"I don't require you to be religious, Mr. Carter. I am simply explaining that although at present you do not understand my decision to leave Verity with her mother, one day you will. It is not necessary to understand everything. Man has lived on this planet for four hundred thousand years without understanding the universe around him. That is a far more vexing problem than why a baby girl should be allowed to remain with her natural mother, is it not?"

  "You might have a reason that's rather less cosmic," John replied. "Perhaps you were hoping for a boy, and a girl doesn't suit your purposes. Or does she have some rare genetic disorder that's going to kill or cripple her and you don't want to be landed with an invalid?"

  Mr. Sarotzini gave John a look of profound sadness, as if John had wounded him deeply. "And there is no place in your heart, Mr. Carter, for simple compassion? You would not entertain in your harsh judgement of me the possibility that I, too, am a human being, and am capable of simple human emotions? Perhaps because you perceive me as wealthy, this puts me on a pedestal where I cannot be touched by the kinds of feelings and responses common to other people?"

  The distress in the banker's voice took John by surprise. The man sounded genuinely close to tears. John was not sure what to say. Then the banker continued. "I have done everything in my power for you and Susan. I saved your business and your home, and I have risked disgrace and prison to save Susan from a possible murder charge. Can you not understand how fond I have grown of dear Susan? How much it would hurt me to see her unhappy? If I take Verity away, it will unhinge her further. And what purpose would it serve? Just to satisfy the whim of an old man."

  "What about your wife?" John said, softening a little, moved by the man but not sure he was telling the whole truth. "You told Susan that you have no wife."

  Mr. Sarntzini lowered his eyes. "Would Susan ever have agreed if she'd known that? I don't think so. I'm just an old man, Mr. Carter, old and lonely, who wanted to leave something of himself behind on this planet when he died." He nodded a few times, still looking down. "And, thanks to you and Susan, I have done that. Susan will make a better mother than any nurse or nanny I could hire. You - you and Susan will make better parents, give Verity a happier upbringing than I could ever hope to do. That's all, that is my only agenda, that is the truth, Mr. Carter." He looked up at John abjectly.

  John's emotions were in disarray. Had he misjudged this man? Had he been swept along by Fergus's wild stories of satanism? Jumping to conclusions about the occult drawings in the loft? Maybe Mr. Sarotzini did practise the occult in some form - the religion he'd told Susan about, which she hadn't understood - but the occult wasn't necessarily bad, was it? There were plenty of good occultists, wlite witches, weren't they called?

  Was that how Sarotzini had amassed his wealth? Through the occult? Through casting spells?

  The thought was absurd. Yet it was absurd also to be sitting in this private jet, absurd that his gentle wife had killed her sister and maimed her obstetrician, absurd that they were taking home a baby that he hadn't even fathered, and that they would have to live a lie that he was the father for -?

  For how long?

  Until Mr. Sarotzini came to claim her?

  "I presume," John said, "that you are going to release the shares in my business and the deeds to our house?"

  The question seemed to take Mr. Sarotzini by surprise. "Our arrangement, Mr. Carter, was that you would hand over the baby to me on the day it was born, and I would then return the deeds and shares to you. This has not happened. You and Susan have not yet earned my trust. How do I know that you will not decide, when you return to England, to put Verity out for instance - for adoption by strangers?"

  John exploded, "That's ludicrous!"

  "Yes," he said quietly. "I would like to hope so. But Susan, as you have admitted, is unbalanced. Who knows what is going through her mind?"

  "Susan intends to keep Verity. She loves her more than anything in the world - far more than she loves me."

  Mr. Sarotzini smiled. "All is well, then. You need not fear for the shares or deeds."

  "So when do I get them back?"

  "When I am convinced." He smiled again and settled back in his seat. Then he pointed to John's laptop. "Please, you have work to do. Don't let me interrupt you any longer."

  John stared back at him, seething with rage, all feelings that he might have misjudged the man swept aside. It was all he could do to restrain himself from getting out of his seat and grabbing the banker by the throat. There was nothing to be gained by an outburst.

  He stared back at his computer screen, at the motionless face of Harvey Addison, and tapped a few keys, clearing the screen, trying to clear his mind, his rage turning slowly to despondency. He was tired of being Mr. Sarotzini's puppet, tired of having his life controlled by this man. When they had gone into this, he had been able to see a clear exit at the far end. And just a month ago he had thought that when the baby was born, it would all be over.

  Now, it seemed, that had been" only the beginning.

  They would be landing soon. Susan was dreaming, and Verity, curled in her arms, her tummy full of milk, was sleeping soundly. In the dream she was in a room she did not recognise: it was a large room and she was alone with Mr. Sarotzini and another man who was in the shadows at the back; a very old man in a wheelchair.

  Mr. Sarotzini said, "Susan, dear Susan, it is time now for you to understand what I am."

  "What are you?" she asked.

  "I am an instrument, that is all. I am merely an instrument for a Higher Power, Susan, just a humble servant of this Power, that is all, a messenger, a link in a chain, given a duty to carry a baton and to pass it on. This baton is a genetic code that contains knowledge from far back in history, a knowledge of all the Truths. It is a knowledge, Susan, whose time has come."

  Then with a trace of bitterness, he said, "Regrettably I am not physically capable of passing it on. The Power has made me search for two others who carry this gene, and there are few on earth who have it, a mere handful of people. It has not, been easy. The first success was twenty-five years ago, when the grave of an old man in Bavaria led me to the male, a small boy who was living in Africa."

  Susan asked him, "Is this boy, the carrier of this gene, is he Verity's father? Is he the man from Telecom?" She felt lost, like a small child, like Alice in Wonderland. Her voice echoed around this chamber as if she was in a cave. "Is he the man who was in the room - when - when I was being fertilised? Are you Verity's father, or is this man? This boy you found?"

  "It's not important."

  "It is. It is important. It's everything. I want to know the truth. Tell me the truth."

  "You, dear Susan, are Verity's mother, that is what counts."

  "And the father? Who is the father? Is it the man from Telecom? The man who was in the room in the Westwood Clinic?"

  "There are some things it is better never to know."

  "I want the truth." "There are many Truths."

  "Please, Mr. Sarotzini, don't play games with me."

  "The Twenty-eighth Truth states that sometimes it is better to believe than to know. The Thirty-fourth Truth states that reality is what you believe, not what you want to believe." He smiled. "So similar and yet so different. It is beholden on all of us to find those Truths with which we are comfortable, and live by those. And it is more beholden on you, than on anyone else. Because one day, Susan, your baby will change the world." "Why me? Why my baby?"

  "Because you also carry this gene. You must never be afraid, you must only be proud."

  "What is this gene? How do you know I carry it?"

  "We searched for twenty-five years for a female who carried it, Susan. Last year, finally, we were successful. We found the grave in Los Angeles of a lady called Hannah Rosewell."

  "Hannah Rosewell? My grandmother?" Susan replied in astonishment. "We performed DNA tests on her remains."

  "My grandmother?"

  "There are a mere handful of people in the entire world who carry this gene, Susan, and forces beyond nature have kept them far apart. The ApoE-AA. This is the gene of my tribe."

  "Your coven?"

  Mr. Sarotzini ignored the remark. "If you have this gene you will live for at least a century, and probably longer. It is the strongest, most resistant gene in our species. We identified it in your family through a search through longevity records. Your grandmother, Hannah Rosewell, lived to a hundred and one. It's a privilege to carry this gene, Susan, and when two people who carry this gene meet and produce a child, they are producing a human of a strength that has not been seen in thousands of years." "Why not?"

  Now Mr. Sarotzini's face was close to her own, so close, and he was smiling, smiling so fervently. "Because, Susan, the Great Impostor's followers have prevented it. For two millennia the world has been in the grip of a conspiracy of evil. My people have been labelled gnostics, witches, heretics. They have been hunted, persecuted, tortured, butchered."

  The jolt of the wheels on the runway woke Susan and woke Verity also. Mr. Sarotzini was staring hard at her. Susan looked away, and when she looked back, Mr. Sarotzini was still staring at her. She felt strange and disoriented.

  Outside it was a fine Sunday morning. London was in bloom. It was spring, and it felt like summer here in the jet as the engines died and the air-conditioning was switched off.

  But then the stewardess opened the exit door, and a wind blew in, a harsh, savage wind that felt as if it had come from somewhere else, some distant place, carrying to Susan in its icy blast all the depths of an Arctic winter.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  In contrast to the grand, post-modernist reception area of the law firm, Elizabeth Frazer's office was small and sparsely decorated. A framed drawing of the Bridge of Sighs hung on the otherwise bare walls. There was a photograph on the desk of a man and two small children on skis posing in front of a chairlift. A vase of flowers on the desk. Two shelves of law books. Otherwise it was just stacks of files, some piled on the floor behind her desk, others on the window-sill, obscuring the view of another office block across the Aldwych, and a computer terminal.

  Susan had told him that Elizabeth Frazer was the country's leading specialist in child law, and his own lawyer had agreed.

  She was in her late thirties. A tall, wiry woman, with curly brown hair and steel-rimmed granny glasses, dressed in a denim blouse and black trousers, she had the air of a radical student revolutionary who had never mellowed. She was not unpleasant, but there was a brittleness about her with which John did not feel comfortable.

  Coffee arrived, and the solicitor dealt him a cup. "This is all very different from when your wife came to see me in March," she said. "You told her that she had a strong case."

  "You've given me a lot of new information, Mr. Carter. Under the Human Fertility and Embryology Act, the donor has complicated rights when he is not anonymous. When Mrs. Carter came to see me, I advised her that our best chance would be to take out a Prohibitive Steps Order, which can taken against either a parent or someone who tries to act as a parent."

  "But Mr. Sarotzini would actually have to be served with this?"

  "Yes."

  "That could be difficult - I mean, embarrassing. I would rather he didn't know."

  Scathingly, she said, "If he doesn't know he's not allowed to take your daughter away, what is to stop him?"

  John had no immediate answer.

  She glanced at her scrawled notes on a large pad. "Your wife's mental state is the biggest problem here. You won't tell me exactly what she's done - and you will have to before we go to court. But you say this Mr. Sarotzini has sufficient evidence to enable serious criminal charges to be brought against her?"

  "Yes."

  "And is she guilty?"

  "No, of course not..." He hesitated. "No. And one of these I don't believe at all. The other -" He thought about the video of Susan stabbing Van Rhoe. "I mean - it would be a question of interpretation. She did something in self-defence and, I think in her mental state, she over-reacted."

  "What's your opinion of your wife's mental state?"

  John grimaced. "I think she's in a bad way. She was close to a breakdown - if not actually having one - in the last couple of weeks of her pregnancy. Our family doctor saw her yesterday and his diagnosis is that she's suffering post-natal depression."

  "Which kind?"

  "Puerperal psychosis." "That's the worst kind."

  "Yes."

  "So she has delusions? Hallucinations? Suicidal tendencies? And she's very tired?"

  "Yes, all of those. He's prescribed antidepressants and he's arranging for the community psychiatric nurse to visit her. He's also suggested I should think about a residential nursery nurse for a period of time - either that or have her admitted to hospital."

  The solicitor glanced at her notes again. "Verity was born three weeks and three days ago."

  "Yes."

  "We're going to have problems if we try going the Prohibitive Steps Order route. If Susan starts telling a judge all this stuff you've been telling me about satanism and black magic, she's not going to get a sympathetic hearing, unless you can come up with some convincing evidence. All judges are aware that this occult activity really does go on, but most of the time it's a bunch of perverts using the trappings as an excuse for child abuse. And do we have enough to convince anyone here? Tell me honestly, Mr. Carter, do you believe that Verity is in danger from the occult?"

  "I don't know," John said. "I really don't know."

  "You've found weird stuff in your attic, but you have no idea how long it's been there. Anything else?"

  "No," he said. "Not tangible."

  "Your wife's fears could be connected to her mental state. Hallucinatory in nature?"

  "I have a lot of respect for Susan, but she's in a bad way. Yes, they could be connected, I just don't know."

  She pulled a plastic dispenser from a drawer in her desk and, with a daintiness that surprised John, clicked two artificial sweeteners into her coffee. "I think a better option for us would be to apply to have Verity made a ward of court, on the grounds of your wife's mental state."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means effectively that the court would have custody of Verity, it would act in loco parentis. It would decide everything to do with Verity and monitor her future. No one could remove her from England without the court's permission."

  "And I would have to testify that Susan was not in a fit mental state to look after her?"

  "No, we'd have a psychiatrist do that."

  "Would Mr. Sarotzini have to be notified?"

  "As the biological father, yes."

  John shook his head. "That's the problem. I'm scared of what he would do."

  "Surely that's the point of why you are here, because you're scared of what he might do, or try to do?

  John nodded gloomily. "Yes. But it's not that simple."

  "You realise you might have another problem if we go to court? The court might decide that Mr. Sarotzini is a better parent to bring up the child than your wife."

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  The Venerable Doctor Euan Freer walked through the fine May sunshine. It was a Saturday and normally this would be his quiet day, but this was not a normal day.

  He was wearing a suit, which was unusual for him: he habitually wore clerical robes, and when not in robes then a dog collar, at least. But today there was nothing outwardly to identify him as a priest, he looked like an overweight, middle-aged businessman with an imposing presence and greying hair, pessimistically carrying a raincoat over his arm on such a fine day.

  He was perspiring heavily, but this wasn't from the heat of the afternoon sun, it was from his nerves. He was shaking inside. On his face there was a grim mask of determination but inside the mask there was fear.

  And inside the raincoat there was a sabatier kitchen carving knife. He had to do this. There was no choice, it had to be done, and quickly. With every day that passed, the news of this infant, this monster, this beast, gave strength and confidence to its people.

  There were channels he should have gone through, sanctions he should have sought, but their bureaucracy alarmed him. It could take years and, in any case, there would be informers inside the Church. And besides, in the end, what could the Church do? Make a feeble condemnation? Issue a public warning? Increase the prayers? What teeth did the Church have?

  This was a decision he had had to take by himself, and the least he knew, from the guidance he had sought in his own prayers, that for this deed he had the highest sanction of them all.

  It was the only one he needed.

  A swirl of leaves rose up from the verge "and rattled past his face with the fury of a striking serpent. The wind plucked at the roots of his short-cropped hair, a deep, icy wind full of hatred, that had slid inside his skin and was blowing though his veins. He could feel it shaking his sinews, he could hear it screaming in his ears, he could feel it freezing the sweat on his skin.

  But he walked determinedly on, down to the end of the street. He did not know this part of London well. He'd never been in this tree-lined street before, but he knew it was the right street - he knew that, without even having to look at the sign bearing its name. He could feel the presence here.

  He walked on, until he reached the house with the turret.

  The temperature was in the early seventies. It was too hot in the garden for Verity: she was asleep in her room, in her cot, after her noon feed.

  Susan lay, with her eyes closed, in a recliner in the garden. Caroline Hughes, the nanny sent by the agency, who had been with them for three days now, sat at the barbecue table assembling a farmyard-animals mobile that Kate Fox had brought round this morning.

  Caroline was a pleasant girl in her late twenties, solidly built with short brown hair cut like a page boy, and dressed in a cream blouse and a pleated navy skirt. Clipped to her belt was the radio intercom, relaying the sounds from Verity's room. All was quiet there, just the strong, steady, reassuring noise of her breathing.

  Across the fence, Susan heard the swishing of a lawn sprinkler. Both the old people had died, within a couple of days of each other apparently, and someone had rented the house, so Lorn Kotok at the That restaurant, who knew everything, had told her - although he'd heard it was in a pretty grim state. Susan had not yet caught a glimpse of her new neighbors.