"Here."

True.

"Have you ever been out of Stocken?"

"No."

"Have you ever tried to get out?"

"No."

"Do you want to get out?"

Bursken demurred for a moment. Then: "I would like to leave."

"Do you think you deserve to leave?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you have done anything wrong?"

"I have done as I was bidden, no more."

"God told you to kill?"

"I was the instrument chosen by our Lord."

"To eliminate sin?"

"Yes."

"What sin did Sarah Inglis commit?" The personal profile his cybofax displayed said Sarah was eleven years old, snatched on her way home from school.

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."

"She was a schoolgirl." It was unprofessional, he knew, but for once didn't care. Anything which could hurt Bursken, from inducing pangs of conscience to a knee in the balls, couldn't be all bad.

"Our Lord cannot be held accountable."

"Yeah, right. What do you know about Edward Kitchener?"

"Physicist. Double Nobel laureate. Lived at Launde Abbey. Advances many controversial theories. Adulterer. Degenerate. Blasphemer."

"Why blasphemer?"

"Physicists seek to define the universe, to eliminate uncertainty and with it spirituality. They seek to banish God. They say there is no room for God in their theories. That is the devil speaking."

"So that would qualify Kitchener as a legitimate victim for the justice you dispense?"

"Yes."

"If you had been allowed out of Stocken would you have killed him?"

"I would have redeemed him with the sacrifice of life. He would have been blessed, and thanked me as he knelt at our Lord's feet."

"Would this redemption involve mutilating him?"

"I would leave behind a sign for the Angels of the Lord to help with his ascension into heaven."

"What sign?"

"Given him the shape of an angel."

"It's the lungs," Stephanie said. "if you look down directly on the body, the lungs spread out on either side represent wings, like an angel. Liam did it to all his victims. The Vikings used to do something similar when they came over pillaging."

"I'm sure they did," Greg muttered. He keyed up the next series of questions on the cybofax.

"OK, you know Kitchener lives at Launde Abbey, and you know there is a kitchen there. Would you take your own knife?"

"The Lord always provides."

"Does he provide from Launde's kitchen, or does he provide beforehand?"

"Beforehand," Bursken whispered thickly.

Stephanie leant over to him, an apologetic smile on her lips. "What are you getting at?" she asked in a low voice.

"Assembling a profile of the mind involved. Whoever did it has to have something in common with Bursken here. It wasn't an ordinary tekmerc, even they would baulk at performing that atrocity. It must be someone whose normal emotional responses have been eradicated, like Bursken.

"What I want to know is how rationally can they function under these circumstances, if they were following a plan, could they stick to it? Sheer revulsion would cause most ordinary minds to crack under the stress, mistakes could be made. So far this investigation hasn't uncovered a single one."

"I see." She flopped back in her chair again.

"Which would be more important to the Lord," Greg asked: "redeeming Kitchener, or destroying the computer records of all his blasphemous work?"

"You mock me, Mandel. You speak of the Lord, yet you carry no reverence in your heart. You speak of blasphemy, and you revel in its execution."

"Which would you prefer to do, kill Kitchener, or erase his work?"

"A computer is a tool, it can be used or misused. In itself it is unimportant."

"Secondary then, but knocking it out would be a good idea, you would try and do it?"

"Yes."

"Were you ever nervous when you murdered those people in Newark?"

Bursken's throat muscles tightened, his thought currents spasmed heavily, thrashing about like wrestling snakes. Loathing predominated.

Greg allowed a smile to play on his lips. "You were, weren't you? You were frightened, trembling like a leaf."

"Of being discovered," Bursken spat. "Of being stopped."

"Did you take precautions? Did you clean up afterwards."

"The Lord is no fool."

"You followed his instructions?"

"Yes."

"To the letter? Right afterwards, I mean the minute after you had spread those lungs, you would start cleaning up?"

"Yes."

"No hesitation? No gloating?"

"None."

"During, what about during? Did you take care then?"

"Yes."

"It was hard work, bloody work, and there was always the danger someone might stumble in on you. The fear. You're seriously telling me your concentration never wavered?"

"Never," Bursken said gleefully. "The Lord cleansed me of mortal weaknesses for my task. My thoughts remained pure."

"Every single time?"

"Every single time!"

"The police found some skin under Oliver Powell's fingernails. Your skin. You missed that, didn't you?"

"They lied. There was no skin. Powell was struck from behind. He cried out but once before I silenced him. A plea. In his heart he knew his sin, he did not attempt to thwart the Lord's justice."

Greg could read it from his mind, the supreme pride in what he had done. The glowing sense of accomplishment, a kind Greg had encountered before in sports tournament winners, someone receiving favourable exam results. Healthy dignity. "Jesus!" Stupefaction pushed Greg back in his chair.

Staring in bewilderment at the creature opposite, it had flesh and blood and bone, but that wasn't enough to make it human, nowhere near. "He's not fucking real."

Stephanie exchanged an embarrassed glance with one of the guards and made a cutting motion across her throat.

"Was there anything else, Greg?" she asked.

Greg shut down his gland secretion. Defeated, soiled and shamed by having been privy to Bursken's thoughts. "No. Absolutely nothing."

The lunatic sneered contemptuously as the guards led him away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Julia's Rolls-Royce passed under a broad stone arch, watched by a pair of silent moss-laden griffins perched on either side. The wrought-iron gates swung shut as the car sped down the long gravel drive.

Even with the new year's punishing weather, Wilholm's grounds were maintained in pristine condition. Formally arranged flowerbeds alternated with cherry trees along the side of the drive. Broad lawns dotted with dumpy cycads rolled away to a border of glossy shrubs; behind them a thick rank of Brazilian rosewoods completed the shield against prying eyes. The Nene was a couple of kilometres away to the south-east. In the summer she could look out of the manor's second-storey windows and watch the little sailing boats cruising up and down the river, dreaming of the freedom they possessed. But this time of year always saw the valley floor flooded by the monsoon rains, the boats safe on dry land. The water was deeper each year as more and more soil was washed away by the powerful current. Further down, between the Al and the tail end of the Ferry Meadows estuary, it became a permanent salt marsh, fetid and unfertile.

But the secluded Wilholm estate remained a passive refuge, protected from environmental ravages by a wall of her money, changeless apart from the spectacular cycle of flowers which varied from month to month. Philip Evans had bought it as soon as he returned to England, paying off the communal farmers who had occupied it under the PSP's auspices. Landscape teams had laboured for months, returning it to its former splendour. Actually, it was probably a lot better than it used to be, she suspected, especially after she saw how much it had cost. Grandpa hadn't cared, he wanted elegance, and by God that's what he got.