Hymn by Graham Masterton Page A

he had shot the bolts, too, top and bottom. Nobody would be able to break into the kitchen without kicking the door out of its frame.
    He softly crossed the living-room until he reached the kitchen door. He hesitated for a moment, his chest tight with anticipation.
    Suppose somebody’s standing outside the back door, trying to force their way in? Even worse, supposing it’s . . .
    He let out a long, controlled breath. Don’t be so goddamned ridiculous. Celia’s dead. You saw her body, you saw it for yourself. They gave you back her charm bracelet, and they gave you back her purse.
    He stepped into the kitchen, and turned immediately toward the back door. For a fraction of a second, he thought he glimpsed a pale fawn figure, ducking down. He heard footsteps brush quickly on the brickwork outside.
    â€˜Come here!’ he shouted. ‘If you run, I’m going to call the cops!’
    Furiously, he twisted the key in the back door, and cursed as he forced back the bolts. He hardly ever used them, and they were so stiff that he chipped the heel of his hand on the edge of the metal. He hurled open the door, knowing how foolish it was, knowing that it was madness, but he was convinced that he had glimpsed a fleeting triangle of bright yellow, and a pale blur that could easily have been a raincoat.
    He rushed out into his back yard, alarming a brace of California quail. There was nobody there. No yellow scarf, no raincoat. What was more, the sprinkler was glittering in the middle of the lawn, and if anybody had run away through the garden they would have had to pass directly through the spray.
    There were no tracks across the silvery moisture-beaded grass, no sign that anybody had run that way. But sidling toward the fence was a cloud of slowly fragmenting smoke, like a ghost that was coming apart at the seams. Eventually, it rose in the breeze and was abruptly whirled away. No—not smoke, but steam, as if somebody had run through the sprinkler whirling a red-hot poker around their head.

Eight
    His appetite wasn’t as hearty as he had imagined it would be, and he left most of the pasta pushed to the side of his plate. Gino was hurt, and came out of the kitchen and stared at him with cow-like eyes.
    â€˜There’s something wrong? Maybe I should cook you some of my rognoncini di agnello saltati con cipolla.’
    â€˜You’ve got to be joking,’ Lloyd responded. ‘Gino, that was brilliant. Spaghettini like they make in heaven. But I guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach.’
    â€˜Aren’t you the man who said to me, “to waste food is to waste life itself . . .”?’ Gino demanded.
    â€˜Sure, but I’m also the man who said, “never eat anything you can’t lift”.’
    Gino sat down at the table with him and snapped his fingers for the waiter to bring them two glasses of verdicchio. ‘You tease me, Lloyd, you make fun,’ he said, laying a hand on Lloyd’s arm. ‘But you must miss her so much. Such a lady. Such elegance.’
    â€˜Yes, well,’ said Lloyd, and lowered his eyes. He was trying very hard not to think about the Celia that he could remember, but to concentrate on the Celia that he had obviously never known. The secret Celia, the Celia who had pretended that she had no parents. The Celia who had believed so obsessively in living for ever. The Celia who had gone to Otto’s religious study group, and who had burned herself alive not five blocks from where he was sitting now.
    â€˜What are you going to do?’ Gino asked him. ‘Maybe you should take some time off?’
    Lloyd nodded. ‘Two or three days, maybe. But I can’t keep away from the job too long. You know what it’s like. You take too much time off, you lose your edge.’
    â€˜Hey . . . if you get bored, come back down here, and I will show you how to make insalatina tenera con la pancetta.’
    â€˜What the hell is that? It