Two weeks before Christmas, Mitch and Eddie Lomax met on a bridge in a park in the freezing rain. They had both made sure that they were not followed. Lomax's news was very interesting. All three of the dead lawyers had died in mysterious circumstances. The lorry which killed Alice Knauss had been stolen in St Louis three days earlier. The driver drove straight into her car and then ran away. He was never found. The hunter, Robert Lamm, was almost certainly murdered. It didn't look like a hunting accident, because his body was found in a part of the forest where there were few animals and the hunters didn't usually go. There were two strange things about Mickel's death: first, the letter to his wife was typed, not handwritten; second, he had never bought a gun in his life, and yet the gun that killed him was an old gun, which the police thought criminals had used in the past. Where did a respectable lawyer get such a gun?

'Your firm has lost five lawyers in fifteen years,' Lomax ended. 'And you're acting as if you're going to be the next. I'd say you've got problems.'

'What about Tarrance?'

'I don't have very much. He's one of their best men; he came down here from New York about two years ago.'

'Thanks.'

'I'll do anything I can to help Ray McDeere's little brother. It seems to me that you're swimming in dangerous waters.'

Mitch nodded slightly, but said nothing.

***

Mitch sat in the corner of Paulette's, a French restaurant in the middle of Memphis. At seven o'clock Abby rushed in from the cold and joined him at his table.

'What's the special event?' she asked. Mitch had said hardly anything on the phone when he invited her to meet him here. He was very careful about what he said on the phone these days.

'Do I need a reason to have dinner with my wife?'

'Yes. It's seven o'clock on a Monday night and you're not at the office. That's very unusual.'

A waiter came to their table and they ordered two white wines. As the waiter went away Mitch noticed the face of a man at another table that looked familiar. Before Mitch could think about it the man hid his face behind a menu.

'What's the matter, Mitch?'

He put his hand on hers and said, 'Abby, we've got to talk.'

'What about?' she asked, worried.

'About something very serious,' he said quietly. 'But we can't talk here. There's a back door near the washrooms. I want you to go to the washroom and then leave by the back door. I'll meet you there. I'll bring your coat. Trust me, please.'