'Margaret, I'm going to have to head back to the States sooner than I thought,' I said, taking a deep breath, looking about, distracted. 'I didn't sleep worth a damn last night.' She lit a cigarette, scrutinizing me. 'I can get you copies of whatever you want. How fast do you need them? Photographs may take a few days, but they can be sent.'

'I think there is always a sense of urgency when someone like this is on the loose,' I

said.

'I'm not happy if he's now your problem. And I'd hoped after all these years he had bloody quit.' She irritably tapped an ash, exhaling the strong smoke of British tobacco.

'Let's take a load off for a minute. My shoes are already getting tight from the swelling. It's hell getting old on these bloody hard floors.'

The lounge was two squat wooden chairs in a corner, where Foley kept an ashtray on a gurney. She put her feet up on a box and indulged her vice.

'I can never forget those poor people.' She started talking about her serial cases again.

'When the first one came to me, I thought it was the IRA. Never seen people torn asunder like that except in bombings.'

I was reminded of Mark in a way I did not want to be, and my thoughts drifted to him when he was alive and we were in love. Suddenly he was in my mind, smiling with eyes full of a mischievous light that became electric when he laughed and teased. There had been a lot of that in law school at Georgetown, fun and fights and staying up all night, our hunger for each other impossible to appease. Over time we married other people, divorced and tried again. He was my leitmotif, here, gone, then back on the phone or at my door to break my heart and wreck my bed.

I could not banish him. It still did not seem possible that a bombing in a London train station would finally bring the tempest of our relationship to an end. I did not imagine him dead. I could not envision it, for there was no last image that might grant peace. I had never seen his body, had fled from any chance, just like the old Dubliner who could not view his son. I realized Foley was saying something to me.