hapter 24

The wheels of his suitcase rumbled behind Alex as he emerged into the concourse of Sea Tac airport. It was hard to focus on the people waiting to meet the passengers, and if Paul hadn't waved, he might have missed him. Alex hurried toward him and the two men embraced without self-consciousness. "Thanks for coming," Paul said quietly.

"Lynn sends her love," Alex said. "She really wanted to be here, but?

"I know. You've wanted this baby so long, you can't take chances." Paul reached for Alex's suitcase and led the way toward the terminal exit. "How was the flight?"

"I slept most of the way across the Atlantic. But I couldn't seem to settle on the second flight. I kept thinking about Ziggy, and the fire. What a hellish way to go."

Paul stared straight ahead. "I keep thinking it was my fault."

"How could that be?" Alex asked, following him out to the car park.

"You know we converted the whole of the attic into one big bedroom and bathroom for us? We should have had an external fire escape. I kept meaning to get the builder to come back and put one in, but there was always something more important to be done? Paul came to a stop by his SUV and stowed Alex's suitcase in the luggage space, his broad shoulders straining against his plaid jacket.

"We all put things off," Alex said, his hand on Paul's back. "You know Ziggy wouldn't blame you for that. It was just as much his responsibility."

Paul shrugged and climbed behind the wheel. "There's a decent motel about ten minutes from the house. I'm staying there. I booked you in too, if that's OK? If you'd rather be in the city, we can change it."

"No. I'd rather be with you." He gave Paul a wan smile. "That way we can get maudlin together, right?"

"Right."

They fell silent as Paul headed out on the highway toward Seattle. They skirted the city and continued north. Ziggy and Paul's home had been outside the city limits, a two-story wooden house built on a hillside with breathtaking views of Puget Sound, Possession Sound and, in the distance, Mount Walker. When they'd first visited, Alex had thought they'd been dropped into a corner of paradise. "Wait till it starts raining," Ziggy had said.

Today it was overcast, with the clear light that accompanies high cloud. Alex wanted rain, to match his mood. But the weather seemed reluctant to oblige. He stared out of the window, catching occasional glimpses of the snow caps on the Olympics and the Cascades. The roadside was lined with gray slush, ice crystals glittering occasionally as they caught the light. He was glad he'd only ever previously visited in summer. The view from the window was different enough not to bring too many painful memories flooding back.

Paul turned off the main highway a couple of miles before the exit that led to his former home. The road led through pine trees to a bluff that looked across toward Whidbey Island. The motel had gone for the log cabin style, which Alex thought looked ridiculous on a building as large as the one that housed the reception, bar and restaurant. But the individual cabins set back in a row at the edge of the trees were attractive enough. Paul, whose cabin was next to Alex's, left him to unpack. "I'll see you in the bar in half an hour, OK?"

Alex hung up his funeral suit and shirt, leaving the rest of his clothes in the suitcase. He'd spent most of the transcontinental flight sketching, and he tore out the one sheet he was satisfied with and propped it up against the mirror. Ziggy stared out at him in three-quarter profile, a crooked smile creasing his eyes. Not a bad likeness from memory, Alex thought sadly. He checked his watch. Almost midnight at home. Lynn wouldn't mind the lateness of the hour. He dialed the number. Their short conversation eased the sharpness of the grief that had threatened to overwhelm him momentarily.

Alex ran a basin of cold water and dashed it over his face. Feeling slightly more alert, he trudged across to the bar, its Christmas decorations seeming incongruous in the face of his sadness. Johnny Mathis crooned saccharine in the background and Alex wanted to muffle the speakers as horses hooves had once been muffled in funeral processions. He found Paul in a booth nursing a bottle of Pyramid ale. He signaled to the barman for another of the same and slid in opposite Paul. Now he had the chance to look at him properly, he could see the signs of strain and grief. Paul's light brown hair was rumpled and unwashed, his blue eyes weary and red-rimmed. A patch of stubble under his left ear showed uncharacteristic carelessness in a man who was always neat and tidy.

"I called Lynn," he said. "She was asking after you."

"She's got a good heart," Paul said. "I feel like I got to know her a lot better this year. It seemed like being pregnant made her open up more."

"I know what you mean. I thought she'd be paralyzed with anxiety throughout this pregnancy. But she's been really relaxed." Alex's drink arrived.

Paul raised his glass. "Let's drink to the future," he said. "Right now, I don't feel like it has much to offer, but I know Ziggy would give me hell for dwelling in the past."

"To the future," Alex echoed. He swallowed a mouthful of beer and said, "How are you holding up?"

Paul shook his head. "I don't think it's hit me yet. There's been so much to take care of. Letting people know, making the funeral arrangements and stuff. Which reminds me. Your friend Tom, the one Ziggy called Weird? He's coming in tomorrow."

The news provoked a mixed reaction from Alex. Part of him longed for the connection to his past that Weird would provide. Part of him acknowledged the unease that still wriggled inside him when he recalled the night Rosie Duff died. And part of him dreaded the aggravation Weird would trail in his wake if he went off on his fundamentalist homophobia. "He's not going to preach at the funeral, is he?"

"No. We're having a humanist service. But Ziggy's friends will have the opportunity to get up and talk about him. If Tom wants to say something then, he's welcome."

Alex groaned. "You know he's a fundamentalist bigot who preaches hellfire and damnation?"

Paul gave a wry smile. "He should be careful. It's not just the South that does lynch mobs."

"I'll have a word with him beforehand." Which would be about as effective as a twig in the path of a runaway train, Alex thought.

They sipped their beers in silence for a few minutes. Then Paul cleared his throat and said, "There's something I need to tell you, Alex. It's about the fire."

Alex looked puzzled. "The fire?"

Paul massaged the bridge of his nose. "The fire wasn't an accident, Alex. It was set. Deliberately."

"Are they sure?"

Paul sighed. "They've had arson investigators crawling all over the place ever since it cooled down enough."

"But that's terrible. Who would do something like that to Ziggy?"

"Alex, I'm the cops' first pick."

"But that's insane. You loved Ziggy."

"Which is exactly why I'm the prime suspect. They always look at the spouse first, right?" Paul's tone was harsh.

Alex shook his head. "Nobody who knew you two would entertain that idea for a minute."

"But the cops didn't know us. And however hard they try to pretend different, most cops like gays about as much as your friend Tom does." He swallowed a mouthful of beer, as if to take the taste of his sentiment away. "I spent most of yesterday at the police station, answering questions."

"I don't get it. You were hundreds of miles away. How are you supposed to have burned your house down when you were in California?"

"You remember the layout of the house?" Alex nodded and Paul continued. "They're saying the fire started in the basement, by the heating-oil tank. According to the fire department guy, it looked like someone had stacked up cans of paint and gasoline at one end of the tank, then piled up paper and wood around them. Which we certainly didn't do. But they also found what looks like the remains of a fire bomb. A pretty simple device, they said."

"Wasn't it destroyed in the fire?"

"These guys are good at reconstructing what happens in a fire. From the bits and pieces they've found, they think it went like this. They found the fragments of a sealed paint can. Fixed to the inside of the lid, the remains of an electronic timer. How they think it worked was that the can had gasoline or some other accelerant in it. Something that would give off fumes. Most of the space inside the can would have been occupied by the fumes. Then when the timer went off, the spark would've ignited the vapor, the can would've exploded, cascading burning accelerant on the other flammable materials. And because the house is wooden, it would have gone up like a torch." The blank recital wavered and Paul's mouth trembled. "Ziggy didn't stand a chance."

"And they think you did this?" Alex was incredulous. At the same time, he felt profound pity for Paul. He knew better than anyone the consequences of baseless suspicion and the toll they exacted.

"They've got no other suspects. Ziggy wasn't exactly a guy who made enemies. And I'm the main beneficiary of his will. What's more, I'm a physicist."

"And that means you know how to make a firebomb?"

"They seem to think so. It's kind a hard to explain what I actually do, but they seem to figure, 'Hey, this guy's a scientist, he must know how to blow people up.' If it wasn't so fucking tragic, I'd have to laugh."

Alex signaled to the barman to bring them fresh drinks. "So they think you set a firebomb and went off to California to give a lecture?"

"That seems to be the way their minds are working. I thought the fact that I'd been away for three nights would put me in the clear, but apparently not. The arson investigator told my lawyer that the timer the killer used could have been set anything up to a week in advance. So I'm still on the hook."

"Wouldn't you have been taking a hell of a chance? What if Ziggy had gone down to the basement and seen it?"

"We almost never went down there in the winter. It was full of summer stuff?the dinghies, the sailboards, the garden furniture. We kept our skis in the garage. Which is another strike against me. How would anybody else know their setup was secure?"

Alex dismissed the point with a wave of his hand. "How many people go down into their basements regularly in the winter? It's not as if your washing machine was down there. How hard would it have been to break in?"

"Not too hard," Paul said. "It wasn't wired into the security system because the guy who does our yard work in the summer has to get in and out. That way, we didn't have to give him details of the alarm system on the house. I guess anyone who was determined to get in wouldn't have found it too hard."

"And of course, any evidence of a break-in would have been destroyed by the fire," Alex sighed.

"So you see, it looks pretty black against me."

"That's insane. Like I said, anybody who knows you would realize you could never have hurt Ziggy, far less killed him."

Paul's smile barely twitched his mustache. "I appreciate your confidence, Alex. And I'm not even going to dignify their accusations with a denial. But I wanted you to know what's being said. I know you understand how terrible it is to be suspected of something you had nothing to do with."

Alex shuddered in spite of the warmth of the cozy bar. "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, never mind my friend. It's horrible. Christ, Paul, I hope they find out who did this, for your sake. What happened to us poisoned my life."

"Ziggy too. He never forgot how fast the human race could turn hostile. It made him real careful in the way he dealt with the world. Which is why the whole thing is so insane. He went out of his way not to make enemies of people. It's not that he was a pushover?

"Nobody could ever have accused him of that," Alex agreed. "But you're right. A soft answer turns away wrath. That was his motto. But what about his work? I mean, things go wrong in hospitals. Kids die or they don't get better like they should. Parents need somebody to blame."

"This is America, Alex," Paul said ironically. "Doctors don't take any unnecessary risks. They're too scared of being sued. Sure, Ziggy lost patients from time to time. And sometimes things didn't work out as well as he'd hoped. But one of the reasons he was such a successful pediatrician was that he made his patients and their families his friends. They trusted him, and they were right to do that. Because he was a good doctor."

"I know that. But sometimes when kids die, logic goes out the window."

"There was nothing like that. If there had been, I'd have known about it. We talked to each other, Alex. Even after ten years, we talked to each other about everything."

"What about colleagues? Had he pissed anybody off?"

Paul shook his head. "I don't think so. He had high standards, and I guess not everybody he worked with could keep up to the mark all the time. But he chose his staff pretty carefully. There's a great atmosphere at the clinic. I don't think there's one single person there who didn't respect him. Hell, these people are our friends. They come to the house for barbecues, we baby-sit their kids. Without Ziggy to run the clinic, they've got to feel less secure about their futures."

"You're making him sound like Mr. Perfect," Alex said. "And we both know he wasn't that."

This time, Paul's smile made it to his eyes. "No, he wasn't perfect. Perfectionist, maybe. That could drive you crazy. Last time we went skiing, I thought I was going to have to drag him off the mountain. There was one turn on the run he just couldn't get right. Every time, he screwed up. And that meant we had to go back one more time. But you don't kill somebody because they have anally retentive tendencies. If I'd wanted Ziggy out of my life, I'd just have left him. You know? I wouldn't have had to kill him."

"But you didn't want him out of your life, that's the point."

Paul bit his lip and stared down at the rings of split beer on the table top. "I'd give anything to have him back," he said softly. Alex gave him a moment to collect himself.

"They'll find who did this," he said eventually.

"You think? I wish I agreed with you. What keeps going through my head is what you guys went through all those years ago. They never found who killed that girl. And everybody looked at you with different eyes because of it." He looked up at Alex. "I'm not strong like Ziggy was. I don't know if I can live with that."

Chapter 25

Through a mist of tears, Alex tried to focus on the words printed on the order of service. If he'd been asked which of the music on the list might have moved him to tears at Ziggy's funeral, he'd probably have settled on Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide" with its final defiant denial of isolation. But he'd made it through that, sustained to the point of elation by the vivid images of a youthful Ziggy projected on the big screen at the end of the crematorium. What had done for him was the San Francisco Gay Male Choir singing Brahms's setting of the passage from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians about faith, hope, and love. Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Spiegel in einem dunkeln Worte; for now we see through a glass, darkly. The words seemed painfully appropriate. Nothing he'd heard about Ziggy's death made any kind of sense, neither logically nor metaphysically.

Tears cascaded down his cheeks, and he didn't care. He wasn't the only one weeping in the crowded crematorium, and being far from home seemed to liberate him from his usual emotional reticence. Beside him, Weird loomed in an immaculately tailored cassock that made him look far more of a peacock than any of the gay men paying their last respects. He wasn't crying, of course. His lips were moving constantly. Alex presumed this was meant to be a sign of devoutness rather than of mental illness, since Weird's hand regularly strayed to the ridiculously ostentatious silver gilt cross on his chest. When he'd first seen it at Sea Tac airport, Alex had almost laughed out loud. Weird had strode confidently toward him, dropping his suit carrier to pull his old friend into a theatrical embrace. Alex noticed how smooth his skin appeared and speculated about plastic surgery.

"It was good of you to come," Alex said, leading the way to the hire car he'd picked up that morning.

"Ziggy was my oldest friend. Along with you and Mondo. I know our lives have moved in very different directions, but nothing could change that. The life I have now I owe in part to the friendship we shared. I'd be a very poor Christian to turn my back on that."

Alex couldn't work out why it was that everything Weird said sounded as if it was for public consumption. Whenever he spoke, it was as if there was an unseen congregation hanging on his every word. They'd only met a handful of times over the past twenty years, but on each occasion it had been the same. Creeping Jesus, Lynn had christened him the first time they'd visited him in the small Georgia town where he'd based his ministry. The nickname felt as appropriate now as it had then.

"And how is Lynn?" Weird asked as he settled himself in the passenger seat, smoothing down his perfectly cut clerical suit.

"Seven months pregnant and blooming," Alex said.

"Praise the Lord! I know how much you two have longed for this." Weird's face lit up in what appeared a genuine smile. But then, he spent enough time in front of the cameras for his television mission via a local channel, it was hard to distinguish the assumed from the real. "I thank the Lord for the blessing of children. The happiest memories I hold are of my five. The love a man feels for his children is deeper and more pure than anything else in this world. Alex, I know you're going to delight in this life change."

"Thanks, Weird."

The reverend winced. "Gonnae no' do that," he said, reverting to a teenage catchphrase. "I don't think it's an appropriate form of address these days."

"Sorry. Old habits die hard. You'll always be Weird to me."

"And who exactly calls you Gilly these days?"

Alex shook his head. "You're right. I'll try to remember. Tom."

"I appreciate that, Alex. And if you want to have the child baptized, I'd be happy to officiate."

"Somehow, I don't think we'll be going down that road. The bairn can make it's own mind up when it's old enough."

Weird pursed his lips. "That's your choice, of course." The subtext was loud and clear. Damn your child to eternal perdition if you must. He gazed out of the window at the passing landscape. "Where are we headed?"

"Paul has booked you a cabin at the motel where we're staying."

"Is it near the scene of the fire?"

"About ten minutes away. Why?"

"I'd like to go there first."

"Why?"

"I want to say a prayer."

Alex exhaled noisily. "Fine. Look, there's something you should know. The police believe the fire was arson."

Weird bowed his head ponderously. "I feared as much."

"You did? How come?"

"Ziggy chose a perilous path. Who knows what sort of person he brought into his home? Who knows what damaged soul he drove to desperate measures?"

Alex thumped the steering wheel with his fist. "For fuck's sake, Weird. I thought the Bible said 'Judge not, that ye be not judged?' Who the hell do you think you are, coming out with rubbish like that? Whatever preconceptions you have about Ziggy's lifestyle, drop them right now. Ziggy and Paul were monogamous. Neither of them has had sex with anybody else for the past ten years."

Weird gave a small, condescending smile that made Alex want to smack him. "You always believed everything Ziggy said."

Alex didn't want to fight. He bit back a sharp retort and said, "What I was trying to tell you is that the police have got some daft notion in their heads that it was Paul who set the fire. So try to be a tad sensitive around him, eh?"

"Why do you think it's a daft notion? I don't know much about the way the police work, but I've been told that the majority of homicides that aren't gang-related are committed by spouses. And since you've asked me to be sensitive, I suppose we should regard Paul as Ziggy's spouse. If I were a police officer, I would consider myself derelict in my duty not to consider the possibility."

"Fine. That's their job. But we're Ziggy's friends. Lynn and I spent plenty of time with the pair of them over the years. And take it from me, that was never a relationship that was heading toward murder. You should remember what it feels like to be suspected of something you haven't done. Imagine how much worse it must be if the person who's dead is the person you loved. Well, that's what Paul's going through. And it's him that deserves our support, not the police."

"OK, OK," Weird muttered uneasily, the fa-de slipping momentarily as memory kicked in and he remembered the primal fear that had driven him into the arms of the church in the first place. He held his peace for the remainder of the journey, turning his head to stare out at the passing landscape to avoid Alex's occasional glances in his direction.

Alex took the familiar exit off the freeway and headed west toward Ziggy and Paul's former home. His stomach tightened as he turned up the narrow metaled road that wound through the trees. His imagination had already run riot with images of the fire. But when he rounded the final bend and saw what remained of the house, he knew his powers of invention had been woefully inadequate. He'd expected a blackened and scarred shell. But this was almost total destruction.

Speechless, Alex let the car glide to a halt. He climbed out and took a few slow steps toward the ruin. To his surprise, the smell of burning still hung in the air, cloying in the throat and nostrils. He gazed at the charred mess before him, scarcely able to superimpose his memory of the house on this wreckage. A few heavy beams stuck up at crazy angles, but there was almost nothing else that was recognizable. The house must have gone up like a burning brand dipped in pitch. The trees nearest the house had also been engulfed by the fire, their twisted skeletons stark against the view of the sea and the islands beyond.

He barely registered Weird walking past him. Head bowed, the minister stopped right at the edge of the crime-scene tapes that ringed the burned-out debris. Then he threw his head back, his thick mane of silvered hair shimmering in the light. "Oh Lord," he began, his voice sonorous in the open air.

Alex fought the giggle rising in his chest. He knew it was partly a nervous reaction to the intensity of emotion the ruin had provoked in him. But he couldn't help it. No one who had seen Weird off his face on hallucinogenics, or throwing up in a gutter after closing time could take this performance seriously. He turned on his heel and walked back to the car, slamming the door to seal himself off from whatever claptrap Weird was spouting at the clouds. He was tempted to drive off and leave the preacher to the elements. But Ziggy had never abandoned Weird?or any of the rest of them, for that matter. And right now, the best Alex could do for Ziggy was to keep the faith. So he stayed put.

A series of vivid visual images projected themselves against his mind's eye. Ziggy asleep in bed; a sudden flare of fire; the tongues of flame licking at the wood; the drift of smoke through familiar rooms; Ziggy stirring vaguely as the insidious fumes crept into his respiratory tract; the blurred shape of the house wavering behind a haze of heat and smoke; and Ziggy, unconscious, at the heart of the blaze. It was almost unbearable, and Alex wanted desperately to disperse the pictures in his head. He tried to conjure up a vision of Lynn, but he couldn't hold onto it. All he wanted was to be out of there, anywhere his mind could focus on a different vista.

After about ten minutes, Weird returned to the car, bringing a blast of chill air with him. "Brrr," he said. "I've never been convinced that hell is hot. If it was up to me, I'd make it colder than a meat freezer."

"I'm sure you could have a word with God when you get to heaven. OK to go back to the motel now?"

The journey seemed to have satisfied Weird's desire for Alex's company. Once he had checked in at the motel, he announced he'd called a cab to take him into Seattle. "I have a colleague here I want to spend some time with." He'd arranged to meet Alex the following morning to drive to the funeral, and he seemed strangely subdued. Still, Alex dreaded what Weird would come out with at the funeral.

The Brahms died away and Paul walked up to the lectern. "We're all here because Ziggy meant something special to us," he said, clearly fighting to keep control of his voice. "If I spoke all day, I still couldn't convey half of what he meant to me. So I'm not even going to try. But if any of you have memories of Ziggy you'd like to share, I know we'd all like to hear them."

Almost before he'd stopped speaking, an elderly man stood up in the front row and walked stiffly to the podium. As he turned to face them, Alex realized the toll that burying a child took. Karel Malkiewicz seemed to have shrunk, his broad shoulders stooped and his dark eyes shrunk back into his skull. He hadn't seen Ziggy's widowed father for a couple of years, but the change was depressing. "I miss my son," he said, his Polish accent still audible beneath the Scots. "He made me proud all his life. Even as a child, he cared for other people. He was always ambitious, but not for personal glory. He wanted to be the best he could be, because that was how he could do his best for other people. Ziggy never cared much about what other people thought of him. He always said he would be judged by what he did, not by other people's opinions. I am glad to see so many of you here today, because that tells me that you all understood that about him." The old man took a sip of water from the glass on the lectern. "I loved my son. Maybe I didn't tell him that enough. But I hope he died knowing it." He bowed his head and returned to his seat.

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hold his tears at bay. One after another, Ziggy's friends and colleagues came forward. Some said little more than how much they'd loved him and how much they would miss him. Others told anecdotes of their relationship, many of them warm and funny. Alex wanted to get up and say something, but he couldn't trust his voice not to betray him. Then the moment he had dreaded. He felt Weird shift in his seat and rise to his feet. Alex groaned inwardly.

Watching him stride to the podium, Alex wondered at the presence Weird had managed to acquire over the years. Ziggy had always been the one with charisma, Weird the awkward gangling one who could be relied on to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, find the wrong note. But he'd learned his lesson well. A pin dropping would have sounded like the last trump as Weird composed himself to speak.

"Ziggy was my oldest friend," he intoned. "I thought the road he chose was misguided. He thought I was, to use a word for which there is no American-English equivalent, a pillock. Maybe even a charlatan. But that never mattered. The bond that existed between us was strong enough to survive that pressure. That's because the years we spent in each other's pockets were the hardest years in any man's life, the years when he grows from childhood to manhood. We all struggle through those years, trying to figure out who we are and what we have to offer the world. Some of us are lucky enough to have a friend like Ziggy to pick us up off the floor when we screw up."

Alex stared in disbelief. He couldn't quite believe his ears. He'd expected hellfire and damnation, and instead what he was hearing was unmistakably love. He found himself smiling, against all the odds.

"There were four of us," Weird continued. "The Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy. We met on our first day at high school and something magical happened. We bonded. We shared our deepest fears and our greatest triumphs. For years, we were the worst band in the world, and we didn't care. In any group, everybody takes on a role. I was the klutz. The fool. The one who always took things too far." He gave a small, self-deprecating shrug. "Some might say I still do. Ziggy was the one who saved me from myself. Ziggy was the one who kept me from destruction. He preserved me from the worst excesses of my personality until I found a greater Savior. But even then, Ziggy didn't let me go.

"We didn't see much of each other in recent years. Our lives were too full of the present. But that didn't mean we threw away the past. Ziggy still remained a touchstone for me in many ways. I won't pretend I approved of all the choices he made. You'd recognize me as a hypocrite if I pretended otherwise. But here, today, none of that matters. What counts is that my friend is dead and, with his death, a light has gone from my life. None of us can afford to lose the light. And so today, I mourn the passing of a man who made my way to salvation so much easier. All I can do for Ziggy's memory is to try to do the same thing for anyone else who crosses my path in need. If I can help any one of you today, don't hesitate to make yourself known to me. For Ziggy's sake." Weird looked round the room with a beatific smile. "I thank the Lord for the gift of Sigmund Malkiewicz. Amen."

OK, Alex thought. He reverted to type at the end. But Weird had done Ziggy proud in his own way. When his friend sat down again, Alex reached across and squeezed his hand. And Weird didn't let go.

Afterward, they filed out, pausing to shake hands with Paul and with Karel Malkiewicz. They emerged into weak sunshine, letting the flow of the crowd carry them past the floral tributes. In spite of Paul's request that only family should send flowers, there were a couple of dozen bouquets and wreaths. "He had a way of making us all feel like family," Alex said to himself.

"We were blood brothers," Weird said softly.

"That was good, what you said in there."

Weird smiled. "Not what you expected, was it? I could tell from your face."

Alex said nothing. He bent down to read a card. Dearest Ziggy, the world's too big without you. With love from all your friends at the clinic. He knew the feeling. He browsed the rest of the cards, then paused at the final wreath. It was small and discreet, a tight circlet of white roses and rosemary. Alex read the card and frowned. Rosemary for remembrance.

"You see this?" he asked Weird.

"Tasteful," Weird said approvingly.

"You don't think it's a bit?I don't know. Too close for comfort?"

Weird frowned. "I think you're seeing ghosts where none exist. It's a perfectly appropriate tribute."

"Weird, he died on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Rosie Duff's death. This card isn't signed. You don't think this is a bit heavy?"

"Alex, that's history." Weird spread his hand in a gesture that encompassed the mourners. "Do you seriously think there's anybody here but us who even knows Rosie Duff's name? It's just a slightly theatrical gesture, which should hardly come as a surprise, given the crowd that's here."

"They've reopened the case, you know." Alex could be as stubborn as Ziggy when the mood took him.

Weird looked surprised. "No, I didn't know."

"I read about it in the papers. They're doing a review of unsolved murders in the light of new technological advances. DNA and that."

Weird's hand went to his cross. "Thank the Lord."

Puzzled, Alex said. "You're not worried about all the old lies being taken out for an airing?"

"Why? We've nothing to fear. At last our names will be cleared."

Alex looked troubled. "I wish I thought it would be that easy."

Dr. David Kerr pushed his laptop away from him with a sharp exhalation of annoyance. He'd been trying to polish the first draft of an article on contemporary French poetry for the past hour, but the words had been making less and less sense the longer he glared at the screen. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, trying to convince himself there was nothing more bothering him than end-of-term exhaustion. But he knew he was kidding himself.

However hard he tried to escape the knowledge, he couldn't get away from the realization that, while he sat fiddling with his prose, Ziggy's friends and family were saying their final farewells half a world away. He wasn't sorry that he hadn't gone; Ziggy represented a part of his history so distant it felt like a past-life experience and he believed he didn't owe his old friend enough to counterbalance the hassle and upset of traveling to Seattle for a funeral. But the news of his death had rekindled memories David Kerr had worked hard to submerge so deep they seldom surfaced to trouble him. They were not memories that made for comfort.

Yet when the phone rang, he reached for it without any sense of apprehension. "Dr. Kerr?" The voice was unfamiliar.

"Yes. Who's this?"

"Detective Inspector Robin Maclennan of Fife Police." He spoke slowly and distinctly, like a man who knows he's had one more drink than was wise.

David shivered involuntarily, suddenly as cold as if submerged in the North Sea once more. "And why are you calling me?" he asked, hiding behind belligerence.

"I'm a member of the cold case review team. You may have read about it in the papers?"

"That doesn't answer my question," David snapped.

"I wanted to talk to you about the circumstances of my brother's death. That would be DI Barney Maclennan."

David was taken aback, left speechless by the directness of the approach. He'd always dreaded a moment like this, but after nearly twenty-five years he'd persuaded himself it would never come.

"Are you there?" Robin said. "I said, I wanted to talk to you about?

"I heard you," David said harshly. "I have nothing to say to you. Not now, not ever. Not even if you arrest me. You people ruined my life once. I will not give you the opportunity to do it again." He slammed the phone down, his breath coming in short pants, his hands shaking. He folded his arms across his chest and hugged himself. What was going on here? He'd had no idea that Barney Maclennan had had a brother. Why had he left it so long to challenge David about that terrible afternoon? And why was he raising it now? When he'd mentioned the cold case review, David had felt sure Maclennan wanted to talk about Rosie Duff, which would have been enough of an outrage. But Barney Maclennan? Surely Fife Police hadn't decided after twenty-five years to call it murder after all?

He shivered again, staring out into the night. The twinkling lights of the Christmas trees in the houses along the street seemed a thousand eyes, staring back at him. He jumped to his feet and yanked the study curtains closed. Then he leaned against the wall, eyes shut, heart pounding. David Kerr had done his best to bury the past. He'd done everything he could to keep it from his door. Clearly, that hadn't been enough. That left only one option. The question was, did he have the nerve to take it?