urder was like magic, he thought. The quickness of his hand had always deceived the eye, and that was how it was going to stay. They thought they had him trapped, sewn into a bag and wrapped with chains of guilt.

They thought they were lowering him into a tank of proof that would drown him. But he was Houdini. He would burst free when they least expected it.

Jacko Vance lay on the narrow police cell bed, the real arm tucked behind his head. He stared at the ceiling, remembering how he had felt in hospital, the only other place where he'd had no choice about staying put. There had been pockets of despair and impotent anger and he knew those would probably afflict him again before he was free of this place and others like it. But when he'd been in hospital, he'd known he would be free of it all one day and he'd focused all his powerful intelligence on shaping that moment.

True, he'd had Micky's help then. He wondered if he could still rely on her. He thought that as long as he could cast credible doubt, she would stand by him. As soon as it looked like he was going under, she'd be gone. Since he had no intention of letting that happen, he thought he could probably be sure of her.

The evidence was flimsy. But he couldn't deny that Tony Hill was impressive in his command of it. He would be hard to discredit in a courtroom, even if Vance succeeded in planting advance press stories accusing the psychologist of being obsessed with Micky. And there was a risk there. Hill had somehow discovered that Micky was a lesbian. If he leaked that in response to an accusation against him, it would do serious damage both to Micky's credibility and his own image as a man who needed no other woman but his adorable wife.

No, if it came to a court battle, even with a jury of telly addicts, Vance would be at risk. He had to make certain it never went past a preliminary hearing. He had to destroy the evidence against him, to demonstrate there was no case to answer.

The greatest threat came from the pathologist and her reading of the tool marks If he could discredit that, there were only circumstantial details. Together, they weighed heavy, but individually, they could be undermined. The vice was too solid a piece of substantiation to submit to that.

The first step was to cast doubt on whether the arm from the university really belonged to Barbara Fenwick. In a university pathology department, it could not be held under the sort of security of a police evidence room. Anyone could have had access to it over the years. It could even have been replaced with another arm deliberately crushed in his vice by, say, a police officer determined to frame him. Or students could have swapped it in some macabre prank. Yes, a little work there could force a few cracks into the reliability of the preserved arm.

The second step was to prove the vice had not belonged to him when Barbara Fenwick had died. He lay on the hard mattress and racked his brains to find an answer. "Phyllis," he eventually murmured, a sly smile creeping across his face. "Phyllis Gates."

She'd had terminal cancer. It had started in her left breast then worked its way through her lymphatic system and finally, agonizingly, into her spine. He'd spent several nights by her bedside, sometimes talking, sometimes simply holding her hand in silence. He loved the sense of power that working with the virtual dead gave him. They'd be gone, and he would still be here, on top of the world. Phyllis Gates was long gone, but her twin brother Terry was alive and well. Presumably he was still running his market stall.

Terry sold tools. New and second-hand. Terry credited Vance with the only happiness his sister had known in the last weeks of her life. Terry would walk on hot coals for Vance. Terry would think telling a jury he'd sold the vice to Vance only a couple of years previously was the least he could do to repay the debt.

Vance sat upright, stretching out his arms like a hero accepting the adulation of the crowd. He'd worked it out. He was as good as a free man. Murder was indeed like magic. And one day soon, Tony Hill would find that out for himself. Vance could hardly wait.