t was Danni's gun,' she said quickly. 'He left it in my apartment.'

'Which is about ten minutes drive from Kamal's restaurant and a good twenty-minute drive from here. But the cops only took thirteen minutes to get here from Kamal's. You couldn't possibly have made it here in time, even if someone had called you the minute the cops took Kamal into custody. So calling it Danni's gun makes a second hole in your story.' Petra picked up the cigarette packet and put it back in her pocket.

'Right now,' she continued, 'I've got a team out in Mitte talking to everybody who knows you and who knew Danni. I'd put money on us not finding a single person who can put you and him together. Well, maybe we'll get one or two. But I'd put money on the fact that they'll be tied in as closely to Darko Krasic as you are.' a*u tr j

At the sound of Krasic's name, Krebs reacted. Her thumb flicked the end of the cigarette so hard she broke the filter tip clean off. For one brief moment, something sparked in her eyes. Inside, Petra rejoiced. The first crack had appeared. Now for the crowbar.

'Give him up, Marlene. He's thrown you to the wolves. You talk to me, you can save yourself. You can watch your kid grow up.'

Something shifted behind Krebs' gaze and Petra realized she'd lost her. The mention of her daughter, that's what had done it. Of course, she thought. Krasic has the kid under wraps. That's his insurance policy. Before she could break Krebs, they'd have to find the daughter. Still, it was worth one last throw of the dice. 'You'll be going in front of the judge soon,' she said. 'You'll be remanded in custody. No matter how smart-mouthed your lawyer is, no matter how many times he plays the card that you're no risk to the public, they're not going to bail you. Because I'm going to tell the prosecutor we've got you on our books as someone with links to organized crime. You're going into the general prison population. Do you have any idea how easy it will be for me to make it look like you're co-operating with us? And do you have any idea how little time it will take Darko Krasic to make sure you never talk to anyone else again? I mean, think about it, Marlene. How long did it take him to set up Kamal?' Petra got to her feet. 'Think about it.' She crossed to the door and knocked to indicate that the meeting was over.

As the WaPo outside opened up, Petra looked back over her shoulder. Marlene Krebs was leaning forward, her loose hair shrouding her face. Til be calling on you, Marlene.'

Krebs looked up. Hate blared across the room at Petra. 'Fuck you,' she said.

I'll take that as a yes, Petra thought triumphantly as she walked back to the Wachte for her gun. She had finally lit a low flame under Darko Krasic that might eventually cook Tadeusz Radecki.

Carol had always enjoyed the ambience of Soho. She'd seen it shift from the seediness of the porn industry's hub to the stylish, gay-orientated caf?society it had become in the 19905, but there had never been a time when she hadn't found it fascinating. Chinatown rubbed shoulders with theatreland, leather men shared the pavements with shifty-eyed prostitute's punters, media gurus battled wannabe gangstas for taxis. Although she'd never policed its narrow, traffic-choked streets, she'd spent a lot of time there, much of it in a drinking club on Beak Street where one of her oldest friends, now a literary journalist, was a founding member.

Today, everything was different. She was looking at the world through a different lens. From the perspective of a drugs courier, nothing was quite the same. Every face on the street was a potential cause for concern. Every dodgy doorway could pose some unnamed threat. To walk down Old Compton Street was to tiptoe into the danger zone, antennae bristling and every sense quivering with alertness. She wondered how criminals coped with these levels of adrenaline. Just one morning and she was jittery at some deep level, her stomach clenched and her skin clammy. Simply trying to keep her pace down to a stroll took every ounce of effort she had to give.

She turned into Dean Street, her eyes scanning the pavements and the roadway, constantly checking to see if anyone was taking an interest in her. Something tricky was bound to be lying in wait for her, and she wanted a sense of what that Carol spotted Damocles up ahead of her on the opposite side of the street. It looked like a typical Soho cafe-bar, all designer chairs and marble tables, exotic flower arrangements visible through the smoked-glass window. She kept on walking till she reached the next corner, then circled the block so that she came back down Dean Street in the opposite direction.

She was almost level with them when she saw them. She'd never worked Drugs, but she was familiar with the plain clothes cars they used. This one looked like a bog-standard Ford Mondeo, but what gave it away were the twin tail pipes of the exhaust. This had a lot more under the bonnet than the standard engine. The stubby radio aerial sticking out of the rear window was confirmation enough if she'd needed it. The driver sat behind the wheel, ostensibly reading the paper, a baseball cap pulled down to shield the top half of his face.

Where there was one, there would be more. Now she had a better idea of what she was looking for, Carol carried on ambling down the street. There was another car she was fairly sure was Drugs Squad, again with the driver in place behind his newspaper. Directly opposite Damocles, two men were making a very thorough job of cleaning the window of a newsagent's. A third man was bending over a bike, pumping up the rear tyre very slowly, checking the pressure with his fingers every few seconds.

Two car loads, she thought. That meant sk or eight officers. She'd clocked five, which meant there were probably another three she hadn't spotted. If she was their target, the chances were that the others were already inside the caf? Fine. So be it.

Time for a little improvisation.

What Carol hadn't registered was the battered white van parked behind the Mondeo. Inside, it was fitted out with state of-the-art surveillance kit. Morgan, Thorson and Surtees perched on swivel chairs, headsets clamped to their ears. 'That's her, isn't it?' Thorson said. 'She's changed the way she looks, but it's her.'

'You can always tell by the walk,' Surtees said, reaching across her to snag a Thermos he'd had filled with caf?latte from his favourite Old Compton Street bar. 'The one thing it's almost impossible to disguise.'

Morgan stared intently into one of the video monitors. 'She's carrying on to the corner. That's two passes. She'll go in next time.'

'She handled those two thugs well,' Surtees said, pouring out his coffee and pointedly not offering any to his colleagues. Morgan, he knew, would have his inevitable bottle of San Pellegrino stashed somewhere. Thorson he'd never liked enough to want to share anything with.

Thorson glared at him as the rich aroma of the coffee hit. She never seemed to manage to be as prepared for things as that anally retentive bastard Surtees. He always made her feel inadequate. She suspected that Morgan knew that, and that it was one of the reasons he kept them working together. He always liked to keep people on their toes. It meant he got results, but she couldn't help feeling that it was sometimes at the expense of the nervous systems of his team members. She craned her neck to look at the monitor over Morgan's shoulder. 'All units in place, target entering,' she heard through the crackle in her headset. 'On my word, not before.'

Carol had come back into sight, this time moving with a determined stride towards the heavy glass and chrome doors of Damocles. Morgan clicked the mouse linked to the video display and the picture changed to the inside of the cafe. Another click and the screen split into two images. One showed the whole of the interior, the other focused on the man sitting reading and smoking at a table in the rear. They watched as Carol walked in and made straight for the bar. She chose a stool towards the back of the room, a little distance from the man she'd been told was her contact. But she made no attempt to catch his attention. She said something to the barista, who supplied her with a mineral water.

'A pity we couldn't get audio in place,' Surtees said.

'There's far too much background noise,' Thorson said. 'We tried a mike under the table, but the marble blocked out anything worth hearing.'

Carol reached into her bag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She took one out and put it between her lips.

'I didn't think she smoked,' Thorson said.

'She doesn't.' Morgan frowned at the screen. 'What is she up to?'

Carol made a show of searching in her bag and pulling a face in disgust. She looked around her and her eyes lit on the man at the corner table. She hitched herself off the stool, leaving her bag on the bar, and walked across to him. Now her body was between the man and the camera and they couldn't see what was happening. She bent down, then eventually stood up, the lit cigarette between her fingers. 'A long time to light a fag,' Morgan said, suspicion in his voice. 'She's not following the script.'

'Good for her,' Thorson said softly as Carol returned to her bar stool. She sipped her drink and toyed with the cigarette, stubbing it out before it had burned halfway down.

Then she was on her feet in a blur of movement, grabbing her bag and heading for the toilets. As she opened the door, her contact jumped to his feet, leaving his magazine, and followed her.

'Oh shit,' Morgan said. 'Is there an exit out there?' Surtees shrugged. 'I've no idea. It was Mary who checked the place out.'

Thorson coloured. 'There's a fire exit. It's alarmed...' As she spoke, the peal of a security siren screamed. At the same moment, all hell broke loose in their ears.

Carol ran down the narrow service alley between the tall build- ings. She didn't have to look over her shoulder to check her ^ contact was behind her; she could hear his heavy footfalls closing on her with every step. They emerged on a narrow side street, the pavements busy with people returning to their offices after lunch. Carol slowed to a brisk walk, her contact falling into step beside her. 'Fucking hell,' he said. 'You trying to kill me?'

'I spotted a geezer from the Drugs Squad sitting outside the cafe" in a car,' she said, still firmly in character. 'Him and his storm troopers turned over a mate of mine's place a couple of months back. They didn't get anything then, and I'm fucked if I was going to let them get anything now.' A nearby police siren swirled through the air. 'We've got to get off the street.'

'My motor's over in Greek Street,' he said.

'They might have clocked that an' all,' Carol said impatiently. She jinked across the road between the traffic-jammed cars, heading for a dingy corner pub. She pushed open the doors. It was still busy from the lunchtime crowd and she squirmed her way to the rear of the room, checking he was still with her. They squeezed into the angle between the bar and the back wall. Carol's hand was in her bag. 'Have you got the money?'

His hand was inside his jacket pocket. He came out with an envelope folded to the size of a twenty-pound note, thick as a London A-Z. Their hands were low, his body blocking them from any curious eyes. Carol passed him the drugs and took the money. 'Nice doing business,' she said wryly, then pushed past him. She looked around for the ladies' toilet, made her way through the throng and dived into a cubicle. She sat on the toilet, head in her hands, shaking. What the hell sort of assignment did they have lined up for her if this was their idea of an exercise?

Gradually, she got her breathing and her heart rate under control. She stood up and wondered if there was any point in trying to change her look again. She pulled off the leggings and replaced them with the skirt, then jammed the baseball cap down over her hair. She might as well give it a try. Now all she had to do was get back to Stoke Newington in one piece. That shouldn't be beyond her, she thought grimly.

Out on the street, there was no sign of pursuit. She made her way by a circuitous route to the Tottenham Court Road underground station and tried not to think about what could still go wrong. At least now she didn't have any drugs on her. Money was always explicable. The only dodgy thing in her possession was the CS gas canister. When nobody was looking, she pushed it into the gap between the seat and the bulkhead of the tube. Not the most responsible thing she'd ever done, but she wasn't thinking like Carol Jordan any longer. She was thinking like Janine Jerrold, one hundred per cent.

Three-quarters of an hour later, she turned back into the street where the day's mission had begun. There was no sign of anything out of place. It was funny how, in just a few hours, normal could seem so rife with potential threat. But at least now the end was in sight. She took a deep breath and marched up to the front door.

It wasn't Gary who answered the door this time. The man on the doorstep had the bulky upper torso of a weightlifter. His reddish hair was cropped close to his head and the glare from his prominent pale blue eyes was unnerving. 'Yeah? What do you want?' he asked belligerently.

'I'm looking for Gary,' she said. Her nerves were buzzing again. He didn't look like a cop, but what if this was another trap?

He pursed his lips then shouted over his shoulder. 'Gary, you expecting some bird?'

A muffled, 'Yeah, let her in,' came from the room she'd been in earlier.

The weightlifter stepped back, opening the door wide. There was nothing in the hall to make her uneasy, so Carol stifled her doubts and walked in. He stepped neatly behind her and slammed the door shut.

It was obviously a signal. Three men stepped out from the doorways leading off the hall. 'Police, stay where you are,' the one who had opened the door shouted.

'What the fuck?' she managed to get out before they were on her. Hands seized her and half-pushed, half-dragged her into the living room. One of them made a grab for her bag. She clung on grimly, trying for the appearance of indignant innocence. 'Get your hands off me,' she shouted.

They pushed her on to the sofa. 'What's your name?' the weightlifter demanded.

'Karen Barstow,' she said, using the cover name she'd been given in the brief.

'Right then, Karen. What's your business with Gary?'

She tried for bewildered. 'Look, what is this? How do I know you're the Old Bill?'

He pulled a wallet out of the pocket of his jogging trousers and flashed a warrant card at her too fast for her to take in a name. But it was the real thing, she knew that. 'Satisfied?'

She nodded. 'I still don't get it. What's going on? Why are you picking on me?'

'Don't play the innocent. We know you're one of Gary's mules. You've been carrying drugs for him. We know the score.'

'That's bullshit. I just came round to give him his winnings. I don't know nothing about no drugs,' she said defiantly. She thrust her bag at him, relieved she'd ditched the CS gas. 'Look. Go on. There's fuck all in there.'

He took the bag and unceremoniously dumped the contents on the floor. He went straight for the envelope and ripped it open. He riffled the bundle of notes with his thumb. 'There must be a couple of grand here,' he said.

'I don't know. I didn't look. You won't find my prints on a single one of them notes. All I know is that my mate Linda asked me to drop off Gary's winnings.'

'It must have been a helluva bet,' one of the other officers said, leaning indolently against the wall.

'I don't know anything about that. You gotta believe me, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even do drugs, never mind dealing them.'

'Who said anything about dealing?' the weightlifter asked, shoving the money back into the envelope.

'Dealing, running, whatever. I don't have nothing to do with that. I swear on my mother's grave. All I was doing was bringing Gary his winnings.' She was confident now. They had nothing on her. Nobody had seen her hand over the drugs to her contact, she was clear on that.

'Gary says he sent you off with a parcel of drugs this morning,' the weightlifter said.

'I don't know why he'd say that, because it's not true.' She was almost sure what he was saying was a bluff. All she had to do was stick to her story. Let them come to her with I anything concrete.

'You went out with the drugs and you were due to come back with the money. And here you are with an envelope full of readies.'

She shrugged. 'I told you, it's his winnings from the horses. ; I don't care what lies Gary's told you, that's the truth and you can't prove any different.'

'Let's see about that, shall we? A little trip down to the : station, get a female officer to give you the full body search and see if you're as keen on your bullshit then.'

Carol almost smiled. At least she was on firmer ground I here. She knew her rights. 'I'm not going nowhere with you | pigs unless you arrest me. And if you arrest me, I'm saying bugger all until I get to see my lawyer.'

The weightlifter glanced around at his colleagues. That was all she needed to see. They didn't have anything on her. They I had been lying about what Gary had said, because if he really 1 had thrown her to the wolves, it would be enough to arrest | her on suspicion. She got to her feet. 'So, what's it to be? Are you going to arrest me, or am I going to walk out that door? With Gary's money, by the way, because you've got no right to that.' She crouched down and started scooping her possessions back into her bag.

Before anyone could respond, the door opened and Morgan stepped into the room. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' he said. 'I appreciate your help. But I'll take it from here.'

The weightlifter looked as if he wanted to protest, but one of his colleagues put a restraining hand on his arm. The four who had confronted Carol filed out of the door. On his way out, the one who had been lounging against the wall turned back. 'For the record, sir, we're not best pleased with the way this has gone.'

'Noted,' Morgan said curtly. He winked at Carol and held a finger to his lips till they heard the front door close behind them. Then he smiled. 'You have really pissed off the Drugs Squad,' he said.

'I have?'

'That was a real deal that went down out there,' he said, crossing to the sofa and sitting down. 'The Drugs Squad's intention was to pick up the bloke you sold the drugs to. You were supposed to have a fairly hairy time but be given the opportunity to escape. Unfortunately, you didn't play it the way we were all expecting you to. And chummy walked away with a parcel of drugs that was supposed to be back in our hands by bedtime.'

Carol swallowed hard. This was exactly the kind of fuck up she'd wanted to avoid. 'I'm sorry, sir.'

Morgan shrugged. 'Don't be. Somebody should have had the wit to cover the emergency exit. You, on the other hand, exhibited initiative under pressure. You acted in character throughout. You dealt with those two bruisers from the NCIS football hooligan squad with intelligence arid style, you did everything you could to cover your tracks and change your appearance, and you outsmarted the opposition right along the line. We couldn't have asked for a better display of your talents, DCI Jordan.'

Carol stood up a little straighter. 'Thank you, sir. So, do I get the job?'

A shadow crossed Morgan's normally open features. 'Oh yes, you get the job.' He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out a card. 'My office, tomorrow morning. We'll give you the full brief then. Right now, I'd suggest you go home and make whatever arrangements are necessary to cover your absence. You'll be going away for a while. And you won't be able to go home again until the job's done.'

Carol frowned. 'I'm not going to Europol?'

'Not just yet.' He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. 'Carol, you get this assignment right, and you can more or less write your own ticket.'

She noted the use of her first name. In her experience, senior officers outside your own team only ever got that informal when the shit was heading for the fan and they hoped you'd be the one standing between it and them. 'And if I get it wrong?'

Morgan shook his head. 'Don't even think about it.'

There was never any shortage of work for idle hands on board the Wtlhelmina Rosen. The old man had set the standard, and he was determined not to fall below it. The crew clearly thought he was obsessive, but he didn't care. What was the point in having one of the most beautiful Rhineships on the water if you didn't maintain it to the highest standard? You might as well be piloting one of the modern steel boxes that had as much personality as a cornflake packet.

Tonight, his task was to restore the brasswork on the bridge to its gleaming patina. He'd been understandably preoccupied with his personal plans, but that morning he'd noticed that it had begun to grow dull. So he'd decided to spend the evening with a bundle of rags and a tin of brass polish, determined to nip his slipshod ways in the bud before they became a new habit.

Inevitably, his mind slipped sideways from the repetitious task to the closer concerns of his heart. Tomorrow, they would be heading back down the Rhine, towards the place where all this had begun. Schloss Hochenstein, standing high on a bluff upriver from Bingen, its gothic windows glaring down on the turbulent waters of the Rhine gorge, its grey stone as forbidding as a thundercloud, the legacy of some almost-forgotten medieval robber baron. For years, the Wtlhelmina Rosen had motored up and down this stretch of river, his grandfather at the helm never betraying by so much as a sideways glance that the schloss meant anything to him.

Perhaps if it had been situated in a less demanding stretch of water his studied avoidance of so prominent a landmark would have taken on its own significance. In the Rhine gorge, however, skippers had to concentrate every ounce of their attention on the water. It had always been a severe test of the skills of boatmen, with its sharp twists, its rock-studded banks, its unexpected eddies and whirlpools and the very speed of its flow. These days, it was easier because deep channels had been dug and dredged to control the capricious movement of the water. But it still remained a stretch of water where a tourist making a single trip would have stronger memories of the surrounding scenery than a Rhineship skipper who had made the transit a hundred times. And so he had never noticed his grandfather's stubborn refusal to let his eyes range over the prospect of Schloss Hochenstein.

Now he knew the reason for that evasion, he had developed a deep and abiding fascination with the castle. He'd even driven up there one night when they'd been moored a few miles upriver. He'd been too late to buy a ticket and take the tour, but he'd stood outside the ornately carved lintel of the main gateway his grandfather had entered sixty years before. How could anyone look at that grim facade and not sense the horrors those high narrow windows had witnessed? He imagined the stones held captive the screams and cries of hundreds of children. The very walls were a repository of pain and fear. Just looking at it made him sweat, the memories of his own agonies rising sharp and harsh as the day they were inflicted. The schloss should have been razed to the ground, not turned into a tourist attraction. He wondered if any of the guides on the pleasure boats that plied the gorge ever mentioned the recent history that had stained Schloss Hochenstein so indelibly. Somehow, he doubted it. Nobody wanted to be reminded of that part of the past. They wanted to pretend it had never happened. And that was why nobody had ever had to pay for it. Well, he was making the bastards pay now, that was for sure.

He rubbed away at the brass, his mind replaying the conversation he'd had in the beer garden with Heinrich Holtz. Well, not so much a conversation as a monologue. 'We were the ones they called lucky,' he'd said, his rheumy eyes flickering constantly from side to side, never settling on one thing for long. 'We survived.'

'Survived what?' the younger man asked.

Holtz continued as if he hadn't heard the question. 'Everybody knows about the concentration camps. They all talk about the horrors inflicted on the Jews, the gypsies, the queers. But there were other victims. The forgotten ones. Me and your granddad, we were two of the forgotten ones. That's because where we ended up was called a hospital, not a camp.

'Did you know that German psychiatric hospitals held three hundred thousand patients in 1939, but only forty thousand were still alive in 1946? The rest died at the hands of the psychiatrists and the psychologists. And that's not counting all the children and babies who were slaughtered in the name of racial purity. There was even one so-called hospital where they celebrated the cremation of the ten thousandth mental patient in a special ceremony. Doctors, nurses, attendants, the administrative staff, they all joined in. They all got a free bottle of beer to toast the occasion.

'But you didn't have to be mad to end up in their clutches. If you were deaf or blind, retarded or disabled, you had to be got rid of for the sake of the master race. A stammer or a harelip was enough to see you sent off.' He paused and sipped cautiously at his beer, his shoulders hunching closer than seemed possible.

The and your granddad, we weren't mentally or physically handicapped. We weren't mad. We were just badly behaved lads. Anti-social, they called us. I was always up to mischief. I'd never do what my mother told me. My dad was dead, and she wasn't much good at keeping me in order. So I was running wild. Stealing, throwing stones, making fun of the soldiers goose-stepping through the town.' He shook his head. 'I was only eight years old. I didn't know any better.

'Anyway, one morning a doctor arrived at the house with a couple of men in white coats and SS boots. I fought like a tiger, but they just beat the living shit out of me and threw me into the back of what had been an ambulance. Now, it was more like a police van. They chained me to the wall and we set off. By the end of the day, there were a dozen of us in there, scared out of our wits, sitting in our own piss and shit. Your granddad was one of them. We were sitting next to each other, and that was the beginning of our friendship. I reckon that's how we survived. We managed to keep some sort of human contact alive between us, in spite of everything that happened.' Holtz finally met the barge skipper's eyes. 'That's the hardest thing. Remembering you're human.'

'Where did they take you?' the skipper inquired. He knew it was probably the least important thing he could ask, but he sensed already that Holtz's story would be far from pretty. Anything that would derail or even delay it seemed like a good idea.

'Schloss Hochenstein. I'll never forget my first sight of it. You only had to look at it to feel the fear rising up and choking you. A great big castle, like something out of a horror film. Inside, it was always dark, always cold. Stone floors, tiny high windows and walls that seemed to sweat damp. You'd lie shiv128 ering in your bed at night, wondering if you'd still be alive in the morning. You never cried, though. If you made a fuss, you got injections. And if you got injections, you died. It was like living in a nightmare you can't wake up from.

'The government had requisitioned the schloss and turned it into what they called the Institute of Developmental Psychology. You see, they didn't just want to kill all us kids who didn't fit the mould. They wanted to use us, alive and dead. The dead had their brains pickled and dissected. The living had their brains fucked with too, only we got to live with the consequences.' Holtz reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and took out a packet of slim dark cigars. He shook one out of the packet and offered it to the younger man, who declined with a shake of the head and a wave of the hand. Holtz unwrapped it and took his time lighting it.

'You know how scientists do their experiments with rats and monkeys? Well, in Schloss Hochenstein they used us kids.' Holtz fiddled with his cigar, using it as a prop rather than smoking it.

'The smart kids, like me and your granddad, we learned quickly. So we survived. But it was a living hell. How do you think the Nazi interrogators learned their skills? They practised on us. We would be deprived of sleep for weeks at a time, till we were hallucinating and so disorientated we could no longer speak our own names. We were given electric shocks to the genitals to see how long we could keep a secret. The girls were raped before and after puberty to explore the emotional effects. Sometimes the boys were forced to take part in the rapes, so their reactions could be observed. They forced rubber tubes down our throats then poured water straight into our lungs. Your grandfather and I, we survived that. God knows how. For days, I couldn't eat a thing, my gullet felt like one long bruise. But there were a lot who didn't make it. They drowned.

'They used to stage exhibitions. They'd bring in doctors from other hospitals, SS officers, local officials. They'd pick some poor fucking imbecile, some kid with Down's syndrome, or a spastic. The doctors would parade them in front of the audience, talking about how they must be exterminated for the benefit of the people. We were seen as a drain on the resources of the state. They'd say things like, "A dozen soldiers ^ can be trained for what it costs to keep one of these vegetables in an institution for a month."

'And there was no escape. I remember one lad, Ernst, who was brought in with us. His only sin was that his father had been condemned as an enemy of the state for being lazy. Ernst thought he could outsmart them. He tried to win their trust by working as hard as he could. He was always sweeping the floors, cleaning the toilets, making himself useful. One day, he managed to get out of the main building into the courtyard and he made a run for it.' Holtz shuddered at the memory.

'They caught him, of course. We were hi the dining hall, eating the slops they served us for dinner, when they dragged him hi by the hair. Then they stripped him naked. Four nurses held him down on a table while two of the doctors beat the soles of his feet with canes, counting out loud all the time. Ernst was screaming like a scalded baby. They kept beating him till his feet were lumps of raw meat, the flesh hanging off the bones and the blood dripping off the table on to the floor. Eventually, he passed out. And the institute director was standing there with a clipboard, noting how many strokes of the canes and how long it had taken to get to that point. Then he turned to us and said, as calmly as if he was announcing what was for dessert, that we should all remember what would happen to any part of our bodies that didn't behave as it should.' Holtz passed a hand over his face, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead. 'Do you know, that sadistic bastard remained a member of the German Society of Psychiatrists till he died in 1974? Nobody wants to admit what was done to us.

'The guilt's too much, you see. It was hard enough for Germany to accept what we did to the Jews. But what was done to us was worse. Because our good German parents let it happen. They let the state take us away, mostly without any protest. They just accepted what they were told, that we needed to be disposed of for the greater good. And afterwards, nobody wanted to hear our voices.

'To tell you the truth, I've made myself forget a lot of what happened back there. That's how I've coped. The scars are still there though, deep down.'

There was a long silence. Finally, the young skipper drained his beer and said, 'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because I know your granddad didn't. We used to meet up for a drink now and then, and he admitted that he'd never told you. I thought he was wrong. I think you deserved to know what made him the man he was.' Holtz reached out with his bony fingers and covered the other man's hand with his. 'I don't know for sure, but I expect it was not easy being brought up by him. But you have to know that, if he was harsh to you, he did it for your own protection. He didn't want to risk you turning into the kind of boy he was, with all the consequences that could bring with it.

Then like me and your granddad, we might know with our heads that the Nazis aren't coming back, that nobody is going to do to our children and grandchildren what was done to us. But deep down, we're still terrified that there are bastards out there who would do the same thing to the people we love. Those doctors, they didn't come out of nowhere. The monsters weren't just there for one generation. They never paid the price for what they did, you know. They carried on, respected and well rewarded, climbing to the top of their so called profession, using what they'd learned to train the ones who came after them. There are still monsters out there, only they're better hidden now. Or they're somewhere else. So, you should know that whatever he did to you that might have seemed cruel or heartless, it was done with the best of motives. He was trying to save you.'

He had pulled his hand back then. He couldn't bear the dry papery feel of old skin against his own. His head hurt, a dull ache starting at the base of his skull and spreading outwards like steel fingers squeezing his brain. He felt the familiar blackness rising inside him, swallowing all his pleasure in saying a last farewell to his grandfather. He didn't know how to deal with what he'd just been told, and physical contact ^ with this ruined old man wasn't helping. 'I have to go,' he ^ said. 'My crew. They're waiting.'

Holtz stared down at the table. 'I understand,' he said.

On the drive back to town, they sat in silence, each staring out at the road ahead. When they reached the outskirts, Holtz said, 'You can let me out here. I can catch a bus. I don't want to put you out.' He reached into his pocket and took out a slip of paper. 'I wrote down my address and phone number. If you want to talk some more about this, call me.'

Holtz got out in the gathering gloom of the afternoon and walked off without a backward glance. They both knew they'd never meet again.

He rubbed his temples, trying to replace his bleak thoughts with the joy he'd felt when he'd pushed the old man into the water. But it wasn't working. He put the old Ford in gear and headed back to the docks. He'd always known there must be a reason for what had happened to him. The brutality, the segregation from other kids, the refusal to let him have anything more than a basic education because cleverness got you into trouble; that all had to have come from somewhere. But whatever he had imagined, it hadn't been this. Now at last, he had someone to blame.

Tony pulled up in the drive of Frances's semi-detached house. Everything about it was squared off and neat. Built before developers started putting flourishes on their executive homes, it was entirely plain in its appearance and, unlike several of her neighbours, Frances had steadfastly avoided anything that would break up the straight lines of doors and windows, gable end and garden. No fake Georgian bottle glass window panes for her, no elaborate front door with panels and mouldings. No island beds or wishing wells in the garden, just neat rectangular borders with roses pruned to within a bud of their lives. At first, Tony had liked the orderliness of it all, a contrast to the blurred edges and confusion of his own life.

But now he acknowledged that there were good reasons why he had chosen an old cottage without a single wall that was plumb, and a patch of garden filled with rambling geraniums and overgrown hebes. As he had come to know Frances better, he had been reminded that those who impose such regimented order on their surroundings are also inclined to hedge in their internal lives with restrictions and barriers for fear their unruly souls might burst forth and create an unmanageable chaos.

There were times when he longed for chaos.

This evening they were due to play bridge with some acquaintances over in Cupar. Frances, he knew, would have dinner cooking, ready to serve within minutes of his arrival so that they would be sure of getting to Cupar in good time. He wanted to speak to Carol, to find out how her undercover day had gone, but he knew that there would be no chance later. He'd tried to call her before he left the office, but she hadn't been home. Maybe in the ten minutes it had taken him to drive across St Andrews she'd have returned.

He keyed her number into his mobile and waited. Three rings and he was connected to her machine. 'Hi, Carol, it's Tony. I was wondering how...'

'Tony? I just walked through the door. Hang on.' He heard the electronic beep of the machine being turned off. Then her voice again. 'How lovely of you to call.'

'Put it down to professional curiosity. I was interested to hear how it had gone.'

'I was going to e-mail you later, but this is better still.' Even several hundred miles away, he could hear the elation in her voice. 'You sound like you're on a real high. How was it?'

Her low chuckle was infectious. He could feel the smile spreading across his face. 'I suppose that depends on your point of view.'

'Start with your point of view.'

'Brilliant. There were a couple of moments where I was absolutely bricking it, but I never felt as if it was slipping out of my control. All the work we did together made me feel confident I could handle whatever they threw at me, and I did.'

'I'm glad,' he said. 'So, who didn't think it was brilliant?'

'Oh God,' she groaned. 'I am numero uno on the Drugs Squad shit list tonight.'

'Why? What happened?'

Laughter bubbled up in Carol's voice as she outlined the fiasco to Tony. 'I know I should be mortified, but I'm too busy being pleased with myself.'

'I can't believe they had so little confidence in you,' Tony said. 'They should have realized you're smart enough to spot a surveillance. You've set up enough of them over the years. From there, it's not a big step to working out that you'd come up with some way to evade the take-down. So, what else did they throw at you?' He settled back hi the driving seat and let Carol take him through the day. When she finally ran out of steam, he said, 'Hey, you should be proud of yourself. One day on the streets and already you've stopped thinking like the hunter and begun to think like the prey. I'm impressed.'

'I couldn't have done it without you.'

He smiled. 'You've no idea how much of a kick I got from feeling I was back in the game again, however peripherally. My life is so predictable these days, it was great fun to sit down and work with you again. In fact, it was even better than before, because there were no lives at stake this time.'

'Maybe you should think about getting back into harness,' Carol said.

Tony sighed. 'There's no place for people like me in today's offender-profiling strategy.'

'It wouldn't have to be front line. You could train. Think about it, Tony. If the Home Office don't want to take a chance, maybe you should think about Europe. All those intelligence officers in Europol need to learn how to profile crimes and criminals, so they can determine what's connected. There must be a place for someone with your talents,' Carol said insistently.

'Yeah, well, we'll see. So, did they tell you whether you've got the job?'

'They did. And I have. But I still don't know what it is. They're going to brief me tomorrow. Here's the best bit: if I perform well, I get to write my own ticket. The world's going to be my oyster.'

Tony couldn't help the prickle of misgiving raising the hairs on the back of his neck. For them to have made Carol a promise of that magnitude, the assignment that lay ahead of her was bound to be fraught with risk. It had to be the kind of enterprise that would provoke an instinctive refusal. With this much sugar coating, the pill would of necessity be an extremely bitter one. 'That's great,' he said. His eye caught the digital clock on the dashboard. He was cutting it tight if he was going to have time to eat before they had to leave for Cupar.

'Listen, Carol, I've got to go now. But I want you to promise me that you'll call as soon as you know what they want from you. I'm not saying this because I have any doubts about your ability. It's just... it sounds like you're going to need all the help you can get, and they're probably going to put you in a position where help won't be easy to come by. I want you to know that I'm here for you. Whatever you need from me, you've got it.'

There was a moment's silence, then she said, 'You've no idea how much that means to me. Thank you. I'll be in touch.'

'Take care.'

'And you. Thanks for calling.'

He ended the call, shoved his phone back in his pocket, and got out of the car. When he walked in, he could smell the fragrant aroma of a rich tomato and meat sauce. As he passed the open door of the darkened living room, he heard Frances speak. 'I'm in here,' she said.

Tony followed the sound of her voice into the living room. He couldn't see much detail, but he could make out Frances's shape silhouetted against the window. 'I heard your car and I couldn't work out why you hadn't come in,' she said. 'So I came to have a look, make sure everything was all right.'

'The phone rang just as I pulled up.' Some lies are a necessary veneer, he thought sadly.

'You were ages,' Frances said.

He couldn't see her face, but there was something in her voice that twisted inside him. 'Sorry about that. I hope dinner isn't spoilt.'

'I think my cooking's a wee bit more robust than that.' Frances turned so her back was to the street. Now her face was even more obscured. 'Was it Carol?'

'What makes you think that?' As soon as the words were out, he realized how much of a revelation they were. In part, it was a professional response. Answer a question with a question, don't let the subject take control of the interview. But it was also the instinctive response of someone who has something to conceal. The innocent man would have said, 'Yes, it was Carol, she's very excited because she's got the job she was after.' However, where Carol Jordan was concerned, Tony could never be an innocent man.

'She's the only person you wouldn't want to talk to with me listening in the background.'

Tony flushed. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means you've got something to hide where Carol Jordan is concerned.'