The girls left at twenty-seven minutes to three. They were leaning against each other, Rosette with her arm thrown protectively around Isabel. The smaller girl was drowsy, a lifeless smile of satisfaction on her lips. Kitchener snoozed on the bed, white hair askew.

How are you coping? Greg asked.

That feeling of being squeezed, it's much tighter now.

OK let's shift forward a little then.

The door opened at eighteen minutes past four. Nicholas Beswick walked in.

"Greg!" The voice encompassed anguish and dread, finishing with a tiny whimper.

He heard it, actually heard it, the force breaking through the neurohormone's isolation.

No no no, her mind cried.

Stay with it. Keep centred, Eleanor, you must keep your mind centred here.

But Greg!

I know. It might not be him. Just a few minutes more, that's all, please.

He'd said it, but he didn't believe it.

Nicholas was wearing a brown apron, naked underneath except for a pair of underpants. His right hand gripped a thirty-centimetre-long carving knife.

Through a clammy chill of disbelief, Greg watched the boy walk over to the bed. He put the knife down on the cabinet, and picked up one of the pillows. Kitchener stirred briefly. Nicholas lowered the pillow on to the old man's face.

Greg, oh Greg, stop him.

I can't, darling. I can't.

Kitchener woke at the very end, scrawny limbs thrashing about. Nicholas's teeth were bared in a feral smile, biceps standing proud as he kept the pillow in place. The feeble scrabbling stopped after less than half a minute. Nicholas didn't lift the pillow for another ninety seconds. After that, he put it back with the others at the head of the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles with the edge of his hand.

He looked down at Kitchener, head bowed almost reverently, then crossed himself. It took him two minutes to methodically unbutton and remove the old man's pyjamas, folding them neatly and placing them on the armchair. When he was finished, he straddled the corpse across its hips. The tip of the knife was brought to rest just above the belly button, dullness of the well-worn metal contrasting against the now etiolate skin.

Nicholas leant forward, pressing down with all his weight. The knife penetrated smoothly, almost up to the handle, and he began to move it forwards, up the chest, in a rough sawing motion.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was truly a cell now. The door remained locked, even when Nicholas knocked on it. Meals, interviews, and his lawyer; that was all it opened for. And the trip to the magistrates' court.

The police had taken him there on Friday morning, twenty-four hours after Eleanor Mandel had tossed about on the bed in his room at the Abbey, opening her eyes to reveal abject revulsion, and rolling over to throw up on the glossy polythene sheet covering the carpet. It was the look she had given him which wounded him the most, the absolute horror, as if his very presence could contaminate her soul. And she'd been so nice to him before, so friendly, not seeming to notice his embarrassment at the shock her appearance had triggered. Girls didn't normally treat him like that; he was either nonexistent or an object of pity, sometimes of scorn. He was secretly a little bit in love with Eleanor; she seemed so forthright, able to cope with life. She was also staggeringly pretty, even though thinking that was disloyal to Isabel.

The words had come shimmering out of her mouth as she gagged, Greg hugging her shoulders, protective and concerned. "He did it. Jesus, he didn't even blink." She sucked down some air, wiping a sticky thread of vomit from her lips. "What are you?"

That was when her mad eyes found him, their stare an almost tangible force, tightening round his throat.

Something shivered inside him then, enervating his legs. The cold terrible certainty that she must mean him. She was accusing him!

"Who?" It was spoken by half the people in the room. He may even have joined in. He couldn't remember.

But she said nothing. Just glared, her ragged breathing the only sound. Then Greg's stare was added to hers, calm and hateful, and Nicholas felt his face reddening even as the clamour of bewilderment inside his skull made him blurt:

"What? What? What have I done?"

"He did it," Greg told the detectives. His voice had gone husky, saddened more than anything.

Langley had looked at Nicholas, then Greg, then back again. "Him?" he asked incredulously. "Beswick?"

"For Christ's sake put some handcuffs on him," Eleanor rasped. "If you'd only seen what he did…"

Greg's arm tightened round her. She had started to tremble.

"But you interviewed him," Vernon Langley said. "You cleared him."

"I told you when we started. I'd never seen that kind of mind before, didn't know what to look for. Well, now I do. He's completely cracked, won't even admit it to himself. Jesus, he was fucking inhuman back there."

"No," Nicholas said. But nobody appeared to have heard him. "No. I didn't. I didn't do that."

"Are you sure?" Langley asked Greg reluctantly.

"Yeah. It was him."

"No," Nicholas said. "No."

Amanda Paterson and Jon Nevin had somehow moved to stand on either side of his chair. He glanced up at them, face pleading. "I didn't."

"Is there any proof; solid proof, I mean?" Langley asked. "Can we test the clothes he was wearing?"

"I can do you one better than that," Greg said. "I can show you where he left the knife."

"I didn't do it!" Why wouldn't anyone listen?

"It's downstairs, in the kitchen," Greg said.

"We checked the kitchen," Amanda retorted indignantly.

"Not all of it."

"You two," Langley signalled his colleagues—"bring him with us, and keep an eye on him. I don't want any sudden sprints across the park."

"I'll stay up here," Eleanor said shakily.

"Me too," Gabriel said.

"OK," Greg said. He patted Eleanor's shoulder. "I'll be back straight away."

She nodded weakly, hunching in on herself as though she was freezing.

Nicholas felt Jon Nevin's hand on his forearm. He didn't protest. His strangely leaden limbs needed all the help they could get to rise out of the chair. Gabriel had gone to sit beside Eleanor, the two of them with their heads together, murmuring quietly.

In the kitchen, Greg walked straight over to the iron range. "It's in here," he pointed to the copper bedwarmer hanging on the wall. "He hid it when he was burning the apron."

"Don't touch it," Denzil said. He and Nicolette cleared the kitchen table, covering it with a broad sheet of polythene. They put on thin yellow gloves and gingerly took the bed-warmer off its hook. The three detectives crowded round as Denzil opened it; Nicholas couldn't see.

Langley turned round, his face struggling against an expression of loathing. "Nicholas Beswick, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of one Edward Kitchener."

"No!"

There was a long knife in the bedwarmer, its blade snapped off at the base so that it could be wedged in the tarnished copper basin. The handle was rolling loose in the bottom. Both were stained black from dried blood.

"You do not have to say anything at this time, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used as evidence against you in a court of law."

His hands were jerked behind him. Rings of cold metal constricting his wrists. The snick of the locks.

"I didn't do it."

They were deaf, immune to any words he said. They also detested him. He had never known that before. People so rarely paid him any attention at all. In the first few days after the murder, the Oakham police had treated him with a slightly puzzled indulgence, as if he was some kind of foreign animal that they didn't know how to feed properly.