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were getting out.

     

      She walked to the periphery of the crowd. What little talk there was amongst the on-lookers was conducted in low voices; one or two of the older women were crying. Though she peered over the heads of the spectators she could see nothing. Turning to a bearded man, whose child was perched on his shoulders, she asked what was going on. He didn't know. Somebody dead, he'd heard, but he wasn't certain.

     

     

      'Anne-Marie?' she asked.

     

     

     A woman in front of her turned and said: 'You know her?' almost awed, as if speaking of a loved one.

     

     

      'A little,' Helen replied hesitantly. 'Can you tell me what's happened?'

     

      The woman involuntarily put her hand to her mouth, as if to stop the words before they came. But here they were nevertheless: 'The child - 'she said.

     

     

      'Kerry?'

     

     

      'Somebody got into the house around the back. Slit his throat.'

     

     

      Helen felt the sweat come again. In her mind's eye the newspapers rose and fell in Anne-Marie's yard.

     

     

      'No,' she said.

     

     

    'Just like that.'

     

      She looked at the tragedian who was trying to sell her this obscenity, and said, 'No,' again. It defied belief; yet her denials could not silence the horrid comprehension she felt.

     

      She turned her back on the woman and paddled her way out of the crowd. There would be nothing to see, she knew, and even if there had been she had no desire to look. These people - still emerging from their homes as the story spread - were exhibiting an appetite she was disgusted by. She was not of them; would never be of them. She wanted to slap every eager face into sense; wanted to say: 'It's pain and grief you're going to spy on. Why? Why?' But she had no courage left. Revulsion had drained her of all but the energy to wander away, leaving the crowd to its sport.

     

     

     

     

      Trevor had come home. He did not attempt an explanation of his absence, but waited for her to cross-question him. When she failed to do so he sank into an easy bonhomie that was worse than his

    expectant silence. She was dimly aware that her disinterest was probably more unsettling for him than the histrionics he had been anticipating. She couldn't have cared less.

     

      She tuned the radio to the local station, and listened for news. It came surely enough, confirming what the woman in the crowd had told her. Kerry Latimer was dead. Person or persons unknown had gained

     

    access to the house via the back yard and murdered the child while he played on the kitchen floor. A police spokesman mouthed the usual platitudes, describing Kerry's death as an 'unspeakable crime', and the miscreant as 'a dangerous and deeply disturbed individual'. For once, the rhetoric seemed justified, and the man's voice shook discernibly when he spoke of the scene that had confronted the officers in the kitchen of Anne-Marie's house.

     

    'Why the radio?' Trevor casually inquired, when Helen had listened for news through three consecutive bulletins. She saw no point in withholding her experience at Spector Street from him; he would find out sooner or later. Coolly, she gave him a bald outline of what had happened at Butts' Court.

     

     

      'This Anne-Marie is the woman you first met when you went to the estate; am I right?'

     

      She nodded, hoping he wouldn't ask her too many questions. Tears were close, and she had no intention of breaking down in front of him.

     

     

      'So you were right,' he said.

     

     

    'Right?'

     

     

    'About the place having a maniac.'

     

     

      'No,' she said. 'No.'

     

     

      'But the kid - '

     

      She got up and stood at the window, looking down two storeys into the darkened street below. Why did she feel the need to reject the conspiracy theory so urgently?; why was she now praying that Purcell had been right, and that all she'd been told had been lies? She went back and back to the