Rachel nodded. 'Yes. I do. I'm sure he's got nothing to do with this. It's just not his style. Anyway, what's his motive?'

'That's the sixty thousand dollar question, isn't it ... the motive. From the picture I'm building up of Charles Marrick, I can see why he'd be a potential victim. But the others ...'

'I know.' Rachel gave him an apologetic shrug. She was as puzzled as he was.

'Any progress with Celia Dawn's alibi?'

'I haven't been able to prove she wasn't where she said she was if that's what you mean. Think it's worth getting a search warrant? After all she did give him his last meal.'

'I don't think it's top of the boss's list of priorities.' Wesley sighed. He suddenly felt tired. 'Do you think Marrick beat her up?'

'She says not and, as far as I can see, she has no links with the other victims. But I'll keep digging,' she concluded wearily.

'What about Petronella Blackwell?'

'Her supermarket alibi for the time of Simon Tench's murder stands up. She used her credit card.'

'Doesn't mean she didn't make a detour on the way home.'

'Her alibi for Grisham's murder's been checked out too. She was off work for a couple of days at the time ... claims she was doing Open University work.'

'But she could have nipped up to Chester.'

'No reason to think that.'

'Suppose not,' said Wesley wearily, aware that he was clutching at any available straw.

At that moment Gerry Heffernan appeared at his office door. 'Who's going to get me the postmortem report on the last headmaster of Belsinger the one who committed suicide? Stanley Hadderson his name was,' he called out as a challenge to the minions at their desks. When Steve Carstairs signalled that he'd be the one to oblige, the boss returned to his lair.

Wesley followed him. He shut the door behind him and sat down.

'Anything new, Wes? Anyone been in to confess?' He sighed wistfully, imagining the scene.

''Fraid not, Gerry. Rachel's been to see Barty Carter.'

Heffernan looked up expectantly. 'And?'

'He didn't tell her much.' He hesitated, a grin spreading across his face. 'But she's got a bit of a spring in her step.'

Heffernan raised his eyebrows. 'I thought he was supposed to be a washed-out failure with a drink problem. Hardly our Rach's type.'

'Maybe she feels sorry for him,' Wesley said, hardly believing it himself. The Rachel he knew wasn't a sucker for lame ducks.

'That'll be a first,' Heffernan mumbled before picking up a handwritten list that was lying on his desk. 'I've been on to Colin. Asked him to do Mortimer Dean's PM as soon as possible. I asked for the toxicology report to be top priority.'

'You think Dean was poisoned?'

'Don't you?'

'Hemlock? The Socrates touch. He was a teacher who was ordered to drink it for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens.'

'And Mortimer Dean corrupted the youth of Belsinger School? Come on, Wes, there was no hint of anything like that, was there? If anyone was a corrupting influence at Belsinger, it's my bet it was Charles Marrick. It really beats me why he wasn't expelled as soon as he started making trouble.'

'If Hedge is telling the truth, Marrick was blackmailing the headmaster, Stanley Hadderson, about their relations.h.i.+p. This was a few years ago now and having openly gay members of staff in a boys' boarding school would hardly have gone down well with the parents, however enlightened and liberal they liked to appear at their London dinner parties.

Heffernan sighed. 'You're probably right, Wes. That little b.a.s.t.a.r.d Marrick had Hadderson by the short and curlies. By 'eck, Wes, he must have been a nasty piece of work.'

'But he always kept one step ahead of the law.'

'He cheated Darren Collins. That was fraud. We could have had him for that.'

'And what's the betting he'd blame whoever supplied him with the dodgy wine. He'd make sure he came out of that one squeaky clean. That's what I hate about people like that.'

'Give us a good, honest villain any day, eh, Wes.'

Wesley smiled. 'And what about the other victims. There's nothing to suggest that they were anything other than blameless, upright citizens. And, according to their school records, they were model pupils.'

Heffernan looked up. 'Charlie Marrick was teflon coated because of what he had on Hadderson that might have applied to his inner circle of mates as well.'

'But there's nothing to indicate that they were his mates, is there? Quite the reverse in fact.'

'Opposites attract, Wes. You know that as well as I do. How many kids from good homes become involved with undesirable friends? Doctors' and vicars' kids who go to the bad on booze and drugs. And policemen's kids of course: there was this DI in Neston his son started hanging around with ...'

'Okay, Gerry, I get the picture.' He found the thought an uncomfortable one. He was only too aware that he wasn't giving his own children enough paternal attention. If they went wrong, he'd only have himself to blame. 'But we've not heard any hint that Tench and Grisham were bad uns, have we?'

Heffernan sighed. 'Have you asked Tom in Forensic if he's traced that e-mail address? Frankie, whoever he or she is.'

'I thought you were doing it.'

Heffernan snorted. 'You know I never have anything to do with computers if I can help it. That Tom terrifies the life out of me.'

Wesley had to smile. Forensic's foremost computer expert was an amiable una.s.suming young man. But his virtuoso skill with the keyboard left Gerry Heffernan in awe, as if he was in the presence of great genius.

'Have you seen the evening paper yet?'

Wesley shook his head.

'Our mole's been at it again.' He reached over and picked a newspaper up off the floor by his desk It was the Tradmouth Echo. That day's edition. 'Here, look at the headline.'

He pa.s.sed the paper to Wesley who scanned the front page, frowning. 'Police connect Morbay bookshop death to Spider enquiry.'

'Have you talked to Ray Davenport?'

'He's avoiding me, Wes. Every time I call him he's out or his secretary says he is. I think we need to go round there. Have a word.'

Wesley looked at his watch. It was four thirty already and, with the pressure of work, the leaking of inside information to the press was hardly on their list of priorities. Not when the Spider might be out there, waiting for his next victim.

'Can it wait till tomorrow, Gerry? Or we could ask the press officer to have a discreet word.'

Heffernan slumped in his seat. 'Suppose so. But the information must have come from someone here and I want to know who it is.'

'You could give the team one of your little pep talks,' Wesley suggested. He had known Heffernan's 'little talks' reduce new recruits to CID to quivering wrecks.

'I might just do that. You don't think it could be Steve Carstairs, do you? He's been unusually quiet since the Carl Pinney incident.'

'I've heard he's been doing a bit of bonding with his long-lost father. And Trish told Rachel that he's got a new woman. Maybe he's been transformed by the power of love.'

Heffernan snorted. 'Transformed by my boot up his backside more likely. Not like you to come over all romantic, Wes. What's up?'

'Nothing's up.' Wesley smiled, impatient to change the subject. 'I think it'll help us to go over everything we've got so far. Is that okay with you?'

Heffernan sighed. 'Until we get those postmortem results and Tom's verdict on that e-mail address, we might as well get things straight in our heads.'

Wesley took a sheet of blank paper and cleared a s.p.a.ce on the desk before putting it down neatly in front of him and taking a pen from his inside pocket.

Heffernan looked at him expectantly. 'Right, where do we start? Charles Marrick's murder?'

Wesley wrote something down. 'Yes. Charles Marrick's found dead. Cause of death loss of blood through two puncture wounds in the neck and he had ingested an infusion of hemlock, possibly administered to paralyse him so that he couldn't summon help. Colin reckoned he would have been unable to move but aware of what was happening knowing he was bleeding to death and not being able to do a thing about it.'

'Not a nice thought. So who are our suspects?'

'Carl Pinney. Nasty little thug and drug user of the parish of Winterham in the badlands of Morbay. He was in possession of the murder weapon and wasn't afraid to use it. Claimed he found it. Only trouble is, I can't see that hemlock's really his style. However, he did break into Simon Tench's surgery to nick drugs.' Wesley thought for a moment. 'The drug they took ... ketamine; that's a tranquilliser. If you wanted to make sure someone couldn't fight back, you could use that rather than mess about with infusions of hemlock. Not that any of the victims would take anything Pinney gave them so I think that theory's a non-starter. And there's nothing to link him to the Chester case.'

Heffernan raised his hand. 'There's always our second suspect, Fabrice Colbert, alias Darren Collins. Reformed robber and celebrity chef. Marrick had just tried to defraud him by pa.s.sing off cheap weasels' p.i.s.s as expensive wine so Collins wasn't a happy bunny. And he was having it off with the victim's missus. Motives coming out of his ears, that one and preparing hemlock'd be a doddle for a chef of his experience. And he's got a temper you can see it on his TV programme every week.'

Wesley looked sceptical. He strongly suspected the chef's ranting and raving was an act, bordering on the theatrical. 'We've nothing to connect him with Tench or Grisham.'

'True. What about Annette Marrick?'

'She's hardly the grieving widow and Marrick did rape her daughter ... allegedly. If you ask me, the woman's as hard as nails. But she does have an alibi.'

'A dodgy one, Rachel reckoned. And one backed up by another possible suspect Marrick's ex-lover, Celia Dawn, who admits she had lunch with him the day he died.'

'What about Annette's daughter, Petronella Blackwell? Has she gone back to Bath yet?'

Wesley shook his head. 'No. She's still with her mother.'

'Odd relations.h.i.+p.'

'She is her mother. Her adoptive parents are both dead now so perhaps she's clinging to her only blood relative. Who knows? It must be an emotional thing, finding your mother after years without her.'

'She claims Marrick raped her. That gives her a d.a.m.n good motive. And the same goes for Annette. They both had good reason to want him dead. None of Petronella's alibis for any of the murders are watertight. When Marrick died she said she drove down from Bath when Annette called her. However, Annette made the call to her mobile so she could have been anywhere on her way back from Rhode for instance. She said she was off work alone in her flat earlier that day no witnesses. And Annette herself could easily have nipped back home and done the deed. If we did more digging, I'm sure we could drive a coach and horses through their stories.'

'Did Petronella know Tench or Grisham?'

'Not that we're aware of.'

Wesley thought for a moment. 'We keep hearing that there was some girl involved with Marrick at school. Annette's much older than her husband but Petronella's nearer his age ... maybe a couple of years younger. Any chance she could have known him back then? The others could have known about something she did and she killed them to shut them up.'

'We can check out where her adoptive parents lived but it seems too much of a coincidence if ...'

Wesley sighed. 'You're probably right. What about Celia Dawn, Marrick's bit on the side who popped a Winterlea's gourmet meal into the microwave for him?'

'Yeah. If he was such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, why was she feeding him? Maybe she had an ulterior motive.'

'Possibly. But we still have a big problem.'

'What's that, Wes?'

'We've got the world and his wife queuing up to murder Charles Marrick. But the same can hardly be said of Simon Tench and Christopher Grisham. Exactly the same MO and they were at school with Marrick. Same year, same house. That has to be the connection. But now their old housemaster's dead ...'

'He can't tell us what that connection is.'

'Too right.'

'Marrick was blackmailing the headmaster and the history teacher because they were gay. And Dean described him as evil. He was a crook, a blackmailer and a rapist and goodness knows what else. I'm just surprised that he never came to our attention.'

'The really clever ones don't, Gerry. That's the trouble.' He thought for a while, absentmindedly sketching a dagger dripping with blood on his sheet of paper. 'Why were the others killed Tench and Grisham? That's what I really can't understand.' He looked up. 'I've made a call to Ches.h.i.+re police to ask if they can trace Grisham's girlfriend Jenny Pringle. She went over to Germany to work in a hotel shortly after Grisham's death.'

'I don't see how that's going to help.'

Wesley shrugged his shoulders. 'Neither do I. But it might be worth talking to her. She might be able to tell us something about Grisham's a.s.sociates. If he knew anybody who's subsequently turned up down here ...'

'It's a long shot,' Heffernan grinned. 'But we might be able to get a trip to Germany out of it. I fancy a cruise up the Rhine.'

Wesley smiled to himself. Their budget hardly ran to foreign travel but he'd let Gerry dream. 'What about Barty Carter?'

'What about him? Somehow I can't see him as our man, can you?'

After a few moments' thought, Wesley shook his head. 'Not really. If it was Carter, it'd be a shotgun in the face ... not hemlock and a knife in the throat. There's something almost ritualistic about it, isn't there? Almost as though there's some significance in the manner of death.'

'Ruddy s.a.d.i.s.tic if you ask me, which brings me to those letters Neil's been getting. They're all about people bleeding to death. Reckon our killer wrote them?'

'I've no idea but I think Neil does. They've really put the wind up him.'

'You should tell him to watch out.'

'He doesn't need telling, he's nervous enough already. He says there's a weird character at the dig who might be his letter writer name of Lenny but he's no proof.'

'We could check him out.'

'Mmm. Another possibility is that the letters are from someone who saw him on the telly.'

'Tench was on telly in that property programme.'

'But Marrick and Grisham weren't. Let's face it, Wes, we're as much in the dark now as we were when Marrick was first found. More so. We thought it was a straightforward stabbing then and we had Pinney and half the low life of Devon in the frame. It's these others Tench and Grisham who've put a spanner in our works. And Grisham's death means the killer's been on the move.'

'Darren Collins was up in Chester at the time he died.'