'I'll see to it, sir.'

Blake started down the stairs, and Parker said, 'Now where?'

'Truth magazine. I want to see Kate's editor, find out what she was working on. You don't have to come. You've got other cases on your hands, Harry. I can handle this on my own.'

'Like hell you will/ Harry Parker told him. 'Let's get going.'

The editor of Truth magazine, Rupert O'Dowd, was the kind of middle-aged journalist who'd seen it all, been there, and done that, and he had little residual faith in human nature. Nevertheless, sitting in his office in shirtsleeves, he reacted with horror to the suggestion that Katherine Johnson had been murdered.

'Please, tell me, what can I do to help?'

'You can tell us what she'd been involved in lately,'Johnson said. 'Was she working on anything special, anything dangerous?'

O'Dowd hesitated. 'Well, there's a question of journalistic ethics here.'

'And there's the question of my wife being murdered by the administration of a massive heroin dose, Mr O'Dowd. So don't play around or I'll make you wish you'd never been born.'

O'Dowd put up a hand. 'Okay, okay, you don't have to come down hard.' He took a deep breath. 'She was working on a big Mafia expose.'

There was silence. Parker said, 'Isn't that old stuff?'

'Only because the Mafia wants you to think that. Let me explain. The ruling power in the Mafia, the Commission, right? It called a halt to mob killings in New York in 1992 because of the bad publicity.'

'So?'

'So they started again last year. Five stiffed in Palermo a month ago, three in New York, four in London. But it's all different, all back-room stuff you can't connect to them. They've gone legit. They don't figure in Forbes magazine, but they're easily the biggest company structure in Europe. The drug market in America is saturated, so they've moved to Eastern Europe and Russia, but now they do it behind an elaborate facade.'