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tore. The animal vanished.
    Deborah saw that no blood seeped from the wound the claw had made, small though it was. That seemed momentarily odd until she remembered that the dead do not bleed. Only the living have that pleasure.
    At last she cried out, spinning away. But every impression stayed so vividly before her that she knew she might as well have gone on staring forever. A leaf caught in hair the colour of walnuts; a crescent scar cradling the left kneecap; a pear-shaped birthmark at the base of the spine; and running along the length of the visible parts of the left side of the body, an odd bruising of the flesh, as if the child had been hurled down on his side sometime in the past.
    He could have been asleep. He should have been asleep. But even Deborah’s brief viewing of him from a distance of two yards had allowed her to see the telling abrasions at his wrists and ankles: stark white flecks of dead skin against a background that was red and inflamed. She knew what that meant. She guessed what the uniform circular burns along the tender flesh of his inner arm meant as well.
    He wasn’t asleep. Death had not come to him as a friend.
    “God, God .” she cried out.
    Her words gave her sudden, unexpected strength. She ran towards the car park.
     

     
    Simon Allcourt-St. James pulled his old MG next to the police line that had been set up at the entrance to the car park of St. Giles’ Church. Briefly his headlamps shone upon the white face of a young, very gawky police constable who maintained a duty post there. He seemed an unnecessary appurtenance, for although the church did not stand in complete isolation, the houses in the surrounding neighbourhood were not closely situated to it, and no curious crowd had gathered upon the road.
    But it was Sunday, St. James recalled. Evensong was due to be celebrated within the hour. Someone would have to be present to turn the faithful away.
    Down the narrow lane that led into the car park, he could see an arc of lights where the incidents room had been set up by the police. A stark blue flashing broke into the white illumination there with a steady, pulsating rhythm. Someone had allowed a police car’s light to continue to whirl, disregarded, on its roof.
    St. James switched off the MG’s ignition and released the hand grip that operated the clutch. He got out of the car awkwardly, his braced left leg landing at an irritating angle that put him off balance for a moment. The young constable watched him right himself, his face wearing an expression that said he was unsure whether to go to the other man’s assistance or warn him off the grounds. He chose the latter. It was more within his purview.
    “Can’t stop here, sir,” he barked. “Police investigation in progress.”
    “I know, Constable. I’ve come for my wife. Your DI phoned me. She found the body.”
    “You’ll be Mr. St. James, then. Sorry, sir.” The constable unabashedly examined the other man as if this would allow him to verify his identity. “I didn’t recognise you.” When St. James did not make an immediate reply, the young man seemed to feel compelled to continue. “I did see you on the news last week, but you didn’t—”
    St. James interrupted. “Of course.” He anticipated the rest of the embarrassed words that halted from the constable’s mouth. On the news, you didn’t look crippled . Certainly not. Why ever should he? Standing on the steps of the Old Bailey, submitting to an interview about the recent use of genetic fingerprinting in a court of law, why should he look crippled? The camera was kept on his face. It didn’t make a study of the worst that fate had done to his body.
    “Is my wife in the incidents room?” he asked.
    The constable waved in the direction of a driveway across the road. “They’ve kept her in the house over there. That’s where she made the call to us.”
    St. James nodded his thanks and crossed the road. The house in question stood a short distance