There was no question, the Jesus head was Starling.

"Another anomaly is that the figure is nailed to the cross through the wrists rather than the palms."

"That's accurate," Mason said. "You've got to nail them through the wrists and use big wooden washers, otherwise they get loose and start flapping. Idi Amin and I found that out the hard way when we reenacted the whole thing in Uganda at Easter. Our Saviour was actually nailed through the wrists. All the Crucifixion paintings are wrong. It's a mistranslation between the Hebrew and Latin Bibles."

"Thank you," Dr Doemling said without sincerity. "The Crucifixion clearly represents a destroyed object of veneration. Note that the arm that forms the minute hand is at six, modestly covering the pudenda. The hour hand is at nine, or slightly past. Nine is a clear reference to the traditional hour when Jesus was crucified."."And when you put six and nine together, note that you get sixty-nine, a figure popular in social intercourse," Margot could not help saying. In response to Doemling's sharp glance, she cracked her walnuts and shells rattled to the floor.

"Now let's take up Dr Lecter's letters to Clarice Starling.

Cordell, if you'd put them up."

Dr Doemling took a laser pointer from his pocket. "You can see `that the writing, a fluent copperplate executed with a square-nibbed fountain pen, is machinelike in its regularity. You see that sort of handwriting in medieval papal bulls. It's quite beautiful, but freakishly regular. There is nothing spontaneous here. He's planning. He wrote this first one soon after he had escaped, killing five people in the process. Let's read from the text:

Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming? You owe me a piece of information, you know, and that's what I'd like.

An ad in the national edition of the Times and in the International Herald- Tribune on the first of any month will be fine. Better put it in the China Mail as well.

I won't be surprised if the answer is yes and no.

The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you'll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it's the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. Be sure you extend me the same courtesy…

Dr Doemling pushed his rimless glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. "This is a classic example of what I have termed in my published work avunculism – it's beginning to be referred to broadly in the professional literature as Doemling's avunculism. Possibly it will be included in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It may be defined for laymen as the act of posturing as a wise and caring patron to further a private agenda.

"I gather from the case notes that the question about the lambs screaming refers to a childhood experience of Clarice Starling's, the slaughter of the lambs on the ranch in Montana, her foster home," Dr Doemling went on in his dry voice.

"She was trading information with Lecter," Krendler said. "He knew something about the serial killer Buffalo Bill."

"The second letter, seven years later, is on the face of it a letter of condolence and support," Doemling said. "He taunts her with references to her parents, whom she apparently venerates. He calls her father `the dead night watchman' and her mother `the chambermaid.' And then he invests them with excellent qualities she can imagine that they had, and further enlists these qualities to excuse her own failings in her career. This is about ingratiation, this is about control.

"I think the woman Starling may have a lasting attachment to her father, an imago, that prevents her from easily forming sexual relationships and may incline her to Dr Lecter in some kind of transference, which in his perversity he would seize on at once. In this second letter he again encourages her to.contact him with a n personal ad, and he provides a code name."

My Christ, the man went on! Restlessness and boredom were torture for Mason because he couldn't fidget "Right, fine, good, Doctor," Mason interrupted. "Margot, open the window a little, I've got a new source on Lecter, Dr Doemling. Someone who knows both Starling and Lecter and saw then together, and he's been around Lecter more than anyone. I want you to talk to him."

Krendler squirmed on the couch, his bowels beginning to stir as he saw where this was going.

Chapter 51

MASON SPOKE into his intercom and a tall figure came into the room. He was as muscular as Margot and dressed in whites.

"This is Barney," Mason said. "He was in charge of the violent ward at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for six years when Lecter was there. Now he works for me."

Barney preferred to stand in front of the aquarium with Margot, but Dr Doemling wanted him in the light. He took a place beside Krendler.

"Barney is it? Now, Barney, what is your professional training?"

"I have an LPN."

"You're a licensed practical nurse? Good for you. Is that all?"

"I have a bachelor's degree in the humanities from the United States Correspondence College," Barney said, expressionless. "And a certificate of attendance from the Cummins School of Mortuary Science. I'm qualified as a diener. I did that at night during nursing school."

"You worked your way through LPN school as a morgue attendant?"

"Yes, removing bodies from crime scenes and assisting at autopsies."

"Before that."

"Marine Corps."

"I see. And while you were working at the state hospital you saw Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter interacting – what I mean is, you saw them talking together?"

"It seemed to me they-"

"Let's start with just exactly what you saw, not what you thought about what you saw, can we do that?"

Mason interrupted. "He's smart enough to give his opinion. Barney, you know Clarice Starling."

"Yes."

"You knew Hannibal Lecter for six years."

"Yes."."What was it between them?"

At first Krendler had trouble understanding Barney's high, rough voice, but it was Krendler who asked the pertinent question. "Did Lecter act differently in the Starling interviews, Barney?"

"Yes. Most of the time he didn't respond at all to visitors," Barney said. "Sometimes he would open his eyes long enough to insult some academic who was trying to pick his brain. He made one visiting professor cry. He was tough with Starling, but he answered her more than most. He was interested in her. She intrigued him."

"How?"

Barney shrugged. "He hardly ever got to see women. She's really good- looking-"

"I don't need your opinion on that," Krendler said. "Is that all you know?"

Barney did not reply. He looked at Krendler as though the left and right hemispheres of Krendler's brain were two dogs stuck together.

Margot cracked another walnut.

"Go on, Barney," Mason said.

"They were frank with one another. He's disarming that way. You have the feeling that he wouldn't deign to lie."

"Wouldn't do what to lie?"

Krendler said.

"Deign," Barney said.

"D-E-I-G-N," Margot Verger said out of the dark. "To condescend. Or to stoop, Mr. Krendler."

Barney went on. "Dr Lecter told her some unpleasant things about herself, and then some pleasant ones. She could face the bad things, and then enjoy the good more, knowing it wasn't bullshit. He thought she was charming and amusing."

"You can judge what Hannibal Lecter found `amusing'?"

Dr Doemling said. "Just how do you go about that, Nurse Barney?"

"By listening to him laugh, Dr Doemling. They taught us that in LPN school, a lecture called `Healing and the Cheerful Outlook."