Sandra couldn't say exactly how or at what moment she knew she was being watched. It was sudden, a feeling of not being alone. And when she looked she saw an eye. It seemed disembodied, just hanging there in the gap in the curtains, but as she ran forward, yelling for Alan at the same time, she caught a glimpse of a figure in a dark raincoat slipping through the gap in the fence and making off down the back alley.

Banks came running up and then left Sandra to calm down the children, who had heard her cry out, while he gave chase. There was nobody in the alley, and it was too dark to see clearly anyway. First, Banks ran up to the main road end, but there was nobody in sight. Then he walked slowly and quietly in the other direction, wishing he'd had the foresight to bring a flashlight, but he saw nothing move in the shadows, and however still he stood, he couldn't hear breathing or rustling-nothing. All he managed to do was disturb a cat, which darted across his path and almost gave him a heart attack.

He walked as far down as the narrow gap at the far end that led to the park, but it was pitch black. There was no point in going any further. Whoever it was had melted back into the darkness, another victory. Banks cursed and kicked the rickety fence hard before storming back indoors.

Chapter NINE

I

On Saturday morning, as promised, Banks stood high on the castle battlements and looked out over his "patch," or "manor," as he would have called it in London. It was a sharp, fresh day and all the clouds had gone. The sky was not the deep, warm cerulean of summer, but a lighter, more piercing blue, as if the cold of the coming winter had already wormed its way into the air.

Banks looked down over the cobbled market square. The ancient cross and square-towered church were almost lost among the makeshift wooden stalls and the riot of color that blossomed every market day. The bus station to the east was full of red single-decker buses, and in the adjacent car park, green and white coaches dwarfed the cars. Small parties of tourists ambled around, bright yellow and orange anoraks zipped up against the surprising nip in the air. Banks wore his donkey-jacket buttoned right up to the collar and the children wore kagoules over their woollen sweaters.

To Tracy, Eastvale Castle represented a living slice of history, an Elizabethan palace where, it was rumored, Mary Queen of Scots had been imprisoned for a while and a Richard or a Henry had briefly held court. Ladies-in-waiting whispered royal secrets to one another in echoing galleries, while barons and earls danced galliards and pavanes with their elegant wives at banquets.

To Brian, the place evoked a more barbarous era of history; it was a stronghold from which ancient Britons poured down boiling oil on Roman invaders, a citadel riddled with dank dungeons where thumbscrews, rack and Iron Maiden awaited unfortunate prisoners.

Neither was entirely correct. The castle was, in fact, built by the Normans at about the same time as Richmond, and, like its more famous contemporary, it was built of stone and had an unusually massive keep.

While the children explored the ruins, Banks looked over the roofs below, checkerboard patterns of red pantile, stone and Welsh slate, and let his eyes follow the contours of the hills where they rose to peaks and fells in the west and flattened into a gently undulating plain to the east. In all directions the trees were tinged with autumn's rust, just like the picture on his calendar.

Banks could make out the town's limits: beyond the river, the East Side Estate, with its two ugly tower blocks, sprawled until it petered out into fields, and in the west, Gallows View pointed its dark, shriveled finger toward Swainsdale. To the north, the town seemed to spread out between the fork of two diverging roads- one leading to the northern Dales and the Lakes, the other to Tyneside and the east coast. Beyond these older residential areas, there were only a few scattered farmhouses and outlying hamlets.

Though he saw the view, Banks could hardly take it in, still troubled as he was by the events of the previous evening. He hadn't reported the incident, and that nagged at his sense of integrity. On the other hand, as he and Sandra had decided, it would probably have been a lot more embarrassing and galling all around to have reported it. It was easy to imagine the headlines, the sniggers. And even as he worried about his own decision, Banks also wondered how many others had not seen fit to tell the police of similar incidents. If women were still reluctant to report rape, for example, would many of them not also balk at reporting a Peeping Tom?

For Banks, though, the problem was even more involved. He was a policeman; therefore, he was expected to set an example, to follow the letter of the law himself. In the past, he may have occasionally driven at a little over the speed limit or, worse, had perhaps one drink too many before driving home from a Christmas party, but he had never been faced with such a conflict between professional and family duty before. Sandra and he had decided, though, over a long talk in bed, and that decision was final. They had also told the children, who had heard Sandra's scream, that she had thought someone was trying to break in but had been mistaken.

What bothered Banks was that if there was no investigation, then valuable clues or information might be sacrificed. To put that right as far as possible, Sandra had offered to talk to the neighbors discreetly, to ask if anyone had noticed any strangers hanging around. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

So that was that. Banks shrugged and watched a red bus try to extricate itself from an awkward parking spot off the square. The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock said eleven-thirty. He had promised that they would be home for lunch by twelve.

Rounding up Brian and Tracy, who had fallen to arguing about the history of the castle, Banks ushered them toward the exit.

"Of course it's an ancient castle," Brian argued. "They've got dungeons with chains on the walls, and it's all falling to pieces."

Tracy, despite her anachronistic image of the period, knew quite well that the castle was built in the early part of the twelfth century, and she said so in no uncertain terms.

"Don't be silly," Brian shot back. "Look at what a state it's in. It must have taken thousands of years to get so bad."

"For one thing," Tracy countered with a long-suffering sigh, "it's built of stone. They didn't build things out of stone as long ago as that. Besides, it's in the history book. Ask the teacher, dummy, you'll see if I'm not right."

Brian retreated defensively into fantasy: he was a brave knight and Tracy was a damsel in distress, letting down her hair from a high, narrow window. He gave it a long, hard pull and swaggered off to fight a dragon.

They wound their way down to the market square, which, though it had seemed to move as slowly and silently as in a dream from high up, buzzed with noisy activity at close quarters.

The vendors sold everything from toys, cassette tapes and flashlight batteries to lace curtains, paintbrushes and used paperbacks, but mostly they sold clothes- jeans, jackets, shirts, lingerie, socks, shoes. A regular, whom Banks had christened Flash Harry because of his pencil-thin mustache, flat cap and spiv-like air, juggled with china plates and cups as he extolled the virtues of his wares. Tourists and locals clustered around the drafty stalls handling goods and haggling with the red-faced holders, who sipped hot Oxo and wore fingerless woollen gloves to keep their hands warm without inhibiting the counting of money.

After a quick look at some children's shoes-as cheap in quality as they were in price-Banks led Brian and Tracy south along Market Street under the overhanging second-floor bay windows. About a quarter of a mile further on, beyond where the narrow street widened, was the cul-de-sac where they lived. It was five to twelve.