He sensed rather than saw her standing in the doorway.

'Won't be long sweetheart, I just need to finish reading this report. I've got an 8am with Towers tomorrow.'

She didn't respond. Harry glanced up. She looked pale, and her fingers played with the necklace at her throat. 'Ruth? What's wrong?'

Her head dropped, as she mentally considered and rejected all the ways of telling him.

Alarmed now, Harry went over and tilted her chin up towards him, his blood running cold at the pity he now saw in those mesmerising blue eyes. 'What is it? Just tell me. Broad shoulders, these!' he tried to inject a bit of levity into his voice and failed miserably. Her hand went to his chest as if to steel him for what was to come, and his fingers closed over hers. 'Talk to me.'

She swallowed, and from somewhere found her voice. 'I just took a phone call from Beecher. He..they...the CIA...they've identified the suicide bomber. The one who..who...'

She felt him tense. 'The one who killed Catherine and 14 other passengers. Go on.'

He was a 19 year old Palestinian called Salam Zuhri, a Chemistry student at Tel Aviv University. He had no known affiliations with any terrorist organisations or splinter cells or political groups.'

Harry blinked. 'What? How can they be sure? Half the time we don't even know these groups exist until they do something like this.'

'They're sure, Harry. They're sure. They've been as 'thorough' as only the CIA can be and given that three Americans were killed in the blast, if there was something to find, they'd find it.'

Harry gazed at her, perplexed. 'Then why...? What was he hoping to achieve?'

'According to his parents, the previous week he'd split up with his girlfriend, an Israeli woman on his course. She was his first serious girlfriend and by all accounts he was totally besotted. He took it badly.'

'Bit of an understatement.'

'Sorry. But the internet, and the knowledge he'd gleaned from his course were all he needed to create what was a fairly rudimentary bomb. He had no prior, not even a parking ticket, so he wasn't being monitored, nothing was picked up. He locked himself away in his room and his parents just thought he was upset and left him to it.'

Wordlessly he went over and leaned, head bowed, palms down, against his desk. He forced himself to breathe. 'So what you're saying,' he said heavily, 'is that my daughter was killed by some lovesick teenager?'

'It seems so.'

'Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is that supposed to give me closure, or whatever Beecher and his compatriots call it?'

Ruth spread her hands helplessly. 'I don't know. But it does end it in a way. There's no group to infiltrate, no cause to fight, no justice to be done. No questions unanswered. Catherine was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'So her death was just utterly bloody pointless.' Ruth's hands were on his back, on his shoulder, guiding him into her arms. He held her, too drained to speak, his mind in turmoil. He'd been expecting, he'd been ready for, intel about some obscure little tinpot organisation that thought it was going to change the world but all it boiled down to was some homicidal geeky bloody Romeo sucking all the life and light out of his and Jane's world and those of a number of other innocent Israeli and American civilians. He was dimly aware of Ruth disentangling herself, switching off his pc, getting his coat from the stand.

She took his hand. 'Come on. Time to go home. We can slum it on the bus.'

He hesitated. 'I need to call her mother.'

'Tomorrow, Harry.' Her voice was insistent. He nodded, conceding defeat, and together they headed out to the pods.

Autumn had barely begun, yet the damp chill in the air warned of a winter not too far behind. Ruth, clad only in a raincoat over a cotton skirt and blouse, shivered. He put his arm round her shoulder, pulling her to him, feeling his heart give a little joyous kick as her arm curled round his waist. They crossed the road and headed for the bus stop, Harry oblivious to everything around them, their conversation of a few minutes looping round his head. How long they had to wait for the bus, he had no idea. The next thing he knew they were sitting on the top deck, Ruth's head against his shoulder, bumping the circuitous route towards her house. His head lolling against the glass he gazed out of the window as the streetlights, the gaudy shop windows, the shouts, the laughter, the growls of the traffic, drifted past. Something brought him out of his reverie. 'I thought we were going back to mine,' he said, to nobody in particular. Ruth squeezed his hand. 'No, Scarlet's at mine, remember? And I'm not leaving you on your own tonight.'

'I'm fine.'

'You're a million miles from fine. Harry, your daughter just died. You spent a few days in Israel for the funeral and since you got back it's just been business as usual. Well, nearly as usual.'

A faint smile flitted across his face.

'My point is, you've never allowed yourself time to grieve. You've just battened down the hatches and all but pretended it never happened. Something's going to give, Harry. It's got to. And this news about Zuhri...in a way I think it's the worst outcome possible, because it seemed to me that getting justice for Catherine was what was keeping you going, and now...'

Harry rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. 'I told you. I'm fine.' The concern in Ruth's eyes was too much for him to bear. He let his head loll against the glass once more and the sights and sounds of the city merged into a kaleidoscopic blur.

When they got in he was mildly amused to see Scarlet make a bigger fuss of Ruth than she did of him; Fidget of course ignored them both. He picked up Scarlet's lead from the table in the hall. 'Why don't you put the dinner on and I'll take madam out for half an hour.'

'You sure?'

'Ruth, I'm perfectly capable of walking my own dog.' His tone was sharper than he'd intended. 'I'm sorry. Didn't mean to...' He kissed her, for just a moment longer than was strictly necessary, and managing to get hold of a zebedeeing Scarlet just long enough to put her lead on, let himself back out into the damp October night.

They were barely round the corner when a prolonged pause at a particularly enticing gatepost made up Harry's mind for him. 'If we're here for the duration I might as well put the time to good use, eh?' As Scarlet dutifully wagged a preoccupied tail he pulled out his mobile and hit speed dial.

'Alton? Harry Pearce. Can we meet?'