He had to concede. 'You'll have to be guarded even if you do go to your mother's.'

'She'll adore the excitement, you know what she's like.'

'Yeah, I do. You'll keep Gabby away from school?'

'If you think that's best. Maybe we'll find another close to Mother's.'

'Better still.'

'Okay, I agree.' Fran ran a hand through her auburn hair and seemed to relax a little. 'Would you like more coffee?'

'No, I'm sinking fast. Is it okay if I stay the night?'

'I was assuming you would. Despite everything that's happened between us in the past, you know you're always welcome here.' She touched his hand across the table, the gesture only slightly awkward, and he responded by squeezing her fingers, then letting go. 'We may not have made each other very happy in the long run, but we did have a certain something going for us, didn't we?'

Tired though he was, Childes managed to smile back. 'They were good years, Fran.'

'To begin with.'

'We changed in ourselves, became unfamiliar to each other.'

'When-' she began to say, but he interrupted.

'Old territory, Fran.'

She lowered her gaze. 'I'll fix up the bed in the spare room for you. If that's where you want to sleep . . .' The words were deliberately left hanging in the air.

He was tempted. Fran was no less desirable than she had ever been and the emotions wrung out by a fraught day had left them both in need of physical comforting. Moments went by before he answered.

'I've got kind of close to someone,' he said.

There was a trace of resentment in Fran's question. 'A certain fellow-teacher?'

'How did you know?' Childes was surprised.

'Gabby was full of the nice lady teacher she met last time she came back from visiting you. It's been going on for quite a while, hasn't it? Don't worry, you can speak freely; I'm long past jealousy, not that I have that particular right any more so far as you're concerned.'

'Her name is Aime'e Sebire.'

'French?'

'Just the name. I've known her for more than two years now.'

'Sounds serious.'

He did not reply.

'I just get involved with married men,' Fran sighed. 'I suppose I never did choose very well.'

'You're still beautiful, Fran.'

'But resistible.'

'Under different circumstances, I-'

'It's okay, I'm deliberately making you squirm. Independence for a woman isn't all it's cracked up to be, even in this day and age; a warm body to cuddle up with, a strong male shoulder to fall asleep on, can still be a necessity for us liberated ladies.' She rose slowly from the table and for the first time he noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. 'I'll get the bedclothes. You haven't told me yet what you and Inspector Overoy plan to do about our friend the ogre.' She waited by the kitchen door for his reply.

He twisted in his chair to face Fran and the tone of his words and their implications chilled her. 'So far it's been searching for me, probing my mind. Overoy thinks it's time I tried to reverse the situation.'

He awoke and sensed someone else was in the room with him. For a few brief seconds he was disorientated, the dim light unfamiliar, subdued shapes unidentifiable. The events of the day crowded back in on him. He was home. No, not home. Temporarily back in his old house with Fran and Gabby. The light was from the streetlamp outside.

A shadow was moving closer.

Childes sat up, the movement sharp and rigid, stiffness caused by sudden fear.

A weight on the bed, and then Fran's quietened voice.

'I'm sorry, Jon. I can't sleep alone, not tonight. Please don't be angry.'

He raised the covers and she slid in beside him, pushing close. Her nightdress was soft against his skin.

'We don't have to make love,' she whispered. 'I'm not here for that. Just put your arms around me and hold me for a while.'

He did so. And they did make love.

He awoke again in the night, much later, when sleep had a firmer hold.

A hand gripped his shoulder: Fran had been roused too. 'What is it?' she hissed.

'I don't-'

The sound came again.

'Gabby!' they both said together.

Childes scrambled from the bed, Fran following, and made for the door, the coldness of terror abruptly roughening the skin of his naked body with tiny bumps. He fumbled for the light-switch in the hallway, giddy for a moment, the light hurting his eyes.

They saw the black cat standing outside Gabby's open bedroom door, back arched, a million needles bristling. Miss Puddles glared ahead, eyes venomous, jaw wide in an angry, pointed-tooth grin.

Gabby's cry again, calling piercingly.

The cat's stiffened hairs ruffled as if disturbed by a draught. She disappeared down the stairway.

They rushed along the landing and when they entered their daughter's room, Gabby was sitting bolt upright in the bed. She was staring into a far corner by the doorway, the weak glow from the nightlight casting deep shadows across her features.

She did not look at them when they ran to the bed, but kept watching the darkened corner, seeing something there. Something that was not visible to her mother and father.

When Fran hugged her close, she blinked rapidly as if emerging from a dream. Childes looked on with concern as Gabby pulled away and scrabbled around her bedside cabinet for something; she found her glasses and quickly put them on. Once more she peered into the shadowy corner.

'Where is she?' Gabby's words were tearful.

'Who, darling, who?' asked Fran, holding her comfortingly.

'Has she gone away again, Mummy? She looked so sad.'

Childes felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. His forehead and the palms of his hands were clammy with cold sweat.

'Tell me who, Gabriel,' said her mother, 'tell me who you saw.'

'She touched me and she was so cold, Mummy, so freezing. Annabel looked so sad.'

Deep within Childes, a long-forgotten memory stirred.

The package arrived by first post Monday morning and it was addressed to JONATHAN CHILDES. Both the name and his ex-wife's address were hand-written in small, neat, capital letters. The brown envelope was a standard ten-by-seven size.

Inside was a narrow, four-inch-square cardboard box.

Inside the box was crumpled tissue paper.

Wrapped in the tissue were six objects.

Five were tiny fingers and thumb.

The last was a smooth, white moonstone.

Life went on; it always does.

Childes returned to the island after two days of intensive questioning by the police and having seen his ex-wife and daughter safely away to Fran's mother, who lived in a quiet village not many miles from London. He had not accompanied them, wanting no impressions of the journey imprinted on his mind.

Although there had been no more help he could give the investigating officers, he suspected that only Detective Inspector Overoy's assurances had persuaded them to allow his departure. Neither the postmark (a suburb of the city) nor the neat handwriting of the address on the macabre package provided any useful clues. There had been no saliva traces on the gummed envelope flap, for it was of the self-adhesive kind, and no clear fingerprints could be established on the paper or on the box inside. Mention of the semiprecious stone found among the mutilated human fingers had been kept from the media: copycat crimes were never encouraged by the police. That there was a 'probable' connection between the kidnapping and possibly three other crimes already under investigation could not be withheld, but the authorities declined to say why they believed there was a link.

Childes benefited from their discretion and had managed to leave the mainland before conclusions could be drawn by outsiders. His psychic contact with the killer had remained a closely guarded secret. The pathologist's report stated that the fingers had been severed from a victim already dead. There was mercy in that alone.

Annabel's body was not recovered and no vision of its whereabouts came to Childes. He tried earnestly to probe with his mind but to no avail.

Nothing more was to happen until a few weeks later.

In the dream he watched the dark-haired boy and knew the boy was himself.

He sat upright in the narrow bed, sheets bunched around him, and he was young, very young. He was speaking, the same words repeated over and over again like a senseless litany.

'. . . you . . . can't . . . be . . .'

The figure of a woman stood at the end of the bed, an ivory statue, unmoving in the moonlight, watching as did he, the dreamer. A terrible sorrow ebbed from her and, just as the sleeping observer knew that the boy was his younger self, he knew the woman was his mother. But she was dead.

'. . . he . . . says . . . you can't . . . you can't . . . be . . .' mumbled the boy, and the sadness between woman and child, mother and son, became immense.

And the son then became aware of the observer, his startled eyes looking upwards, into the darkest corner of the room. He looked directly at himself.

But the moment was gone as heavy, lumbering footsteps sounded along the corridor outside. So, too, was gone the spectral vision of his mother.

The dark shadow of a man stood swaying in the doorway and Childes, the onlooker, was almost overwhelmed by the wretched anger exuding from his father in threatening waves, a guilt-ridden fury that charged the atmosphere. Childes cringed, as did his younger self, the boy, when the drunken man lurched forward, fists raised.

'I told you,' the father shouted. 'No more! No more . . .' The boy screamed from beneath the bedclothes as the blows fell.

Childes tried to call out, to warn his father to leave the boy alone, that he could not help seeing his mother's ghost-spirit, that she had returned to reassure him, to let him know that her love had not perished with her cancer-riddled body, that love always continued, the grave was no captor or gaoler or executioner, that she would ever love him and he could know that through his special gift which allowed him to see . . . But his father would not listen, did not hear, his wrath overriding all other senses and emotions. He had told his son there was no life after death, the dead could never come back to torment, that his mother had died full of hate and had deserved the lingering suffering because God willed such upon those whose hearts were corrupted with hatred, and she could not rise again to talk of love when she was filled with an odious loathing of him, her husband, the boy's father, and there were no such things as spirits or ghosts or hauntings because even the Church denied them, and there was nothing like that, nothing at all, nothing . . .!

The boy's screams had sunk to sobs and the beating this time was worse than any of the others. Soon his consciousness began to fade as he closed away his mind, deliberately rejecting what was happening, what had happened. And Childes, the man, the dreaming witness, was aware that the boy's mind had closed against what would happen.

He awoke whimpering, as he had all those years ago when only a boy.

'Jon, are you all right?'

Amy was leaning over him, her hair brushing his cheek. 'You were having a nightmare, like before, saying the same words, and then yelling at someone, screaming for them to stop.'

His breathing was shallow, fast, his chest rising in sharp movements. She had turned on the bedside lamp and her sweet face, anxious though it was, was a relief from the nightmare.

'He . . . he made me . . .' he whispered.

'Who, Jon? And what?'

Alertness was swiftly returning. Childes lay there for a few more seconds, gathering his thoughts, then pushed himself up so that his back was against the wall. Amy half-knelt beside him, shadows accentuating the soft curves of her body as the bedsheet fell around her waist. She smoothed away dark hair that hung over his forehead.

'What did I say in my sleep?' he asked her.

'You mumbled, but it sounded like: "It can't a " no, " a you can't be". You kept saying the same thing over and over again and then you started shouting.'

Although the hour was late, there was no chill in the air; not even a breeze came through the open window.

'Oh, Amy, Amy, I think I'm beginning to understand,' he said, and the words were almost a moan.

Her arm went around his body and she rested her head against his shoulder. 'You frighten me so much,' she said. 'Talk to me now, Jon, tell me what you think it is you understand. Please don't hide anything away from me.'

He caressed her back, absorbing the warmth that was more than physical through sensitive fingertips. He began to talk, speaking in a soft, low voice, hesitant at first, the words as much for himself as for her.

'When Gabby . . . when she saw . . . when she thought she saw Annabel that night . . . after Annabel had been . . . taken . . . something was revived in me, a thought, a feeling, a memory. Something kept hidden away for a long, long time. It's complex, and I know I won't be able to explain it all, but I'll try, if only for my own sake.'

Amy eased away so that her weight was not on him.

'I suppose no one really wants to hate their father,' he went on, 'and remember, for so many years he was my only parent, so that guilt may have played some small part in my refusal to admit certain facts about myself. I can't be sure, I'm just searching, Amy, trying to come up with some answers, a rationale, if you like.'

He fell silent, as though searching his own thoughts, attempting to bring some order to them, and Amy tried helping. 'Your dream, Jon. Perhaps you should start there.'

Childes' fingers pressed against his closed eyelids. 'Yes,' he said after a while, 'the dream, that's the key. Only I'm not sure it was just a dream, Amy.' Reaching for her hand, he held it in his lap and looked towards the window on the far side of the room. 'I saw myself as a boy a about Gabby's age, I think a and I seemed to be looking down at him a at myself a as if hovering over his bedroom. The boy was sitting up in bed, afraid, yet somehow I felt there was a kind of happiness about him. Someone else was in the room, Amy, standing in the moonlight, watching the boy as I was. A woman. I know it was my mother.'

Childes breathed in deeply while Amy quietly waited. His face was drawn and the glistening in his eyes indicated both sadness and the subdued excitement of discovery. She tensed when he said, 'But my mother had been dead for over a week.'

'Jon-'