ST ANSELM'S HOSPITAL, ROOM 414"A colleague," Ethan repeated. "A very old friend.""We trained together." Ashford smoothed the front of his white coat with one long finger, unhurried. "Alden Pruitt and I shared a flat in our second year. He chose general practice, I chose surgery. We send each other the odd patient. It's what doctors do.""Dr. Alden Pruitt of Cole Family Practice.""You know him.""Everybody on my father's side knows him. He's the one who comes to the house when someone has a cold." Ethan tapped the clipboard against his palm. "He's also the one who signed my mother's death certificate. Heart failure after a long illness. Funny. She was never ill a day in her life.""I'm very sorry for your loss.""No, you're not. You're sorry for the paperwork." Ethan's voice stayed light, and that was the worst of it. "Last week my cousin sat in a clinic bed with a drip in his arm and told us all about a tonic. Every week for two years, delivered to my mother's door in a little brow

*CENTRAL POLICE STATION, CHIEF'S OFFICE"Say that again," Chief Augustine Pell whispered."Sir, it's the Cole boy." The desk sergeant stood in the doorway holding a clipboard like a shield. "The Morgan husband. He's been brought in. With, with about two hundred others.""Two hundred.""Ninety eight, sir, by the last count. The rest are still in the vans.""Ninety eight men.""And one deceased. And the chairman of Cole Construction, who is in St. Anselm's with a broken jaw and three cracked ribs, and, sir, his wife is asking for a lawyer."Pell closed his eyes. He was a short, heavy man with a grey moustache that had seen better decades and a stomach that gave him no peace after midnight. He had been woken at one in the morning by a call from a city councillor, another at one fifteen from the mayor's secretary, and a third at one thirty from a voice he had not heard in six years, a voice that said very politely, "Augustine, I trust you'll be careful with my son in law.""Which son in

OFFICE OF THE STATE SECRETARY"Stand down."The mayor of the city held the telephone away from his ear and looked at it as if it had bitten him."Mr. Secretary, with respect, the man killed someone in public.""Allegedly.""There are two hundred witnesses!""There are two hundred contradictions," said the voice on the line, calm, dry, patient, the voice of a man who had spent forty years telling mayors to sit down. "Let the state handle the Cole matter. No statements, no leaks, no helpful speeches from your office. If I read one more word about a 'Morgan Mob' in your press releases, I will personally read your travel expenses aloud on the radio.""My travel.""Lisbon, I believe. In March. Very sunny."The mayor's face turned the colour of old porridge."I understand, Mr. Secretary.""Good. Give my regards to your wife."The line clicked dead. The mayor sat very still in his big leather chair, staring at a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with a president, and then, with grea

A PRIVATE RESIDENCE, AT THE HILLS The telephone hit the wall and came apart like a dropped egg. "Who!" Gerald Cole roared, or tried to. The wires in his jaw turned it into a thick, whistling shriek. He heaved himself up out of the leather chair, knocked over a side table, kicked the lamp, and stood swaying in the middle of the carpet with his bandaged fists clenched. "Who is it? Who, Dean?" "I don't know, Chairman." "You ran the check!" "I ran it twice. He is your son, Chairman, and you cut him off years ago. No property, no savings, no connections. He had forty dollars in a bank account when he met the Morgan girl. His only friends were a baker, a driver, and a boy who sells sweet potatoes." "Then who has the Secretary's ear?" "I swear, I." "Think, you fat fool!" Rourke winced, pressing a hand to his taped ribs. "Perhaps Richard Morgan, Chairman. The old man. He's always been quiet, since his legs. Sits in that big house with his cane and his secrets. They say he has friends

***THE OLD QUARTER, DEMOLITION SITENobody heard it coming.That was the beauty of it, Ethan reflected afterwards. A crowd that has been screaming for forty minutes into its own megaphones can no longer hear anything but itself. The old black sedan came up the street at a murmur, then a growl, then a howl, and by the time the first head turned, it was too late for the second."Car!" a man shrieked."Move!""It's not stopping!"The fat priest on his milk crate saw it first. He stared with his mouth open and the bullhorn dangling from his hand, and then, with remarkable agility for a man of God, leapt sideways into a hedge. The girl with the selfie stick did not leap anywhere. She stood frozen with her phone held out and her mouth in a perfect O, filming the front bumper of a Morgan sedan growing larger in the screen, and the last thing three hundred thousand viewers heard was a high, thin, wondering "Oh."The crowd broke like a plate.The car hit the middle of the line at fifty miles