The gateway to Belham Grange was now huddled deep in mist. The local constable who had been sent out to investigate cruised by the entrance twice before he found it. Then he did not drive through, but only turned his car on the narrow country road, pointed his headlamps into the drive.

The mist curled in the headlamp beams, wreathed itself around them like a living thing. The local constable, a handsome blond youth with ladykilling blue eyes, leaned close to the windscreen and peered through it.

At first, there was nothing. Only the mist folding, falling, gathering over the first distances of the long front path between the overhanging trees.

Then something moved. A silhouette in the fog. Amorphous at first, then, slowly, defining itself as it approached the light. The figure of a man.

As the constable peered through the windscreen, his heart thudding, the figure moved into the scope of his headlamps. A tall man, with long black hair, with features cut in sharp, cruel angles. With deep, laughing, hypnotic eyes. He was wearing a white three-piece suit. He had green gloves on his hands.

He lifted one hand, one finger, and touched it to his eyebrow in a salute.

The local constable nodded, swallowing hard. He returned the salute to his master.

Then, quickly, he threw the police car into reverse. Spun back away from the Grange’s drive. Stepped on the gas and roared off down the country lane, disappearing into the mist.

Iago put his hands behind his back and strolled casually down the drive towards the house.

24

Storm, then, was at the window again, looking out at the night, and wondering. He was buttoning his shirt, tucking it into his pants, and wondering about the reality of grace. Maybe, he thought, maybe this was it: the way he felt right now—hey, what did he know?—maybe this was grace, what religious people called grace. I love you, Richard, come to bed. I mean, was that a bolt from the blue, or what? It wasn’t what he’d been expecting, that was for damn sure. It sure as hell wasn’t what he thought he deserved.

Outside, through the window, the clouds, the moon, the drifting mist, threw their romantic, spectral shadows on the ruins of the abbey, on the wall, on the graves. A wonderful scene, he thought. A great setting for a movie, for a ghost story. And, hey, maybe there was still time for that. Maybe he could just zip a crew out here and shoot “Black Annie” straight off the page, a classy little one-hour job for Brit TV …