By mid-morning, the cloister was sealed.

A strip of rope had been tied across both entrances. Constables in greatcoats stood guard, stamping their feet against the chill. The news had spread through the precinct faster than the mist: Sturmey dead; in the cloister, of all places; police crawling over the Close like ants on a gravestone.

John Lomas felt the Cathedral watching him.

From the Chapter House windows, from the Deanery, from the discreet little houses of minor canons, eyes peered through lace curtains or from behind half-drawn blinds as he walked across the grass with Harry Makepeace at his side. The two men made an odd pair: Lomas tall, rangy, and clean shaven, with the slightly abstracted air of a man who is thinking two things at once; Makepeace shorter, broad-shouldered, waxed mousta...

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