"Sit down, then." He took a chair and pressed her into it before moving to the back door and flinging it open.

"Out," he ordered the man at the sink.

"Get yourself to hospital as fast as you can. If your friends have an ounce of decency they'll keep your name to themselves. If they haven't' he shrugged - *you've got about half an hour to get yourself admitted before the police come looking for you."

The man needed no persuading. He launched himself into the fresh air of the alleyway and took to his heels.

With a groan of exhaustion, Hal shut the door and slithered to the floor.

"I need a rest. Do me a favour, sweetheart, and take off their masks.

Let's see what we've got."

Roz's head was aching intolerably where the roots of her hair had been loosened. She looked at him with burning eyes in a pasty white face.

"For your information, Hawksley," she said icily, "I'm just about out on my feet. It may have escaped your notice, but if it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have got anything."

He gave a mighty yawn and winced as pain seared around his chest and back. Fractured ribs, he thought tiredly.

"I'll tell you this for free, Roz. As far as I'm concerned you are the most wonderful woman G.o.d ever made and I'll marry you if you'll have me." He smiled sweetly.

"But at the moment I'm bushed.

Be kind. Get off your high horse and take their ski-masks off."

*"Words, words, mere words"," she murmured, but she did as he asked.

The side of his face was already thickening where a baseball bat had split the skin. What the h.e.l.l sort of state must his back be in?

Covered in weals, probably, like the last time.

"Do you know any of them?" She studied the slack features of the unconscious man by the door. She had a fleeting impression she knew him, but his head moved and the impression vanished.

"No." He'd seen her frown of brief recognition.

"Do you?"

"I thought I did," she said slowly.

"Just for a moment." She shook her head.

"No. He probably reminded me of someone on the telly."

Hal pushed himself to his feet and padded over to the sink, his stiffening body protesting at every step. He filled a bowl with water and sloshed it into the gaping mouth, watching the eyes flicker open.

They were instantly alert, wary, guarded, all of which told Hal he wasn't likely to get anywhere by asking questions.

With a shrug of resignation, he looked at Roz.

"I need a favour."

She nodded.

"There's a phone box about two hundred yards down the main road. Take your car to it, dial 999, tell them the Poacher's been broken into, and then go home. Don't give your name. I'll call you the minute I can."

"I'd rather stay."

"I know." His face softened. She was wearing her lonely look again.

He reached out and ran the back of a finger down the line of her cheek.

"Trust me. I will call."

She took a deep breath.

"How long do you want?"

He'd make it up to her one day, he thought.

"Fifteen minutes before you phone."

She retrieved her handbag from the floor, cramming the contents inside and zippering it closed.

"Fifteen minutes," she echoed, pulling the door open and stepping outside. She stared at him for a long moment then shut the door and walked away.

Hal waited until her footsteps faded.

"This," he said gently, reaching for the hat ping *is going to be extremely painful." He grasped the man's hair and forced him down until his face was flat against the floor.

"And I haven't got time for games." He placed the weight of one knee across the man's shoulders then prised a finger straight in one of the bound fists and pushed the point of the hat ping between the flesh and the nail. He felt the finger flinch.

"You've got five seconds to tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on before I push it home. One. Two. Three. Four. Five."

He breathed deeply through his nose, closed his eyes and shoved.

The man screamed.

Hal caught "Foreclosures. You're costing money on the foreclosures' before a ton weight descended on the back of his head.

Sister Bridget, as imperturbable as ever, ushered Roz into her sitting room and sat her in a chair with a gla.s.s of brandy.

Clearly Roz had been in another fight. Her clothes were ifithy and dishevelled, her hair was a mess, and splotchy red marks on her neck and face looked very like the imprint of fingers.

Someone, it seemed, was using her as a target for his spleen, though why she chose to put up with it Sister Bridget couldn't begin to imagine. Roz was as far removed from d.i.c.kens' Nancy as anyone could be and had quite enough independence of spirit to reject the degrading life that a Bill Sykes offered.

She waited placidly while wave after wave of giggles spluttered from Roz's mouth.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked at last, when Roz had composed herself enough to dab at her eyes.

Roz blew her nose.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"It wasn't at all funny." Laughter welled in her eyes again and she held the handkerchief to her mouth.

"I'm sorry to be a nuisance but I was afraid I'd have an accident if I tried to drive home. I think it's what's known as an adrenalin high."

Privately, Sister Bridget decided it was a product of delayed shock, the natural healing process of mind over traumatised body.

"I'm pleased to have you here. Tell me how you're progressing on the Olive front. I saw her today but she wasn't very communicative."

Grateful for something to take her mind off the Poacher, Roz told her.

"She did have a lover. I've found the hotel they used."

She peered at the brandy gla.s.s.

"It was the Belvedere in Farraday Street. They went there on Sundays during the summer of eighty-seven." She took a sip from the gla.s.s then placed it hurriedly on the table beside her and slumped back into the chair, pressing shaking fingers to her temples.

"I'm terribly sorry," she said, *but I don't feel at all well. I've got the mother and father of headaches."

"I should imagine you have," said Sister Bridget, rather more tartly than she had intended.

Roz ma.s.saged her aching temples.

"This ape tried to pull my hair out," she murmured.

"I think that's what's done it." She pressed an experimental hand to the back of her head and winced.

"There's some codeine in my handbag. You couldn't find them for me, could you? I think my head is about to explode." She giggled hysterkally.

"Olive must be Sticking pins into me again."

Tut-tut ting with motherly concern, Sister Bridget administered three with a gla.s.s of water.

"I'm sorry, my dear," she said severely, *but I'm really very shocked.

I can't forgive any man who treats a woman like a chattel and, harsh though it may sound, I find it almost as difficult to forgive the woman. Better to live without a man at all than to live with one who is only interested in the degradation of the spirit."

Roz squinted through one half-closed eyelid, unable to take the glare of light from the window. How indignant the other woman looked, puffing her chest like a pouter pigeon. Hysteria nudged about her diaphragm again.

"You're very harsh all of a sudden. I doubt Olive saw it as degradation. Rather the reverse, I should think."

"I'm not talking about Olive, my dear, I'm talking about you.

This ape you referred to. He isn't worth it. Surely you can see that?"

Roz shook with helpless laughter.

"I'm so sorry," she said at last.

"You must think me incredibly rude. The trouble is I've been on an emotional rollercoaster for months." She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

"You must blame Olive for this.

She's been a G.o.dsend. She's made me feel useful again."

She saw the polite bewilderment on the other's face and sighed inwardly. Really, she thought, it was so much easier to tell lies.

They were one dimensional and uncomplicated.

"I'm finea Everything's finea I like waiting herea Rupert's been very supportive over Alla We went our separate ways amicablya" It was the tangled web of truth, woven deep into the fragile stuff of character, that made life difficult. She wasn't even sure now what was true and what wasn't. Had she really hated Rupert that much? She couldn't imagine where she had found the energy. All she could really remember was how stifling the last twelve months had been.

"I'm completely infatuated," she went on wildly as if that explained anything, *but I've no idea if what I feel is genuine or just pie in the sky hoping." She shook her head.

"I suppose one never really knows."

"Oh, my dear," said Sister Bridget, *do be careful. Infatuation is a very poor subst.i.tute for love. It withers as easily as it flourishes.

Love real love takes time to grow, and how can it do that in an atmosphere of brutality?"

"That's hardly his fault. I could have run away, I suppose, but I'm glad I didn't. I'm sure they'd have killed him if he'd been alone."

Sister Bridget sighed.

"We seem to be talking at cross purposes. Do I gather the ape is not the man you're infatuated with?"

With streaming eyes, Roz wondered if there was any truth in the phrase to die laughing.

"You're very brave," said Sister Bridget.

"I'd have a.s.sumed he was up to no good and run a mile."

"Perhaps he is. I'm a very poor judge of character, you know."

Sister Bridget laughed to herself.

"Well, it all sounds very exciting," she said with a twinge of envy, taking Roz's dress from the tumble-drier and laying it on the ironing board.

"The only man who ever showed any interest in me was a bank clerk who lived three doors away from my parents. He was skin and bone, poor chap, with an enormous Adam's apple that crawled about his throat like a large pink beetle. I simply couldn't bear him. The Church was far more attractive." She wet her finger and tapped it against the iron.

Roz, wrapped in an old flannelette nightie, smiled.

"And is it still?"

"Not always. But I wouldn't be human if I didn't have regrets."

"Have you ever been in love?"