Susan held out the folder. "There's a flight to Pisa at six tomorrow morning. You're booked on it, and there's a hire car arranged at the airport. I didn't reserve accommodation-I thought you'd rather sort out your own. You will, of course, be reimbursed."

Bel was taken aback. "Six in the morning?"

"It's the only direct flight. I've checked you in. You'll be driven to the airport. It only takes forty minutes at that time of the morning-"

"Yes, fine," Bel said impatiently. "You were very sure I'd agree."

Susan put the folder on the sofa between them and stood up. "It was a pretty safe bet."

So here she was, bouncing down a dirt road in the Val d'Elsa past fields of sunflowers just bursting into dramatic flower, the hot beat of excitement pulsing in her throat. She didn't know if Brodie Grant's name would open doors in Italy as easily as it did in Scotland, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he'd know exactly how to manipulate the bone-deep corruption that underpinned everything here. There was nothing in Italy these days that couldn't be reduced to a transaction.

Except friendship, of course. And thanks to that, at least she had a roof over her head. The villa, of course, was out of the question. Not because of the cost-she was pretty sure she could have made Brodie Grant spring for it-but because it was high season in Tuscany. But she'd been lucky. Grazia and Maurizio had converted one of their old barns into holiday apartments, and the smallest, a studio with a tiny terrace, had been available. When she'd called from the airport, Grazia had tried to offer it to her for free. It had taken Bel almost ten minutes to explain that someone was paying her expenses so Grazia should overcharge as much as she liked.

Bel turned off the track on to a narrower rutted lane that wound up through a forest of oaks and chestnuts. After a mile or so, she emerged on a small plateau with an olive grove and a field of maize. At the far end was a tight cluster of houses beyond a hand-painted sign that read BOSCOLATA. Bel negotiated the tight turns and carried on, back into the trees. As she rounded the second bend after Boscolata, she slowed and peered through the undergrowth at the ruined villa where this trail had started. There was nothing to show it was of any interest, other than a piece of red-and-white tape tied half-heartedly to the gate. So much for the Italian police investigation.

Another five minutes' tortuous driving and Bel pulled into Grazia's farmyard. A tan hound with droopy ears and a pink nose danced at the end of his chain, barking with all the bravado of a dog who knows nobody is going to come close enough to bite. Before Bel could open her door, Grazia appeared on the steps leading down from the loggia, wiping her hands on her apron, her face crinkling in a broad smile.

Extravagant greetings and the settling of Bel into the beautifully appointed studio took half an hour and had the advantage of helping Bel recover the rhythms of the language. Then the two women settled down with a cup of coffee in Grazia's dim kitchen, the thick stone walls keeping the summer heat at bay as they had done for hundreds of years. "And now, you have to tell me why you are back so soon," Grazia said. "You said it was something to do with work? "

"Sort of," Bel said, wrestling her Italian back into shape. "Tell me, have you noticed anything going on down at the ruined villa recently?"

Grazia gave her a suspicious look. "How do you know about that? The carabinieri were there on Friday. They took a look around, then they went to talk to the people in Boscolata. But what has this got to do with you?"

"When we were here on holiday, I went exploring in the old villa. I found something there that connects to an unsolved crime back in England. A case from twenty years ago."

"What kind of crime?" Grazia looked anxious. The swollen joints of her hands moved restlessly on the table.

"A woman and her baby son were kidnapped. But something went wrong when the ransom was being handed over. The woman was killed, and they never found out what happened to the child." Bel spread her hands and shrugged. Somehow, such gestures came more naturally when she was speaking Italian.

"And you found something here connected to that?"

"Yes. The kidnappers called themselves anarchists and they delivered their demands in the form of a poster. I found a poster just like it down at the villa."

Grazia shook her head in amazement. "The world is getting smaller and smaller. So when did you go to the carabinieri?"

"I didn't. I didn't think they'd believe me. Or if they did, they wouldn't be interested in something that happened back in the UK twenty-odd years ago. I waited till I got home, then I went to the woman's father. He's a very rich man, a powerful man. The sort of person who makes things happen."

Grazia gave a grim little laugh. "It would take a man like that to make the carabinieri get off their backsides and come all the way out here from Siena. That explains why they were so interested in who had been living in the villa."

"Yes. I thought it looked as if squatters had been living there."

Grazia nodded. "The villa belonged to Paolo Totti. He died, maybe a dozen years ago. A silly man, very vain. He'd spent all his money buying a big house to impress everyone, but he didn't have enough left over to look after the place like it deserved. And then he died without a will. His family have been fighting over the villa ever since. It drags on through the courts and every year the villa falls down a little bit more. Nobody from the family does anything to repair it in case they end up with nothing to show. They stopped coming near it years ago. So sometimes people move in for a while. They stay for summer then they go. The last lot, they stayed longer." Grazia finished her coffee and stood up. "All I know is gossip, but we'll go down to Boscolata and talk to my friends there. They'll tell you a damn sight more than they told those bossy carabinieri."

Peterhead, Scotland

Karen studied James Lawson as he approached. No more ramrod bearing, head high and back straight. His shoulders were slumped, his steps small and tight. Three years in jail had put ten years on him. He lowered himself into the chair across the table from her, fidgeting and fussing till at last he settled. A small attempt at controlling some part of the interview, she thought.

Then he looked up. He still had the flat, hard cop stare, his eyes burning, his face stony. "Karen," he said, acknowledging her with a tiny nod. His lips, pale and bluish, compressed in a tight line.

She couldn't see any point in small talk. There was nothing to be said that wouldn't lead straight to recrimination and bitterness. "I need your help," she said.

Lawson's mouth relaxed into a sneer. "Who do you think you are? Clarice Starling? You'd need to lose a few pounds before you could give Jodie Foster a run for her money."

Karen reminded herself that Lawson had attended the same interrogation courses she had. He knew all about probing for your opponent's weaknesses. But then, so did she. "It might be worth going on a diet for Hannibal Lecter," she said. "But not for a disgraced cop that's pulled his last trout out of Loch Leven."

Lawson raised his eyebrows. "Did they send you on a smartarse course before you took your inspector's exam? If you're supposed to be buttering me up, you're not exactly going about it the right way."

Karen gave a resigned shake of the head. "I haven't got the time or the energy for this. I'm not here to flatter your ego. We both know how these things play out. You help me, your life inside these four walls gets a wee bit less horrible for a while. You walk away from me, who knows what shitty little stunt is going to make your life that wee bit more miserable? Up to you, Jimmy."

"It's Mr. Lawson to you."

She shook her head. "That would imply more respect than you deserve. And you know it." Her point made, she'd refrain from calling him anything. She could hear him breathing hard through his nose, a faint wheeze at the end of each exhalation.

"You think you could make my life any more miserable?" He glared at her. "You have no bloody idea. They keep me in isolation because I'm an ex-cop. You're the first visitor I've had this year. I'm too old and too ugly to interest anybody else. I don't smoke and I don't need any more phone cards." He gave a faint snort of laughter, phlegm bubbling in his throat. "How much worse do you think you can make it?"

She stared back at him, unflinching. She knew what he'd done and there was no place for pity or compassion in her heart for him. She didn't care if they spat in his food. Or worse. He had betrayed her and everyone else who had worked with him. Most of the cops Karen knew were in the job for decent motives. They made sacrifices for the job, they cared that it was done properly. Discovering that a man whose orders they'd followed without flinching was a triple killer had shattered morale in the CID. The fractures were still healing. Some people still blamed Karen, arguing that it would have been better to let sleeping dogs lie. She didn't know how they could sleep at night.

"They tell me you use the library a lot," she said. His eyes flinched. She knew she had him. "It's important to keep your mind active, isn't it? Otherwise you really do go stir crazy. I hear you can download books and music on a wee MP3 player from the library these days. Listen any time you've a mind to."

He looked away, folding and unfolding his fingers. "You still on cold cases?" The concession of the words seemed to take energy he could ill spare.

"It's my department now. Robin Maclennan retired." Karen kept her voice neutral and her face impassive.

Lawson looked over her shoulder at the blank wall behind her. "I was a good cop. I didn't leave many loose ends for you carrion crows to pick over," he said.

Karen gave him a measured stare. He'd killed three people and tried to frame a vulnerable man for two murders, and yet he still thought of himself as a good cop. The capacity of criminals for self-delusion never ceased to amaze her. She wondered that he could sit there with a straight face after the laws he'd broken, the lies he'd told, and the lives he'd shattered. "You cleared a lot of cases," was the best she could manage. "But I've got what looks like new evidence on one that's still open."

Lawson's expression didn't change, but she sensed a flicker of interest as he shifted slightly in his chair. "Catriona Maclennan Grant," he said, allowing himself a self-satisfied smirk. "For you to come yourself, it has to be murder. And that's the only unsolved murder where I was SIO."

"Nothing wrong with your deductive skills," Karen said.

"So, what? You finally got something to nail the bastard, after all this time?"

"What bastard?"

"The ex-boyfriend, of course..." Lawson's grey skin furrowed as he dredged his memory for details. "Fergus Sinclair. Gamekeeper. She'd given him the push, wouldn't let him be a father to his kid."

"You think Fergus Sinclair kidnapped her and the baby? Why would he do that?"

"To get his hands on his kid and enough money to keep the pair of them in high style," Lawson said, as if he were instructing a small child in the obvious. "Then he killed her during the hand-over so she couldn't finger him. We all knew he'd done it, we just couldn't prove it."

Karen leaned forward. "There's nothing about that in the file," she said.

"Of course there isn't." Lawson made a derisive noise in his throat. "Christ, Karen, do you think we were stupid back then?"

"You didn't have to disclose everything to the defence in 1985," she pointed out. "No operational reason why you shouldn't have left a wee pointer for anyone coming after you."

"All the same, we didn't put anything on paper that we couldn't back up with solid evidence."

"Fair enough. But there's nothing in the file to suggest you even looked at him. No interview notes or tapes, no statements. The only mention in the file is in a statement from Lady Grant saying she believed Sinclair was the father of Catriona's son but that her daughter had always refused to confirm that."

Lawson looked away. "Brodie Maclennan Grant's a powerful man. We all agreed, right up to chief constable level. Nothing went in the file that we couldn't back up a hundred and ten per cent." He cleared his throat. "Even though we thought Sinclair was the obvious suspect, we didn't want to sign his death warrant."

Karen's mouth opened and closed. Her eyes widened. "You thought Brodie Grant would have Sinclair killed?"

"You didn't see the pain he was in after Cat died. I wouldn't have put it past him." His mouth snapped shut and he glared at her defiantly.

She'd thought Brodie Grant was a harsh, driven man. But it had never crossed Karen's mind to consider him a potential commissioner of death. "You were wrong about that," she said. "Sinclair was always safe. Grant doesn't think he had it in him."

Lawson snorted. "He might be saying that now. But at the time, you could feel the hatred coming off him for that lad."

"And you looked close at Sinclair?"

Lawson nodded. "He seemed promising. He had no alibi. He was working abroad. Austria, I think it was. Estate management, that's his line." He frowned again, scratching his clean-shaven chin. He started speaking slowly, speeding up as memory took shape. "We sent a team over to talk to him. They didn't find anything that let him off the hook. He'd been off work on holiday for the crucial time-kidnap, ransom notes, handover, getaway. And the guy we consulted at the art school said the poster was in the German Expressionist style, which kind of tied in with where he was living."

He shrugged. "But Sinclair said he'd been on a skiing holiday. Moving from one resort to the next. Sleeping in his Land Rover to save money. He had ski-lift passes for all the relevant dates, paid for with cash. We couldn't prove he hadn't been where he said he'd been. More to the point, we couldn't prove he was where we thought he was. It was the only real lead we had, and it took us nowhere."

Monday, 21st January 1985; Kirkcaldy

Lawson flicked through the folder again, as if he might find something he'd missed on his previous pass. It was still painfully thin. Without raising his head, he called across the office to DC Pete Rennie. "Has nothing come in from the crime scene lads yet?"

"I just spoke to them. They're working as fast as they can, but they're not optimistic. They said it looks like they're dealing with people who are smart enough not to leave traces." Rennie sounded both apologetic and anxious, as if he knew this was somehow going to be his fault.

"Useless wankers," Lawson muttered. After the initial flash of excitement provoked by the second note from the kidnappers, it had been a day of mounting frustration. He'd had to accompany Grant to the bank, where they'd had a difficult meeting with a senior official who had mounted his high horse, announcing the bank had a policy of non-cooperation with kidnappers. And that was without either of them saying a word about the reason for Grant's request. They'd ended up having to speak to a director of the bank before they'd made any headway.

Then Grant had taken him to some fancy gentleman's club in Edinburgh and sat him down with a large whisky in spite of his protestations about being on duty. When the waiter put his drink in front of him, he ignored it and waited for Grant to say what was on his mind. This was one investigation where Lawson knew better than to appear to be in the driving seat.

"I've got kidnap insurance, you know," Grant had said without preamble.

Lawson had wanted to ask how that worked, but he didn't want to look like some provincial numpty who didn't know what he was doing. "Have you spoken to them?"

"Not so far." Grant swirled the malt round inside the crystal tumbler. The heavy phenolic smell of the whisky rose in a miasma that made Lawson feel faintly sick.

"Can I ask why not?"

Grant took out a cigar and started the fiddly process of trimming and lighting. "You know how it is. They'll want to come in mob-handed. The price of the ransom will be them running the show."

"Is that a problem?" Lawson was feeling a little out of his depth. He took a sip of whisky and nearly spat it out. It tasted like the kind of cough medicine his grandmother had sworn by. It didn't seem to belong to the same family as the dram of Famous Grouse he enjoyed by his own fireside.

"I'm worried it will get out of hand. They've got two hostages. If they get so much as a sniff that we've set them up, who knows what they're capable of?" He lit the cigar and screwed up his eyes to peer at Lawson through the smoke. "What I need to know is whether you're confident you can bring this to a successful conclusion. Do I need to take a chance on outsiders? Or can you get my daughter and grandson back to me?"

Lawson tasted the sweet, cloying smoke in his throat. "I believe I can," he said, wondering if his own career was about to go the same way as the cigar.

And that was how they'd left it. So here he was now, still at his desk while the evening crept inexorably towards night. Nothing was happening, except that his words seemed more and more foolhardy. He glared at Rennie. "Have you managed to track down Fergus Sinclair yet?"

Rennie's shoulders hunched and he squirmed in his seat. "Yes and no," he said. "I found out where he's working and I spoke to his boss. But he's not around. Sinclair, I mean. He's away on holiday. Skiing, apparently. And nobody knows where."

"Skiing?"

"He went off in his Land Rover with his skiing gear," Rennie said defensively, as if he'd personally packed up Sinclair's stuff.

"So he could be anywhere?"

"I suppose so."

"Including here? In Fife?"

"There's no evidence of that." Rennie's mouth seemed to slip sideways, as if his jaw had just realized it was on thin ice.

"Have you been on to the airlines? Airports? Channel ports? Have you made them go through their passenger lists?"

Rennie looked away. "I'll get on to it right away."

Lawson pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "And get on to the passport office. I want to know if Fergus Sinclair has ever applied for a passport for his son."

Monday, 2nd July 2007; Peterhead

"I was always convinced that Sinclair was involved somehow. It's not as if there were that many people who knew her routine well enough to do the snatch," Lawson said, a touch of defensiveness in his voice now.

Karen felt perplexed. "But what about the baby? If he did all that to get his hands on his son, where's Adam now?"

Lawson shrugged. "That's your million-dollar question, isn't it? Maybe Adam didn't survive the shootout. Maybe Sinclair had some woman lined up to take care of the kid for him. If I was you, I'd take a look at his life now. See if there's some lad in it the right age." He sat back, folding his hands in his lap. "So you've not come up with anything significant? This just a fishing expedition?"

She reached for the rolled-up poster she'd propped against her chair and slipped it free from its elastic band. She let it uncurl facing Lawson. He started to reach for it then stopped, giving her an interrogative look. "Go ahead," she said. "It's a copy."

Lawson carefully unfurled the paper. He studied the stark blackand-white artwork, running a finger over the puppeteer and his marionettes; the skeleton, Death and the goat. "That's the poster the kidnappers used to communicate with Brodie Maclennan Grant." He pointed to the blank area at the bottom of the poster. "There, where you'd paste on the details of the show, that's where the messages would be written." He gave her a look of resignation. "But you know all that already. Where did this come from?"

"It turned up in an abandoned house in Tuscany. The place is falling down, been empty for years. According to the locals, it had been squatted on and off. The last lot cleared out overnight. No warning, no goodbyes. They left a lot of gear behind. Half a dozen of these posters included."

Lawson shook his head. "Pretty meaningless. We've had a few posters like this turn up over the years. Because Sinclair faked it up to look like some anarchist group hitting on Brodie Maclennan Grant, every now and again you'd get wankers using the poster to promote some direct action or festival or whatever. We checked them out every time, and there was never a connection to what happened to Catriona." He waved a hand dismissively.

Karen smiled. "You think I didn't know that? At least that much made it into the files. But this is different. None of the copies that turned up before was exact. There were differences in the detail, the way there would be if you were copying it off old newspaper cuttings. But this one's different. It's exactly the same. Forensics say it's identical. That it came off the same silk screen."

Lawson's eyes brightened, the spark of interest suddenly obvious in him. "You're kidding?"

"They've had all weekend to make their minds up. They say there's no doubt. But why would you keep the screen all these years? It's the one piece of evidence that ties the kidnappers into the crime."

Lawson smirked. "Maybe they didn't keep the screen. Maybe they just hung on to the posters."

Karen shook her head. "Not according to the document examiner. Neither the paper nor the ink had been developed in 1985. This was produced recently. On the original screen."

"It doesn't make sense."

"Like so many other things about this case," Karen muttered. Without realizing, she had slipped into her historic relationship with the man opposite. She was the junior officer, pricking him into making sense of the scraps she laid at his feet.

Unconsciously, Lawson responded, relaxing into the conversation for the first time. "What other things?" he said. "Once we'd fixed on Sinclair, it all came together."

"I don't see it. Why would Fergus Sinclair kill Cat at the hand-over?"

"Because she could identify him."

The impatience in his voice stung Karen, reminding her of their present roles. "I understand that. But why kill her then? Why not kill her beforehand? With her alive at the handover, he was setting up a really complicated situation. He had to control Cat and the baby, get his hands on the ransom, then shoot Cat and get away with the baby in the resulting confusion. He couldn't even be sure that he'd kill her. Not in the dark, with everybody milling around. It would have made life a lot simpler for him to have killed her before the ransom handover. Why didn't he kill her earlier?"

"Proof of life," Lawson said with the satisfaction of a man trumping an ace. "Brodie required proof of life before he'd go ahead."

"No, that doesn't fly," Karen said. "The kidnapper still had the bairn. He could use Adam for proof of life. You're not telling me Brodie Grant would refuse to pay the ransom if he didn't have proof of life for Cat too."

"No... He'd have paid whether Cat was alive or dead." Lawson frowned. "I hadn't thought of it like that. You're right. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course, if it wasn't Sinclair, she might not have had to die." Karen's eyes went dreamy as she tried the idea on for size. "It might have been a stranger. She might not have been able to identify him. Maybe it was an accident?"

Lawson cocked his head to one side and gave her a speculative look. Karen felt as if her fitness for purpose were being assessed. He did a little drum roll with his fingers on the edge of the chipped table. "Sinclair could have been the kidnapper, Karen. But not necessarily the killer. You see, there's something else that wasn't in the report."

Wednesday, 23rd January 1985; Newton of Wemyss

The tension was excruciating. The bulk of the Lady's Rock took a bite out of the starry sky, blocking out the shoreline beyond. The cold nibbled at Lawson's nose and ears and around the narrow bracelet between his leather gloves and the cuffs of his sweater. The air held the acrid tang of coal smoke and salt. The nearby sea was only a faint rumble and whisper on this windless night. The waning moon gave just enough light for him to see the taut features of Brodie Maclennan Grant a few yards away, just clear of the trees that sheltered Lawson himself. One hand held the hold-all with the cash, the diamonds, and the tracking transmitters, the other grasped his wife's elbow tightly. Lawson imagined the pain radiating from that pincer grip and was glad he wasn't on the receiving end of it. Mary Maclennan Grant's face was in shadow, her head bowed. Lawson imagined she was shivering inside her fur coat, and not from the cold.

What he couldn't see were the half-dozen men he had stationed among the trees. That was just as well. If he couldn't see them, neither could the kidnappers. He'd hand-picked them, choosing the ones he believed to be both clever and brave, two qualities that coincided less often than he liked to admit. A couple of them were firearms trained, one with a handgun, the other on top of the Lady's Rock with an assault rifle, complete with night sights. They were under orders not to shoot except on his direct order. Lawson sincerely hoped he was over-reacting by having them there.

He'd managed to pry some other uniforms from their routine duties guarding the pit heads and the power stations. Their buddies had resented their detachment, all the more since Lawson hadn't been in a position to explain the reason for their temporary secondment to his command. These extra officers were stationed at the rough ground at either end of the wood, the nearest points to the rendezvous where vehicles could be parked. Between them, they should be able to prevent a getaway if Lawson and his immediate team bungled the take-down at the handover.

Which was more than a possibility. This was a nightmare of a set-up. He'd tried to persuade Grant to say no, to insist on another place for the handover. Anything but a bloody beach in the middle of the night. He might as well have saved his breath. As far as Grant was concerned, Lawson and his men were there as a sort of private security force. He acted as if he was doing them enough of a favour by inviting them along against the express instructions of whoever had taken his daughter and grandson. In spite of what he'd said about the kidnap insurers' team, he didn't seem to appreciate how much could go wrong. It really didn't bear thinking about.

Lawson snatched a look at the luminous dial of his watch. Three minutes to go. It was so still, he'd have expected to hear their car engine in the distance. But acoustics were always unpredictable in the open. He'd noticed when he walked the path during his earlier reconnaissance how the looming bulk of the Lady's Rock acted as a baffle, cutting off the sound of the sea as effectively as a set of ear protectors. God alone knew how the woodland would distort the sound of an approaching vehicle.

Then without warning a brilliant burst of white light from the direction of the rock wiped out his night vision. All Lawson could make out was the mesmerizing circle of light. Without conscious thought, he stepped further back into the trees, afraid his cover was blown.

"Jesus Christ," Brodie Grant yelped, letting go of his wife and taking a couple of steps forward.

"Stay where you are." A disembodied shout from beyond the light. Lawson tried to place the accent, but there was nothing distinctive about it other than its Scottishness.

Lawson could make out Grant's profile, all colour stripped from his skin by the bleaching white light. His lips were stretched back over his teeth in a snarl. Unease squirmed in Lawson's stomach like acid indigestion. How the hell had the kidnappers got into position at the side of the rock without him seeing them? The moonlight had been enough to illuminate the path in both directions. He'd expected a vehicle. They had two hostages, after all. They could hardly march them a mile up the beach from West Wemyss or East Wemyss. The steep cliff behind him ruled out Newton of Wemyss.

The kidnapper shouted again. "OK, let's do it. Just like we said. Mrs. Grant, you walk towards us with the money."

"Not without proof of life," Grant bellowed.

The words were barely out of his mouth when a figure stumbled out in front of the light, a stark marionette that reminded Lawson of the posters the kidnappers had used to deliver their demands. As his eyes adjusted, he could see it was Cat. "It's me, Daddy," she called, her voice hoarse. "Mummy, bring me the money."

"What about Adam?" Grant shouted, grabbing his wife by the shoulder as she reached for the holdall. Mary nearly tripped and fell, but her husband had no eyes for her. "Where's my grandson, you bastards?"

"He's all right. As soon as they have the money and the diamonds, they'll hand him over," Cat shouted, desperation obvious in her voice. "Please, Mummy, bring the money like you're supposed to."

"Damn it," Grant said. He thrust the holdall at his wife. "Go on, do what she says."

This was out of control, Lawson knew it. To hell with the radio silence he'd called for. He reached for his radio and spoke as clearly as he dared. "Tango One and Tango Two. This is Tango Lima. Despatch officers to shore side of Lady's Rock. Do it now. Do not reply. Just deploy. Do it now."