"No, I went off duty after your baby's midnight feed. Did you come up with a name yet?"

  Susan hesitated. She didn't want anyone to know, she decided, not yet, she wanted to share as little as possible of her baby with, anyone here. "I -haven't got that far. I was expecting a boy."

  "That's very common, you know. A lot of mothers expect a boy and then get surprised."

  "I can understand that. I don't know why I was expecting a boy."

  "Girls are less trouble," Nurse Dufors replied, breezily.

  As Susan sat down on the lavatory seat, she said, "I don't have a phone in the room. Could you do me a favour and bring me one?" Immediately she caught the sudden stiffening in the nurse's face.

  "No problem," she replied.

  "And could we do something else - some time. I'd like - I'd like to show the baby to my sister, Casey. Could you help me up to her room?"

  Nurse Dufors turned away. "Sure, I - I'll take you up - when you're stronger. I don't think today."

  She helped Susan wash and get back into bed, then went out of the room. Susan reminded her about the phone and she promised she would look into it right away.

  Susan forced down a little dry toast, although she wasn't hungry, and drank some tea and apple juice. Nurse Dufors did not reappear with a phone. Susan rang the bell above her bed then, exhausted, lapsed into a doze.

  When she next opened her eyes, her father was sitting beside the bed, watching her, and her mother was standing over the cot, looking at Verity with a strange intensity. Susan smiled, feeling an immense sense of relief. "Thank God," she said.

  "She has your grandmama's eyes," her mother said, barely glancing at her.

  Suddenly her relief at seeing them was tinged with unease. Susan wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but her parents looked awkward, as if they were posing for a Jan van Eyck tableau, and her mother's voice sounded stilted.

  "She's beautiful, isn't she?" Susan said. The wall clock said ten twenty-five. A while yet before Verity's next feed. Good. Lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she said, "They're here, the people I told you about, they've found me, they're gonna take the baby, you have to get me - us -out of here."

  Her father stared at her with an expression she could not read, his Adam's apple bobbing inside his open-necked checked shirt. He was unshaven and, although he always dressed in casual, working men's clothes, he never normally left the house without shaving. He looked gaunt and haggard, his skin drawn. Once, when she had been a kid, he had seemed so strong; now he looked weak, helpless - and old. Susan wondered, suddenly, whether he was sick.

  Then she saw that her mother, too, was looking pale and drained, as if she had been up all night. And frightened.

  "Has your father's nose," her mother said, in that stilted voice again, as if she were trying to change the subject. "A real Corrigan nose that one. See the way it turns up at the tip?" She moved away from Verity and paced up and down the room, wringing her hands and looking at Susan's father as if for help.

  "We - we have to go. You have to get me out of here," Susan said, even more urgently than before. "The people I told you about, don't you remember? The staff here - I think they're in league with them. You've got to get me - us - Verity and me, and I think maybe Casey, too, away from here -"

  She stopped as she saw the fleeting eye contact between her parents, and her mind shot back again to the beeping warning signal, Casey's terrible complexion, the disconnected air line. "Is Casey OK?" she said, suspiciously.

  Her father looked at her again and she saw his Adam's apple bobbing again, the way it always did when he was nervous about something. "Casey's fine," he said. "She - she's good."

  Gayle Corrigan walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. Her father sat still in silence. It seemed to Susan that there was something he wanted to say, but he stood up and went over to the window. "Grand view," he said.

  Susan couldn't believe this. Shaking with terror now, she said, "Dad! They're gonna take Verity! Don't you believe me?" She raised her voice, until she was shouting, not caring whether she woke Verity. "Dad! For God's sake you have to get me out of here! Daaaddddddd! Listen! Oh, God, please LISTEN to me!"

  The door opened and Nurse Dufors came in, followed by Susan's mother, who was red-eyed, as if she'd been crying.

  Nurse Dufors turned to the Corrigans and said, "I'm afraid she's finding everything rather distressing at the moment. Why don't you let her get some rest today and come back tomorrow?"

  Susan's father nodded.

  "No!" Susan pleaded. "Dad, Mom! No, don't leave me, you have to take me away - you -"

  She couldn't believe her eyes. They were just walking obediently out of the room. Her father stopped in the doorway, fixed her with another stare that seemed to be a mixture of bewilderment, pity and reproach, and then they were gone.

  Nurse Dufors raised a finger to her lips and said, as brightly as ever, "Susan, please, calm down! You're going to wake your daughter!"

  "Look, you don't understand, please -" Susan tried to get out of bed. The nurse placed a firm but gentle restraining hand on her shoulder.

  "You and your daughter both need rest right now."

  Susan stared up at her: a pleasant face, handsome rather than pretty, with dark hair pulled back a tad severely, in her mid-thirties Susan guessed. Could this woman help her? "I - I need to talk to you, in confidence."

  The nurse suddenly produced two pills and tiny paper cup of water.

  "Take these, Susan, and you'll feel much better." Susan looked at her warily. "What are they?"

  "Mild painkillers."

  Mistrustful, Susan feigned swallowing them, dropping them from one hand into the other. Then she said, "I don't want to stay here, I want to go to another clinic - or hospital - or home."

  The nurse frowned. "You are in the best place in the whole of California. Why do you want to move, Susan?"

  Susan hesitated. Would she believe her if she told her the whole story? Maybe that's why her parents were acting so strangely - because they didn't believe her, because they thought she was nuts. Or had John gotten to them and convinced them she was nuts? "So why won't anyone bring me a phone?" she asked.

  Nurse Dufors smiled again. "The phone! I'll go get it sorted for you right away!"

  Susan waited until she was out of the room, then pushed the two pills between the mattress and the covering slip. She looked at Verity again, still sound asleep, then lay back, exhausted, and closed her eyes, listening for the return of Nurse Dufors" footsteps.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  To John's relief the flight took off on time, and landed early, twenty minutes ahead of schedule, at twelve forty-five; but it was another hour and a quorter before he was in a rental car and heading out on the freeway towards Orange County.

  Throughout the entire eleven hours of the flight he'd been churning over and over the same territory, trying to work out what best to do when he arrived, a steady fuse of anger burning inside him. Whether he should first try to convince Susan's parents of the danger Susan was in or go straight to the clinic and deal with the situation as he found it.

  Given what Dick Corrigan had told him over the phone about the air line, the police were not an option. Finally he ruled out his parents-in-law, also. He needed to speak to Susan, and hear her version of what had happened with Casey. He just could not believe Susan had harmed her kid sister. Unless... The thought hung like a vapour trail. Unless... unless in some twisted-up thought spiral Susan figured that by killing Casey she was freeing herself of the financial obligation to support her and that, therefore, keeping the baby and breaking the deal with Mr. Sarotzini would be fine. Breakdown?

  He found that hard to accept. He knew Susan too well. She was strong, she was a coper. Yes, she had been deeply upset by Fergus Donleavy and Harvey Addison's deaths. She had been spooked by what Donleavy had told her about Van Rhoe and Sarotzini's occult connections. But enough to have pushed her over the brink and sent her to America to kill her sister? He didn't think so.

  It was a fine afternoon, warm enough to turn on the air-conditioning in the car. John slowed as he approached the white Doric pillars at the entrance to the Cypress Palisades Clinic, then deliberately drove on past, checking out the place. The gates were open and there was no sign that any additional security had been introduced by its new owners. ^ long line of sprinklers threw spray across the lawns, and a Hispanic gardener was pushing a barrow laden with cuttings along a woodchip path.

  Nearing, the grounds, the road wound up into a canyon. He pulled up a quarter of a mile on, turned the blue Chevrolet round, then killed the engine and lit a cigarette, gathering his thoughts once more as he smoked it. He felt surprisingly alert after the long flight, the payoff from sticking to soft drinks and eating little.

  The VOm Bank had bought the clinic six months back.

  They had told Dick and Gayle Corrigan that Susan had murdered Casey, but they were going to keep it under wraps.

  The clinic are being very good about it, John. They - the director had a talk with us. They don't want a scandal - I guess - I guess any more than we do.

  Maybe they didn't want a scandal. But Sarotzini had been watching them, and listening to them ever since - how long? Since before they had moved in? He would know that Susan was having doubts about handing over the baby. Maybe Sarotzini had decided to frame her, as a precaution. She could hardly fight a custody battle if she had a murder charge hanging over her head.

  He wondered if he was being too far-fetched. But he was beginning to realise that, so far as Mr. Sarotzini went, nothing was too incredible.

  When Susan next opened her eyes, Mr. Sarotzini was in the room, sitting beside the bed, staring into the cot in a rather detached way. He looked more like a man admiring an exhibit in a museum, than a father adoring his child. She had no idea how long he'd been there.

  "Good morning, Susan. How are you feeling?"

  She took some time to consider this question. Her abdomen felt as if it had just been used as a target in a knife-throwing competition, her backside had gone to sleep, she had pins and needles in her thighs, as well as a raging thirst and a.headache. "Fine," she said, guardedly and unsmiling. Then she remembered, and said, petulantly, "I'd be even more fine if someone brought me a telephone."

  Mr. Sarotzini pointed to the bedside table, and she saw a phone sitting on it, plugged into the socket.

  "We removed it for your own protection, Susan," he said, good-humouredly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Perhaps it is better that you do not remember. Your behaviour was -shall we say? - a little erratic yesterday."

  "What do you mean, erratic?"

  He raised a hand, as if to signal the subject was closed. "And how is Verity this morning?"

  Startled, she asked, "How do you - know - her name?"

  "It's a pretty name, so appropriate."

  "How do you know it?" she asked again, more insistently.

  He raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps I know you too well, Susan."

  She shook her head. "No, I don't think you do, I don't think you know me at all." She glanced anxiously at Verity, who was sleeping peacefully.

  Mr. Sarotzini continued to smile at Susan. "I am so very proud of you. You are going to make a wonderful mother, I always knew you would."

  "What went on last night?" she asked, sternly. "Who were all those people, and what did they think they were doing - you, and all of them -coming into my room? And who was playing the music? The flute?"

  He folded his hands neatly together and gazed at Verity, with a strangely distant look in his eyes. "It was a little blessing ceremony for the new-born child."

  "A blessing?" she retorted, scathingly.

  He turned his head and stared at Susan. "My dear Susan, there is so much you are going to have to learn. There really is such a very great amount."

  Susan stared icily back at him. "Mr. Sarotzini, Verity is my baby. I am her mother and you need to understand that what I say counts. If you ever again want to bring your weirdo friends to a party in my room in the middle of the night, I don't care what your reason is, you ask me first, OK?"

  Mr. Sarotzini moved his focus from Susan to Verity, then back. "Susan, I know you've been dredging up the law on surrogacy and taking advice, but you don't have to worry." He smiled again. "You really do not have to worry. I just wanted to see proof for myself that you could love this child as much as if she were a child of your very own. And you have given me that proof."

  Susan's thoughts went haywire. He knew? He knew that she'd been to a lawyer? How? Had John told him?

  Of course he had. John was in on this. John had told him.

  "I - I don't quite know what you mean," she replied.

  "I think we can do business together, Susan, that's what I mean. We made one deal for you to have this baby, I think we can come to another arrangement that will enable you to keep her."

  She stared back at the aristocratic face, the silver-flecked hair, the finely tailored suit, the elegant tie, feeling astonishment - and a strong tinge of suspicion. "I can - keep - Verity? You're going to let me? Keep her?" "A baby belongs with its mother, Susan."

  "What about your wife?"

  He ignored the question. "Tell me, how much do you love Verity?"

  She gave a nervous half-laugh. "I - I don't know, I can't measure it. I love her with all my heart."

  "Si parva licet componere magnis," Mr. Sarotzini replied. ""If one may measure small things by great." Virgil." He looked at Verity fondly, yet with a certain distance, a remoteness. "Your husband? How will you deal with this problem?"

  Susan looked at him suspiciously. What exactly had he and John agreed? "When John sees Verity, I'm sure..." She hesitated.

  Mr. Sarotzini said, "If you can imagine something, then it exists."

  She frowned, still on guard, thin said, a little cynically, "So if I can imagine John loving Verity, he will? Just like that?"

  "Indeed."

  Suddenly, Susan understood what was going on. Of course; "When we met in London, you told us how much you and your wife wanted a child, and that you couldn't have one because she had had a cancer operation. Was it a boy you wanted? A son and heir? Is that why you don't want Verity?"

  There was a long silence. She watched his face like a hawk, but instead of shiftiness, all she registered was sadness.

  "Susan," he said finally, "I told you a small white lie when we met." He fell silent again. Then he said, "I have no wife. I have never married."

  The words hung in the air. They didn't dissolve but they weren't absorbed into Susan's brain for a long time. She just heard them repeating, echoing, endlessly going round and round. The banker's face was rigid, as if he were trying to shield himself from his own emotions. His eyes had become two wells of sadness.

  "Not married?" she says. "You - you don't - you have no wife?"

  And as she looked at him, she couldn't help feeling sorrow for the man in spite of her shock. But with it came the growing, angry realisation that she had been conned. And confusion.

  "A small white lie?" she said.

  He seemed to be ageing as they spoke. His shoulders sagged, he clenched his hands, and creases like fault lines were breaking out along his forehead. When he spoke, it was no longer the voice of a powerful, man-of-the-world international banker, but the voice of a lonely old man.

  "Susan, I - I cannot explain this easily. This is not something that will take just a few minutes."

  "I'm very confused, I don't understand what you want. What's going on?"

  "Let me try to explain. You see, I am the last in the line of a very old family. We can trace our ancestry back in direct lineage for twenty-five thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Great Impostor. I have a duty to pass on the baton. I cannot be the one to let this die out, to end this line, Susan. Not now, not at this time in history." He looked again at Verity. "Not when our greatest dream has finally come true."

  "What baton? What dream?"

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he answered, "My religion." Susan felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Fergus's words came back to her. Was it possible? The devil incarnate. Was she was sitting here with the devil incarnate and his baby?

  Her baby.

  Fathered by the man who had murdered Fergus?

  Had she conceived the devil incarnate's child, carried it in her womb, given birth to it?

  She looked at Verity and then at Mr. Sarotzini, feeling a prickle like a current running through her. And there was a power coming from this man, she could feel it. Her skin was crawling as if it was alive with static electricity. But the devil incarnate? What did it mean? What had Fergus meant? What was the devil incarnate? A madman? An obscenely rich dilettante with delusions of grandeur?

  Someone who had the power to kill Zak Danziger, Harvey Addison, Fergus Donleavy?

  She looked at her innocent baby, then at Mr. Sarotzini again. "What religion?" she asked. "You're a devil worshipper, is that it?"

  He smiled. His confidence seemed to be returning and, with it, his stature and assurance. "And you worship the Great Impostor, Susan, who teaches us that we are all cursed with Original Sin. That we are born evil and corrupt and we can only obtain salvation through divine grace. Through pouring money into a church collection box." His face regained its normal good-humoured expression. "Look at your daughter, look at her - look at Verity. Is she evil? Is she corrupt? Is that how she has been born? Is that how you see her when you look at her, hold her, suckle her? An evil, corrupt monster? Is it, Susan?"

  "It's not that simple."

  "No, you are right," he said wistfully. "It is not that simple and we have much to talk about. It will take many days, Susan. Perhaps at the end you will still not agree with me, but you will understand the validity of my reasoning. And you will agree to bring up Verity in my customs and in my family's religion."

  Susan shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'll bring up my child in my customs and in my religion. You can't just walk into my life and think you can buy my beliefs. They're not for sale, I'm sorry. End of story."