He tried to make himself take deep breaths and calm down. It was not his case. He should be leaving things to Watkins and channeling his energy to catching a murderer. Yet again he would be returning to his boss empty-handed, with no new clues and no new insights. His mind went back over the incidents of the morning-the blood-spattered kitchen, Megan Owen's tear-stained face. How many more grief-stricken families would there be before this cold-blooded killer was caught? Because one thing was sure-the killer had to have nerves of steel. Shooting Rogers in a respectable street during the morning commute hour, shooting Alessi on a Friday night when people would still be coming out of the pubs and clubs, and then shooting Terry Owens in broad daylight on a housing estate. All highly risky procedures. The term "hit man" came to him again. These were all hits. The quick dispatching of someone who needed to be dispatched. Maybe their team should focus more on the North Wales underworld after all.

Why would a professor, a pizza parlor owner, and an unemployed machinist run afoul of organized crime, he asked himself? Drugs were the most obvious answer, but there had been no hint of drug use. What they hadn't yet checked was whether any of the victims was in trouble financially. They should also find out whether any of them had borrowed money or had a gambling problem.

Then he had to smile at the absurdity of these thoughts. Missy Rogers would know if her husband took drugs or gambled. So would the other wives. Ridiculous. He felt especially bad about Megan Owens. She'd gone through a lot recently for one so young and frail looking. Poor kid, she had lost a child and a husband within a month of each other. Barely recovered from one before she had to go through this. He hoped her mother was being nice to her. There had been a definite coldness between the two as Evan watched them go off in the mother's car.

Then suddenly he broke off in midthought. "Wait a minute," he said out loud. There was a connection at last. He couldn't see how it might impact the three murders, but it was a connection. He put his foot down and zigzagged in and out of the traffic.

"Listen, I think I've got something," he gasped, out of breath from taking the stairs two at a time. The other men looked up expectantly.

"Megan Owens had a miscarriage a month ago. Missy Rogers went into hospital a month ago. Pamela Alessi had been under the care of a doctor."

"So?" Bragg asked.

"We've been looking for a connection. All three women have been ill. Is it possible they met in hospital?"

"And decided to find a hit man to kill their husbands?" Bragg raised an eyebrow.

"You thought Missy Rogers had killed her husband," Evan pointed out. "You were about to charge her. What's to say the other women didn't do the same? All we have to prove is how the gun was passed from one to the other."

"And the motive?" Bragg asked. "They were all tired of their old men? Not a sound move financially in any of the cases. No big life insurance policies."

"But it is a thought," Wingate agreed. "It's the only possible link so far."

"Go for it then," Bragg shrugged. "Right now I'd believe it if you told me they all took belly-dancing lessons or turned tricks together. Let's find out where and when these women were in hospital. Talk to their doctors. Wingate, you take Rogers, Evans you can take Alessi, and Pritchard, you get Owens."

Evan hurried back to his car. The blinds were drawn at Papa Luigi's, and the sign said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. But Pamela Alessi answered the door after peeping out from behind one of the blinds.

"Oh, it's you, Constable Evans. Any news?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid, Mrs. Alessi," he said. "So you're still living here then? I thought you might have moved in with a friend or gone to a hotel."

"I don't have any friends living close by that I choose to go to right now," she said, "and hotels cost money. Besides, I'd like to get the restaurant up and running again as soon as the police will release my kitchen from being a crime scene. I need to make money, or I won't be able to pay next month's rent."

"So Luigi didn't leave you well provided for?"

"Luigi wasn't good with money," she said angrily. "If he had it, he spent it. He thought nothing of blowing twenty pounds on drinks for the lads. And those TV sets? Always had to have the biggest and best."

"But didn't Luigi do all the cooking?"

"Yes, but the lads and me can probably muddle through. That's what I'll be doing for a while, I expect, muddling through."

"Have you seen your doctor since it happened?" Evan asked cautiously.

"What would he do-just give me more pills that make me dopey half the time."

"The illness you spoke about," Evan went on. "Is it serious? I know you mentioned something about your nerves, but it isn't a serious condition that put you in the hospital, is it?"

"What are you implying-that I'm a nutter?"

"Of course not. So it's just a case of stress and depression then, is it? The normal difficulties of life?"

"That's about it. The normal difficulties."

"And you haven't been in hospital recently for any condition?"

"What's this about hospitals?" she asked sharply.

"Just following up on something we've heard."

"Hang about. You don't suspect me of murdering Lou, do you? Shooting my husband? What, because I'm really off my head? Oh, that would wrap it up nice and conveniently for you, I must say."

Evan raised a protesting hand. "Nobody's accusing you of anything, Mrs. Alessi. We have to follow up on all the leads we've been given, however absurd they seem. I'm sorry to have troubled you."

With that he made his exit. A visit to the regional hospital nearby did not show that she had been admitted there. Neither did a phone call to Ysbyty Gwyneth, the big regional hospital in Bangor. Of course there were always private nursing homes and hospitals out of the region. He'd have to see what the other two came up with.

Soon after he arrived back at HQ, Pritchard came back with the news that Megan Owens had been admitted overnight to the regional emergency center just over a month ago. Reason listed was miscarriage. She was discharged the next morning. Then Wingate arrived. No hospital in the area showed Missy Rogers as a patient. She denied ever having said that she was going into hospital-was quite indignant about it, in fact. And yet Gwyneth Humphries had insisted that she had been away getting medical treatment and Martin had been desolate without her.

"Maybe it was some kind of treatment she didn't want to admit to," Evan suggested. "Mental illness, maybe? Perhaps she went to a facility outside of the area. And it's just possible that Pam Alessi was also treated at a place like that."

"But Megan Owens wasn't. We've got records of her visits to the health clinic during her pregnancy prior to the miscarriage. She couldn't have left the area for more than a couple of days."

"So that shoots that theory," Bragg said. "Any more bright ideas, Evans? I thought you were supposed to be the whiz kid."

"I never claimed to be anything special, sir," Evan said. "I just try to do my job, like everyone else. And right now I'm as stumped as the rest of you. But the connection has to be out there. I thought that maybe we might be dealing with a hit man after all. If the men secretly gambled, took drugs, borrowed money and didn't repay it . . ."

Bragg considered this then shook his head. "I've had a bit of experience with lowlifes. They don't shoot you for not paying your debts. They'd like those debts repaid. They might bash you about a bit, break your legs, set fire to your car, just as a warning. But why kill off the goose before it can lay the golden egg?"

"That's just what it boils down to, isn't it?" Wingate said thoughtfully. "Why do it? What had anybody got to gain from it? The wives are going to be struggling financially as widows. Alessi and Owens had zero money to speak of. What was it for?"

"When we find that out," Bragg said, "then we'll have solved it. Until then let's get cracking again. So the gay angle turned up nothing, did it?"

"Quite the opposite in my case," Evan said. "Martin Rogers was so anti-gay that he tried to stop the gay/lesbian dance last year and nearly caused a campus riot."

"He seems to have been a proper killjoy," Wingate said. "Vetoing everything he didn't agree with."

"Yes, but you don't kill somebody for stopping you from having fun, do you?" Bragg sucked thoughtfully at the end of his pen.

"Especially not if you're a student," Evan agreed. "You protest. They love having something to protest about. They've got some kind of big rally going on. They were trying to put up the banners. Celtic Pride, I believe."

"Celtic Pride!" Bragg sniffed. "When I was young you were given a clip round the head and told you were lucky to be born Welsh and should feel sorry for everybody else. We didn't need bloody festivals to remind us to have pride in ourselves."

"So what else before we wrap it up for tonight?" Wingate asked wearily.

Bragg considered for a moment. "I suppose we should go back to the housing estate where the Owens lived. People who were out at work will be home by now. We can find out if Owens crossed swords with anybody there. Also telephone his mates-I've got their numbers-and find out what they've got to say about him." He got up, started to walk to the door, then looked back at them. "Well, come on. Don't just stand there."

It was after eight when Evan drove wearily back up the pass. Wind swirled dead leaves around the car and buffeted him on the turns. Winter was definitely on the way. One day soon they'd wake to find the peaks opposite dusted with snow. As he parked and got out of the car, he saw a portly figure in an overcoat running toward him. It was Mr. Khan.

"Any news yet?" he shouted. "Any news at all?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Khan, but I'm not assigned to work on Jamila's case."

"My daughter's disappearance is not important enough that you drop what you're doing and look for her?" Mr. Khan shouted. "Because we're Asian, right? Because Pakistani people don't matter?"

"Hold on a minute," Evan shouted back over the wind. "I really wanted to look for Jamila, but I'm assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, which is investigating three murders within the past week. But I can assure you that my old boss, Inspector Watkins of Western Division, is doing everything he possibly can to find your daughter."

"But she's not anywhere," Khan said quietly now. "It's as if she's vanished from the face of the earth. Where could she have gone? She hasn't been here long. She doesn't know many people."

"There is one thing," Evan said after a moment's hesitation. "Your son, Rashid. I went to the house where he's now living, and his house mates were decidedly nervous about talking to me. So I'm asking you now, is it possible that Rashid has done something to her?"

"Done something? What do you mean?"

"Kidnapped her or even . . ." He couldn't say the words.

"You mean killed her? Killed his own sister? What do you take us for-monsters?" He was screaming now. "We should never have come to this country. I bring up my children to be good British citizens. I tell them about British justice and fair play, and what happens when I need justice and fair play? You tell me that. All we meet is prejudice."

"Mr. Khan, everybody feels very sorry for you and, believe me, we're doing everything we possibly can. Bronwen took her lunch hour to go and speak to Jamila's friends. She thought they might be more inclined to tell the truth to someone who wasn't officially with the police."

"And?"

"One of them said that Rashid had threatened to kill his sister if she stained the family honor."

"No. I don't believe this. That was just Rashid talking big," Mr. Khan said. "He says silly things sometimes. He doesn't mean them. He would never hurt Jamila. He would never-" He collected himself. "I must go back to my wife. She is almost out of her mind with worry."

"And I must go to my wife too," Evan said. "She feels almost as bad as you do."

He left the older man trudging wearily back down the road.

Bronwen looked up expectantly as he came in. "You've been working late? Any news?"

"Nothing," Evan said. "A completely frustrating day."

"She must be somewhere," Bronwen called over her shoulder, as she went into the kitchen to take out his dinner plate. "If she'd left the area, she'd have had to be on a bus or a train."

"Unless she hitchhiked. They're going to display her picture on the missing children Web site. But they can hardly show it to every long-distance lorry driver, can they?"

"Where would she go? Surely not back to Leeds. She hated it there, she told me. She hated living in a ghetto, being surrounded by only Asian families. She said she had no one to talk to. The other girls weren't interested in English or physics or any of the subjects she liked."

"I wish I knew, Bronwen," he said. "Just the same as I wish I could figure out why three very different men were shot with the same gun and apparently still no connection between them."

"What you need is one piece of luck," she said. "Now come and eat your dinner. You must be starving."