"Maybe we both should. He sounds like a nutcase."

I'm starting to calm a little now-I've bought us some time. Betty and I are going to get out of this, I swear it.

Agent Wade glances at the list again. I'm beyond trying to tell him that I shouldn't be on it. He produces his silver cigarette lighter, snaps on the flame, and holds it below the list. I watch as the flames eat up the list, and Agent Wade holds it until his fingers are nearly burned before dropping it to the floor. Specks of black ash mingle with a ring of smoke, and he blows hard, sending the smoke and ash all around my living room.

Agent Wade looks me straight in the eye, and I swear there's something disturbing hiding behind his bright blue stare. He rises to his full height, looming over me, threateningly turns up the flame on his lighter until it must be about six inches high. He lets me see the flame, then suddenly snaps it out. I don't know what this means, but it is obviously meant to serve as some sort of dire threat.

"Let the fires of h.e.l.l claim them all!"

I study Agent Wade intently and start to get this sudden and golden vision. In it I see him lying facedown in the crocodile house. Being eaten.

It's the only answer.

COLD CHAMOMILE.

J AMES MASON AMES MASON is one of those gaunt, bony, long-limbed guys who should be arrested on sight. His eyes bulge, his skin is taut and sallow, and he has pockmarks on his face and neck. Sometimes he has a boil on the back of his neck to go with the pockmarks, and I know for certain that he pays someone to squeeze it, probably a prost.i.tute. He has huge, and I mean murderously huge, hands, and his nose is broken in maybe twelve places. He once showed me a photo of his mother, and to be honest, you couldn't tell the two of them apart. is one of those gaunt, bony, long-limbed guys who should be arrested on sight. His eyes bulge, his skin is taut and sallow, and he has pockmarks on his face and neck. Sometimes he has a boil on the back of his neck to go with the pockmarks, and I know for certain that he pays someone to squeeze it, probably a prost.i.tute. He has huge, and I mean murderously huge, hands, and his nose is broken in maybe twelve places. He once showed me a photo of his mother, and to be honest, you couldn't tell the two of them apart.

I like him.

His stories are delivered in a very dry tone, which sounds sarcastic but probably isn't meant to be. He hardly ever touches his food and only drinks herbal tea. He carries herbal tea bags in his wallet and gets the deaf waitress-or should I say Myrna-to bring him cups of hot water, into which he dunks his herbal tea bag. Usually rose leaf or chamomile. Once, when he wasn't looking, I saw Chuck empty half a salt cellar into James's teacup, and to my amazement, James never seemed to notice and drank it all without batting an eye.

James lives in a modern-looking apartment in Dallas and has recently been decorating it in "Mom's favorite cornflower blue." I pay cash for my flight and head for the terminal carrying a length of lead piping in my bag. It immediately sets off the airport metal detector and I spend a good thirty minutes being interrogated by an obese security guard. It seems they automatically question anyone carrying this much lead. The delay causes me to miss all my connections and I arrive in Texas six hours later than planned. A Texan security guard then spends two hours threatening to hit me with the lead piping, unless I tell him why I'm carrying it around with me. Eventually his boss walks in and tells him to let me go. He's been through every page of the airport's guidelines and apparently lead isn't mentioned anywhere and they have to let me go.

The outrageously expensive cab I take to James's place pulls up half an hour later. The driver is a short-jawed chocolate eater who listens to a medical phone-in over the radio. I study the driver and know that he probably wanted to be a doctor once but gave it all up when he realized he had the IQ of a water buffalo. I get out, grudgingly pay my fare-no tip-cross the street to a diner, and spend two hours sipping expensive coffee and watching a cable movie about a woman who donates her bone marrow to save her daughter's life, only to have a dog run off with the marrow and eat it. The dog turns out to be possessed by the devil or something. Either that or it was just hungry. I don't really concentrate on the movie because I keep thinking about my date with Betty on Sunday. I've decided that we can hide out on Burt's houseboat-maybe even sail it somewhere warm and dry. I don't want to hang around any longer, and I'm hoping that James and his mom will be my last kills for the foreseeable future. Agent Wade, aka the Kentucky Killer, can join the Club by all means, but me and Betty are getting out. Only when I'm good and ready will I come back and finally rid the world of all known skillers-federal agent Kennet Wade included.

Evening closes in, and as I pay my tab I can see James pull up, having a huge argument with his mother about her irritating penchant for backseat driving. After opening the pa.s.senger door for his invisible mom to get out, he gets back in the car and takes the ramp down into the underground car park under his apartment block.

I wait twenty minutes and then cross the street to James's apartment.

James's killing career could have been sponsored by Waddington's, the brilliant minds behind the ingenious board game Clue, because to date he has used a dagger, a length of rope, a candlestick, a revolver, and a wrench to murder his victims. James told us that when he was eight, his mother, an alcoholic, used to beat him regularly with empty bottles of Waddington's brown ale, beer she used to get from visiting English sailors in return for s.e.x. He had originally intended to kill drunken English sailors but found that murdering jurors who concluded against him was much more satisfying.

As I approach James's apartment, I pull out the length of lead piping, feel it heavy in my hands, and ring his doorbell. I quickly tape over the eyehole so that he can't see who is out there on the landing and then bring up the lead piping like a baseball bat, ready to swing it as soon as James opens the door.

I wait five minutes before trying the doorbell again, regripping the lead piping as I do.

Still no one answers.

I check the number to make sure I've got the right apartment-the last thing I want to do is cave in some innocent person's head-but I'm at the right door, and he should be answering.

I try a third time, finding that the lead piping is becoming increasingly heavy in my hands.

I can't believe James isn't answering. I check around to make sure no one has seen me, then I try the door.

It's open.

I take a moment, pushing the door gently. "Pizza boy."

I press my nose and my right eye into the crack between door and jamb and try to see if I can detect any sign of movement inside. It all seems very still, and I push the door open a few more inches.

"Hawaiian with extra pineapple?" My whole head is inside the door now as I crane my neck, eyes screwed up, peering into the darkened apartment.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

I grip the lead piping tight as I step in and close the door gently behind me. My eyes are getting used to the shadowy room, and I can smell the cornflower paint and see white dust sheets covering every possible item of furniture. I can feel my pulse racing as I take a few silent steps farther into the apartment. Something is telling me to get out of here, but equally I seem compelled to keep edging farther inside, my eyes darting everywhere, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

"Garlic bread supreme for two?" There's a quiver in my voice now, and I realize that unless pizzas are delivered in a lead piping shape, no one watching me is going to believe a word of it. I opt for silence as I ease open a door and realize I'm staring into James's bedroom. The thing that draws my attention the most is a huge double bed with a skeleton lying on it. Not a real skeleton-one of those fake things tutors wheel out in biology cla.s.s and then make "my, that's some diet you're on" type of jokes about. It's wearing women's silk underwear and a pair of zip-up thigh-length boots, and I have to confess that James is even more messed up than I thought. I don't know whether to laugh or puke.

I move on from the bedroom, find a small but stylish kitchen, can see steam rising from an avant-garde kettle; two mugs with teabags on strings stand waiting beside it, and there's a loaf of bread freshly opened. All the signs of life, but I'm d.a.m.ned if there's anyone in.

I check out a store cupboard, a bathroom, and a spare bedroom but can't find a thing. James is nowhere to be seen. I look at the length of lead piping that I'm still clutching and start to feel pretty stupid as I come back into the living room, unable to fathom how and why James isn't here. My eyes are used to the darkness by now, and I can make out pots of cornflower paint sitting on the rungs of a stepladder. A roller lies in a tray awaiting paint, and after I switch on a side lamp, I can see that all told he's done a pretty good job so far. I might take a leaf out of his book and do my place up the same. The white sheets covering the furniture have several splashes of blue on them, and as I look up I can see where James has been painting over a splash of red on the ceiling. I decide to leave; this is turning into a waste of time. . . . I stop suddenly.

I quickly look back at the splash of red on the ceiling, watching it drip onto the white dust sheet below. I walk over, peer up at the splash, and immediately know what I'm looking at.

I glance around wildly, heart thumping so hard that my ribs are going to end up bruised. I check again, desperately making sure there's no one else in the room, and then reach forward and pull away the bloodstained dust sheet. It's like being hit by a train when I see what is sitting on the sofa. A man, tall, thin, bony-and currently stabbed to death, hence the arterial spray on the ceiling-sits very upright with a carton over his head. A KFC family-size bucket, to be more precise. I can tell just from looking at the body's huge hands that it is James, but I have to make completely sure. Using the tip of the lead piping, I gingerly push up the KFC bucket until I can see James's gaping dead mouth crammed with lemon-scented hand wipes. I raise the bucket farther and find a typed sheet stapled to James's forehead. I lean closer still.

Hi, Dougie.

My soul kicks savagely at my insides, scratching and tearing to get out of my frozen body. That old familiar mantra of four years ago, from when I first joined the Club, returns.

Get the h.e.l.l out, Dougie! Get out, get out, get out!

And this time I heed it. I turn and flee from the apartment, thundering onto the landing and taking the emergency stairs, somehow having the presence of mind to make sure no one sees me as I head down into the car lot built underneath the apartment block. Thanks to the lead piping, I easily smash open the side window of a white Cadillac and jump in behind the wheel. I don't care that the car alarm is now screeching as I hot-wire the engine, slam it into drive, and roar away. It takes me a good fifty miles before I find out how to turn off the d.a.m.n alarm, and by this time I'm driving along an empty freeway to G.o.d knows where. Rearing up before me is a nameless world, and I break the speed limit trying to escape the eerie, cemeterylike landscape. I grab the mobile phone and punch in the number for Betty. I don't know what time it is in Chicago, and in truth I don't really care. Her answering machine kicks in, tells me the number of her mobile, and I call that, punching the keys so hard that I break a nail.

"Douglas?"

"Jesus . . . Betty . . . G.o.d . . . help me . . ."

"What is it, what's wrong?" Betty's voice crackles, is hard to make out-it sounds like she's standing in a wind tunnel.

"I love you."

"Douglas . . . ?"

"I do, Betty. I love you and love you and love you."

"Start breathing, Douglas. One . . . two . . ."

"Betty, I mean it. I want to go away with you. On a boat, Burt's boat. We'll sail to Mexico together. You, me, and your dog."

"What dog?"

"Please say yes, Betty. . . ."

"Look, we'll talk when you come over Sunday."

"I can't wait that long."

"You have to."

"Don't make me beg you, Betty."

"Douglas . . . I'm going to help you. Are you listening? I'm going to help you. Everything's going to be just fine. You won't have to worry anymore."

"I love you more than anything in the whole world, Betty."

"And I love you, too, Douglas. Now go back to sleep."

"Sleep? I'm driving, for chrissakes!"

"Driving? Where exactly are you?"

"Texas."

"What are you doing down there?"

"I, uh . . . I dunno. I guess I took the wrong turn."

"What about the meeting tonight? Will you be back in time for that?"

"I didn't know there was one."

"It's an emergency meet. KK's posted an ad. He's coming tonight."

I'm so insensible that I can't take this on board and seem capable only of declaring my undying love for Betty, as if this single feeling can combat everything bad that's happening to me. "Betty . . . I . . . I really, really-"

"I know, Douglas. I know."

Betty hangs up, and I grip the phone hard in my hand, wishing I could somehow squeeze Betty out of it so that she'd be there with me. When she doesn't appear, I toss the phone away and instead notice the odometer. I gaze intently at the dial as the miles roll hypnotically past, going from the tens to the hundreds, and on and on and up to the thousand mark and beyond.

When I get back to Chicago, I don't truly know where to go. I definitely can't face Agent Wade, and I'm not sure I can face the Club, either. I arrive at the harbor to find that the waters are still and the sun has broken through for the first time in what must be a decade.

There is a definite buzz in the air, and as I pa.s.s the security guard's hut, I can smell warm bagels. It could also be his burned feet, I guess, but I don't bother looking.

Burt's houseboat, the Teacher, Teacher, is empty, creaking gently in the quiet tide. I drag my weary self aboard, find his bunk, and crash facedown on it. I am in h.e.l.l, and I don't know the way back. is empty, creaking gently in the quiet tide. I drag my weary self aboard, find his bunk, and crash facedown on it. I am in h.e.l.l, and I don't know the way back.

SON OF SUDDENLY.

I WAKE TO THE SOUND WAKE TO THE SOUND of a familiar voice. Burt's small portable television is on, and as I open my eyes, trying to establish where exactly I am, I look around to see the face of the television psychiatrist staring back at me. From the tiny black-and-white screen, I hasten to add. of a familiar voice. Burt's small portable television is on, and as I open my eyes, trying to establish where exactly I am, I look around to see the face of the television psychiatrist staring back at me. From the tiny black-and-white screen, I hasten to add.

His face disappears, to be replaced by a drawing of someone sitting on a sofa with a KFC bucket placed over their head. The television psychiatrist comes back on screen and slowly, gravely, shakes his head.

"Victim number three hundred and one." A shot of James's skeleton lover complete with underwear and thigh-length boots is flashed up, with the psychiatrist's voice-over. "Is this what America is coming to?"

The psychiatrist shakes his head solemnly. "Let's concentrate on the victim for a change. Put to the back of your minds that he was killed by the Kentucky Killer, and instead, think hard about what sort of man-a lawyer, no less-dresses up a skeleton and takes it to bed with him. And then think that perhaps this man deserved to die, that our fine friends in forensics have established this man as a notorious serial killer-"

A hand reaches over and flicks off the screen. I sit up suddenly at the sight of Agent Wade offering me a cup of chamomile tea.

"Figured you'd be here."

My heart break-dances inside my chest, and I can hardly hold the cup of tea without spilling it all over myself.

"Tried the zoo first, then thought to myself, Now where would I go if I were Dougie?" Agent Wade chews on a nail, bites it, and then spits it out. "I see you've got a sense of humor."

"I'm sorry?"

"Dumping the KFC box on James's head. Very funny."

"I didn't."

"Dougie . . ."

"He was like that when I found him." I'm not sure why Agent Wade is playing these games with me. "He was, I swear."

Agent Wade looks at me as if he's waiting for me to break into an uncontrollable smile, like I'm joking and it's only a matter of time before I own up.

"There was even a typed message stapled to him. 'Hi, Dougie.' I wouldn't have put that there."

"Wasn't mentioned in the news report."

"Maybe they forgot."

"A message like that would make headlines: 'Anyone Out There Know a Dougie?'"

"Someone else killed him." I try hard to get my point across as I set down the cup of chamomile tea. Chamomile? I glance at the cup like it's got a snake in there or something. Where the h.e.l.l did Agent Wade get the teabag from? He had to have been in James Mason's apartment.

Agent Wade sits at the bottom of the bunk-close to my feet-and I find I really don't like being this close to him. He produces a newspaper and tosses it over to me. I pick it up and see that it is folded open at the personals. On the top half there is nothing but lonely guys looking for even lonelier girls. Some lonely guys seem to be happy to ask for either-a lonely girl or a lonely guy, or even both at the same time. One ad asks for "any color, creed, s.e.x, or religion, just please, please write to me," and I know from experience that that sort of pathetic begging will get him nowhere. I invert the page, read the bottom half, and trawl through more ads from society's misfits, and then finally I see it.

It's Club night and the King is in the mood to party.

I remember the phone call to Betty and glance at my watch. It's seven in the evening; I haven't been asleep as long as I thought.

Agent Wade grabs my sports bag from the floor and unzips it, showing me what's inside. "I brought a change of clothes for you. How about having a shower and a shave, and after you're dressed I'll drive you over to the Club."

"I'm not going."

"Don't start that again."

I fix my eyes on Agent Wade, not about to budge. "I'm not going."

"You've got to-KK's going to be there. I want that guy, Dougie."

"You go, then. Take a seat somewhere, the next table, even, wait for the meeting to wrap, and then take him out after he leaves."