He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once -although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now. He noticed a rapid nervous movement in the young man's cheek, and it reminded him of a coal which dims and then brightens when it is blown upon. 'But you haven't told me anything,' he heard himself saying, 'I want you to tell me what happened.'

'But how can I confess if you won't believe me?'

'But I do believe you. Go on. Go on with it. Don't stop now.'

1 followed him until I was sure I had him alone. It was down by that street, the one in the paper. He knew I was after him but he didn't say much. He just looked at me. Who said he could live? I wouldn't mind being dead if someone could do it like that. Do you know what I'm saying?'

'Yes, I know what you mean. How many have you killed, Brian?'

And the man smiled as Walter entered the room with a glass of water. 'More than you know. Many more. I could do it in my sleep.'

'But what about the churches? Do you know about those?'

'What churches? There are no churches. Not in my sleep.'

Hawksmoor grew angry with him now. 'That doesn't make any sense,' he said, That doesn't make any sense at all. Does it make any sense to you?' The man turned towards Walter, his arm outstretched for the glass of water, and as he did so Hawksmoor noticed some livid welts on his neck where he had been mutilating himself. 'You can go now,' he told him.

'You mean you don't want me to stay here with you? You don't want to lock me up?'

'No, Mr Wilson, that won't be necessary.' He could not look into the man's eyes, and so he got up to leave the room; Walter followed him, smiling. 'Send him home,' Hawksmoor said to the constable outside, 'Or charge him with wasting police time. Do what you want with him.

He's no use to me.'

He was still angry when he entered the incident room and approached one of the officers: 'Have you got anything for me?'

'We have some sightings, sir.'

'Do you mean we have witnesses?'

'Well, let's put it this way, sir '

'Let's not, if you don't mind.'

'I mean, we have statements, which we're checking now.'

'So let me see them now.'

A sheaf of photocopies was given to him, and Hawksmoor looked over each one rapidly: 'It was about midnight when the witness saw a tall man with white hair walking down Lombard Street… at three a. m. the witness said she heard an argument, one low voice and one high voice, coming from the direction of the church. One of the men sounded as if he were drunk… Then about thirty minutes later he saw a short, plump man walking hurriedly away in the direction of Gracechurch Street… She heard a young boy singing in Cheapside at about eleven p. m… He saw a man of average height dressed in a dark coat trying the gates of St Mary Woolnoth… then she heard the words, We are going home. The witness did not know the time'. None of these apparent sightings interested Hawksmoor, since it was quite usual for members of the public to come forward with such accounts and to describe unreal figures who took on the adventitious shape already suggested by newspaper accounts. There were even occasions when a number of people would report sightings of the same person, as if a group of hallucinations might create their own object which then seemed to hover for a while in the streets of London. And Hawksmoor knew that if he held a reconstruction of the crime by the church, yet more people would come forward with their own versions of time and event; the actual killing then became blurred and even inconsequential, a flat field against which others painted their own fantasies of murderer and victim.

The officer, hesitating slightly now, came up to him: 'We've got the usual mail, sir. Do you want to look at that as well?' Hawksmoor nodded, gave back the sheaf of witnesses' statements and then leaned over the new bundle of papers. There were more confessions, and letters from people explaining in great detail what they would like to do with the murderer once he had been caught (some of them coincidentally borrowing effects from the murderer's own repertoire).

Hawksmoor was accustomed to such messages and even enjoyed reading them; there was, after all, some amusement to be derived from the posturing imaginations of others. But there were other, more impersonal, letters which still enraged him: one correspondent requested more information, for example, and another proffered advice. Did the police know, he now read, that children often murder other children and might it not be a good idea for you to interview the poor boy's schoolfellows? Question them severely, since children were such liars! Another correspondent asked if there had been any mutilation of the body and, if so, what form did it take? He put the paper down and stared at the wall in front of him, biting his thumb nail as he did so. When he looked at the desk again, another letter caught his attention. The phrase DON'T FORGET was printed across its top, suggesting that the lined paper had been torn from a standard memorandum pad. Four crosses had been drawn upon it, three of them in a triangular relation to each other and with the fourth slightly apart, so that the whole device resembled an arrow: The shape was familiar to Hawksmoor; and suddenly it occurred to him that, if each cross was the conventional sign for a church, then here in outline was the area of the murders -Spitalfields at the apex of the triangle, St George's-in-the-East and St Anne's at the ends of the base line, and St Mary Woolnoth to the west. Underneath had been scrawled, in pencil, This is to let you know that I will be spoken about'. And there followed another line, so faint that Hawksmoor could hardly read it, 'O misery, if they will die'. Then he turned the page and he trembled when he saw the sketch of a man kneeling with a white disc placed against his right eye: this had been the drawing which he had seen issuing from the hand of the tramp beside St Mary Woolnoth. Beneath it was printed in capitals, THE UNIVERSAL ARCHITECT'. And he wondered at this as, surreptitiously, he placed the letter in his pocket.

'So what do you make of it?' was the question he asked Walter as they sat together later in Hawksmoor's office, contemplating the sign of the arrow which now lay on the desk between them.

'I don't really make anything of it. If the computer '

'And the tramp?'

Walter was puzzled at this. 'It could be the same man who did the drawing. And that sign might be a tramp sign, No Hope Here, or something. Shall I have it analysed?'

'And one of the tramps was killed. We could make a connection there.' Hawksmoor saw a pattern forming, but its vagueness angered him.

'As far as I can see, sir '

'As far as you can see, Walter, tell me what do you see?'

He was taken aback at this: 'I was simply going to say, sir, that we have to be logical about this.'

'Oh yes by all means let's be logical. Tell me this logically, then.