hapter 17

Kit held the sheet of paper out to Fiona. Gingerly, she took it by the top left-hand corner. It was a single sheet of A4 paper, folded twice to fit a standard business envelope. There was nothing to distinguish it from any other computer-generated document. Standard font, nothing complicated about the layout. All of this Fiona took in first, bracing herself before she read the words.

"Kit Martin, you are a thief of other people's creative endeavour and a traducer of other people's reputations. You steal what you cannot yourself make. And your lies deprive others of what is rightfully theirs.

"Your work is a feeble reflection of other people's light. You have striven to ensure that competition is driven from the field. You take, you destroy, you are a vampire who sucks the blood of those whose gifts you envy. You know this to be true. Search your pathetic grimy soul and you will not be able to deny what you have deprived me of.

"The time has come for you to pay. You deserve nothing from me but my contempt and my hatred. If killing you is what it takes to grant what is rightfully mine, then so be it.

The hour and the day will be of my choosing. I trust you will not sleep easy; you do not deserve so to do. I will enjoy your funeral. From your ashes, I will rise like a phoenix."

Fiona read the poisonous letter twice. Then she carefully put it down on the hall table and stepped forward to hug Kit. "Poor you. What a horrible thing." She could feel his tension as he buried his face in her shoulder.

"I can't get my head round it," he said, his voice muffled. "It makes no sense."

Fiona said nothing. She just held on tight to him until she felt his body start to relax against her. "Where did it come from?" she asked eventually.

"It was in the post. I was busy when the second delivery came; I didn't bother picking it off the mat till I was going out. I stuck it in the office. I wasn't expecting anything urgent."

"Have you got the envelope?"

He nodded. "It's in the bin, I just chucked it automatically." He went into his office. Fiona followed him into the chaos of books and papers that covered all of the available surfaces and half of the floor. Not for the first time, she marvelled that anyone could work in such a clutter. But Kit not only worked here, he also seemed to have total recall when it came to the site of any particular book, file or letter. He went straight to the wastepaper bin by the desk and fished out a plain-white self-sealing envelope. He studied it with a frown. Fiona put an arm round his waist and looked at it with him. The address had been printed in the same anonymous typeface.

"West London postmark. Posted two days ago with a second-class stamp," he said. He gave a snort of nervous laughter. "Well, it's obviously not an urgent death threat. I suppose that should be some sort of consolation."

"You should report this to the police," Fiona said decisively.

Kit dropped the envelope on top of his keyboard. "You think so?" He sounded sceptical.

"I do, yes. It's a really nasty letter. It's a death threat, for God's sake!"

Kit dropped into his chair, swinging round to face her. "I get nasty letters all the time, love. Not death threats, admittedly, but in among the fan mail, I regularly get letters slagging off me and my books. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells is horrified by the torture scenes in The Dissection Man. Ms Censor of Lambeth is appalled that teenagers have access to the depraved sexual fantasies in The Blade King. And then there are the ones who accuse me of being gutless for not writing about grotesque mutilation and sexual perversion in more detail. It's not all fan mail, you know.

"How do they get your address?" Fiona demanded, suddenly struck with an uncomfortable vision of mentally unstable readers beating a path to her front door.

Kit shrugged. "I don't know. Mostly, they come via my publisher. Some on e-mail. One or two of the more obsessive types have probably trawled the voters' roll for Dartmouth Park. I'm not that hard to find, love."

Fiona shivered. "That letter was bad enough. But now you're really scaring me. Honestly, Kit, I think you should take this to the police."

He picked up a pencil and fiddled with it restlessly. "They'd laugh at me, Fiona. It's just a crank letter. There's nothing specific in it. All it says is that I nick other people's ideas. Which is bullshit. It's just some nutter with a bee in his bonnet."

Fiona looked unconvinced. "I don't think you should be taking this so lightly, Kit. I really don't." She turned away and crossed to the window, where, as usual, the blind was raised. Impatiently, she tugged the cord to shut them off from the outside world. Anything to avoid saying what was uppermost in her mind.

"It's not that I'm taking it lightly. It's the police that would think I was wasting their time. Anyway, why should I react to this, any more than the rest of the offensive mail I've had in the past? I've been getting letters from nutters ever since I was first published. It's no big deal. Honestly. It was a shock, that's all. You don't often get them so vitriolic. But nothing's ever come of a letter before, so I don't see why this should be any different." He was, he knew, protesting too much. But he didn't want to be scared. He wanted this letter to be in the same class as every other piece of hate mail that had ever dropped on the doormat. Any other response opened a door he wanted to keep firmly closed.

But Fiona was determined to articulate what was in both their minds, however unpalatable it might be. "After what happened to Drew, I don't think you can afford to ignore this," she said quietly.

"I knew you were going to say that," Kit said irritably. "I knew I should never have let you see it. Christ, Fiona, you always have to analyse things, to connect them. Well, sometimes things just don't connect. They are separate. They just are. OK?"

"No, it's not OK." Fiona raised her voice, her cheeks flushing. "Why are you so resistant to this? Two weeks ago, one of your colleagues was murdered in a horrible, ritualistic way. Now you get a death threat, and you don't think the two might be connected? Reality check, Kit!"

He slammed the pencil down on the desk. "The only connection between this letter and what happened to Drew is that some fuck wit thinks it would be clever to take advantage of his murder to put the shits up me. You read the letter, Fiona. That wasn't written by the person who killed Drew. There's no specifics in it, no boasting, none of that, "You'll get what's coming to you, like Drew Shand did.""

"That doesn't prove a thing," Fiona stormed. "That letter was written by somebody who is off the scale of normal. So was Drew's killer."

Kit got to his feet and hit the wall with the side of his fist. "So were Fred and Rosemary West, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't them that wrote this. Look, Fiona. If I go to the police with something as flaky as this, you know what they're going to say."

She folded her arms tight across her chest. "Enlighten me."

"They're going to say I'm doing a Georgia. They'll write it off as bandwagon-jumping. Publicity-seeking. They're not going to take it seriously. What can they do anyway? Send it off to the labs on the off-chance that my correspondent has conveniently left fingerprints and DNA all over it? I don't think so."

Fiona couldn't resist the truth in what he said. She knew he was probably right. But that knowledge did nothing to assuage the chilly lump of apprehension in her stomach. That someone hated Kit or his work enough to pour out such venom on the page was unnerving. To fear that poison might escalate into real violence was, in her opinion, an entirely reasonable reaction.

She pushed past him and into the hall. In the doorway, she turned. "It's your decision. It's your letter. But I think you're wrong."

"So what's new?" He turned his back on her. "I'll live with it."

Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13/4599

Tqsaf mxafa ruzwp dqiet mzp. Mxxah qdftq bmbqd etqim e. Ngfft qkpup zfsqf uf. Qhqdk napkt mpftq udaiz ftqad kmzpz afazq arftq yomyq oxaeq.

He got a lot of ink, Drew Shand. But they didn't get It. Everybody had their own theory and not one of them came close. They soon will, though. Me, I've been keeping my head down, being a good little boy, not attracting any attention. Not that anybody is paying any attention.

Which means I had no interference with the next stage of my plan. Jane Ellas. She's American, but lives In Ireland; probably because writers don't pay any tax there. The bitch wasn't satisfied with earning more money than Cod, she wanted to keep it all.

It wasn't hard to find where she was living. You can maybe get away with being a recluse somewhere the size of America, but not in Ireland. I knew she had a big estate in County Wicklow, on the shores of a lake. I knew it was about an hour's drive from Dublin. One of the fan sites on the web had a picture of the house. So I just drove around for a day with a large-scale map and a pair of binoculars till I found it.

The next morning, I went back down to Ellas's estate. I cut down to the shoreline of the lake when I saw what I was looking for a sailing club with lots of little dinghies pulled up on the concrete ramp. There was nobody about. It couldn't have been better. I hunkered down among the boats and checked out Elias's property on the other side of the water. I could just make out a landing stage with a couple of boats tied up alongside. If my information was right, she would come down to the lake sometime in the afternoon and go sailing.

Sure enough she appeared just after two. She got on one of the boats and went sailing off across the lake. I waited till it got dark and she'd gone back, then I dragged one of the dinghies down to the water's edge and climbed aboard. I'd sussed a hiding place earlier, further up the lake where the trees came right down to the water's edge.

I was feeling really edgy again with the prospect of what I was going to have to do the next day. There were so many mistakes I could make that would blow it. And then I had to do the killing again. I decided I wasn't going to stick to the book as closely this time. There was no way I was going to torture somebody for hours. I knew I didn't have the stomach for it. And besides, I didn't have the time or the place for something so elaborate.

What I would do, I decided, was to kill her quickly with a knife. Then I could do the things to her body that would make it look like the body in the book. It's the appearance that's important. I'm not some fetishistic killer who has to obsess about all the details. What I'm doing is sending a message, not satisfying some weird urge inside myself. If there was another way of showing those bastards that they can't get away with discounting me and my life, I'd have chosen it.

I'm trying not to think about what I'll have to do to her. My stomach's queasy enough without making it worse. I just have to keep telling myself it won't take long, and then I'll be on the road home.

They'll have to pay attention this time.

Chapter 18

The early morning light was pearl-grey, a thin curtain of cloud hanging just above the tops of the Wicklow Hills across the steely waters of Lough Killargan. The spectacular autumn colours of the trees were beginning to emerge against the soft green of the hillsides, transforming the landscape from chill to warmth.

Jane Elias stood on the flagged patio and gave a long, low whistle. From a stand of green, ochre and brown sycamores a few hundred yards away, two streaks of black and tan emerged, their shapes resolving into a pair of lean Dobermans as they bounded across the grass towards her. Jane held her hands out to the dogs as they skidded to a halt at her feet and luxuriated in the sensuous warmth of their wet tongues on her skin.

"Enough," she said after a few moments. The dogs, obedient to their morning ritual, lay at her feet while she went through a series of stretches to loosen up muscles still half-frozen from sleep. Then, as Jane moved off in a slow jog, the dogs scrambled to their feet and raced ahead of her. This was the best part of the day, she thought. No promises broken, no sentences written, no phone calls taken. Everything was still possible.

Gradually, she picked up speed, heading out towards the perimeter wall that ringed her property. Five and a half miles, the perfect length for a morning run. She could beat the bounds of her domain in absolute privacy, secure from prying eyes and free from fear.

She didn't count the guard monitoring the closed-circuit TV cameras as having prying eyes. After all, she was paying him to make sure she was safe. She didn't mind him watching her run. They occupied separate universes, he in his windowless office, his bulk crammed into khaki shirt and navy trousers, his walkie-talkie at his hip, his small life somewhere else; she in the fresh air of her personal fiefdom, her streaked blonde hair fastened in a headband, her lean muscled limbs enclosed in lightweight sweats, her feet pounding out a regular rhythm as she thought about the morning's work that lay ahead of her.

After the run, she let the dogs into the mud room where she fed them on chopped steak and vitamin-enriched dried biscuit. While they were still snuffling down their food, she was already on her way through the kitchen of the Georgian mansion, heading for the private bathroom that no one else was permitted to use, not even her lover Pierce Finnegan. Five precise minutes under the hot shower, then a blast of freezing water to close her pores, and Jane was on to the next stage of her daily routine. A brisk to welling then an application of expensive aroma therapy body milk from chin to toe. Facial moisturizer, eye gel, dark-red lipstick.

Dressed in jeans and a silk and wool plaid shirt, she headed back to the kitchen for fresh fruit salad, a slice of wholewheat toast with organic peanut butter and a tall glass of tomato juice. Once, she'd been twenty-five pounds overweight. That was one of many things that was never going to happen again.

She was in her office by seven-thirty, the day's work arrayed on one of the two large desks that stood against the walls. Today, the task was to correct the proofs of her forthcoming novel. For the next five hours, she focused on the printed pages, scanning each line for errors, making the occasional change to a sentence she now found clumsy, sometimes reaching for the dictionary to double-check a spelling that looked odd.

At half past noon precisely, Jane pushed her chair away from the desk and stretched her arms above her head. She returned through the silent house to the kitchen, switched on the radio tuned to a classical music station and took a portion of frozen vegetable soup out of the freezer. While it microwaved, she opened the morning's post, delivered by the security staff while she was at work. After the soup and a couple of slices of bread, she returned to her office, where she dictated replies to the day's letters.

She left the tape on the kitchen counter, where the security staff would collect it and deliver it to the woman in the nearby town who acted as her secretary. The letters would return on a disk that evening, ready for Jane to print out and sign. The two women met only rarely at social occasions in town, but it was an arrangement that worked well nevertheless.

Jane walked out into the mud room and picked up a fleece jacket, letting the dogs back out into the grounds. She walked down the path to the jetty, head up as she savoured the fresh afternoon air and tested the breeze. The cloud layer had lifted, leaving a blue sky smudged with occasional puffs of cumulus. She reckoned the wind was somewhere around force five, just right for a brisk sail in the 2i-foot Beneteau First Classic, currently her favourite of the three boats she kept moored at her small private marina. It was perfect for single-handed sailing, unlike the bigger Moody that she preferred when she and Pierce went out on the lough together.

She checked the boat over, then cast off, allowing it to drift out from the jetty before she raised the mainsail. Leaving a single reef in it, she headed out towards the centre of the lough, planning her afternoon cruise in her head without bothering to consult her charts. She knew this part of the lake better than she knew her own face in the mirror. Three days out of four, she sailed more or less the same route, depending on the winds. It was, she had decided, best for views across the water to the hills as well as having no treacherous snags to trip her if she grew forgetful, her mind on her work rather than her helm.

Soon she had left the shore behind, moving across the water at a sharp forty-five-degree angle, the only sounds the hiss of the water against the hull and the crack of the wind in the sails. Jane gloried in the feel of the air against her skin, loving the sense of release that sailing the lake always brought her. Who cared if people thought she was weird, a slave to routines and patterns, a paranoid recluse? She knew different. There was nothing routine about what she did on the water every afternoon she could, pitting herself and her craft against the weather and the wildness of the lake. Out here, she was Queen of Freedom Hill. Fuck them. They could call her anal as much as they liked. All that proved was how little they knew of her. They knew nothing of her life at the tiller. Nor did they know about the fierce passion of her relationship with Pierce, kept secret by both of them for so long they had forgotten there was any other way to live.

He visited when he could, which, given the schedule of a member of the Garda Siochana's undercover drug squad, was not often. They had met when he'd attended an FBI course at Quantico. One of the instructors, an old college friend of Jane's, had invited them both to dinner and the spark had been instant. Within weeks, she had sold her estate in New England and bought the property in Ireland. It was only after she'd made the move that she discovered the unexpected bonus of the tax exemption the Irish state extended to writers. Now she was as settled here as she'd ever been anywhere.

And when Pierce was travelling undercover, she would sometimes take a room in the same hotel. Being a recluse had its advantages. No one recognized her the way they might with other best selling authors who appeared on chat shows and full-colour jacket photographs. Producing ID for Margaret J. Elias, her given name, had never raised so much as an eyebrow with hotel clerks. In two days, proofs finished and sent off to New York, she'd be flying out to Morocco to meet him. She could hardly wait.

After a long tack, she went about and cut a course at right angles to her previous direction. It would bring her nicely round the headland and into the bay, where she'd lose some of the wind, allowing her plenty of leeway to alter her heading to take the boat back out towards the centre of the lake.

Coming into the bay, she noticed a dinghy tacking erratically back and forth across the line she planned to take. With a touch on the tiller, Jane adjusted her heading, hoping the dinghy sailor would respond accordingly. But suddenly, the small boat heeled over in a capsize, catapulting the man at the helm into the water. Within seconds, the wind had carried the dinghy in one direction, the current had swept the man in the other.

Calling down the wrath of the gods against fools who didn't know what they were doing on the water, Jane started her engine then hurried forward to lower the sail. Inside a minute, she was motoring slowly towards the bobbing orange life jacket that was all she could see clearly of the idiot who obviously didn't know how to handle his boat.

Coming alongside him, she set the engine to idle and dropped the swim ladder at the stern. The man swam clumsily round to the back of the boat and hauled himself out of the lake, icy water streaming from him. "Thanks," he gasped, unfastening his life jacket and slipping one hand inside it.

"I guess you don't know these waters," Jane snapped, turning away to put the engine back in gear.

She never saw the cosh as it arced through the air towards the base of her skull.

Chapter 19

From below, the two women on the sheer side of the hill looked like a pair of cursors moving diagonally across a muted green screen. They had climbed swiftly from the Wye Valley at Litton Mill through the trees that lined the old railway, then out on to the bare hillside where even sheep preferred not to scramble among the limestone outcroppings. They reached the highest point of the climb and Fiona, who was quicker on her feet over the familiar terrain, chose a boulder with enough of an edge to perch on while she waited for Caroline to pant her way up the last twenty yards. She looked down at her companion with an affectionate smile.

When Fiona's sister Lesley had been an undergraduate at St. Andrews, she'd learned as much about herself as she had about her studies. One of the things she'd discovered was the direction of her heart. At the time of her murder, she'd been tight in the grip of first love. The revelation of its nature had been another aspect of her death that her parents had found difficult to cope with. For Fiona, though, it had come as no surprise that the person who was sharing her sister's bed was another woman. Lesley hadn't actually told her in so many words, but Fiona had understood the meaning of the way she spoke about her friend Caroline Matthews.

Because their relationship had been clandestine, Fiona was also the only person with whom Caroline could properly grieve. It was no surprise that out of grief, the bond of friendship had been forged. Now, twelve years later, Fiona and Caroline met whenever Caroline was in London, and they communicated irregularly by phone and e-mail. And at least three times a year, they met to walk in the Peak District.

Caroline had remained in St. Andrews and was now a lecturer in mathematics. She had moved on, as Fiona had. But for both of them, the loss of Lesley was an undercurrent that would forever inform the tenor of their emotional relationships. And the debt of guilt that both bore about Lesley meant they would never let each other down.

Caroline reached the crest, scarlet and panting. She collapsed on a boulder near Fiona, her breath ragged and shallow. "Oh God," she gasped. "I am so out of condition. The summer was such a washout, we hardly got out on the hills at all."

"Sounds like you've not been to the gym either," Fiona commented.

Caroline pulled a face. "Julia's started going to a step class in her lunch hour, so she's knocked the gym on the head. And we both have so many work commitments, she gets pissed off with me if I spend our two free evenings a week down the gym. I keep telling myself I'll get up early and go before work. But somehow, I never manage it."

"You'd feel better if you fitted it in." Fiona opened her rucksack and took out her water bottle.

"Fiona ..." There was a warning in Caroline's voice.

Fiona laughed. 'I'm sorry, you're right. I'm not your mother. Shut up, Fiona." She extended a hand and Caroline gave her a gentle smack on the wrist. It was an old routine, born of the early days of their common grief, when Fiona had fussed around Caroline as a substitute for the caring she could no longer offer her sister.

Fiona took a swig of her water, offering it to Caroline, who shook her head. "If I start drinking in these temperatures, I'll want to pee within five minutes. And I can't see a single bit of shelter for the next half-mile."

"As long as you don't get dehydrated."

"Fiona!" This time it was a shout. "You are not my mother. Behave."

"Sorry. It's living with a man that does it. Especially one who spends half his time inhabiting a parallel universe."

"Presumably one where somebody else always remembers to pick up the dry cleaning and puts food in front of him at regular hours?"

Fiona grinned. "It's not that sort of thing Kit forgets. It's stuff like being so engrossed in his work that he suddenly looks at the clock and realizes he was supposed to pick me up ten minutes ago. Or missing his stop on the tube because he's busy having a conversation with himself and coming round to find he's in Kennington when he should be in Leicester Square."

"How is he, anyway?"

Fiona got to her feet, stuffing her water bottle into her backpack and shouldering it. "Bloody-minded as ever."

Caroline, now breathing normally, stood up, giving Fiona a speculative look. Fiona wasn't given to bad-mouthing Kit. And besides, if she had to divide the bloody-mindedness in that relationship between them, she'd have to award Fiona the lion's share. As far as Caroline had observed, Kit was pretty laid back. In debate, he was quick and decisive, but never attacked the way Fiona could if she sensed weakness in the opposition that could be bulldozed aside. "Sounds like he's rattled your cage," she said cautiously as she fell into step behind Fiona on the narrow track that cut across the shoulder of the hill above the spectacular curve of Water-cum-Jolly Dale.

"You could say that." Fiona clamped her mouth shut, her eyes on the ground in front of her.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm so cross with him," Fiona said fiercely. "We had a blazing row the other night. He got this death threat in the post, and he refuses point blank to take it to the police. He says it's just a routine crank letter, but I'm not so sure. It felt very unpleasant to me. And after what happened to Drew Shand .. ."

"But surely that was a one-off?" Caroline said. "According to all the reports I've seen in the Scottish media, they reckon it was a pick-up for S&M sex that went wrong. There's been no suggestion that anybody outside the gay community could be at risk."

Fiona scowled at the horizon. "That's only one possibility. And we don't know if Drew Shand had any death threats, because all we know is what the police are telling us. I know it's a long shot to suggest that the killing might have more to do with Drew's writing than his life, but it's a possibility, and while it's a possibility, I think Kit should be taking this more seriously."

"And that's what you had a fight about?"

"We've hardly spoken since."

"Presumably Kit understands why you're so wound up about this?" Caroline said, taking advantage of the path splitting into two parallel tracks to catch up with Fiona.

"I think he's got the message that I'm concerned about him," Fiona said frostily.

"But that's not really what it's about, is it?"

Fiona said nothing, simply ploughing on resolutely and making great play of looking down at the river as it widened into the still expanse of water created by the dam for the Georgian mill at Cressbrook.

"This isn't just about Kit, Fiona. It's about Lesley."

Fiona stopped in her tracks. "It's nothing to do with Lesley." Her jaw was set in a stubborn line.

Caroline came to a halt a few feet ahead of her and turned to put a gloved hand on her arm. "You don't have to pretend with me, Fiona. You can't bear the thought of losing him because you've already lost Lesley and you know what it feels like when someone you love is murdered. And that fear magnifies the slightest danger into something life-threatening, turning you into a one-woman nanny state." Caroline paused. Fiona said nothing, so she pressed on. "I understand the phenomenon, because I do it myself. It drives Julia crazy. If she's in town without the car, I always pick her up. She says it makes her feel like a teenager whose mother doesn't trust her not to be snogging the local ruffian behind the bike shed."

Caroline gave a weak laugh. "One time, early on in our relationship, she insisted that I not pick her up after a parents' evening. So I hung around outside the school and waited till she came out. I followed her home. And I nearly gave her a heart attack because when she was cutting through one of the alleys in the town centre, she heard footsteps behind her and thought she was going to be mugged. That was when she realized that my insistence on picking her up was more about my fears than about her capabilities. So now she goes along with me, in spite of how it irritates her deep down. Fiona, you need to tell Kit why you've let this threatening letter take on such huge proportions. If he says it's nothing, he's probably right. He knows what his post is like. But he needs to know that you're not just fussing. That there's a valid reason for the way you're behaving."

Fiona glared at the limestone cliffs on the other side of the dale. "I thought I was the psychologist around here." Her voice shook slightly.

"Yeah, well, psychologist, analyse yourself."

Fiona studied the scuffed toes of her walking boots. "You're probably right. I should explain myself better." She met Caroline's steady gaze. "I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to him." Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

Caroline pulled Fiona into a tight hug. "I know."

Fiona drew back and managed a frail smile. "I'll talk to him when I get home. Promise. Now, are we going to stand here till we get hypothermia, or are we going to the Monsal Head pub?"

Caroline pretended to consider. "I think, on balance, I'm going to go for the pub."

"Race you to the dam," Fiona said, setting off across the hillside at a killer pace.

"You win," Caroline muttered, following at a more reasonable speed. Twelve years on, and still Lesley's death was the denning event in both their lives. No matter how much they tried to put it behind them, it was there, ready to ambush them, she thought. Sometimes she wondered if they would ever be free of its embracing shadow. Or even if they actually wanted to be.

Fiona marched up Dartmouth Park Hill from the tube station, determined to set things straight with Kit. Caroline was right; she just hadn't allowed herself to accept what was driving her determination that he take the letter seriously. Head down, she scuffed through fallen leaves, easily out pacing the late commuters coming home from the office. She reached the left turn into their street in record time, gathering speed as she headed downhill. She was eager now, more than ready to apologize and explain.

So her heart sank when she opened the door and heard Kit call, "We're upstairs." Whoever the other component of 'we' was, she wasn't in the mood for their company.

"Just taking my boots off," she shouted. Backpack on the floor, jacket tossed over the newel post, Fiona undid her laces and stepped free. She wiggled her toes at the pleasure of release. Comfortable as her well-worn boots were, they still caged her feet. She stopped in the kitchen to pick up a glass, reckoning that if Kit had company, the wine would already be open, then she made her way up to the first-floor living room.

The lamps were on, casting scattered pools of warm light through the wide room. Kit was in his favourite armchair, glass in hand. That would have been perfect if he'd been alone. But his companion was the last person Fiona felt like seeing.

Curled up on the sofa, her strappy sandals kicked off on the rug below her, was Georgia Lester. A legend in her own lifetime, Georgia had published over thirty novels in a twenty-five-year career that had seen her rise to challenge P. D. James and Ruth Rendell to the title of Queen of Crime. She'd been one of the first crime writers to have her work successfully adapted for TV, and that had guaranteed her a slot in the bestseller lists ever since. She was a darling of the media, shamelessly exploiting every possible opportunity to appear in print, on the radio or on TV. Men fell for her flirtatious flattery and her undeniable generosity; most women, including Fiona, cheerfully loathed her. "She's the Barbara Cartland of crime fiction," Fiona had once remarked to Mary Helen Margolyes, who had choked on her drink and then promptly passed the remark around the bush telegraph. Without attribution, of course.

The soft illumination flattered Georgia, softening the tautness of cosmetically tightened skin, minimizing the elaborate make-up that Georgia skilfully employed to keep the years further at bay. In this light, she could pass for early forties, which Fiona regarded as nothing short of miraculous for a woman who couldn't be a day under fifty-seven. "Fiona, darling," Georgia purred, tilting her head upwards in a gesture that demanded an air kiss.

Fiona obliged, conscious of her wind-burnt skin, her unbrushed hair, and that her fleece probably smelled of sweat. Georgia, naturally, was fragrant with Chanel N 5 and dressed immaculately in a flowing midnight-blue garment that clung only to the strategic points of breasts and hips. Her hair, an improbable but convincing ash-blonde, appeared to have come straight from the salon. "I wasn't expecting to see you, Georgia," Fiona said as she turned away and helped herself to a glass of wine. She crossed to Kit and kissed his cheek. "Hello, love," she said, hoping the action would combine with her tone of voice to indicate that she was offering a truce.

He caught her round the waist with his free arm and hugged her, relieved that a day in the hills with Caroline seemed to have broken down her hostility. It unsettled Kit when things were scratchy between them, but he'd realized early on that he would either have to get used to that or learn to apologize even when he didn't believe he was in the wrong. Now, he mostly gave in, for the sake of a quiet life. But sometimes, he dug his heels in, tolerating the edgy atmosphere for as long as it took for Fiona to acknowledge she might possibly have been less than right. "Did you have a good day, then?" he asked.

"We were lucky with the weather," Fiona said, perching on the arm of his chair. "We did about ten miles; great views."

Georgia shuddered. "Ten miles? I don't know how you do it, Fiona, I really don't. Wouldn't you rather be tucked up somewhere warm and cosy with this delicious man?"

"The two are not mutually exclusive, Georgia," Fiona said. "I enjoy the exercise."

Georgia's smile was the equivalent of a teacher patting a small child on the head. "I've always preferred to take my exercise indoors," she said.

Fiona refused to rise. "So, how are you, Georgia? I hear you're feeling a bit nervous about your safety."

Georgia immediately switched on an expression of tragedy. "Poor, poor Drew. Such a terrible fate, and such a dreadful loss to us all."

"I didn't realize you knew Drew," Fiona said, trying not to sound as bitchy as she felt.

"I meant his work, Fiona, dear. To see such talent snuffed out so young is indescribably tragic."

Fiona resisted the impulse to gag. "But surely, Drew's death is no reason for you to feel under threat?" she asked.

"That's why Georgia's here," Kit interrupted. He didn't want the sparring between the two women to drive Fiona from the room. It had happened before; rather than allow it to develop into all-out hostility that might damage the unlikely friendship between Kit and Georgia, Fiona would invariably remove herself from the fray. Tonight, however, he wanted her to stay.

"Absolutely, my dear. When Kit told me about the terrible letter he'd had, I knew at once I had to come. He was taking it so lightly, you see. And when he told me your reaction, I knew I had an ally in you, my dear." She gave Fiona the benefit of the full radiance of her cosmetically enhanced smile.

"Georgia's had a letter like mine," Kit said. "Show it to Fiona it must be from the same person."

Georgia picked up a folded piece of paper from the occasional table by the sofa. She held it out, forcing Fiona to get up and collect it from her. Fiona crossed to the other armchair before she opened it and studied it. The paper and the typeface looked the same as Kit's letter. And the style was similar. As far as she could recall, whole sentences were identical.

"Georgia Lester," she read, 'you call yourself a Queen of Crime, but all you are monarch of is plagiarism and protectionism. Your fame is based on what you have stolen from others. You give no credit where it is due and your lies deprive others of what is rightfully theirs.

"Your work is a feeble reflection of other people's light. You would be nothing without the ideas of others to feed on. You have striven to ensure that competition is driven from the field. When you could have offered help, you have trampled the faces of those who are greater than you will ever be. You are a vampire who sucks the blood of those whose gifts you envy. You know this to be true. Search your sluttish soul and you will not be able to deny what you have deprived me of.

"The time has come for you to pay. You deserve nothing from me but my contempt and my hatred. If killing you is what it takes to grant what is rightfully mine, then so be it.

The hour and the day will be of my choosing. I trust you will not sleep easy; you do not deserve so to do. I will enjoy your funeral. From your ashes, I will rise like a phoenix."

Fiona carefully folded the letter closed. She had no doubt it had come from the same source as the one that had so disturbed her a couple of nights before. "When did you get this, Georgia?"

Georgia waved one hand negligently. "A fortnight ago? I can't be sure. I came back from Dorset last Tuesday and it was among the mail waiting for me."

"Did you do anything about it?"

Georgia stroked the hair over her right temple. "To be honest, I thought it must be one of those crank letters Kit tells me he gets regularly. It's not something I've ever had much experience of the letters I get are invariably from admirers. My work is so much less provocative than Kit's, you see. But when Kit told me he'd had so similar a letter, I felt sure we shouldn't ignore them. In the light of Drew's murder, I mean."

"Georgia thinks we should take them to the police," Kit said. "Like you."

Fiona looked at him in dismay. She was caught on the horns of a dilemma of her own making. While she found the letters profoundly disturbing, she was also loath to take any course of action that would link Kit with Georgia in the eyes of both police and public. If they took these letters to the police, then within twenty-four hours, a media circus would descend upon them. Whatever Georgia might promise here and now, Fiona knew the lure of publicity would be far too strong for her to resist. It would be a nightmare.

Not only would the invasion of her and Kit's privacy be hideous. But if he didn't have a stalker before, he soon would have. Photographs of their house would appear in the tabloids, an easily identifiable target for any of the seriously strange who found something in his books that tapped into their own mental frailties. She knew she wasn't being paranoid; they knew at least one crime writer whose life had been rendered so intolerable by a stalker that the family had been forced to move house and to change their children's schools.

But she was the one who had pushed so hard for action when Kit had received his death threat. If she was going to change her tune now, she'd better have a good reason lined up. "I agree you should take them seriously," she said cautiously. "But I'm not convinced that anything would be gained by taking these letters to the police. As you said yourself, Kit, there's little they could do with them. It's not likely there will be any forensics on the letters, they offer no clues to the sender's identity, and the police don't have the resources to protect either of you. All it would do would be to attract unwelcome attention to the pair of you from the very kind of person you're nervous of."

Kit looked faintly baffled. "That's not what you said the other night."

Fiona gave an embarrassed smile and half-shrug. "I've been giving it some thought today. I realized I was overreacting and that you were right."

Kit's eyebrows rose. "Can I have that in writing?" he said.

"That's all very well," Georgia said, her mouth drooping in petulance. "But we could be at serious risk here. Are you seriously suggesting that we forget all about this, Fiona?"

Fiona shook her head. "Of course not, Georgia. You and Kit must take every care." She forced an artificial smile. "I understand you wanted your publisher to provide you with bodyguards for your book tour? That would be a good place to start."

Kit stared at them, open-mouthed. He couldn't believe Fiona had kept a straight face. "You want me to get a minder?" he asked, incredulous.

"Not if you take sensible precautions. Don't be out on the street at night alone. Don't strike up conversations with strangers when you're on your own." She grinned. "And don't go to gay S&M bars."

"I don't think this is a joking matter, Fiona," Georgia said huffily.

"No, sorry, you're right, Georgia. But what you must bear in mind is that it's unlikely the person who sent these letters is the same person who killed Drew."

"How can you be so sure?"

It was Fiona's turn to adopt an air of patronage. "There's a saying in law enforcement. "Killers don't call and callers don't kill." Psychologically speaking, people who write threatening letters seldom carry out their threats. What they want is to cause fear without getting their hands dirty. And people who murder generally fail to advertise their intentions ahead of time. It would make their plans much harder to carry out, for one thing. If you like, I'll take both of these letters and subject them to professional psycho linguistic analysis. If, after that, I think there is some substantive reason to be genuinely worried, I'll come to the police with you. Is that a deal?"

Georgia pursed her lips. If she could have seen how it revealed the fine lines around her mouth, she'd never have done it again. "I'll allow myself to be guided by your professional judgement, Fiona. But I'm not entirely happy, I have to say. And I will be speaking to my publisher about providing me with a bodyguard."

"Wise move," said Fiona, struggling to stifle the giggle that threatened to erupt.

"And now," Georgia said, gathering her dress around her and elegantly slipping her feet into her shoes, "I must away. Dear Anthony and I are dining with the culture minister and his partner, and I'm already fashionably late."

While Kit saw Georgia to her car, Fiona reclaimed the sofa and stretched out full length, letting her muscles relax. The letters were disturbing. But now she had recognized what was really eating at her, she was able to put them into perspective. They contained, she believed, no credible threat.

She heard Kit running upstairs, and he collapsed on the sofa beside her, cuddling her close. "You are a very wicked woman," he said, laughter in his voice.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Bodyguards would be a good place to start," he mimicked.

"Well, she deserves it. Honestly, Kit, I don't know how you can put up with all that archness."

"I've always had a weakness for high camp," he confessed. "She's good fun, Fiona. And generous to a fault."

"Only if you're a chap, darling," Fiona said, in a parody of Georgia's grand manner.

"And they say men are bitches." He slid his arms around her, pressing his body against hers. "Have we stopped fighting now?"

Fiona sighed. "I overreacted. I always have Lesley at the back of my mind. Even when I don't know it myself."

"Thank you, Caroline." He buried his face in her hair and kissed her neck. Then he pulled away. "Oh, and by the way. I just wanted to say, I've never heard a bigger load of bullshit in all my time with you. "I'll subject the letters to professional psycho linguistic analysis." Honestly, Fiona."

"Georgia seemed to think it was a good idea."

"Yeah, but Georgia's grasp on reality is shot to fuck. Let's not forget she actually believes our policemen are wonderful. And that accusations of racism and corruption against the Metropolitan Police are wicked lies spread by left-wing conspirators."

"They're not?" Fiona's eyes widened in mock-horror.

"I don't know how to tell you this, Fiona, but there's no Father Christmas either."

She pulled his head down towards her. "I'll just have to see what you've got in your sack for me, then."