

"But what about Kevin Templeton?"

"Another mistake. Another casualty. I was trying to stop a memory from being made, and I thought he was the one. He shouldn't have been there. How could I have known he was there to protect people? I think perhaps he'd sensed my presence there, and maybe he thought I was the killer. When he started to walk towards the girl, he was going to warn her to leave, but I thought he was going to attack her. I'm sorry. You've got the real killer now. He's the same as Eastcote and Lucy Payne. Perhaps at the moment he seems contrite, remorseful, but you wait. That's because he's just been caught and he's scared. Even worse, he's beginning to realize that he won't be able to do it again, to experience that bliss again. But he'll still have his memories of that one glorious time. He'll be sitting there in the corner of his cell running over every detail. Relishing the first second he touched her, the moment he entered her and she gasped with pain and fear, the moment he spilled his seed. His only regret will be that he won't get to do it again."

"You sound as if you know what it feels like," said Annie.

Before Dr. Wallace could respond, footsteps sounded in the corridor and Winsome appeared at the door with several uniformed officers behind her. Dr. Wallace lurched forward with the scalpel at her own throat. "Stop! Stop right there."

Annie held her arm up and Winsome stopped in the doorway. "Get back!" Annie yelled. "All of you. Get back out of sight." They disappeared, but Annie knew they weren't far away, working out their options. She also knew there would be an armed response unit arriving soon, and if she had any hope of talking Kirsten into surrendering, she had to work fast. She checked her watch. It had been half an hour since Kirsten picked up the scalpel.

"Do you see what I mean?" Annie said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. "People know I'm here. They've come now. They won't just go away. Don't make things worse. Give me the scalpel."

Dr. Wallace glanced towards the door and, seeing no one there, seemed to relax a little.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "It's all over now anyway. I've done all I can do. God, I'm tired. Too many memories." She was leaning back on the blood-filled gutter of the post-mortem table, the half-sewn-up body behind her. Annie was about five feet away, and she calculated whether she could get over there and wrestle the scalpel out of Kirsten's hand. In the end, she decided she couldn't. The damn thing was way too sharp to risk something like that. She had seen what damage it could do.

"Look," said Annie. "There's still time. You can tell your story. People will understand. I understand. I do. We can get you help."

Dr. Wallace smiled, and for a moment Annie could see the remains of what had probably once been a lovely young girl with a brilliant future, one who would take the world by the horns and go as far as she wanted. Christ, she had almost been killed by a monster and had then taken her revenge, and after that she had reinvented herself as a pathologist. But she seemed weary now, and there were deep cracks in the smile. "Thanks, Annie," she said. "Thanks for being understanding, even though no one can ever really understand. I wish I'd known you before. This may sound weird, but I'm glad I got to spend my last few minutes on earth with you. You will take good care of yourself, won't you? Promise me. I can tell you've been damaged. You've suffered. We are kindred spirits underneath it all, in some ways. Don't let the bastards win. Have you seen what they can do?"

She opened the front of her smock, and Annie recoiled at the jagged criss-cross of red lines, the displaced nipple, the parody of a breast.

"Kirsten!" Annie cried out.