'Diane. She killed Barry Ickerman. The skeleton in the woods. That's what I've been trying to ...'

Wesley listened carefully as Neil outlined what he knew. If it weren't for the current emergency, this would be his top priority. But as it was, there were lives at stake. 'Where are you now?'

'Tradmouth Hospital. How soon can you get here?'

Wesley took a deep breath and looked at his watch. 'Sorry, we've got an emergency here. I'll see you as soon as I can ... I promise.'

There was a long silence. Then, 'I've found out all about Brother William.'

'Good,' said Wesley. Even in a dire situation, Neil's mind was still on archaeology.

'Look, Neil, I've got to go. I'm sorry. I'll get back to you soon. Promise.'

He felt bad but it was all he could do for now. They had to find Francis Duparc and he only hoped they wouldn't be too late.

'They've tracked down the mobile phone signal. It's in the vicinity of Belsinger School. And the helicopter's spotted a red car parked in the lane just by the woodland at the edge of the school grounds. According to Father Joseph at Shenton Abbey, their missing car's a red Fiat.'

'It looks like they're together,' said Gerry Heffernan quietly. 'Let's hope we're not too late.'

'So what's happening, sir?' Steve Carstairs stood there with his mouth open. He looked confused. And a little lost.

Wesley gave him a sympathetic glance as the phone on Gerry Heffernan's desk rang. The DCI picked it up and barked a 'h.e.l.lo'. After a few seconds he looked up at Wesley. 'They've found Francis. He's been taken to Tradmouth Hospital. But the killer's got away ... disappeared. We've got the registration number. All patrols are on the look-out for the car.'

Wesley thought for a moment. 'Let's go and have a word with Brother Francis. I want to know once and for all what all this is about.'

'You and me both.' Heffernan turned to Steve. 'You stop here. If anything comes in let us know right away if not sooner.'

'What's going on, sir?'

Wesley had rarely seen Steve worried before. But there's a first time for everything.

They had to talk to Francis Duparc urgently and twenty minutes later they were sitting at his bedside. Heffernan gave Wesley a nudge: he'd let him do the talking.

There was no time for pleasantries, however brief. 'We need to know what's going on.'

The monk raised his right hand weakly. The blood was beginning to seep through the dressings on his upper body. The killer hadn't been controlled and methodical this time: it had been an unfocused, half-hearted attack and he'd had a lucky escape. Perhaps someone up there had been looking after His own, Wesley thought fleetingly.

'Have you found ... ?' His voice was stronger than Wesley had expected.

'Not yet. But all patrols are out looking. We need to know the whole story. Why don't you start at the beginning?'

Francis considered the question for a few moments. 'Very well,' he said before pausing to gather his thoughts. 'I'd never encountered real wickedness until I met Charles Marrick at Belsinger,' he began, a tremor in his voice. 'I'm not talking about naughtiness or what they call nowadays challenging behaviour. Charles wasn't necessarily naughty at school he was too clever for that too sly to want to draw attention to himself by getting into trouble. But he how shall I put it? lacked basic human feeling. He considered himself the centre of the universe and thought the rules of morality didn't apply to him not that we realised that at the time, of course. He used people for his own ends. And he gathered a little clique of weaker boys including myself around him. You have to understand, he was very charismatic, Inspector. If he hadn't ... if he hadn't been the way he was, he might have been a natural leader. He had a terrific influence over us. And he manipulated us so that we'd do anything he suggested.' He hesitated.

'Go on,' Wesley prompted.

'He devised rituals. Mind games. I find it hard to believe he had such power over us, Inspector, but I a.s.sure you that power was real.'

'What were the rituals?'

Francis rolled up the left sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. 'Blood. He used to cut us with a sharpened penknife and make us drink each other's blood. The idea's preposterous now but for impressionable adolescents at midnight on an isolated beach by the light of a fire ... As I said, he knew exactly how to manipulate us and keep us in his power.'

He held out his arm to Wesley. The faint scar was visible even after all these years. Wesley had seen such scars before on the dead flesh of Charles Marrick and Simon Trench.

'Tell me about the girl. A former Belsinger pupil called Barty Carter said he saw her in Tradmouth. She was the caretaker's daughter, I believe.'

Francis swallowed hard and tears began to fill his eyes. 'Her name was Janet. Janet Blincoe. I've never forgiven myself for what happened. Not that we realised what Charlie intended to do. He was more grown up than we were. It almost seemed as if he was born that way. We hardly knew anything about s.e.x not like Charlie who claimed to have had half a dozen girls before he was sixteen.'

'Lads like to boast,' Heffernan chipped in. 'Doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Could all have been fantasy ... wishful thinking.'

Francis looked at him. 'In general I'd say that you're probably right, Chief Inspector. But in Charlie's case I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been true. As I said, he wasn't like the rest of us.'

'So what happened?'

'Janet had been hanging around us. I think she must have had some sort of crush on Charlie.'

'And he took advantage of the fact?' Wesley said.

'You could say that.' He thought for a few moments, considering the best way to begin his narrative. 'Mortimer Dean, the housemaster, wasn't very observant Charlie could run rings around him. It was easy for us to sneak out of Tavistock House because there was a broken catch on one of the ground floor windows. It was summer, really warm and one night we let ourselves out after midnight. We didn't realise Charlie had told her to come with us. She met us in the school grounds by the cricket pavilion and we went down to the beach. Charlie was very quiet. She was chatting a lot, trying to make him notice her. She was only fourteen a couple of years younger than us and we thought she was just a silly kid. We didn't know why Charlie had said she could come.'

Wesley pictured the scene. It was easy to envisage the boys following their pack leader doing things they wouldn't normally dream of doing as they returned to a feral state under the influence of a more powerful personality. He waited for Francis to continue.

'When we got down to the beach, Charlie made an announcement,' he said after a few moments. 'He said she was to undergo the blood ritual to be one of us. None of us liked the idea but, as I said, Charlie's word was law. We didn't argue.'

'So what happened?' Gerry Heffernan leaned forward, anxious to hear the rest of the story.

'Things went too far.'

'What do you mean?'

Francis opened his mouth but no sound came out, as if he couldn't bring himself to put what had happened into words and give the truth the power of being released into the open. Wesley let him take his time and eventually his patience was rewarded.

'Charlie raped her, there in front of us,' Francis whispered. 'Then he told us to ... It was as if we'd been taken over by something evil.' He shook his head as the tears began to flow down his cheeks. 'It was madness. She was screaming and crying but ...'

'So you all raped her?' Gerry Heffernan couldn't keep the horror out of his voice.

'I've been paying for it all my life.' He buried his head in his hands. 'Charlie kept egging us on and ...'

'And you never thought to say no? You never thought to stop it?' Heffernan's voice was getting louder and Wesley put a restraining hand on his arm.

'None of us did. It was like ... like a collective madness. A frenzy. I know I can't make excuses for what we did. There is no excuse.'

'So you all joined in? Even Simon Tench?'

Francis nodded. 'You're wondering how someone like Simon could carry on with his normal, respectable life after doing that. Well the human mind can fool itself that an event that's too painful to live with never even happened a defence mechanism, I suppose. I think Simon and Chris blotted it out completely. And if you'd asked them about it they would have denied it because they would have persuaded themselves that they could never do something like that. And in normal circ.u.mstances, they probably couldn't. They weren't bad boys, Inspector. It was as if they were possessed.'

'And you?' Wesley asked gently.

Francis looked Wesley in the eye. 'I could never blot it out. I've been doing penance for it since I was sixteen.'

'There's more isn't there? What happened after you'd ... ?'

Francis looked away. 'Charlie said if she wanted to be one of us, she'd have to undergo the ritual. He pinned her down again so she couldn't move and he cut her wrist with the knife. She started to bleed a lot and she was crying. That's when we got scared. We all ran off 'cause we knew it had gone too far. We thought she was going to die and we were terrified.'

'What about Charlie?'

'He stayed.'

'Did you talk about it afterwards?'

'Never. n.o.body breathed a word. It was as if it had never happened.'

'And the girl?'

'She went away. We never saw her again.'

'Surely her parents called the police,' said Wesley. 'Surely there was some sort of investigation.'

Francis shook his head. 'No, it was never mentioned again. She disappeared.'

'So her father quit his job as caretaker?'

Francis thought for a moment. 'No, I don't believe he did. But she left and nothing was ever said.'

'So everyone closed ranks. The school covered it up.' Gerry Heffernan said, full of righteous indignation.

But Francis shook his head again. 'I don't think the school knew what had happened. I think the girl had been too ashamed to tell the truth.' He hesitated. 'That's one of the things I asked her when ... She told her father she'd had an accident. Her mother was dead and her father kept his distance. She'd been adopted and they weren't close.'

'Did she say how she tracked you and the others down after all these years?' This was one of the things that had puzzled Wesley.

'The Belsinger website has details of what old boys are doing now. We were all on it. Mortimer Dean made sure of that. She did her homework.'

'Did she say how she administered the hemlock?'

'She told me everything ... made her confession. I suppose she didn't think I'd be around to give away her secrets.'

'Well?'

'She'd had a part-time job doing market research at one time and that gave her the idea. She called round at the victims' houses with samples of malt whisky irresistible to the likes of Charlie Marrick. They readily volunteered to give their verdicts on the different samples only the whisky contained hemlock. Once they'd drunk it, she produced a questionnaire and chatted until the paralysis set in. Then she made them bleed to death ... just as they'd left her to bleed to death. She told them who she was as they lay paralysed and helpless. Said she enjoyed seeing the look in their eyes as they realised ... as they remembered that night.'

'Where is she now, Francis?' Wesley asked gently.

There was no answer.

Wesley stood up and Gerry Heffernan watched him expectantly. A nurse entered the room with a clattering trolley and Francis slumped back on his pillows, looking almost relieved.

'So you took part in what happened at the beach,' Wesley continued, ignoring the nurse. 'You went along with it all. You could have told Mortimer Dean. You could have gone to the headmaster ... the matron. You could have told someone.'

The man in the bed shook his head sadly. 'It was against the code of honour to tell tales. I sinned and now I can't live with myself. I wish you hadn't found me, Inspector. I wish I'd been allowed to die.' He swallowed hard. 'I wanted her to kill me. I was ready to pay for what I did to her.'

'For what Charles Marrick did, you mean.' Wesley looked into Francis's tear-filled eyes. 'Did she tell you where she planned to go?'

Francis said nothing.

'Please. We have to find her.'

After a few seconds Francis spoke, almost in a whisper. 'She said she was going to go back to where it happened.'

Heffernan leaned forward. 'And where exactly was that?'

As soon as Francis told them, Wesley, ignoring the hospital's ban on mobile phones, pulled his from his pocket and made a call.

Steve Carstairs stood at the office door, blocking Trish's way. She avoided his gaze, like someone face to face with a bereaved relative who found themselves lost for something to say.

He caught her arm. 'What the f.u.c.k's going on, Trish? Why won't anyone tell me what's happening?'

Trish stood for a few moments, wondering how much she should tell him. The boss hadn't actually said that he should be kept in the dark indefinitely. Besides, she had just heard that it was almost over. The search was on now all the manpower they could spare and it wouldn't be long now until the arrest was made.

She looked around. The office was buzzing. She needed somewhere more private. She grabbed Steve's hand and led him out into the corridor. Then she turned to face him and looked into his eyes. 'Look, Steve, the boss is afraid you won't be able to keep your mouth shut. But I think you need to know.' She hesitated. 'Ches.h.i.+re police sent a photo of Christopher Grisham's girlfriend, Jenny I recognised her and so did Barty Carter. He'd seen her in Tradmouth.'

'What's all this got to do with ... ?'

She took a deep breath. She was trying to break this gently. 'She called herself Jenny Pringle up in Chester. Her dad was the caretaker at Belsinger. She's down here using a different name.' She paused. 'She's calling herself Joanne.'

He shook his head. 'I don't believe you.'

'She's just tried to kill Francis Duparc Brother Francis. He's in hospital now and he's made a statement. Joanne's the Spider, Steve. She killed those men.'

Steve stared at her as though she'd struck him.

'Didn't you suspect anything?' she asked warily.

'Of course I didn't. It's impossible. There's been a mistake. Where is she? Does anyone know? I've been trying her mobile number but ...'

'They think she might be at the beach at Littlebury ... just east of Monks Island.'

Steve turned. 'I'm going over there.'

Trish clutched at his sleeve. 'No. The boss said ...'

'The boss can f.u.c.k off.'

He shook off Trish's clinging hand and marched out. But Trish followed him, her mouth set in a determined line. There was no way she was going to let him go there alone.

It was raining now and she stood barefoot on the sand staring out to sea. The sound of the waves brought back the memory of that night. Relentless, pitiless like the boys who had violated her body. She had never let a man touch her in that way since. Even Steve. However much she liked him, she felt no desire, no temptation. The very thought of physical contact of giving herself made her want to vomit.

When Marrick had stabbed the blade into her arm and laughed, she had prayed for death. They were alone then, her and Marrick the others had run off like frightened animals. Marrick had whispered in her ear. 'You enjoyed that, didn't you? Now I'm going to watch you die.' She lay sprawled there on the sand beneath the cliffs, paralysed with terror as he leered down at her.

Then suddenly she'd found herself alone, knowing that death was close as her life blood drained away on to the damp sand. She'd felt faint, as though the world was drifting away, but then she'd sensed a sudden pressure on her arm. Someone was kneeling by her side, binding it with cloth very tightly to stop the bleeding. She'd looked into Mr Dean's face and saw he was crying. And he was telling her to say nothing. It had been an accident. She'd slipped and cut herself. She didn't want to ruin the future of the lads in his charge, did she? It would be better to say nothing. n.o.body would believe her anyway.