Their parents had died of grief. Jane knew this as well as she knew herself, even though the coroner's certificates had read heart failure and stroke. The loss of their volatile, favored, younger daughter had been more than the Dunns could bear.

They had left Jane the house, the land, and a little money. She had set out to find a way to support herself- and she had vowed she would never love anyone, or anything, as much as her parents had loved Julia.

Jane hung the ornament on the tree, watching it swing until it fell still. Was this how she had failed Alex? For she had come to feel, in the last three days, that she had failed him, that she had not given him the core of emotional strength he needed.

Or was this his mother's legacy, the fatal crack in the porcelain not seen until now? Years ago, Julia, hollow-eyed and emaciated, had pushed her frightened child away from her, promising Jane she'd come back for him in a few days. For months afterwards, Alex had stood every day at the end of the drive, watching, waiting, but his mother never returned.

Jane had spent much time and money at first trying to trace her sister, but gradually it had seemed less urgent. She and Alex settled into their life together, and by the time he started school she had given up the search altogether. When Alex questioned her as he grew older, she'd told him his mother was dead.

With a last look at the Christmas tree, she left the sitting room and went out into the drive. The early December dusk would settle in soon, and Alex had not returned. Every day he left the house after breakfast, walking as if he could escape his grief, returning only as it grew dark. In the evenings he ate whatever she'd prepared for supper without seeming to notice what it was, and then he began to drink.

As Alex had enjoyed his wine but had never been more than a moderate drinker, this worried Jane greatly, but she didn't know how stop him. Unable to sleep, she began checking on him in the middle of the night. Once, near dawn, she'd found him poring over his boyhood collections, as if he found some solace in touching the birds' eggs, the nests, the bent and tarnished spoons; and once, asleep, his body wrapped around a pottery teapot as if he were cradling a child.

During the day, her every attempt at conversation or confidence had been met with the same blank stare, as if she spoke a language Alex could no longer comprehend. But now she knew she must try to reach him.

Fern had rung from London, saying that the police were looking urgently for him, and that they had even threatened her with arrest if she didn't reveal his whereabouts.

Whatever Alex had seen, or done, or knew, she must convince him to go back to London and face up to it. If she let him go on in this way, she would be compounding her own failure. Nor could she go on watching him disintegrate before her eyes. It came to her, with the cold breeze that eddied off the marsh, that time and familiarity had betrayed her, concealing the fact that she had long ago broken her own vow.

Gemma rang down to the incident room and summoned Gerry Franks. When he appeared, his sneer more apparent than usual, she settled back in her chair and laced her fingers together.

"I've just had a word with the guv'nor, Gerry," she began conversationally. "He tells me you're unhappy with my handling of the Arrowood case. I'd like to know why you didn't come to me first if there was something you thought needed to be addressed."

"Figured you had more important things to do than listen to your sergeant," he said. Watching the swift calculation cross his face, she knew that diplomacy was not going to be enough. "What do I have to offer compared to Scotland Yard?"

"You're a good, experienced officer and I depend on you more than I've let you know," she replied. "I'm sorry if I've made you feel you were left out of the loop. We've no hope of solving a case this difficult without working as a team, communicating and cooperating, and I intend to do a better job of both. What about you?"

"What about Arrowood, then? We've danced round him like butterflies on a bloody daisy."

"Karl Arrowood is a powerful man, and we'd be mad to antagonize him more than absolutely necessary. Not to mention the fact that we have half a dozen other strong leads that need following up, including finding Alex Dunn, and we cannot leave out the possible connection with Marianne Hoffman's murder. If you don't feel you can work within those parameters, I can ask to have you transferred off the case." Pausing to let the threat sink in, she added pleasantly, "But I'd like you to stay, Sergeant. You're an asset to this investigation, and I'd be hard put to replace you."

She saw him struggling between his anger with her and the salve to his vanity. When he cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter, she knew vanity had won. "This Hoffman woman. Might help if I had a look at the file."

"I'll send a copy down to you. In the meantime, I'd like you to go through the house-to-house reports once more. Someone has got to have seen something that we've missed."

When he left, he stopped at the door and gave her a brusque nod. It seemed a token of grudging respect, and she thought it might be a while before he realized he'd been assigned to paperwork Siberia.

Reaching for the phone to ring Melody Talbot, Gemma realized her hands were trembling. It was then that the pain struck. A radiating web, it encircled her abdomen, squeezing, making her gasp for breath. How long it lasted she didn't know, but at last it receded, leaving her shaken and sweating.

She waited, deliberately slowing her breathing, alert to the slightest sensation, but the cramping didn't come back. She moved, gingerly at first, then ran her hands over the gentle swell of her abdomen. Had she felt a flutter, a faint tickle of movement? Surely it was too soon, she thought, but the sensation reassured her.

She was all right, the baby was all right, everything was going to be all right.

Melody came into her office balancing two Starbucks cups. "Decaf latte," she announced. "Just the way you like it."

"You must be able to read minds." Gemma wrapped her hands round the cup gratefully.

Sitting with her own coffee, Melody studied her. "You okay, Gemma? You seem a bit pale."

"I'm fine. Really. Melody, do you know Otto Popov, the man who runs the little café on Elgin Crescent?"

"A nice bloke. Russian, but that you must have gathered. First generation, as I think his parents came over after the war, when he was a child."

"Any idea why he would want to see Karl Arrowood blamed for his wife's death?"

"None… but…"

"But what? Out with it, Melody. I need to know."

"Um, I don't know why it would have anything to do with Arrowood, but I have heard vague rumors about Otto… Something to do with the Russian Mafia. I wouldn't give any credence to that sort of talk. In my opinion, it's just prejudice combined with idle gossip."

"Know anyone who'd know more?"

"As in 'off the record'?" Melody thought for a moment. "Yeah. Maybe. I'll see what I can do. And in the meantime, you've got media vultures waiting in the anteroom for their afternoon bulletin."

"We are still pursuing multiple leads," Gemma told the gathered reporters, sensing their disappointment in the lack of new developments. She plowed on, looking directly into the eye of the Channel 4 video camera and ignoring Tom MacCrimmon's probing gaze. "If anyone in the neighborhood of St. John's Church last Friday evening saw anything out of the ordinary, please ring this number." Her hope of a response was dwindling; it had been two days and not one legit call had been received.