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into two large glasses, envisaging a handicapped child, more painfully beloved than its brothers, a beautiful brain-damaged child, a child doomed to die at birth but never to be forgotten…He shook his head as if to negate these thoughts. A handful of fattening calorie-filled cashew nuts went into a bowl. He loved cashew nuts with what he sometimes thought was an unhealthy fixation. Now was no time for what his old dad had called “banting.”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with it,” Dora said as he went back into the room. “If that’s what you’ve been thinking. I know I have. It’s fine. Sylvia’s four months pregnant and Neil’s the father.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYes, you did hear me. That’s what I said. Neil’s the father. There’s more to come, though. A lot more.”
    Dora took an unladylike swig of her wine and sighed. “I hoped they’d get back together, she and Neil. I always hoped that, as you know. But that’s not it. He’s apparently very happy with his girlfriend—what’s she called?”
    â€œNaomi.”
    â€œHe and Naomi are happy but for one thing. She can’t have children and it’s not a simple case of trying and failing. She’ll never be able to have any.”
    â€œI see what’s coming,” said Wexford. “I see it in all its horror. She’s having this baby for them. She’s going to give it to them.” Suddenly the room was hot, the shade outside made no difference. It was hot and close and oppressive, and he was sweating again, beads of sweat breaking out on his face. “She’s got Neil on her conscience because she thinks, or both of them think, that she left him for no reason. Just because she got fed up or bored. So she’s making it up to him by having his baby as a present for him and his girlfriend. I know her. I know the way her mind works. Why can’t she confine her social-worker dogooding to her clients?”
    â€œEvery digit of your blood pressure is showing in your face,” said Dora. “You want to calm down. You’re even worse than I am.”
    Â 
    Hannah Goldsmith was writing her report. Or her new computer measuring twenty centimeters by twelve was writing it while she did the thinking, remembering, and transcribing of her notes. Jewel Terrace, Brimhurst was her subject. She and Baljinder Bhattacharya had spent a large part of the day there and been back in the late afternoon. It was a piece of luck that of all the four occupants of the terrace, while two of them were in full-time employment, only one was out at work. Only John Brooks had left his house that morning, at the early hour of six-thirty, to drive to the Stowerton Industrial Estate where he was security officer at a large manufacturing complex.
    The occupant of number one was a horror. Hannah knew she shouldn’t be ageist, but really there were limits. She realized she had an irrational dislike of old men. Not old people, only men. This prejudice shouldn’t be allowed to go on and perhaps she should think about having counseling for her problem. Briefly, she lifted her fingers from the computer, thinking about whether to go back to her old counselor or find one specializing in relations with the elderly. Still, for now she must get on with this report.
    The horror’s name was Henry Nash. His living room was hot and stuffy with a nasty chemical stench overlaying cooking smells, which Wexford would have known but which Hannah was too young to recognize as camphor. Henry himself wore a pair of striped trousers, evidently part of a suit, fraying blue braces, and a collarless striped shirt done up tightly at the neck. Hannah, who found stubble on a man’s chin attractive, particularly on Bal Bhattacharya’s, was repelled by the half-inch growth of white beard on Henry Nash’s.
    All this would have mattered little in comparison with Henry’s attitude