He didn't have small talk, not his way. Erlich said, "This is unbelievable."

"It's their back-yard… "

"Has this place been cleaned up?"

"They got the cartridge cases…"

"What else?"

"I don't know what else… "

" Y o u happy with that?"

"Where was your Scene of Crime experience?"

"Atlanta, Georgia," Erlich said.

"Listen here, Bill, this is sure as hell not Atlanta."

" A n d you take that?"

The Station C h i e f s voice was low. " W e are foreigners, we are far from home. What I know from long and painful experience is this: we kick them, they go mightily obstinate. The harder we kick, the less we get."

"I hear you."

There was the rattle of iron gates behind him. Erlich turned.

A woman came from the villa to which the girl had delivered the flowers. She wore a tailored two-piece grey suit and deli cate shoes, and there was a scarf over her hair that came from Dior, minimum, and she carried the red roses. She walked in the rain across the road and round the group of policemen, Erlich watched her. She went to the stained pavement, where the blood pools were washed by the rain spots. She knelt. Her eyes were closed, her lips moved. She crossed herself. The woman laid the roses on the pavement. She stood. For a moment she stared down at the stains and the roses, and then she walked away.

Erlich said softly, "Thank you, ma'am."

He didn't know whether she heard him, she gave no sign.

Erlich said to the Station Chief, " I ' d like to see Harry."

Bill had been enough times to a morgue. He knew what they looked like, what the procedures were. A body didn't change if it had been blasted with an automatic weapon in a robbery on Lenox Square or gunned down on a sidewalk in Athens. Morgues were the same, bodies were the same. He fancied that the section of the morgue in Atlanta that dealt with violent death was cleaner, but it would be cleaner, had to be, because it was busier. The attendants stood back to allow Erlich and the Station Chief to go on their own to the centre of the room where the two stretchers were parked on their wheeled bases, draped with green sheeting.