He told me the full story.

An hour and three pints later we staggered from the Fleece. I made my way home, let myself in through the front door-after a few futile attempts-and climbed to the bedroom.

As I'd expected, Zara was still out. The bed was empty. I sat on the edge of the duvet and tried not to weep. It was one in the morning. Zara would be back, soon, and would slide quietly into bed in an attempt not to wake me. Over breakfast she'd make the excuse that the study group had run on late and they'd continued the discussion back at a friend's house in Bradley. And I would smile and try not to show my suspicions, and then we would part and go to our respective jobs, and I would be sick with jealousy for the rest of the day.

But... less about my problems, at this juncture. The next episode concerns Doug Standish and the strange events that occurred that winter.

FIVE.

THE TOUCH OF THE ANGELS.

The sun was going down on another clear, sharp January day when Standish received the call. He'd left the station at the end of his shift and was driving over the snow-covered moors towards home and another cheerless evening with Amanda. As he reached the crossroads, he decided to stop at the Dog and Gun for a couple beforehand, let a few pints take the edge off his perceptions so that Amanda's barbs might not bite so deep tonight.

His mobile rang. It was Kathy at control. "Doug. Where are you?"

"On my way home. Just pa.s.sing the Onward Station." The alien edifice was a five hundred metre tall spire like an inverted icicle on the nearby hillside.

"Something's just come up."

Standish groaned. Another farmer reporting stolen heifers, no doubt.

"A ferryman just rang. There's been a murder in the area. I've called in a scene-of-crime team."

He almost drove off the road. "A murder?"

She gave him the address of a secluded farmhouse a couple of miles away, then rang off.

He turned off the B-road and slowed, easing his Renault down a narrow lane between snow-topped dry-stone walls. The tyres cracked the panes of frozen puddles in a series of crunching reports. On either hand, for as far as the eye could see, the rolling moorland was covered in a pristine mantle of snow.

Murder...

Ten years ago Standish had worked as a detective inspector with the homicide division in Leeds. He had enjoyed the job. He'd been part of a good team and their detection and conviction rate had been high. He viewed his work as necessary in not only bringing law and order to an increasingly crime-ridden city, but also, in some metaphorical way, bringing a measure of order to what he saw as a disordered and chaotic universe. He had no doubt that every time he righted a wrong he was, on some deep subconscious level, putting right his own inability to cope with the hectic modern world he was finding less and less to his taste.

And then the Kethani came along...

Within months, crime figures had dropped dramatically. Within a year, murders had fallen by almost eighty per cent. Why kill someone when, six months later, they would be resurrected and returned to Earth? In the early days, of course, murderers thought they could outwit the gift of the Kethani. They killed their victims in hideous ways, ensuring that no trace of the body remained, and attempted to conceal or destroy the implant devices. But the nanotech implants were indestructible, and emitted a signal that alerted the local Onward Station to their whereabouts. Each implant contained a sample of DNA and a record of the victim's personality. Within a day of discovery, the device would be ferried to the Kethani home planet, and the individual successfully brought back to life. And then they would return to Earth and a.s.sist with investigations...

Two years after the coming of the Kethani, the Leeds homicide division had been disbanded, and Standish shunted sideways into the routine investigation of car thefts and burglaries.

Like most people he knew, he had rejoiced at the arrival of the aliens and the gift they gave to humanity. He had been implanted within a month and tried to adjust his mind to the fact that he was no longer haunted by the spectre of death.

Shortly before the arrival of the Kethani, Standish married Amanda Evans, the manageress of an optician's franchise in Bradley. For a while, everything had been wonderful: love and life everlasting. But the years had pa.s.sed, and his marriage to Amanda had undergone a subtle and inexplicable process of deterioration and he had gradually become aware that he was, somewhere within himself, deeply dissatisfied with life.

And he had no idea who or what to blame, other than himself.

The farmhouse was no longer the centre of a working farm but, like so many properties in the area, had been converted into an expensive holiday home. It sat on a hill with a spectacular view over the surrounding moorland.

Standish turned a corner in the lane and found his way blocked by the Range Rover belonging to one of the local ferrymen. He braked and climbed out into the teeth of a bitter wind. He turned up the collar of his coat and hurried across to the vehicle.

The ferryman sat in his cab, an indistinct blur seen through the misted side window. When Standish rapped on the gla.s.s and opened the door, he saw Richard Lincoln warming his hands on a mug of coffee from a Thermos.

"Doug, that was quick. Didn't expect you people out here for a while yet."

"I was pa.s.sing. What happened?"

He'd got to know Lincoln over the course of a few tea-time sessions at the Dog and Gun a year ago, both men coming off duty at the same time and needing the refreshment and therapy of good beer and conversation.

Lincoln was a big, silver-haired man in his sixties, and unfailingly cheerful. He wore tweeds, which gave him a look of innate conservatism belied by his liberal nature. His bonhomie had pulled Standish from the doldrums on more than one occasion.

Lincoln finished his coffee. "b.l.o.o.d.y strange, Doug. I was at the Station, on the vid-link with Sarah Roberts, a colleague. She was at home." He pointed to the converted farmhouse. "We were going over a few details about a couple of returnees when she said she'd be back in a second-there was someone at the door. She disappeared from sight and came back a little later. She was talking to someone, obviously someone she knew. She was turning to the screen to address me when there was a loud... I don't quite know how to describe it. A crack. A report."

"A gunshot?"

Lincoln nodded. "Anyway, she cried out and fell away from the screen. I ran to the control room and sure enough... We were being signalled by her implant. She was dead. Look."

Lincoln reached out and touched the controls of a screen embedded in the dashboard. An image flickered into life, and Standish made out the shot of a well-furnished front room, with a woman's body sprawled across the floor, a b.l.o.o.d.y wound in her upper chest.

Absently, Lincoln fingered the implant at his temple. "I contacted you people and drove straight over."

"Did you pa.s.s any other vehicles on the way here?"

Lincoln shook his head. "No. And I was on the lookout, of course. The strangest thing is... Well, come and see for yourself."

Lincoln climbed from the cab and Standish joined him. They moved towards the wrought-iron gate that barred their way. It was locked.

"Look," Lincoln said. He indicated the driveway and lawns of the farmhouse. A thick covering of snow gave the scene the aspect of a traditional Christmas card.

Standish could see no tracks or footprints.

"Follow me." Lincoln walked along the side of the wall that encircled the property. Standish followed, wading through the foot of snow that covered the springy heather. They climbed a small rise and halted, looking down on the farmhouse from the elevated vantage point.

Lincoln pointed to the rear of the building. "Same again," he said, looking at Standish.

"There's not a single d.a.m.ned footprint to be seen," Standish said.

"Nothing. No footprints, tyre-marks, tracks of any kind. The snow stopped falling around midday, so there's no way a new fall could have covered any tracks. Anyway, the killer came to the house forty-five minutes ago."

"But how? If he didn't leave tracks..." Standish examined the ground, searching for the smallest imprint. He looked at Lincoln. "There is one explanation, of course."

"There is?"

"The killer was always in the house, concealed somewhere. He came before the snow fell and hid himself. Then he emerged, crept through the house to the door, stepped outside and knocked."

"But that'd mean..."

Standish nodded. "If I'm right, then he's still in there."

"What do you think?" Lincoln asked. "Should we go in?"

In the old days, before the Kethani, he would not have risked it. Now, with death no longer the threat it used to be, he didn't think twice.

"Let's go," he said.

They returned to the front gate and climbed over. Standish led the way, high-stepping through the deep snow.

He had the sudden feeling of being involved in one of those Golden Age whodunits he'd devoured as a teenager, stories of ingenious murders carried out with devious cunning and improbable devices.

The front door was unlocked. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Standish carefully turned the handle and pushed open the door. He led the way to the lounge.

Sarah Roberts lay on her back before the flickering vid-screen. The earlier image of her, Standish thought, had done nothing to convey her beauty. She was slim and blonde, her face ethereally beautiful. Like an angel, he thought.

They moved into the big, terracotta-tiled kitchen and checked the room thoroughly. They found the entrance to a small cellar and descended cautiously. The cellar was empty. Next they returned to the kitchen and moved into the adjacent dining room, but again found nothing.

"Upstairs?" Lincoln said.

Standish nodded. He led the way, climbing the wide staircase in silence. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, two bare and unoccupied, the third furnished with a single bed. They went through them from top to bottom. He was aware of the steady pounding of his heart as Standish pulled aside curtains and opened wardrobes. Last of all they checked the converted attic, spartanly furnished like the rest of the bedrooms, and just as free of lurking gunmen.

"Clean as a whistle," Lincoln said as they made their way downstairs.

"I wish we'd found the killer," Standish muttered. "I don't like the alternative." What was the alternative, he wondered? An eerie, impossible murder in a house surrounded by snow...

They entered the lounge. Lincoln knelt beside the body, reached out, and touched the woman's implant.

Years ago, before the Kethani, Standish had seen any number of bodies during the course of a working week, and he had never really become accustomed, or desensitised, to the fact that these once living people had been robbed of existence.

Now, when he did occasionally come across a corpse in the line of duty, he was immediately struck by the same feeling of futile waste and tragedy-only to be brought up short with the realisation that now, thanks to the Kethani, the dead would be granted new life.

Lincoln looked up at him, his expression stricken. "Christ, Doug. This isn't right."

Standish felt his stomach turn. "What?"

Lincoln slumped back against the wall. Standish could see that he was sweating. "Her implant's dead."

"But I thought you said... you received the signal at the Station, right?"

Lincoln nodded. "It was the initial signal indicating that the subject had died."

"So it should still be working?"

"Of course. It should be emitting a constant pulse." He shook his head. "Look, this has never happened before. It's unknown. These things just don't pack up. They're Kethani technology."

"Maybe it was one of those false implants? Don't people with objections to the Kethani sometimes have them?"

Lincoln waved. "Sarah worked for the Kethani, Doug. And anyway, it was was working. I saw the signal myself. Now the d.a.m.ned thing's dead." working. I saw the signal myself. Now the d.a.m.ned thing's dead."

Standish stared down at the woman, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was struck once more by her attenuated Nordic beauty, and he was sickened by the thought that she would never live again. Amanda would have called him a s.e.xist b.a.s.t.a.r.d: as if the tragedy were any the greater for the woman being beautiful.

"Can't something be done?"

Lincoln lifted his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. "I don't honestly know. The device needs to be active in the minutes immediately after the subject's death, in order to begin the resurrection process. Maybe the techs at the Station might be able to do something. Like I said, this has never happened before."

The room was hot, suffocatingly so. Standish moved to a window at the back of the room and was about to open it when he saw something through the gla.s.s.

He stepped from the lounge and into the kitchen. The back door was open a few inches. He crossed to it and, with his handkerchief, eased it open a little further and peered out.

The snow on the path directly outside the door had been melted in a circle perhaps a couple of metres across, revealing a stone-flagged path and a margin of lawn. The snow began again immediately beyond the melt, but there was no sign of footprints or any other tracks.

He returned to the lounge. Lincoln was on his mobile, evidently talking to someone at the Onward Station. "And there's nothing at your end, either? Okay. Look, get a tech down here, fast."

Standish crossed the room and stood before the big picture window, staring out at the darkening land with his back to the corpse. He really had no wish to look upon the remains of Sarah Roberts. Her reflection, in the gla.s.s, struck him as unbearably poignant, even more angelic as it seemed to float, ghost-like and evanescent, above the floor.

Lincoln joined him. "They're sending someone down to look at the implant."

Standish nodded. "The scene-of-crime team should be here any minute." He glanced at the ferryman. "You didn't hear her visitor's voice when she returned from answering the door?"

"Nothing. I was aware that there was someone in the room by Sarah's att.i.tude. She seemed eager to end the call. But I didn't see or hear anyone else."

"Have you any idea which door she answered, front or back?"

Lincoln turned and looked at the vid-screen. "Let's see, she was facing the screen, and she moved off to the left-so she must have answered the back door."

That would fit with the door being ajar-but what of the melted patch?

"What kind of person was she? Popular? Boyfriend, husband?"

Lincoln shrugged. "I didn't really know her. Station gossip was that she was a bit of a cold fish. Remote. Kept herself to herself. Didn't make friends. She wasn't married, and as far as I know she didn't have a partner."

"What was her job at the Station?"

"Well, she was designated a liaison officer, but to be honest I don't exactly know what that entailed. I kept her up to date with the dead I delivered and the returnees, but I don't know what she did with the information. She worked with Masters, the Station Director. He'd know more than me."

"How long had she been at the Station?"

"Two or three months. But before that she'd worked at others up and down the country, so I heard."

Standish nodded. "I'm just going to take another look around. I'll be down when the scene-of-crime people turn up."

He left the lounge and climbed the stairs again. He stood in the doorway of the only furnished bedroom and took in the bed-a single bed, which struck him as odd-and the bedside table with nothing upon it.