'I'm sorry,' she repeated, her eyes sad, for she knew my history well. 'I didn't mean to bring up something painful. You seem blue enough this morning.'

'You made an interesting point.' I tried to be brave. 'I suspect the killer we're looking for is rather much like a bomber. He doesn't care who he kills. His victims are people with no faces or names. They are nothing but symbols of his private, evil credo.'

'Would it bother you terribly if I asked a question about Mark?' she said.

'Ask anything you want.' I smiled. 'You will anyway.'

'Have you ever gone to where it happened, visited that place where he died?'

'I don't know where it happened,' I quickly replied. She looked at me as she smoked.

'What I mean is, I don't know where, exactly, in the train station.' I was evasive, almost stuttering.

Still she said nothing, crushing the cigarette beneath her foot.

'Actually,' I went on, 'I don't know that I've been in Victoria at all, not that particular station, since he died. I don't think I've had reason to take a train from there. Or arrive there. Waterloo was the last one I was in, I think.'

'The one crime scene the great Dr Kay Scarpetta will not visit.' She tapped another

Consulate out of the pack. 'Would you like one?'

'God knows I would. But I can't.'

She sighed. 'I remember Vienna. All those men and the two of us smoking more than they did.'

'Probably the reason we smoked so much was all those men,' I said.

'That may be the cause, but for me, there seems to be no cure. It just goes to show that what we do is unrelated to what we know, and our feelings don't have a brain.' She shook out a match. 'I've seen smokers' lungs. And I've seen my share of fatty livers.'