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that might leap out at him at any moment

The house was a white turn-of-theentury Colonial with a pillared verandah. It was too grand for an army boffin, but Luke had never pretended to live on what he made as a scientist. Anthony opened a gate in a low wall and entered the yard. The place would have been easy to break into, but that would not be necessary. He circled around to the back. By the kitchen door was a terra cotta planter with bougainvillea spilling out of it, and under the pot was a big iron key.

Anthony let himself in.

The outside was pleasantly old-fashioned, but the interior was right up to the minute. Elspeth had every kind of gadget in the kitchen. There was a big hall decorated in bright pastel colours, a living room with a console TV and a record player, and a dining room with modern splayed-leg chairs and sideboards. Anthony preferred traditional furniture, but he had to admit this was stylish.

As he stood in the living room, staring at a curved couch upholstered in pink vinyl, he recalled vividly the weekend he had spent here. He had known within an hour that the marriage was in trouble. Elspeth had been flirtatious, always a sign of tension with her, and Luke had adopted a forced air of cheery hospitality that was quite uncharacteristic.

They had given a cocktail party on the Saturday night and invited the young crowd from Redstone Arsenal. This room had been full of badly dressed scientists talking about rockets, junior officers discussing their prospects for promotion, and pretty women gossiping about the intrigues.of life on a military base. The gramophone had been stacked with long-playing jazz records, but that night the music had sounded plaintive, not joyous. Luke and Elspeth had got drunk - a rare thing for both of them - and Elspeth had grown more flirty while Luke became quieter and quieter. Anthony had found it painful to see two people he liked and admired so unhappy, and the whole weekend had depressed him.

And now the long drama of their interwoven lives was playing out its inevitable conclusion.

Anthony decided to search the house. He did not know what he was looking for. But he might turn up something that would give him a clue to why Luke was coming here, and warn him of unforeseen danger. He put on a pair of rubber gloves that he found in the kitchen. There would be . a murder investigation eventually, and he did not want to leave fingerprints.

He started in the study, a small room lined with shelves full of scientific books. He sat at Luke's desk, which looked out on to the back yard, and opened the drawers.

Over the next two hours, he searched the house from top to bottom. He found nothing.

He looked in every pocket of every suit in Luke's well-filled closet. He opened every book in the study to check for papers concealed between the pages. He took the lids off every piece of Tupperware in thE enormous double-door refrigerator. He went into the garage and searched the handsome black Chrysler 300C - the fastest stock sedan in the world, according to the newspapers - from its streamlined headlamps to its rocket-ship tail fins.

He learned a few intimate secrets along the way. Elspeth coloured her hair, used sleeping pills that were prescribed by a doctor, and suffered from constipation. Luke used a dandruff shampoo and subscribed to Playboy magazine.

There was a small pile of mail on a table in the hall - put there by the maid, presumably. Anthony shuffled the letters, but there was nothing of interest: a flyer from a supermarket, Newsweek, a postcard from Ron and Monica in Hawaii, envelopes with the cellophane address window that indicated a business letter.

The search had been fruitless. He still did not know what Luke might have up his sleeve.

He went into the living room. He chose a position from which he could see through the Venetian blinds to the front yard, and also through the open door into the hallway. He sat down on the pink vinyl couch.

He took out his gun, checked that it was fully loaded, and fitted the silencer.

He tried to reassure himself by imagining the scene ahead. He would see Luke arrive, probably in a taxicab from the airport. He would watch him walk into the front yard, take out his key, and open his own front door. Luke would step into the