“God damn,” he muttered. He replaced her arm and nodded at the photographer. “Shoot her,” he said and moved away.

He looked across Coe Fen. The fog seemed to be lifting, but it might have been the effect of growing daylight, a momentary illusion, or wishful thinking. Still, it didn’t matter if the fog was there or not, for Sheehan was Cambridge born and bred, and he knew what lay beyond that opaque veil of shifting mist. Peter-house. Across the street, Pembroke. To Pembroke’s left, Corpus Christi. From there, to the north, the west, and the east sprang college after college. Surrounding them, servicing them, owing its very existence to the presence of the University was the city itself. And all of it-colleges, faculties, libraries, businesses, homes, and inhabitants-represented more than six hundred years of uneasy symbiosis.

A movement behind him and Sheehan turned to look into Drake’s moody grey eyes. Obviously, the forensic scientist had known what to expect. He’d been long anticipating the opportunity to put the thumbscrews to his subordinate back in the lab.

“Unless she beat in her own face and made the weapon disappear, I doubt anyone will argue this a suicide,” he said.

In his London office, New Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Malcolm Webberly mashed out his third cigar in as many hours and surveyed his divisional DI’s, wondering how merciful they would be about ignoring the egg which he was about to splatter upon his own face. Considering the length and volume of his diatribe only two weeks ago, he knew he could probably expect the worst. He certainly deserved it. He had expostulated with his team for at least thirty minutes about what he had caustically referred to as the Cross-Country Crusaders, and now he was about to ask one of his men to join them.