She took an unbroached packet of cigarettes from a carton of two hundred in her top drawer and tore the seal off it. He watched her patiently, saying nothing.

"Just who do you think you are?" snapped DG Friar angrily. "You heard the Sergeant. Open the b.l.o.o.d.y safe."

She ignored him, flipped the lid of the packet and turned the whole thing upside down, shaking a key into the palm of her hand. "How are you on Spenser?" she asked McLoughlin with a quirky smile. " 'A man by nothing is so well betrayed as by his manners.' It might have been written for your friend here."

She's stalling, he thought, she's afraid, and I hate her. G.o.d, how I hate her. "The safe, please, Miss Cattrell."

She walked over with a tiny shrug, unlocked the door and pulled it open. The safe was empty except for a carving knife with a blood-stained rag wrapped around its handle. The blade was black and crusted. McLoughlin felt sick. For all his anger, he hadn't wanted this. With a detached part of his mind, he wondered if he was ill. His head was burning as if he had a fever. He leant his shoulder against the mantelpiece to steady himself. "Can you explain this, please?" He heard his voice from a distance, harsh and unnatural.

"What's to explain?" she asked, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.

What indeed? The shutter clicked open and shut, open and shut, behind his eyes. He glanced at the cigarette packet on the desk. "Let's start with why you went to so much trouble to hide the key?"

"Habit."

"That's a lie, Miss Cattrell."

Tension had tightened the skin around his nose and mouth, giving him a curiously flat look. She thought of the steel hawser she had once seen in Shanghai, winding on to a huge capstan and drawing a crippled tanker into the docks. As the slack was taken up, it had risen from the concrete, shaking itself free of dust as it thinned and tautened, and then had come a moment of pure horror when it snapped under the strain and whipped with frightening speed through the defenceless flesh of a man's neck. He had seen it coming, she remembered, had put up his hands to protect himself. She looked at McLoughlin and felt an urge to do the same. "I want to phone my solicitor," she said. "I will not answer any more questions until he gets here."

McLoughlin stirred. "Friar, find Inspector Walsh for me and ask him to come to Miss Cattrell's wing, will you? Tell him it's urgent, tell him she wants to make a phone call. Jansen"-he flicked his head towards the French windows-"rustle up a WPC for a strip search. You'll find Brownlow somewhere outside." He waited till the two men had left then turned to the mantelpiece and stood staring at the open safe. After a moment he swung the door to and put his hands on the mantelpiece, lowering his head to look into the unlit fire. It was a gas replica of a real fire and the artificial coals were peppered with cigarette ash and dog-ends. "You should put them in a bin," he murmured. "They'll leave marks when they burn."

She craned her neck to see what he was looking at. "Oh, those. I keep meaning to hoover them up."

"I thought Mrs. Phillips did the hoovering."

"She does, but she discriminates against certain messes, or more accurately the makers of certain messes, and won't touch them with a barge pole."

He turned to look at her, resting his elbow on the mantelpiece. He was shaking like a man with ague. "I see." He didn't, of course. What sort of discrimination did Molly go in for? Racial? Religious? Cla.s.s?

"She discriminates on moral grounds," Anne told him. Had he spoken his thoughts aloud? He couldn't remember, his head ached so much. "She's a good old-fashioned Puritan, only truly happy when she's miserable. She can't understand why the rest of us don't feel the same way."

"Like my mother," he said.

She gave her throaty chuckle. "Probably. Mine doesn't bother, thank G.o.d. I couldn't do battle with two of them."

"Does she live near here?"

Anne shook her head. "The last I heard of her she was in Bangkok. She remarried after my father died and set off round the world with husband mark two. I've rather lost track of them, to be honest."

That hurt, he thought. "When did you last see her?"

She didn't answer immediately. "A long time ago." She drummed her fingers impatiently on her desk. "Give me one good reason why I should wait for the Inspector's permission to make this telephone call."

Her voice vibrated with irritation. It made him laugh. Laughter swept over him like a kind of madness, wild, uncontrollable, joyous. He put a hand to his streaming eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry. There is no good reason. Please. Be my guest." The words, appallingly slurred, seemed to echo in his head and, even to his own ears, he sounded drunk. He clung to the mantelpiece and felt the hearth lurch beneath his feet.

"I suppose it hasn't occurred to you," observed Anne at his shoulder, as she shoved a chair behind his legs and folded him neatly on to it with the pressure of one small hand on the nape of his neck, "that it might be worth eating from time to time." She abandoned him to rummage through her bottom drawer. "Here," she said, a moment later, pressing an unwrapped Mars bar into his hand. "I'll get you something to drink." She took a bottle of mineral water from a small drinks cabinet, poured a tumblerful and carried it back to him.

His hand, clasping the Mars bar, hung loosely between his knees. He made no attempt to eat it. He couldn't have moved, even if he'd wanted to.

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" she said crossly, putting the gla.s.s on a table and squatting on the floor in front of him. "Look, McLoughlin, you're a pain in the b.l.o.o.d.y a.r.s.e, you really are. If you're trying to drink yourself into early retirement, fine, that's your choice-G.o.d knows why you joined the police force in the first place. You should be writing a biography of Francis Bacon or Rabbie Burns or something equally sensible. But if you're not trying for the chop, then do yourself a favour. Any minute now, that little toe-rag you sent off in search of the Inspector is going to come back through my door, and he'll wet himself when he sees you like this. Take my word for it, I know the type. And if there's anything left of you when Walsh has finished, then your friend the constable is going to p.i.s.s all over it. He'll do it again and again and again, and he'll have an o.r.g.a.s.m every time he does it. I promise you, you won't enjoy the experience."

In her own way she was beautiful. He could drown quite happily in those soft brown eyes. He took a bite out of the Mars bar and chewed on it thoughtfully. "You're a b.l.o.o.d.y awful liar, Cattrell." He moved his head gently from side to side. "You told me compa.s.sion was a frail thing, but I think you've just broken my neck."

13.

There was an atmosphere in the room. Walsh smelled it the minute he stepped inside. McLoughlin was by the window, hands resting on the sill, looking out over the terrace and the long sweep of lawn; Miss Cattrell sat at her desk, doodling, her boots propped on her open bottom drawer, her lower lip protruding aggressively. She looked up as he approached. "Well, thank G.o.d for small mercies!" she snapped. "I want to phone my solicitor, Inspector, I want to do it now, and I refuse to answer any more questions until he gets here." She looked very cross.

Anger, thought Walsh with surprise. Somehow, it hadn't smelled like anger. "I hear you," he said equably, "but why would you want to do that?"

McLoughlin opened the French windows to let in Jansen and WPC Brownlow. His legs, seeping sawdust, belonged to somebody else; his stomach, re-awakened by the Mars bar, was clawing at itself in a search for further nourishment; his heart was gambolling about his wilting frame like a healthy spring lamb. He felt rather pleased with himself. "Miss Cattrell," he said, his voice quite steady, "would you agree to WPC Brownlow searching you now, while I explain the position to Inspector Walsh?"

"No," she snapped again, "I would not. I refuse to co-operate any further until my solicitor gets here." She tapped a pencil angrily on the desk-top. "And I'm b.l.o.o.d.y well not going to say any more in front of you, either, or those creeps you brought with you." She glared at Walsh. "I object to this very strongly. It's bad enough having your personal things mauled over, but to have them mauled over by men is the pits. You must have some women on your force. I refuse to talk to anyone but women."

Walsh hid his excitement well but McLoughlin, with his new clarity of vision, could see the Inspector's scrawny tail wagging. "Are you making a formal complaint against Sergeant McLoughlin and his team?" Walsh asked.

She glanced at Friar. "I don't know. I'll wait until my solicitor gets here." She reached for her telephone and started dialling. "But my objection stands, so, if you want my co-operation, I suggest you find me some women."

The Chief Inspector jerked his head towards the door. "Friar, Jansen, wait in the corridor. Sergeant McLoughlin, gather together what you've found and bring it outside. Brownlow, stay here." He stood back, eyes narrowing, as he watched McLoughlin launch himself off the wall and plough firmly across the floor. There was something wrong, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He darted sharp glances about the room.

Anne was murmuring into the telephone. "Hold on a moment, Bill"-she cupped her hand over the receiver-"I'd like to remind you, Sergeant," she said icily, "that you haven't given me a receipt for what's in my safe. The only receipt I have is the one for my diary."

Jesus, woman, thought McLoughlin, give me a break. I'm not Charles Atlas, I'm the puny one who gets sand kicked in his face. He bowed ironically. "I'll make one out now, Miss Cattrell."

She ignored him and returned to her phone call, listening for a moment. "Dammit, Bill," she exploded angrily into the mouthpiece, "considering how much you charge, you might make the effort to get here a bit sooner. h.e.l.l, I may not be one of your fancy London clients, but I always pay on the nail. For G.o.d's sake, you can make it in under two hours if you pull your finger out."

Bill Stanley, long-time friend as well as solicitor, grinned at the other end of the line. He had just told her he'd drop everything to be with her in an hour. "I could make it three hours," he suggested.

"That's a bit more like it," she growled. "OK, I'll ask him." She turned to the Inspector. "Are you planning to take me down to the Police Station? My solicitor wants to know where to come."

"That's entirely up to you, Miss Cattrell. Frankly, I'm a little puzzled at the moment as to why you want your solicitor present." McLoughlin turned round with the carving-knife and rag neatly secured in a polythene bag. "Ah!" said Walsh with ill-concealed glee. "Well, that does rather suggest you can help us in our enquiries. As long as you understand there is no duress involved, I think it will be simpler for everyone if we pursue our questioning at the Station."

"Silverborne Police Station," she told her solicitor. "No, don't worry, I won't say anything till you get there." She hung up and s.n.a.t.c.hed the second receipt from McLoughlin. "And there'd better be nothing of mine hidden in that briefcase," she said spitefully. "I've yet to meet a policeman who didn't have sticky fingers."

"That's enough, Miss Cattrell," said Walsh sharply, wondering how McLoughlin had managed to keep his temper with her. But perhaps he hadn't and perhaps that explained the tension in the air. "I draw the line at unwarranted abuse against my officers. Constable Brownlow will wait with you while I have a couple of words with Sergeant McLoughlin in the corridor." He walked stiffly from the room. "Right," he said, when the door had closed behind them, "let's see what you've got." He held out his hand for the polythene bag.

"It's like I told you, sir," said Friar eagerly. "She was hiding it in her safe. And then there's the diary, with talk about death and graves and G.o.d knows what else."

"Andy?"

He supported himself against the wall. "I'm not sure." He shrugged.

"Not sure about what?" demanded Walsh impatiently.

"I suspect we're being had, sir."

"Why?"

"A feeling. She's not a fool and it was very easy."

"Friar?"

"That's b.a.l.l.s, sir. The diary was easy, I grant you that, but the knife was well hidden. Jansen went all along that wall and missed the safe completely." He threw a look of grudging acknowledgement in McLoughlin's direction. "It was the Sergeant spotted it."

Walsh thought deeply for several moments. "Well, either way we're committed now, so if we're being had, let's find out why. Jansen, you take this back to the Station and get it fingerprinted before I bring Miss Cattrell in. Friar, cut along and give them a hand outside. Andy, I suggest you take over from me in Mrs. Maybury's wing."

"With respect, sir," McLoughlin murmured, "wouldn't it be a better idea if I went through her diary? Friar's right, there are some strange references in there."

Walsh looked at him closely for a moment, then nodded. "Perhaps you're right. Pick out anything you think relevant and have it on my desk before I talk to her." He went back into the room, closing the door behind him.

Friar dogged McLoughlin's heels down the corridor. "You jammy b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

McLoughlin grinned evilly. "Privilege has its perks, Friar."

"You reckon she's going to make a complaint?"

"I doubt it."

"Yeah." Friar paused to light a cigarette. "Jansen and me are clear, whichever way you look at it." He called after McLoughlin: "But I'd sure as h.e.l.l like to know where those marks on her neck came from." McLoughlin drove straight to a transport cafe on the outskirts of Silverborne and ate and ate till he could eat no more. He kept his mind deliberately on his food and, when an errant thought popped in, he chased it out again. He was at peace with himself for the first time in months. When he'd finished, he went back to his car, reclined the seat and went to sleep.

Jonathan was hanging round the front door when Anne was ushered out by Walsh and WPC Brownlow. He moved aggressively into their path and Walsh had no difficulty recognising in him the gangling boy who had protected his mother so fiercely all those years ago.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

Anne laid a hand on his arm. "I'll be back in two or three hours at the most, Jon. There's nothing to worry about, I promise. Tell your Ma I've phoned Bill Stanley and he's coming straight down." She paused for a moment. "And make sure she takes the phone off the hook and gets Fred to lock the front gates. The story's bound to be out by now and there'll be pressmen all over the place." She gave him a long, straight look. "It's a safe bet she'll be worrying, Jon, so try and take her mind off it. Play her some records or something." She spoke over her shoulder as Walsh led her towards a car. "Pat Boone and 'Love Letters in the Sand.' That's always a safe bet when you want to take Phoebe's mind off something. You know how she adores Pat Boone. And don't hang about, will you?"

He nodded. "OK. Take care, Anne."

He waved disconsolately as she was driven away, then retreated thoughtfully through the front door. As far as he was aware, his mother had never listened to a Pat Boone record in her life. "Don't hang about, will you?" He walked towards Anne's door, took a quick look about him, then turned the handle and trod softly down her corridor.

He eased her living-room door open and peered, around it. The room was empty. "Safe bet," she had said that twice. "Love Letters." It was the work of seconds to slip the hidden catches, take a firm grasp on the chromium handle and slide the whole safe out. It weighed virtually nothing, being made of aluminium. He rested it on one hip while he plunged his hand into the dark recess in the chimney breast and retrieved a large brown envelope. He flicked it on to the nearest easy chair, then carefully repositioned the safe and thrust it back into place. As he stuffed the envelope into the front of his jacket, it occurred to him that something or someone must have frightened Anne pretty badly to make that hiding place unsafe. And why on earth should she worry over some love letters? It was odd. As he left by the French windows, he heard the door into Anne's wing open and close and the sound of footsteps in the corridor. He tip-toed across the terrace and out of sight.

He found Phoebe and Diana in the main drawing-room. They were murmuring quietly on the sofa, heads together, gold hair and red hair interwoven like threads in a tapestry. He was suddenly jealous of their intimacy. Why did his mother confide in Diana before him? Didn't she trust him? He had shouldered the guilt for ten years. Wasn't that long enough for her? Sometimes, he felt, it was only Anne who treated him like an adult.

"They've taken Anne," he announced laconically.

They nodded, unsurprised. "We were watching," said Phoebe. She gave Jonathan a comforting smile. "Don't worry, darling. I have more sympathy for the police than I do for her. They'll find that two hours in the ring with Mike Tyson would be preferable to half an hour in Anne's company when she's fighting her corner. She's phoned Bill, I hope."

"Yes." He went to the window and looked out on to the terrace. "Where's Lizzie?" he asked them.

"She's gone with Molly," said Diana. "They're searching the Lodge now."

"Is Fred there, too?"

"Fred's standing guard by the gates," said Phoebe. "It seems the press, have arrived in force. He's keeping them at bay."

"That reminds me. Anne said to take the phone off the hook."

Diana stood up and walked over to the mantelpiece, retrieving a dog-end from behind a clock there. She struck a match and lit the crumpled tip. "Already done." She squinted at the pathetic half-inch of tube and puffed inexpertly.

Phoebe exchanged a glance with Jonathan and laughed. "I'll go and get a decent one from Anne's room," she said, pushing herself out of the sofa. "She's bound to have some lying around and I do hate to see you suffer." She left the room.

Diana dropped the dog-end into the fireplace. "She's going to bring me one and I'm going to smoke it, and it'll be my second one today. Tomorrow it'll be three and so on till I'm hooked again. I must be mad. You're a doctor, Jon. Tell me not to."

He walked over, mollified by her sudden need of him, and put an arm round her shoulders. "Not a doctor yet and you wouldn't take any notice of me anyway. How does it go? 'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.' Smoke, if it helps. I'd say stress is just as bad for you as nicotine." It was like cuddling an older Elizabeth, he thought. They were so alike: in their looks, in their constant search for rea.s.surance, in the ironic twist they gave to everything. It explained so well why they didn't get on.

He squeezed her arm and let her go, moving back to the window. "Have all the police gone?"

"Except for the ones at the Lodge, I think. Poor Molly. It'll take her months to get over having her long Johns inspected by the fuzz. She'll probably wash them all several times before she wears them again."

"Lizzie will calm her ruffled feathers," he said.

She gave his back a speculative glance. "Do you see much of Elizabeth in London?" she asked him.

He didn't turn round. "On and off. We have lunch together sometimes. She works pretty anti-social hours, you know. She's in the casino till nearly dawn most nights." It was tragic, he thought, how much there was about a daughter you could never tell her mother. You couldn't describe the exquisite pleasure of waking at four in the morning to find her warm naked body rhythmically arousing yours. You couldn't explain that just to think about her made you h.o.r.n.y or that one of the reasons you loved her was because, whenever you slipped your hand between, her thighs, she was wet with longing for you. Instead, you had to say you rarely saw her, pretend indifference, and the mother would never know of the fire her daughter could kindle. "I should think I see more of her down here," he said, turning round.

"She doesn't tell me anything about her life in London," said Diana with regret. "I a.s.sume she gets taken out but I don't know and I don't ask."

"Is that because you don't want to know or you think she wouldn't tell you?"

"Oh, because she wouldn't tell me, of course," she said. "She knows I don't want her to repeat my mistake and marry too young. If she is serious about someone, I'll be the last one to know, and by then it'll be too late for me to urge caution. My own fault entirely," she said. "I quite see that."

Phoebe came back and tossed an opened packet of cigarettes at Diana. "Would you believe they've left that child on guard in Anne's room? PC Williams, the one Molly's taken a shine to. He's had orders to stay there until further notice. Insisted on taking every one of these f.a.gs out to have a look at it." She crossed to the telephone and replaced the receiver. "I must have been out of my mind," she went on. "Jane's due in at Winchester some time this afternoon or evening. I told her to ring when she got there. We'll just have to put up with nuisance calls until we hear from her."

With a grimace, Jonathan opened the French windows and stepped out on to the terrace. "I'm going to take the dogs for a walk. I think I'll try and find Lizzie. See you later." He put his fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle before setting off down the garden.

Just then the telephone rang. Phoebe picked it up and listened for a moment. "No comment," she said, replacing the receiver. A few seconds later it began to ring again.

Benson and Hedges cavorted around him, waggling their bottoms and barking, as if a walk was a rarity. He struck out towards the woodland between the Grange and Grange Farm, flinging a stick every now and then to please the scampering dogs. His direction took him past the ice house and he watched with distaste as they made a beeline for it, only to whine and scratch with frustration outside the sealed door. He went on, pausing regularly to turn and scan the way he had come, whistling to the dogs to keep up.

When he reached the two-hundred-year-old oak, standing majestically in its clearing in the middle of the wood, he took off his jacket and sat down, relaxing his back into a natural concave in the wrinkled bark. He remained there for half an hour, listening, watching, until he was satisfied that the only witnesses to what he was about to do were dogs and wild creatures.

He stood up, removed the envelope from inside his folded jacket and popped it through a narrow slit into a hollow in the oak's great trunk where a branch had died and been discarded in infancy. Only Jane, who had swarmed with him through the leafy panoply when they were children, knew the secrets of the hidey-hole.

He whistled up the straying dogs and went back to the house.

"Can I talk to you, darling?"

Elizabeth, halfway up the stairs to her bedroom, looked reluctantly at her mother. "I suppose so." She had just got back from the Lodge and was tired and irritable. Molly's unspoken distress over the police search had upset her.

"We'll leave it if it's riot a good time."