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“Why?” Bluntness was a quality she said she’d inherited from her father, a Yorkshireman who used to run a farm. I hadn’t met him and didn’t want to.

“Because I write crime novels,” I said, looking down at my plate.

“You revolting voyeur,” she said, pretending to be shocked. “Not to mention thief. Can’t you make up your own ways of killing people?”

This conversation was getting ironic beyond even my limits. “Ever heard of realism?” I asked innocently.

“You’re asking a reporter if she knows about realism?”

I raised my hand. “All right, point taken.” I gave her a placatory smile. “Is there anyone on the crime desk you can talk to?”

“The crime desk?” she said, laughing. “Is that how you think newspapers work these days? Everyone has their own workstation, a computer and a phone.”

“Okay, do you know anyone on the crime workstation?”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? You want me to do your dirty work for you.” She refilled her wineglass. “You’re still a journalist, aren’t you? Why can’t you use your contacts?”

“Oh yeah. I’ll phone up Maximum and talk to my mates there about murder. The death metal expert will be just the guy to ask.”

“Ha-ha.” She gave me a tight smile. “All right, I’ll make a call. Do you mind if I finish eating first?”

I managed to disguise my impatience. After we’d cleared up, I sat down and feigned interest in a women’s magazine of Sara’s. She got the message and picked up the phone.

The Daily Independent’s crime correspondent was apparently called Jeremy. I got the impression that Sara didn’t like him much-she kept making faces at me while she was listening.

“Prat,” she said as she put the phone down. “He went to Eton. But I have to admit he’s bloody good.” She looked down at the shorthand notes she’d taken. “God, this is nasty. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

I nodded, realizing with a sinking feeling that my fears were about to be confirmed. As they were. Candlestick, eyes, heart wound, altar and paper in the mouth-they were all as the Devil had listed.

“The police have banned reporting about the piece of paper,” Sara said, her forehead furrowed. “Apparently there’s something written on it. They’re not saying what.”

The quotation from Webster. I wondered what the Met’s finest minds would make of that.

“Matt?” Sara said, coming across to me. “What’s the matter? You’ve gone pale.”

I gave her a weak smile. “As you said, it’s pretty nasty.” Sara hadn’t read the Sir Tertius novels as she didn’t like anything set in the past, so she wouldn’t make the connection with the modus operandi. “Thanks,” I said, pulling her down and kissing her.

“That’s all right,” she said, grinning lasciviously. “You vulture.”

That didn’t come close to what I felt about myself. But I still succumbed to our mutual desires, even though the relief from my cares was only fleeting. Later, when she was asleep, I put the diskette with the Devil’s e-mails inside her copy of my last Albanian novel. I was beginning to understand what I was up against. If anything happened to me, there was a reasonable chance she’d take out my books and look through them.

I slept for almost five hours. It was the deep and dreamless kind of sleep that doesn’t make you feel you’ve rested at all. I woke up as the first gray fingers of dawn slipped under the blind in Sara’s bedroom. She was still on her side, her breath regular and her eyes tightly closed. I didn’t want to wake her, so I stayed where I was. It was time I started thinking about how to stand up to the Devil.

What did I have to go on? His first e-mails had shown that he’d read my books carefully. That suggested he was educated to a reasonable level. He’d followed up on John Webster, as well. But the material he’d sent me about his childhood, underprivileged and abused in the extreme, didn’t sit easily with that. He obviously came from a poor East End family. I didn’t think I had many readers with a background like that. Had he managed to pass some exams after his father’s murder? Had he got to college? He hadn’t given away much for me to track him down-no family name, no address or school. At least I knew the name of the priest who’d abused him.

I sat up in bed, moving slowly to avoid waking Sara. I had a lead. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t even have to do much tracing myself. The tabloid reporters would be swarming over the body, looking for a motive for the murder. His real identity would come out soon enough. If I had the name of the church he was attached to in the East End, I’d be able to check the altar boys-there must have been records of them. I didn’t know the Devil’s age, but I could limit the number of names to the years that the priest was there. The TV news had said that he’d been ten years at St. Bartholomew’s. He was in his fifties, so he couldn’t have been more than twenty years at his previous church. I was on the bastard’s trail.

Then I remembered the threat the Devil posed to Lucy, Sara and everyone else I knew. If he was still watching me the way he had been when I got rid of Happy, then heading off to Bethnal Green would be asking for trouble.

I slumped back down under the duvet. What else could I infer about my tormentor? He’d found out a lot about my movements, and those of Caroline and the neighbors-he’d obviously been watching the houses in Ferndene Road for some time in order to work out their routines. I had another flash of inspiration. Mrs. Stewart down the road. Maybe she’d noticed someone loitering in the park. The prospect of going to talk to the desiccated old bigot wasn’t appealing, but it was a start. Even if he was watching me, the Devil couldn’t really get uptight about me going down there. I could take Lucy with me and make the visit look like a family one. Christ. I reined myself in. What was I thinking of? Lucy was already in enough danger. I’d talk to Mrs. Stewart on my own.

What else? The guy obviously had a lot of spare time on his hands. He also had the wheels that he’d used to tail me to Farnborough, and a high-quality camera. Did he have money and therefore didn’t need to work? Or was he paying people to watch me and the others? Neither of those thoughts made me feel good.

What about the White Devil’s motives? Did he really want his story written up as a novel? There must be more to it than that. Why had he chosen me? Did he really like my books? Had he obtained some insights into my character from my writing? He had an uncanny ability to foresee how I would react. I had the distinct feeling he was using me as more than his paid scribe. Was he trying to tie me to his criminal activities?

So much for the bastard. The question now was, how to stand up to him? I had friends-my mates from the rugby club, other crime writers-who would help me out. But I couldn’t risk Lucy by contacting them. Tell no one, the Devil had said. I’d seen what he’d done to Happy, and if he was the priest’s killer, he was capable of anything.

No, I was still alone. But maybe, if he gave me more to go on, I could make use of my friends. Some of them were almost as crazy as he was and others had skills that would definitely be useful.

But not yet. I had to play for time.

I didn’t manage to get back to sleep.

I made it to Caroline’s in time to take Lucy down to school. We could have gone in the car, but I’d always loved the half hour we spent walking together. My daughter was in pigtails and she was inordinately proud of them. She seemed less concerned about Happy now. I’d heard from my ex-wife that Jack and Shami hadn’t had any response to their appeals so far, and that they were both desperately unhappy. The Devil was ruining more lives than mine.

I found myself staring suspiciously at every male we passed. I tried to resist the temptation to keep looking round, but I took the opportunity to check if anyone was following us when we waited for the traffic lights to change. Unless he’d kitted himself out with a kid or kids in school uniform, there was no one out of the ordinary on the streets leading to Dulwich Village. Then the idea that the Devil was one of my fellow parents hit me. I dismissed it rapidly. I didn’t know anyone who’d been brought up in the East End, let alone anyone who could have done that to the priest. Or did I? Maybe there really was no one I could trust. Except Sara. But she was the last person I wanted to bring into the limelight. The bastard already knew about her.