Scarpetta?'

His name was Jimmy Shaw, and he was very young and Irish, with hair as fiery as copper ivy, and eyes as blue as sky.

'I've been better,' I confessed.

'Well, I was just boiling tea,' he said, shutting us inside a narrow, dimly lit hallway, which we followed to his office. 'Sounds like you could use a cup.'

'That would be lovely, Jimmy,' I said.

'As for the good doctor, she should be finishing up an inquest.' He glanced at his watch as we entered his cluttered small space. 'She should be out in no time.'

His desk was dominated by a large Coroner's Inquiries book, black and bound in heavy leather, and he had been reading a biography of Steve McQueen and eating toast before I arrived. Momentarily, he was setting a mug of tea within my reach, not asking how I took it, for by now he knew.

'A little toast with jam?' he asked as he did every morning.

'I ate at the hotel, thanks.' I gave the same reply as he sat behind his desk.

'Never stops me from eating again.' He smiled, slipping on glasses. 'I'll just go over your schedule, then. You lecture at eleven this morning, then again at one P.M. Both at the college, in the old pathology building. I should expect about seventy-five students for each, but there could be more. I don't know. You're awfully popular over here, Dr Kay Scarpetta,' he cheerfully said. 'Or maybe it's just that American violence is so exotic to us.'

'That's rather much like calling a plague exotic,' I said.

'Well, we can't help but be fascinated by what you see.'

'And I guess that bothers me,' I said in a friendly but ominous way. 'Don't be too fascinated.'

We were interrupted by the phone, which he snapped up with the impatience of one who answers it too often.

Listening for a moment, he brusquely said. 'Right, right. Well, we can't place an order like that just yet. I'll have to ring you back another time.