He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes before eleven.

He wondered how long it would be before they had a signed confession from Lionel Black.

Thirty years' experience let him know, even at this early stage, that Black was his man.

But he still wanted to know why.

It was a cold, windy day, the day after Kitti's death, but Stanley Gilborn paid no attention to the blustery October wind.

After leaving Conrad, Gilborn had no destination. He simply walked, not noticing where he was, not caring. He stopped automatically at the street corners, waiting for the traffic lights to change, unheeding of other people, his coat open and flapping.

As he walked, he tried to think.

Of Kitti. Of himself. Mainly of what Conrad had tried to make him believe.

There was nothing coherent about his thinking. It was a succession of picture images passing through his mind: the same ones, different ones, in no apparent sequence, in no logical succession.

The enormity of what Conrad had told him made it impossible for Gilborn to accept, with any degree of realism, the actuality of it.

Conrad's words had intellectual meaning for him only. Emotionally, they penetrated him not at all.

Whoever he was and your wife were intimate.

Gilborn remembered Conrad's exact words. They made sense and yet they didn't. He knew Conrad had told him the truth. It was so. Yet it wasn't so. It wasn't so because it couldn't be so.