ith this case, it had been clear from his first glance at the police reports that this wasn't true of Geronimo. Unusually, what remained absolutely constant and inviolable was the ritual. There seemed no sign of escalation or variation caused by a lack of satisfaction with previous efforts. The victims themselves varied widely, from de Groot's trimly muscled frame to Margarethe's neat slenderness to Neumann's comfortable bulk. That meant there had to be another element at play in the selection process, and Tony had been utterly convinced it must lie in a shared professional interest, since this was the one thing that connected the dead. Which only went to show how foolish it was to theorize ahead of the data, he reminded himself as he carried his cup back through to the living room.

'What is it about psychologists that winds you up, Geronimo?' he asked out loud. 'Do you hate them? Did a psychologist make decisions that adversely affected the way your life has turned out? Or do you think they need to be put out of their misery? Is this personal, or do you see yourself as an altruist? Are you doing them a favour or are you doing the world a favour?'

He flicked back through the information he'd garnered from the web. 'If this is about something somebody did to you, why are you going for academics? If you were fucked up by some educational psychologist or some presentence report in the courts, why aren't you going for practitioners? What do academics do that clinicians don't?'

If anyone could answer that question, it should be him. He'd walked on both sides of the wire, after all. He'd started out as a clinician and turned to academe only relatively recently. What was different about his own working life these days, apart from the obvious one - that he didn't see patients? Was that it? 'Are you taking it out on academics because they're not putting their training to proper use, Geronimo?' he asked of the hazy shade who was refusing to take shape in his mind.

'No, I don't think so,' he continued. 'That's too ridiculous. Nobody kills people because they're not fucking with people's heads.' He rubbed his tired eyes with his knuckles and leaned back in the chair. What did university staff do? They lectured. They supervised graduate students. They did research.

'Research,' he said softly, jerking upright. Hastily, he looked back through the articles and papers written by the three victims. This time, he saw it. 'Experiments,' Tony exclaimed with satisfaction. The one thing that academics did, that all three of these victims had done, that could remotely be defined as messing with people's heads was to carry out experiments with live human subjects.

'You believe you've suffered as a result of psychological experiments,' he said, confident now. 'Something happened to make your life different from other people's lives, and you blame the psychologists. You see them as vivisectionists of the mind. That's it, Geronimo, isn't it?' He knew at some instinctive level that he'd conjured up the visceral motivation behind this series of killings.

Now he was ready to begin thinking about drafting his profile. But the hour was late, and he knew it would be better left for morning. Reluctantly, he turned off his machine and unzipped his travel bag. He doubted he'd get much sleep, but at least he could go through the motions. And tomorrow not only would he have the chance to do what he did best, he'd see Carol again. The thought made him smile. For once, he was convinced the positive elements of their relationship were starting to outweigh the bitter memories of the past. He might be kidding himself about that, but at least he was willing to put the theory to the test.

The second act seemed to last forever. Carol couldn't concentrate on the music; all her mind was capable of was rerunning their conversation and finding fault with what she'd said and how she'd said it. She wished she'd had the chance to role-play the scenario with Tony in advance. At least then she'd have felt more confident that she was pushing the right buttons. It wasn't that she'd expected instant capitulation from Radecki. But she had hoped for something more than his obstinate refusal to acknowledge that he had any idea what she was talking about.

She was aware too of his eyes on her. His seat was set slightly further back than hers, and out of the corner of her peripheral vision, she could sense him studying her for long periods. She couldn't catch his expression, which made her feel exposed and edgy. What was he thinking? What effect was she having on him?

Carol stifled a sigh of relief as the second act reached its climax with the wedding of the vixen and her mate. No echoes there, she thought thankfully. Before the house lights could come up, she saw Tadeusz rise from his chair and move to the back wall. She turned to catch him reaching inside the pocket of the overcoat hanging on a hook by the door. His hand came out holding a mobile phone. 'I have some calls to make,' he said loudly, so his voice would carry over the applause. 'I will be back shortly.'

'Yes,' she breathed triumphantly as the door closed behind him. He had decided to check her out. Morgan had told her not to worry about the UK end of her cover story; they had, he assured her, been working on it for a while. Her alias was a name that had been fed on to the streets from two directions. Undercover cops had mentioned her as a player in a quiet but powerful way. And the people brought in for questioning after Colin Osborne's shooting had all been questioned hard about Caroline Jackson. 'We really leaned on them,' Morgan had explained. 'The interviewing officers were all briefed to act as if they couldn't believe it when the suspects said they'd never heard of you. They planted the idea that you were connected to Colin, that you were in the same line of business, and that you and he had big plans for the future. So when Radecki starts to check you out - and he will check you out, make no mistake about that - you'll show up as a name that people have heard of. The fact that nobody knows you face to face is something you can work to your advantage. It makes you look as if you're a completely clean operator, like Radecki himself.'

Morgan had been right about that at least. She was sure Radecki was making those first calls right now. And she had a trump card to play later this evening that should tip the balance and get him as interested in her as a potential business partner as he was clearly intrigued by her as a woman.

Tadeusz was gone for the whole of the second interval, not returning until ten minutes into the third act. Carol deliberately didn't turn round when he came back, pretending to be entirely absorbed in the music. As the opera drew to a close, Carol wondered if Radecki was seeing parallels between the action on stage and what was happening to him this evening. There was the dying vixen, killed more by accident than design. And there was the gamekeeper, confronted with one of the vixen's cubs, which he recognizes as the spitting image of her mother. Was all this provoking resonances for him? She could only hope so. The more her resemblance to Katerina was hammered home, the better her chances of success.

As the audience burst into their final round of applause, he pulled his chair forward so it was in line with hers. He leaned close to her. She smelled the faint tang of cigar smoke and the complex notes of an expensive cologne. 'It has been interesting to meet you. Even though I still don't understand what you were talking about.'

Carol turned her head and met his eyes. 'You take a lot of convincing. I like that in a colleague. People who trust too easily tend to talk too openly, which isn't clever in our line of business. Look, why don't you give me a call tomorrow? We can meet and discuss matters of mutual interest.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'I don't think we have a mutual interest. At least, not in terms of business. But I think I might like to meet you again.'

Carol shook her head. 'This is a business trip for me. I don't have time to waste on social engagements.'

'That's a shame,' he said, his face guarded now.

The applause began to die away and she reached down for her evening bag. 'Look, Colin had problems with his end of your joint operation. He was good at promising but he couldn't always deliver. That's probably why he's dead now. The people you sent to him, they expected him to supply them with documentation. That's what they'd paid through the nose for, after all. But he didn't have a proper source. That's why he was always setting them up to get caught.'

Tadeusz's eyebrows rose slightly. 'Is this supposed to mean something to me?'

'I don't know. I have no idea if you were aware of what he did with the illegals after you passed them on, but he was skating on thin ice. Eventually the immigration service was bound to cotton on to his connection with all these little sweatshops that kept getting raided.' Carol gave him a questioning look. 'Especially since the raids were engineered by Colin himself, whatever he may have said to the contrary.'

She could see she had him now. He might still have a ^ condescending smile on his face, a look of puzzlement in his eyes, but he didn't want her to stop.

'I'm different,' she continued. 'I never promise what I can't deliver.' She opened her evening bag as the opera house lights came up, and took out what she thought of as the ace up her [ sleeve. It was an Italian passport. When she'd asked Morgan I whether it was a fake or the real thing, he'd simply smiled and said, 'It's not going to get you into trouble. Whatever checks Radecki makes, it'll come up clean.'

She held it out to him. 'An act of good faith. I can get hold j of as many of these as I need, within reason. You bring me people who can pay the price, and I'll make sure I keep my | end of the bargain.'

His curiosity finally overcame his caution. He took the passport from her and flicked it open at the ID page. His own ; face stared back at him, a faint smile on his lips. The pass- t port said he was Tadeo Radice, born in Trieste. He studied it I attentively, moving it back and forward to let the light catch it. Then he turned back to the beginning and looked through it. Finally, he met Carol's eyes, his gaze serious. 'Where did you get the photograph?' he said.

'That was the easy part. A news magazine did an interview I with you last year, remember? Part of a series about Berlin, businessmen who had seized the opportunity of reunification to build a new empire? I pulled it up out of their online archives and scaled down one of the pics. So, tomorrow? Why don't you call me in the morning?' She fished in her bag again and came out with a business card that simply gave her name and mobile phone number. 'I really do think we should talk.' She handed him the card, gave him the full hundred-watt smile and watched the play of emotions in his eyes again.

He held out the passport to her. 'Very interesting.'

Carol shook her head. 'It's no use to me. Keep it. You never know when it might come in handy.' She stood up and straightened her dress, smoothing it down over her hips in a consciously sexual gesture. 'Call me,' she said, heading for the door. She grasped the handle then turned. 'Otherwise, you'll never see me again.'

As she stepped back into the corridor, Carol became conscious of her body once more. The adrenaline that had kept her so firmly in control inside the opera box was starting to bleed away, leaving her weak-kneed and worn out. But she couldn't afford to relax yet. If Radecki was anything like as good as he was supposed to be, he would have arranged for someone to pick her up when she left his box, and to stick with her. She and Petra had discussed how they would handle that. Petra would hang well back, but close enough to make sure Carol got into a cab and to check out who was on her tail. Petra would try to follow the followers, but would take no risks of discovery.

Exhausted though she was, she acted as nonchalant as she could manage and made her way down to the cloakroom to stand in line and collect her coat. Or rather, Caroline Jackson's coat, a luxuriously soft lambskin that managed the trick of fashionable elegance coupled with the kind of warmth that early spring in Berlin demanded. Without looking around to see if she could spot the expected tail, she strolled out of the Staatsoper and stood by the kerb, looking for a passing taxi.

Me and half of Berlin, she thought wearily after five minutes, when her attempts to snag a ride had completely failed. Feeling a hand touch her arm, she whirled round, eyes wide, fight or flight reflexes on full alert. Radecki stood behind her. Whether it was deliberate or not, he maintained the perfect distance to avoid crowding her. Even in her heightened state of anxiety, Carol noted how unusual that was in a man. Tm sorry, I startled you,' he said.

She collected herself quickly. 'You did,' she said with a smile. 'Just be grateful I didn't have my pepper spray in my hand.'

He inclined his head with a rueful look. 'I couldn't help noticing when I came out that you were having trouble getting a cab. Perhaps I can help?' He reached for his mobile phone. 'My driver can have the car here inside five minutes. He can take you wherever you want to go.'

So much easier than following me, Carol thought with admiration. 'That would be very kind,' she said. 'My feet are freezing.'

He glanced down at the high-heeled, thin-soled, fuck-me shoes she'd chosen for the occasion. 'I'm not surprised. It's easy to see you're not a Berliner. Come back inside the foyer, it's warmer there.' He took her elbow and steered her towards the opera house, talking rapidly into his phone as they walked. Carol was aware of several curious looks from some of their fellow patrons as they passed. That was hardly surprising; if they were familiar with Tadeusz and Katerina, the sight of her by his side would be worth some serious gossip. She could imagine it now. 'Hey, did you see Tadeusz Radecki at the opera with that woman? She could be Katerina's sister. That's weird. What kind of pervert goes out with a woman who looks that much like his dead girlfriend?'

They stood just inside the doors, slightly apart, saying nothing. She didn't want to break the silence with the wrong words; sometimes it was better to let the fish come to you. A few people nodded a greeting to Tadeusz as they left the building, but no one stopped to speak.

He was true to his word. Only a few minutes passed before he nodded towards a black Mercedes that was drawing up at the kerb. 'My car,' he said. He walked her to the kerb and opened the rear door.

'I really appreciate this,' Carol said, climbing in. He leaned in past her and spoke to the driver.

'It's nothing,' he said, withdrawing. 'Just tell him where you want to go.' He began to close the door.

'Wait,' Carol said. 'You're not coming?'

'No.'

'But how will you get home?'

'I live close by. Besides, I prefer to walk.' This time, his smile was apparently uncomplicated. 'I'll call you,' he said, closing the door with a soft thud.

Carol gave her address to the driver and leaned back against the firm leather upholstery. It was a clever move on his part, to place her in his debt without making any kind of move on her. She wanted to shout out loud to release some of the jubilation she felt. But not in front of his driver, who would doubtless report back on every nuance of her behaviour. Instead, she let her head fall back and closed her eyes. Phase one was complete. And it had gone even better than she could have hoped.

Maybe she could do this after all.

Maybe she really could walk inside someone else's skin.

Brigadier Marijke van Hasselt walked into the detective squad room at Regio Leiden headquarters, carrying a carton of coffee and a bag of smoutebollen, the deep-fried choux pastry balls dredged with icing sugar that were her one concession to junk food. Carbs, caffeine and sugar; the only way to start the day.

Early as she was, Tom Brucke was ahead of her. He sat frowning over a pile of reports, his curly brown hair already rumpled from his constant riddling with it. He looked up at I the sound of her footsteps. His boyish face looked strained and tired, heavy lines tracking under his eyes. 'Hey, Marijke," he said. 'Fucked if I know where we're going to find a perp for this case.'

She took an instant decision. Two heads were, as she had already proved, infinitely better than one. 'Oddly enough, Tom, I had an idea about that last night.' She pulled up a chair and sat at the end of his desk, tucking one leg under her.

Tom curled a tendril of hair round his index finger. 'I'm staring at so many dead ends here, I'd seriously consider a clairvoyant,' he said. 'I don't know about you, but this case is doing my head in.'

'I keep waking up at night thinking I'm drowning,' Marijke admitted.

Tom snorted. 'Drowning in a sea of fucking paper,' he said, waving a hand at the piles of reports on his desk. 'Talk about living for your work. De Groot seems to have been on every committee he could get nominated for. He also organized an annual weekend conference for psychologists working in the same area as him. "The psychodynamics of emotional abuse," whatever that means. The upshot of which is that half the bloody world seems to have known him. It's a nightmare. So what's this brilliant idea of yours?'

'I didn't say it was brilliant, but at least it's something fresh to try. We're both agreed that this is a stranger killing, right?'

'There's nothing in his life to indicate anything different. On the other hand, there's no sign of forced entry. Balance. of probabilities? He didn't know his killer.'

Marijke lifted the lid on her coffee and took a sip. 'From everything I've read, people who kill like this - no apparent relationship to the victim, sexual elements in the murder they don't stop at one. Agreed?'

'Oh yes, I think we all know deep down that he's going to do it again. Particularly since we don't seem to be able to do fuck all to stop him,' Tom said pessimistically. 'Are those smoutebollen you've got there?' He pointed to her paper bag.

'Help yourself.' She pushed the bag towards him. 'Save me from myself.' Tom unwrapped the bag and pulled out one of the pastries. Icing sugar scattered on his pale blue shirt and he brushed at it impatiently with his free hand. 'But what I was thinking was, what if this isn't the beginning of his series?'

Tom stopped eating in mid-chew, then swallowed hard. 'You mean you think he's done this before?'

Marijke shrugged. 'It didn't look like an amateur job to me. If I had to guess, I'd say he's been doing this, or something very like it, for a while.'

Brucke shook his head doubtfully. 'We'd have heard about it. It's not like pubic scalping is an everyday occurrence, Marijke.'

'We might not have heard about it if it had happened in another jurisdiction. In France, say. Or Germany.' Tom scratched his head. 'You've got a point. But there's not a lot we can do about it.'

'Yes there is. There's Europol.'

Tom snorted. 'Bunch of fucking desk jockeys.'

'Maybe so, but they do send out those international bulletins.'

'More fucking paper. Who reads that crap?'

Marijke reached for her paper bag and pulled out one of the napkins she'd placed inside at the smoutebollen stall. Then she extracted one of the pastries, careful not to spill the sugar on her clothes. 'I do,' she said. 'And I bet I'm not the only one.'

'So you want to pass the case on to the office boys in Den Haag?' he said incredulously.

'No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm suggesting we send a request to Europol with details of the case, asking them to circulate it to member states, asking if anyone else has had anything comparable on their patch. That way, we can at least find out if he's done it before. And if he has, and if we can pool our information with the investigating team there, we might start to get somewhere.'

Tom gave her a considering look. 'You know, that might not be such a bad idea.'

'So I can count on your support when I run it past Maartens?'

He laughed. 'You're such a fucking politician, Marijke.'

Til take that as a yes.' She got to her feet and retrieved the remains of her breakfast. She had just made it as far as her own desk when Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens barrelled through the squad-room door, his meaty hand dwarfing the can of Coke that was halfway to his mouth. He took a swig as he strode, tossing the empty can into the next wastepaper bin he passed. Recycling was for people with time on their hands, not for busy men like him, his gesture seemed to say.

'What's new?' he demanded, stopping beside Tom's desk.

'Nothing of any significance,' Tom said.

Maartens turned towards Marijke. 'What about you, Marijke? Anything useful come through from forensics yet?'

She shook her head. 'It's all negatives. Nothing that takes us any further forward.'

Maartens rubbed a hand along his jaw. 'I hate this case,' he muttered. 'It makes us look stupid.'

'Marijke's got a good idea,' Tom volunteered.

Gee, thanks, she thought as Maartens turned back to her, his heavy brows lowering in an interrogativ '^

that, Marijke?' he asked. ?^thought

'I've been thinking about how meticulous < ?& llv^he was. How methodical, how organized. This \ ^ Wl the moment thing. It was planned. What it re

the work of a serial killer. I know we're all woi ~«i me

prospect of him killing again if we can't catch him, but it occurred to me that he might have killed before.'

Maartens nodded, his head to one side. He crossed to her desk and dropped into a chair facing her. 'I can't argue with the theory,' he said heavily. 'But haven't we already checked to see if there's anything similar in the records?'

'We can only check Dutch records, though,' Marijke said. 'What if his previous victims weren't in Holland? What if he's killed in Belgium or Germany or Luxembourg? We'd have no way of knowing.'

'And these days, post-Schengen, we're all citizens of Europe,' Maartens said acidly. 'I see what you mean, Marijke. But how does that take us any further forward?'

'Well, I've noticed in the past few months that the bulletins coming out of Den Haag from Europol have been a lot more specific. They used to be fairly generic, but now they've taken to circulating much more detailed requests for information about particular areas of concern. I wondered if it might be worth approaching them and asking them to include a request for information about any similar cases elsewhere in the EU?'

Maartens looked deeply sceptical. 'Don't you think it's a bit too near street level for them? They're only interested in the stuff that lets them play with their fancy computer databases. They don't want to get their hands dirty with something as vulgar as murder.'

'But this isn't some run-of-the-mill killing. And murder can be part of their brief. I checked it out on their website.

Where there are international implications, they've got a responsibility to act as an intelligence clearing house fori murder as well as the organized crime stuff.'

Maartens shifted in his seat. 'They'll think we're too stupid to manage our own cases,' he grunted.

'I don't think so, sir. I reckon they'll respect us for sussing out that we could be looking at a serial killer. It could be a feather in our caps. We'd go down as the ones who had the brains to see the implications of what we were looking at and the courage to say, "We want input from other jurisdictions." They'll be able to hold us up as an example of how cross-border co-operation should work in the new Europe.' Marijke turned on all her charm as she spoke, desperate to persuade Maartens into the course of action that suited the plans she and Petra had already made.

Maartens considered for a moment, then swung round to look at Tom. 'And you think this is a good idea, do you?'

Tom waved a hand over the paperwork on his desk. 'We've exhausted every conventional avenue and we've got fuck all. The way I see it, we've got nothing left to lose. And we might have a lot to gain.'

Maartens shrugged. 'OK, we'll give it a shot. Marijke, put something on paper for me, and I'll see it gets sent off later today.'

Til have it on your desk within the hour.'

Maartens got to his feet and lumbered towards his office. 'That doesn't mean we stop working the case,' he growled as he disappeared behind his door.

'Nice one,' Tom said. 'Smooth as butter, you are.'

'Yeah, well. We both know that if it works out, it'll be down to Maartens. But if we end up looking stupid, it'll be thanks to me.'

'It's good to know that in a changing world, some things always remain the same,' Tom said with a smile.

And some things we can force to change, Marijke thought cheerfully as she booted up her computer. This was it. The big chance. And she was determined not to blow it.

Carol felt as excited as a teenager on a first date. He'd come to Berlin after all! She'd woken up after her dramatic night at the opera to an encrypted e-mail from Petra, revealing that Tony was staying in the same apartment building and drawing up a profile of the serial killer. And that he was expecting her this morning. But what more could Petra say? She had no idea of the complex matrix that was the relationship between Carol and Tony. She had no idea how much like salvation his arrival would feel to Carol.

Hastily, she towelled herself dry from the shower and pulled on fresh jeans and a loose shirt, the simplest outfit in Caroline Jackson's wardrobe. She wanted to be as close to Carol Jordan as she could manage. She finger-combed her hair and hastily applied lipstick. No time for more.

Her heart was racing as she waited for the lift. Calm down, she told herself. He's not here for you. But deep down, she was convinced he was. The murder investigation might be the perfect excuse, but he'd resisted coming back into the game for the past two years. All that had changed was that this was an investigation that offered a chance to bring them together.

She knocked on the door and, suddenly, there he was, his familiar face as dear to her as ever. Impulsively, Carol stepped towards him. Their arms went round each other in a hug, her head on his shoulder, his hand in her hair. 'Thank you for coming,' Carol whispered.

Gently, Tony moved out of their embrace and closed the door behind her. 'I knew Margarethe Schilling,' he blurted out.

It hit her like a glass of wine in the face, taking her breath away and making her eyes smart. 'What?' she said, feeling stupid.

Tony ran a hand through his hair. 'The Bremen victim. I knew her.'

'So you came out of ... what? A desire for vengeance?' Carol asked, following him and sitting down in the single armchair, taking care to stay well away from the window. Even though she hadn't spotted a tail, that didn't mean there wasn't someone dogging her every move and she didn't want to reveal herself anywhere she wasn't supposed to be.

With his back to her, Tony stared out of the picture window into the street below. 'Partly. Partly because I'm bigheaded enough to think I can maybe help to save more lives. And partly because...'He paused, searching for the right words. 'Because what happened to Margarethe made me fret about the dangers you're exposed to.' He turned to face her, arms folded across his chest. 'I don't mean to sound presumptuous. I don't know anyone who's better at their job than you. I don't know anyone who's more self-sufficient or stronger.' He looked down at the floor. 'But I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you that I might have helped prevent.' He gave a short bark of laughter. 'I don't even know what I mean by that, which is a very strange thing for a psychologist to have to admit. I just... I don't know. I suppose I wanted to be around in case there was anything I could do to help you.'

His words were more valuable to Carol than gold. Just when she'd thought he was delivering a slap in the face, he'd turned it into a caress. She'd waited years to hear this level of personal concern from him, and it had been worth every minute. The knowledge that he cared this much was almost enough in itself. It held its own guarantee for some sort of future. It promised the chance to take things at their own pace, without any necessity for her to push. 'You have no idea how much it means to me that you're here. Whatever the reason,1 she said. 'I've been feeling so isolated on this job. Petra's a star, but she's not part of Carol Jordan's life. She's not going to see if I'm slipping away from myself, because she doesn't really know what that self is. You do. You can be the Carol Jordan benchmark, you can be my sheet anchor. And you can help me decide how to handle Radecki.'

'I can try. How did it go last night?'

Carol took him through her first encounter with her target. Tony sat on the sofa, chin propped on his fists, listening intently and asking the occasional question along the way. 'It sounds to me as if you handled it well. I was afraid he'd be so suspicious of your resemblance to Katerina that he'd refuse to have anything to do with you. But you seem to have got over that hurdle.'

'Maybe. He's still not called, though.'

'He will.'

'Let's hope so. But we shouldn't be spending all this time on me. I don't want to take you away from the work you have to do on your profile. That's what you're here for. That's the most important thing. Because if this bastard isn't stopped, he's going to do it again and again. He's got to be taken down. And if anyone can make that happen, it's you.'

'I hope so. I owe this bastard a death. Or at the very least, the rest of his life behind bars.' Tony shook his head. 'I still can't take in the fact that Margarethe's dead.'

'Were you old friends?'

'I wouldn't really describe it as a friendship. We were colleagues with some common interests. I stayed at her house for a couple of nights once. We talked about collaborating on a paper, but we never got round to it. We e-mailed a few times a year, exchanged cards at Christmas. So, not friends, but more than mere acquaintances. I liked her. I liked her a lot. She was imaginative, intelligent. She was doing good work. And she had a son. She adored him.' He shook his head. 'What does that do to a kid's head? He must be seven, eight, something like that. And he's going to have to grow up knowing somebody treated his mother like a piece of meat.'

'Will you let me help?'

Tony looked surprised. 'Don't you have enough on your plate?'

'I'm probably going to have plenty of free time on my hands. When I'm not with Radecki or writing up my reports, I've got nothing else to do.'

He frowned, considering. 'I'm working at Petra's apartment. Obviously, you can't come there in case you're being watched. But if I can talk through my ideas with you, that would be a big help for me. You're always good at coming up with the off the-wall idea that nobody else gives house room to.'

'Great.' Carol smiled. 'So when do you start?'

'I made a start last night.' He glanced at his watch. 'Ideally, I should get over to Petra's now so I can start drafting out some ideas.'

'Do you want to get together later?' she asked, rising to her feet.

'We can e-mail securely, right? Let's arrange it that way.' He stood up and crossed to her, tentatively putting his arms round her. 'I'm glad I'm here.'

The too.' She turned her face to his. They smiled at each other, then let go. For the first time, Carol thought, it felt as if they had all the time in the world.

Tadeusz Radecki was restless. Sleep had eluded him for hours after he'd returned from the opera. The encounter in his private box would have been unsettling under any circumstances, speaking as it did of someone having researched him as thoroughly as he investigated anyone he had dealings with. But beyond the natural discomfort of knowing he'd been studied, this confrontation with so close a simulacrum of what he'd so recently lost had left him feeling that the world had turned upside down.

His first sight of Caroline Jackson had made his heart skip a beat. His chest had constricted, his legs had trembled. He'd doubted the evidence of his eyes, convinced he was having some sort of psychotic episode that had produced this hallucination. But as soon as she'd spoken, he'd realized this was reality, not some pathetic projection of his deepest desire. He'd never have conjured up a Katerina who addressed him in English, that much had penetrated even his bewildered and alarmed state.

Luckily, years of guarding his face and tongue had allowed him to cover the worst of his confusion. At least, he thought it had. Whatever the truth of that view, she had shown no sign of being aware of the effect her appearance had on him. He'd been dry-mouthed and bemused, unnerved by a resemblance that stirred up the morass of memory.

And as if it wasn't enough that he'd come face to face with a woman who could have been the twin sister of the woman he'd adored, the conversation had lurched into the most dangerous of areas almost from the beginning. This woman who made his stomach churn and his skin turn clammy knew who he really was, knew what he really did. Either she had discovered enough about his business to comprehend exactly what he needed right now, or else this was another example of the eccentric serendipity that had brought Katerina's double to his door in the first place. Either way, it was a set of circumstances so strange it turned on its head everything he knew about how the world worked.

He had no idea how he'd managed to hold it together during their subsequent conversation, only that he'd never felt so relieved as he had when that apparently interminable first interval had drawn to a close. He'd sat through the next act oblivious to the music, completely absorbed in the private drama that had unfolded in his immediate ambit. The tension in his body had made his muscles ache, but he hadn't been able to take his eyes off her.

He'd studied every feature in her face, comparing it to the database of images stored in his head. On closer inspection, he had become aware of discrepancies. Of course, the hair was different. The long cornsilk of his lover's hair was far more beautiful than the short, thick blonde crop of this stranger, though it was clearly as natural a shade as Katerina's. Their profiles were subtly distinct in ways he couldn't quite gauge. Katerina's eyes had been a deep hyacinth blue, but even in the dim light of the theatre, he could see that Caroline's were grey blue. Their mouths were different too. Katerina's lips had been sensuous, full, beautifully shaped, appearing always to be on the point of a kiss. This Englishwoman had thinner lips, her mouth promising far less than Katerina had always delivered. But when Caroline smiled, the contrast had disappeared and the resemblance had become even more profound. Seeing that mouth pronounce the familiar 'Tadzio' had disconcerted him more than almost anything else.

The strangest thing about his scrutiny of her face was that although he could see clearly that she wasn't Katerina, those small variations only served to reinforce this interloper's effect on him. She wasn't Katerina, which was both a disappointment and a relief. But she was a woman who had the power to move him as no one had done since Katerina's death. That was unnerving, but also fraught with strange possibilities. The notion of working with her made him both apprehensive and excited.

But not so excited that he had forgotten the basic rules of the game. As soon as the second act had ended, he had taken the first steps to find out what he could about Caroline Jackson. He remembered a man he'd met a couple of times when he'd been setting up the deal with Colin Osborne, Nick Kramer was another Essex boy who had worked with Colin in the past. He clearly wasn't a lieutenant in the way that Darko was, and Tadeusz reckoned the main reason Colin had brought him along was to make it look as if the teams were even. Tadeusz, always covering the bases, still had Kramer's number stored on his mobile phone.

Kramer had answered on the second ring. 'Yeah?' he grunted. ft

'This is Colin's German friend,' Tadeusz said. 'We met in London?'

'Oh yeah, right, I remember you. What's happening?'

'I've come across someone who says she was a friend of Colin. I wondered if you knew her.'

'What's her name?'

'Caroline Jackson. She says they were looking to do some business.'

There was a short pause. 'I know the name. But I never met her. I've heard she's in the same line of work as you and Colin. Runs an operation somewhere in East Anglia. Keeps herself to herself, by all accounts. Oh, and I heard that after Colin... died, her name came up when people was questioned. That's all I know. Sorry I can't be more help, mate.'

'Do you know anyone who does know her?'

An exhalation of breath. 'There's this geezer out Chelmsford way. A friend of Charlie's, if you get my meaning?'

A cocaine dealer, Tadeusz translated. 'Do you have a number where I can contact him?'

'Hang on a minute...' The muffled sound of conversation. When Kramer returned, he reeled off a mobile phone number. 'Tell him I said you were kosher.'

'Thank you.'