She stared, puzzled for a moment by the remark, then realized he had cracked a joke.

  'Extraordinary, quite extraordinary; I've never known anything like this, never.' He leaned towards her. 'This is something really quite incredible.'

  Alex stroked the nape of the cat's neck mechanically and listened to it purring. 'In what way?'

  'Extraordinary; did it make sense?'

  'I'm very confused.'

  'I'm very confused too,' smiled Ford.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Have you had much experience in this field, Mrs � er � I'm sorry � I can't remember your name?'

  'High �Johnson.'

  'Ah, yes.'

  'What do you mean, experience?'

  'In the spiritual world?'

  'No.'

  'Your son came through very clearly; I am correct, yes? It was your son you wanted to contact? His name is Fabian, or Adrian?'

  He knew who she really was; somehow he had found out.

  'You've done your research well,' she said, coldly. 'You've been very thorough; but you've made just one mistake.'

  He raised a single eyebrow.

  'My son wasn't killed by a lorry, but by another motor car.'

  'Mrs Johnson, I wasn't there; I can only go by what I'm told.'

  'Or by what you've read.'

  He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. 'Read?'

  'The crash was reported in the newspapers, Mr Ford,' she said. 'I don't know how many papers, but it was in the Daily Mail. They reported that it was a lorry. I noticed, as I came in, the Daily Mail on your desk.' She waited for the explosion of anger, but none came. Instead, he looked hurt, puzzled, and shook his head thoughtfully.

  'I'm sorry,' he said, quietly, 'you obviously have a poor opinion of the integrity of mediums.'

  The sincerity of his voice made her hesitate, and she felt herself begin to blush. She looked at his neatly groomed hair, his immaculate white shirt and snappy grey tie and the matching handkerchief bouffed out of the breast pocket of his suit. She looked at his tiny pink hands with their manicured nails and the huge vulgar ring, and then back at his face. Smooth. He could have been an insurance salesman.

  'I don't do research, Mrs Johnson. I don't read obituary notices. I don't scan the papers for reports on road accidents and try to link them up with my clients; I don't delve back into the old school records of my clients, trying to dig up facts they've long forgotten that I can hit them with.' He smiled. 'In any event, with the amount of people who come here giving me fictitious names, how could I get anywhere with any consistency?'

  Alex looked away guiltily from his searching eyes, and heard his gentle voice continue.

  'Nor do I dole out only good news to the bereaved; I relate what I hear. That's my gift, that's all I can do.' He raised his eyebrows apologetically. 'We have a misconception about the departed. We think that because they have moved on, they have gained integrity.' He shook his head. 'It takes more than one life and one passing to gain integrity - and integrity is just one of many things we have to learn in our journeys through this life and the next. Spirits can tell lies, frequently they do; they can get things wrong too. You see, things don't get improved, suddenly, by passing into the next plane. If you have a lousy memory in this life, it isn't going to alter suddenly in the next.'

  She saw his meek, apologetic smile and did not want to hurt him. 'My son had a very good memory.'

  'Accidents happen very fast. They can be very confusing; the whole business of going over is very confusing, that's why I don't like to try to communicate with the very recently departed, not really before at least three months; this was only in the last few weeks, wasn't it?'

  She nodded.

  'Normally, I am not aware of much of what I am saying during a sitting, and at the end I can scarcely remember it at all; this is quite different; never in all my life have I known anything so vivid. Please don't be cynical, we should continue.'

  'You got something else wrong too,' she said.

  He smiled. 'What was that?'

  'You were talking about someone called Harry - you said that something was odd, that it seemed to be a girl called Harry.'

  'Yes?'

  'Could she have been called Carrie?'

  'Carrie?'

  Alex nodded.

  'Sometimes,' he said, 'with all the interference � things aren't distinct. Carrie? Yes, Carrie.' He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. 'Yes, it could have been.'

  'Tell me, at these sessions, do you talk to the living or the departed?'

  He stared at her, unruffled. 'I'm what is called a medium, Mrs Johnson; I'm a link between the earth plane and the departed.'

  'Then I don't understand how you could have spoken to Carrie.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because she's not dead. She's very much alive, and well, in America.'

  She saw doubt flit across his face, like the shadow of a bird, saw a strange look appear in his eyes, as if something had profoundly disturbed him. He shook his head. 'She was trying to come through, Mrs Johnson, that's all I can tell you. You're sure that she's still on this plane? That she hasn't been in an accident?'

  'Isn't it possible you might have picked her up telepathically?'

  'That's how a lot of people try to explain mediums, Mrs Johnson. That we pick up the information telepathically from our client's brain. You couldn't use that old chestnut today, could you? Because I've stated two things that aren't in your brain: that your son was in collision with a lorry; and that Carrie, whoever she is, has passed across to the other side.'

  She stared at him, trying to think clearly.

  'I'm sorry that you're sceptical, Mrs Johnson. I don't know how I can change that, but I've got to, somehow.'

  'What do you mean?'

  He sat in silence for a long time. Alex listened to the hiss of the gas, the purring of the cat; outside she heard the rattle of a taxi and the slam of its door, and wondered if it was his next client arriving.

  Suddenly he leaned towards her, until his face was close to hers, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath. 'Mrs Johnson,' he said. 'Fabian wants to come back.'

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  She felt confused and disillusioned as she drove away. Main had been right in his advice; it was exactly how he had told her she would feel. The curate had been right too. Nothing could be gained by summoning up the departed, he had said, nothing but, what was it - disappointment and evil? Strong words from the fire-and-brimstone brigade. Pastoral care, he had recommended; that had a nice gentle ring to it.

  She thought about the evil; mischief, perhaps, but not evil. Games, perhaps; tricks. She thought about his room, how it had seemed so menacing without the presence of Ford; did evil take place there? Did he hold strange seances where they drew the curtains, turned up the wick, and sat in circles with the cats hissing? She shuddered. There seemed to be so much about life, so much that went on in the world that she could never know, that most human beings could never know: secret societies, strange practices, communions with gods, devils, departed ones. Did any of them know the secret? The truth? Was Morgan Ford, in his smooth suit and his grand drawing room, one of the few people on earth privy to the meaning of life? Had he alone been entrusted with the secret? And if so, what had he done with it? What was he doing with it? Sitting in his strange room telling lies to grieving women?

  She heard angry hooting behind her and looked up; the light was green. She glanced in the mirror, saw the nose of the taxi, raised a hand and drove into Hyde Park. She pulled over to the left, driving slowly, and put her indicator on. Where was she going? It was eleven o'clock on Monday morning and she had important work to do in the office, but she couldn't face it, not yet; it seemed unimportant compared to her disappointment. What had she been expecting, she wondered, and shrugged, privately, to herself.

  It had really seemed, she thought sadly, that Fabian had been trying to tell her something; that there had been a meaning to all the strange goings on, to the weird tricks her mind had been playing. She had been convinced, she knew, that Fabian had been telling her to go to a medium. She smiled, and felt her eyes watering. She had hoped, she supposed, that she was going to discover some point to his death, that he would explain it to her; but now all that had been shattered; it had been a delusion, another of life's dirty tricks.

  Yes, Main was right. He and his kind were closer to the truth, sitting there in their laboratories with their pipettes and their glass tubes and their Bunsen burners, and their computers, searching all the time for their equations, searching for that one big ultimate equation.

  Was it there, a palimpsest, lying quietly somewhere under the DNA code, waiting for that one scientist more patient, or just luckier than the rest, who would forever render the entire paraphernalia of religion redundant?

  She parked and walked along beside the Serpentine, feeling the enormity of the world all around her. She looked at the London skyline beyond the trees, the buildings bunched together, rubbing shoulders, like passengers in a crowded tube. An old man sat staring out across the water, raising his arms up and down as if making a strange gesture to the futility of it all. She shivered, wrapped her arms around herself, afraid suddenly of being old, old and staring at the water and making futile gestures.

  The roses in the room; the rose on the car windscreen. What were the odds of that happening? The odds of there being the same number of roses in the bowl? The same colour?

  What were the odds for Morgan Ford? Had he known who she really was? Was linking her with the car crash he'd read about in the papers a good guess, or had she given him some clue when they'd begun to talk? Had he picked it up telepathically? That was the only other rational explanation � but then how had he made the mistake about the lorry? And the mistake about Carrie?

  Too many things were contradicting each other. Where was the truth? Was there a personal palimpsest put there by Fabian? Was she looking at the face value of everything, and not beneath? She shook her head, stared at the boathouse, watched a horse canter by on Rotten Row, a young smart girl in one of those new-style crash helmets; change, she thought, change, progress. Everything seemed to be converging to a vanishing point somewhere in the distance. There was a growing sameness about everything; even horse riders now all looked like mounted police. God, she had never been any good at puzzles, riddles; was there a vanishing point for this riddle now? Would the puzzle stay unresolved for ever, parallel lines that would never change, or was there a junction, somewhere in the distance out there, where the answer lay?

  Otto came into her mind, quietly, unobtrusively at first, as if he had slipped in through an open door and was waiting quietly in the shadows for her to notice him. She watched a young girl with her nanny throwing crumbs to the ducks, and felt Otto, lurking, smirking. Why? What was he doing, she thought, irritated. She tried to ignore him, to put him out of her mind, but that only made him clearer still. She could see his room, the empty champagne bottles, the hum of his coffee grinder, the careless, arrogant stirring of the cups, and the contempt in his eyes, with their secrets about her son, and the look which said 'I could have you any time I wanted, but I wouldn't bother.'

  What did he know?

  She found herself walking back to the car, working out in her mind the best route to the motorway, wondering if he would be there, or would she have to wait out in the corridor? It was no good resisting, there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She could think of nothing, nothing except the dark oak door of his room.

  She arrived in Cambridge shortly before two, parked outside Magdalene and ran through the archway. She hurried up the steps and down the corridor which now seemed familiar, then stopped outside his door, breathless, and hesitated, listening, for floorboards creaking, for a clink of a cup, for music, voices, a rustle of paper. There was nothing. She knocked, timidly, knowing it was futile, heard the dull echo of the knock, sensed the flat emptiness of the room beyond.

  The door opened, and she jumped back. Otto stood there, one hand in the pocket of his heavy cardigan, and nodded at her, the knowing smirk on his lacerated face, the leer in his eyes. 'You're earlier than I expected.'

  She frowned, thrown by the remark, stared back into his eyes, trying to understand what he meant, then looked away, uncomfortably, and gazed for a moment at the flaking lintel above the door. 'I'm sorry, I don't understand -I didn't leave any message.'

  He turned and walked inside. 'I've put coffee on. Would you like some?'

  She saw the percolator bubbling, the two cups laid out beside it.

  'Thank you.'

  'I knew you were coming,' he said, matter-of-factly.

  'How?'

  He shrugged. 'I know a lot of things.'

  'What sort of things?'

  He gave a short contemptuous laugh, and for an instant she would have loved to hit him.

  'You didn't know enough to save my son from being killed,' she said suddenly, vitriolically, unable to prevent the words from coming out.

  He knelt down beside the percolator and lifted it up. 'Black, no sugar.'

  'Thank you.'

  She waited for his retort, but none came; he stayed kneeling by the coffee pot, and she watched him, feeling strangely sickened.

  When he finally turned around, his eyes were livid.

  'I'm sorry, Otto,' she said, nervous suddenly. 'That wasn't very nice of me.' She felt the rage burning silently inside him; he seemed much older than a student, suddenly, older than her. 'Sometimes I say things,' she said, 'things I don't mean.'

  He sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall, his anger subsiding, the youth returning.

  She smiled tentatively. �How did you know I was coming?'

  He sounded distant, as though he was dictating into a microphone. 'I get feelings about things sometimes, something that's going to happen, sometimes big things, sometimes little things, sometimes nothing.'

  'And what happens?'

  He took a sip of his coffee. 'They come true.' He stared, probing. 'But I can't do anything about them; it's all useless, this information.'

  'Why?' she said uncomfortably.

  'It's as though it has already happened; so I can do nothing.'

  'You got the coffee ready for me.'

  He shrugged. 'Got the coffee ready, sure; but that's really no big deal.'

  'Did you know about the accident? That it was going to happen?'

  'No. Nothing.' He paused. 'Even if I had -' He shrugged.

  'Do you know why I've come?'

  He said nothing.

  She looked into his eyes, tried to read them. She tried to ignore the faint mocking smile that was in them, and looked beyond; but there was nothing. It was like staring through panes of glass at a dark night.

  'Otto, I want you to try to remember something; it's not going to be very nice for you, but it's really very important to me; will you help me?'

  'If I can.'

  'It was a car you hit, wasn't it?'

  'Yes, for sure.'

  'What happened just before?'

  'I don't remember; one moment I was in the car, the next I was outside.'

  'Please try.'

  'I had a hangover; the party was a good party; I don't know about Fabian.' He smirked.

  'Why are you smiling?'

  'He scored with the host's daughter; spent the night with her.' He shook his head. 'Incredible, you know, he was always scoring with girls.'

  'But never keeping them?'

  He looked at her, then looked away. 'It wasn't important.'

  'Not to you; what about to him?'

  Otto shrugged. 'Your son was a bastard to women, Mrs Hightower; better to leave it at that.'

  'What do you mean?'

  He shook his head.

  'Does it really matter, now that he's -' she paused. 'Can't you tell me?'

  He smiled strangely. 'It's not important, really it's not important.' He stirred his coffee. 'We drove, we were just talking; I was in the front passenger seat, Charles and Henry were in the back; for some reason I hadn't put my seat-belt on, the catch in the Golf is awkward, you know. It was dawn, we had our lights on; Fabian was talking to Charles, looking around; suddenly I saw these lights in front of us, coming straight at us, high up; I thought it was a lorry.'

  'What?' Alex heard herself shout the word out, involuntarily; she felt herself shaking, trembling in disbelief, confusion; she felt giddy, saw the floor slope suddenly away from her, as if she was in a boat hit by wash, and had to hold on to both arms to prevent herself falling sideways from the chair. 'A lorry?'

  'It was an old Citroen, apparently, big, upright; we were sitting in the Golf, low down. It looked like a lorry. Fabian must have thought so too. He shouted out "Lorry!" After that, I was lying on grass, or mud � I don't really remember.'

  The chair felt like a seesaw; it swayed from side to side as if it had a life of its own; she fought it, leaned against it, and watched his eyes all the time, those eyes that were like the night.

  'I'm afraid it does not tell you much.'

  'Sometimes,' she said, distantly, vaguely conscious of the curious flutter in her stomach, 'one doesn't need to be told much.'

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The house looked fresh and clean and smelt of polish. Mimsa had left one of her usual indecipherable notes: 'Dere Misy Higtow, dun al jobbs. Don got no more clenning for winnow stuff. Got problims in dounstair toilee, paper no stick wall. See yoo tummorro.'

  She frowned, and made a note on the shopping pad. She hesitated outside the downstairs lavatory, then went up to Fabian's room. Mimsa had left everything as it was, as she had told her. She picked up his diary, sat down on the bed and took out the postcard she had taken from Carrie's mother, and the letter Carrie had written to Fabian, which she opened out and pressed flat. Then she laid the postcard beside it, and began to compare the handwriting, going through each letter of the alphabet in turn.

  She began to feel chilly as she worked, and sensed the temperature dropping. She stood up and left the room, without looking up at the portrait, went downstairs into the drawing room and sat beside the phone. She picked up the receiver, hesitated, and dropped it back on the rest. She stared again at the letter and the postcard, then picked up the receiver again and dialled Philip Main.