Fu said, “I wouldn’t have chosen you, Ulrike. I rather like you. It was actually my mistake ever to mention Dad. But when you started asking for alibis-and it was fairly obvious that was what you were doing, by the way-I knew I had to tell you something you’d be happy with. Sitting home alone would never have cut the mustard, would it? The alone part would have made you curious.” He looked down on her, completely friendly. “I mean, you would have been all over that, p’rhaps even telling the coppers about it. And then where would we be?”

He brought out the knife. He took it from the little work top where the propane cooker was merrily heating not only the pan but the van itself now. Lynley could feel the warmth undulating across to him.

Fu said, “It was meant to be one of the boys. I thought Mark Connor. You know him, don’t you? Likes to hang round in reception with Jack? Little rapist in the making, you ask me. He needs sorting, Ulrike. They all need sorting. Proper little gobshites, they are. Need discipline and no one gives that to them. Makes one wonder what kind of parents they have. Parenting, you know, is essential to development. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

He turned back to the cooker. He took up the candle and held it to various points on his body. It came to Lynley that this was a hieratic ritual he was watching. And he was meant to be watching, like a worshipper at church.

He wanted to speak, but his mouth too was covered with tape. He tested the bindings that held his wrists to the side of the van. They were immovable.

Fu turned again. He stood there quite naturally in his nudity, his body glistening where he’d used the oil on it. He held up the candle and saw that Lynley was watching him. He reached for something on the work top again.

Lynley thought it would be the torch to stun him once more, but it was instead a small brown bottle, not the one he’d been using but another that he took from a little cupboard and held up so that Lynley would be sure to see it.

“Something new, Superintendent,” he said. “After Ulrike, I’ll switch to parsley. Triumph, you see. And there’ll be much cause for it. For triumph. For me, that is. For you? Well, I don’t expect you’ve much to feel grand about at this moment, have you? But you’re curious, still, and who can blame you? You want to know, don’t you? You want to understand.”

He knelt by Ulrike, but he looked at Lynley. “Adultery. Nowadays it’s nothing she’d actually go to gaol for, but it’ll do nicely. She would have touched him-intimately, Ulrike? It would have been intimately, wouldn’t it?-so, like the others, her hands bear the stain of her sin.” He looked down at Ulrike. “I expect you’re sorry for that, aren’t you, darling?” He smoothed her hair. “Yes, yes. You’re sorry. So you’ll be released. I promise you that. When it’s over, your soul will fly to heaven. I’ll keep a bit of you with me…snip snip and you’re mine…but at that point, you won’t feel it. You won’t feel a thing.”

Lynley saw that the young woman had begun to cry. She struggled wildly against her restraints but the effort only exhausted her. Fu watched her, placid, and smoothed her hair once again when she was finished.

“It has to happen,” he said kindly. “Try to understand. And do know that I like you, Ulrike. Actually, I quite liked them all. You have to suffer, of course, but that’s what life is. Suffering through whatever we’re handed. And this is what’s been handed to you. The superintendent here will bear witness. And then he’ll pay for his own sins as well. So you’re not alone, Ulrike. You can take comfort from that, can’t you?”

The toying with her, Lynley saw, was giving the man pleasure, actual physical pleasure. This, however, seemed to embarrass him. It would doubtless make him feel like one of the “others” and he wouldn’t like that: the indication that he too was of warped human stock like every other psychopath who had gone before him, getting a sexual kick from another’s terror and pain. He picked up his trousers and donned them, pushing his phallus out of view.

But it seemed that the fact of his arousal altered him. He became all business, the friendly chat put behind him. He sharpened the knife. He spat into the pan to test the heat of it. From a rack, he took a length of thin line that he held-one end in each hand-and snapped expertly as if to test its strength.

“Down to work, then,” he said when he was fully prepared.

BARBARA STUDIED the van from the farthest end of the carpark, some sixty yards away. She tried to think what the inside might be like. If he’d killed the boys and sliced them open within the vehicle-which she was certain he’d done-that called for space, space in which to lay someone out, which meant the back of the van. Obvious, no? But how exactly was one of these bloody vehicles structured? she wondered. Where were its most vulnerable points and where the most secure? She didn’t know. And she didn’t have the time to find out.

She climbed back into the Bentley and she adjusted the seat, far back now, as far as it would go. This would make it difficult for her to drive, but she wasn’t going a great distance.

She fastened her safety belt.

She revved the motor.

She said, “Sorry, sir,” and changed the car from park to drive.

FU SAID to Ulrike, “We’ve had judgement already, haven’t we? And I can see both admission and repentance in your tears. So we’ll go on directly to punishment, darling. From punishment, you see, purification comes.”

Lynley watched as Fu removed the pan from the stove. He saw him smile kindly down at the struggling woman. He too struggled but it was to no avail. “Don’t,” Fu told them both. “It’ll make everything worse.” And then directly to Ulrike, “Anyway, darling, trust me on this. It’s going to hurt me far worse than it’ll ever hurt you.”

He knelt beside her and placed the pan on the floor.

He reached for her hand, untied it, and held it tight. He considered it for a moment, then kissed it.

And the side of the van exploded.

THE AIRBAG DEPLOYED. Smoke filled the car. Barbara coughed and fumbled frantically with the fastening on her safety belt. She managed to release it and she stumbled from the car, sore of chest and hacking to clear her lungs. When she got her breath back, she looked at the Bentley and realised then that what she’d thought was smoke was actually some sort of powder. The airbag? Who knew. The important thing was that nothing was on fire, neither the Bentley nor the van, although neither was the same as it had been.

She’d aimed for the driver’s door. She’d hit it dead centre. Thirty-eight miles an hour had done the job. The speed had destroyed the front of the Bentley and sent the van spinning into the shrubbery. What faced her now was the rear of the van, its single window staring and black.

He had the weapons, but she had surprise. She went forward to see what surprise had wrought.

The sliding door was on the passenger’s side. It was open. Barbara yelled, “Cops, Kilfoyle. You’re finished. Step outside.”

Nothing in response. He had to be unconscious.

She moved carefully. She looked round her as she went. It was dark as pitch, but her eyes were adjusting. The shrubbery was thick, gnarling from the ground right into the carpark, and she made her way along it to the open van door.

She saw figures, unaccountably two of them and a candle guttering on its side on the floor. She righted this and it shed light in a glow that allowed her to find him. Lynley hung limply from his arms and his wrists, bolted like a piece of meat to the side of the van. On the floor, Ulrike Ellis lay bound. She’d wet herself. The smell of piss was rank in the air.