"If it's a grade-four glioma it wouldn't have made any difference."

"But I don't think it is. Grade-three, possibly. Not a four. And though I think it's unlikely to be benign, we need a biopsy to be sure. I could be wrong."

But you think that is almost out of the question, Cat thought. Self-belief is your speciality.

"Thanks." Chris stood up. "Not a lot more to say, is there?"

"Treatment. There's that to say."

"There is no treatment. Don't take the piss."

"If you'd sit down, I could go through the options. You may not be up to speed. GPs rarely are, I find. How long is it since you diagnosed a grade-three glioma?"

"About two months ago, as a matter of fact. Thirty-six-year-old man, six foot six, bronzed and fit, swimmer, diver, one of Australia's many outdoor sports fanatics."

"So in that case you know that in many situations we can operate to relieve pressure."

"Depending on the site of the tumour."

"This one looks possible."

"There's no point."

"You won't say that when the headaches become more intense, which could be any day now. We'll also give you the maximum number of radiotherapy bursts-ten I should say. That will keep the worst of the symptoms at bay for a time. I'll put you down to start next week. We want to get on top of this. It won't wait." She stood up. As she did so, Chris turned to Cat as if he was about to say something but instead was suddenly and violently sick.

In the car park he said, "Remember."

Cat did not need to hear more. "Chris, don't ask me. I would do anything to help you, to get you through this."

"Anything except what I want."

"You can't ask your wife or anyone else to kill you-I can't, I won't and you shouldn't even think it, no matter what's happening to you. I don't want to have this conversation again."

He sat beside her in silence all the way home. Dear God, Cat prayed silently, get us out of this.

She made an egg salad and coffee and set the table on the terrace. It was as warm as June, the wasps sailing insolently close to their plates, but the stems of a dogwood at the far end of the garden were already turning red, blazing in the sun. The grey pony came ambling across the paddock to the near fence.

Chris said, "I didn't understand what patients meant when they said, "I can't take it in. I haven't taken it in." Well, I do now because I can't."

"No."

He put down his fork. "Tell me what to do, Cat."

She reached for his hand. The feel of his skin and flesh and bone, the utter familiarity of this man's hand, was unnerving. She was thinking of it as the hand of someone dying, a hand she should not love too much because it was going to be taken away from her. It was unimaginable.

"I think you do as she said. She was a bitch. She should be in a lab, not dealing with people-God knows how other patients cope with her, totally bewildered by everything in there, not only by what might be happening to them but by the jargon and the procedures. She should never have to speak to a patient again for the rest of her life. But she was right. You have to do what she said. You know that."

"Is there any point? How long is it going to take-six months? Max. Do I want to spend that time recovering from brain surgery, exhausted by radiotherapy? I'm not sure I do." He sounded infinitely weary, even at this stage, too tired to bother with any of it.

"Yes. They need to do a biopsy. They can reduce the size of the tumour."

"To buy me time."

"What's wrong with time?"

"Oh, nothing whatsoever from where I'm standing."

"Surgery and radiotherapy will buy you time-and good time, Chris. Maybe quite a long time. And if the biopsy is good-"

"It won't be. They never are."

"Rubbish and you know it."

"Do I? What do we doctors say? Listen to the patients, they'll give you the diagnosis. So listen to me."

She smoothed her fingers over the back of his hand, memorising the feel of it. She said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"No point."

"Chris, I'm your wife."

"You were going to find out. Why spoil the last bit of Australia, why put you through it before it was inevitable?"

She looked at him. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Long nose. Wide mouth. Flat ears. Not handsome. Not ugly. Not a face that stood out in a crowd. Not a face anyone would see and be unable to forget. Chris's face.

He lifted up her hand and pressed it to his cheek.

"The thing is," he said, "it's not only that I don't want to leave you and I don't want to leave the children. I don't want to miss them growing up. I don't want not to be here, doing what we do, in this place. The thing is ... it isn't even that I don't want to die."

She felt the stubble on his skin. She thought that if she tried she could even feel the flow of the blood beneath it.

She said nothing. Waited. Whatever it was, he had to say it. To tell her. Whatever it was.

But he was silent. He held her hand to his face a little while longer, then let it go before getting up and wandering away across the garden towards the paddock. Cat watched him and as she watched saw that his gait was odd, uneven and slightly unsteady. She closed her eyes, knowing why, too terrified to watch any more.

Twenty-seven.

The grounds of the hotel ran down to the river. There was a small hooped wooden bridge beside willow trees where almost every one had a photograph taken-the bride and groom standing romantically together with the willow branches bending over them, the water gliding by. Photographers were clever with reflections. The bridegroom would hold up a branch of willow for the bride to pass under. They would stand hand in hand, leaning over the bridge rail looking down. It never failed.

Amy Finlayson, Events Manager and Wedding Coordinator for the Riverside Hotel, stood on the lawn watching the gang erect the marquee for the following day. The double doors of the dining room would be open onto the small flight of stone steps, the marquee entrance just below, and with a bit of luck, they could open up the back too so that people could see the lawn leading to the river and stroll down there later. This lot were having fireworks at ten. The team would set them up in the paddock. She'd earned her bonuses and the extra tips this year. People were generous when a wedding went well, they were lavish with gratuities. By the end of October she'd be taking her holiday in Canada.

"I don't understand you," the manager had said. "Why don't you go for sun and a beach? Why not somewhere like Mauritius?"

"Because Mauritius means one thing," Amy said. "Bloody weddings."

From where he stood, concealed behind the thick stump of a pollarded willow, he had the perfect view-the woman pointing, the marquee men. The line of sight was ideal. Up the lawn, through the tent to the open French windows.

He looked carefully around him. Behind, a wooden fence into a field. He could climb over easily enough but the field was fully open to view from the hotel. The footpath beside the river was also open and visible. Only if he went left did he have any chance of slipping away unseen and it was a risk because although there were screening trees and a hedge, both had significant gaps. It was also a long way to the road. Too long. There was nowhere he could safely hole up, either.

No. It would be clear exactly where any shots had been fired from. The patrol cars, especially just at the moment, would be fast on the scene. He had no chance. Unless ...

He smiled. Unless.

It was so obvious he could have worked it out as a ten-year-old boy.

What kept you? he thought.

Alison had dreamed of a marquee-the inside had been designed in her head for years, with pink and white ribbons tied round a maypole, a pink and white awning and swags of flowers. It had all come together in the weeks before. Cost a fortune. Her mother paying. Paying for a grand wedding.

It was what she wanted and what she wanted was fine by him.

Alison.

He drove home feeling the sparks of anger, that always smouldered, rekindle and burn hard. When something reminded him, it affected his breathing. He felt a tightness in his chest. Even his vision sometimes changed, clouding a little.

Alison.

He put the car away and locked it, then went out again, a quarter of a mile to the pub he preferred because no one was interested in anyone else, no one behind the bar wanted to chat.

He bought his pint of keg, hating the sweet thick taste of the real ale they tried to push, took it to a corner with the local paper and a biro in case he needed to mark anything out.

It was full of the shootings. Three deaths. No leads. No clues. Lots of blether filling page after page but nothing real. Nothing that troubled him.

Twenty-eight.

Simon Serrailler lay on his back on the floor and rolled first to the left and then to the right, left and right, left and right. He was a tall man and his back had been giving him trouble but in the past two weeks he had been working fifteen-hour days and although he knew he should go to the physio for treatment there had been no time.

He rolled over left to right a dozen more times and then lay on his back again, arms behind his head, in the quiet of his living room. Before long the bells would start to ring. Thursday night was full practice night. But for now, only the floorboards creaked occasionally, settling back after he had disturbed them with his exercise.

Exercise also helped to clear his mind. Work he could deal with. He had been in the game too long now to carry it home in his head. Earlier that day he had said, "We'll get him and I'll tell you why. Because he'll make a mistake. Yes, he is clever and cunning, yes, he is planning carefully. But with firearms there are any number of mistakes he can make and sooner or later he will make one of them and give himself away. I don't mean we sit and wait for him to do it. We're being as proactive as possible on this one. But I'm confident that when he does cock up, in however small a way, we'll be there and we'll have him."

He believed it.

He had closed his eyes. Now he opened them and looked around his room, drawing from its calm order. Then he stood up, twisted this way and that a few times, and went to fetch himself a whisky. He was spending the evening in, alone, watching a documentary about Italy and reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin. It was time he desperately needed, time he had been looking forward to, limited enough for him to relish every moment. He wanted to go through his sketchbooks of his spring break in the Faroes where he had gulped in lungfuls of crystal-cold air and walked among seabirds and grass-roofed houses and felt both invigorated and deeply peaceful. He had an exhibition next year, half of which would be of these drawings, the rest of portraits, many of his mother. He wanted to sift through them, place them in perfect order which would take a long, careful time.

He stretched out on the sofa. It was not only time which he did not have. He needed a calm emotional sea and he could not see when he might get one.

His brother-in-law had a brain tumour. Simon knew enough to be aware that his chances were slim. He was very fond of Chris, he would find it hard if he were not around, but it was his sister he had most in his mind and in his heart. Her future, with three young children and a stressful job but without her beloved husband, was unimaginable. She would need Simon. He would need to have strength and time and love for all of them. There was no one else.

The cathedral bells started up. Simon went to the window and looked down on the close.

Not true, a voice niggled, not true and you know it. There is Dad. And now there is Dad and Judith.

Judith Connolly.

She is a nice woman, the voice niggled. She is warm and kind and seemingly straightforward and she will do your father a power of good. What possible reason is there for your being so antagonistic towards her? None.

While work was muddied and turbulent, while Chris was ill and very probably dying, and Judith was in his mother's place, he could settle to nothing here, could not take pleasure from his drawing and planning his next exhibition, could not relax and simply be.

The phone rang.

"Si?"

Cat.

She was crying.

"I'll come," Simon said.

It was another mild night, another day had stretched out the long decline of summer even further. The close was empty, the bells ringing on through the evening. Simon stood for a moment listening. He was neither musical nor spiritual-he left that to Cat. She did music and God for both of them, she had once said. But he thought about Chris, facing a horrible illness, and a horrible treatment and very possibly a horrible death, and his thoughts were as close to prayer as he ever came.

If a SIFT case came up now and looked like taking him away from Lafferton for any length of time, he decided that he would ask to be left out. He was needed here, not halfway across the country after an elusive and anonymous murderer, though if he wanted one of those, he didn't have far to look.

As he sped through the narrow town streets, his mobile rang. He ignored it. Right now Cat came first.

Twenty-nine.

"Jamie, be quiet and go to sleep."

He was a good sleeper. If he hadn't been, Bethan Doyle would have gone off her head. He woke before six but in any case they had to be ready to leave the house at seven so it didn't matter. She walked to the nursery, then caught the bus to Bevham to be there at eight. Mornings were death but she'd rather that than depend on Foster, rather be independent, rather have no money. Not that she had much money now by the time she'd paid for the nursery and her rent. But she was her own woman. And if her wedding-dress business took off she might even give up the day job.

Jamie wailed. She closed the door and switched on Corrie but the wails came through the wall. There wasn't anything wrong with him.

The television wailed too, the Corrie signature tune, drowning him out for a minute. Bethan went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, but when she came out, Jamie's cries were so loud that next door were banging.

She went into the dark bedroom. His cot was in one corner, her bed in the other. Poky little room. She suddenly wanted to throw things around, she hated the pokiness so much. And the street it was in and the people next door and the rest of them all round. She was on the council list but they'd only offered her on the roughest estate in Bevham and she wanted to stay here. Lafferton was a step up and it was away from Foster. When the time came the schools were decent. If she could get a job here so she didn't have to fork out for fares, it would be even better.

She had plans. It all took so long but she did have plans. Jamie hadn't been planned, far from it, but he was here so the plans had to be for them both. Children grew up, it wasn't forever. Her plan was to go to the college, do dress design and business studies and move from sewing at home to opening a wedding shop. Already her ads had brought in some work. She had a beautiful beaded dress on the go now. If she could just go out there and shout at all the girls as easily led by boys as she had been. If she could force them to see. But she'd make it. She was sure.

She pushed Jamie's damp hair back from his forehead. It was close in the room. That was probably why he couldn't get off.