Sam Bourne - The righteous men

Maybe it was the reference to Yale that did it, but five minutes later Will was seized by a thought. He sat back at the computer, still nibbling at the icing on the carrot cake.

He typed in Church of the Reborn Jesus, scrolled and clicked until he found the talkboard with the picture showing the Rev Jim Johnson and his acolytes.

Now Will's eye went straight to his father. So serious, even then. Will's eye shot across to Townsend McDougal and then, methodically, started at the right of the back row. Face, face, face…

He increased the magnification on the image. There he was, in the middle row, four away from McDougal. With long, hippy hair he was almost unrecognizable: Will had certainly glided right past him the first time he had looked.

But the supercilious smile was unchanged: Terence Walton.

Suddenly a shiver ran across Will's shoulders. He could hear Walton's voice from just a few moments ago: As the good book says, 'brothers, time is short'. He knew it was familiar: it was the message the texter had sent when Will was in jail, from Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

Will sat back in his seat, a wry smile breaking on his lips.

What had Harden said? Walton had done every job on the paper, including a stint editing the puzzle section: he even wrote crossword clues.

I'll be damned,' said Will out loud. It was him.'

A founder member of the Church of the Reborn Jesus with a knack for riddles: suddenly Will had no doubt. Don't stop; the ten proverbs; Just men we are, our number few. Walton knew it all and wanted to pass it on. He must have been scared. Too scared to tip anybody off directly. If the Apostle or his heavies had discovered his betrayal, they would not have hesitated to kill him. No wonder he had had to resort to code.

But why Will? Why had he picked him to receive all those clues? He must have seen Will's stories in the paper and realized he was onto the killing of the righteous men. Don't stop. It did not refer to finding Beth; it referred to the story of the lamad vav. Don't stop at Macrae and Baxter: move's to come. No wonder he had stolen Will's notebook: he wanted to know what Will knew. He might even have been keeping it safe.

Then a doubt surfaced. If Walton was the informant, a mole inside his father's circle, why had he taunted Will after the Macrae story? Surely he should have encouraged him?

And then Will remembered their conversation after his story had hit the front page. He had bullied him about beginner's luck: Very hard to pull off that trick twice, he had said. And yet that was exactly what Will had done, by recounting the life and death of Pat Baxter. Walton had all but drawn a map — and Will had followed it.

Once he saw the Baxter piece, Walton must have realized Will was the man to expose the Church of the Reborn Jesus. To expose his own father. Or had Walton's plan been hatched even earlier; had he even engineered the Baxter story? What had Harden said when he despatched Will out west? scraped the bottom of the barrel and offered them Walton, who was all set to go, but now, at the eleventh hour, he's cried off with some lameassed excuse. Was it even possible? Had Walton ducked the assignment, knowing that Will would go instead — and walk right into the Baxter story? And that flyer for the Church of the Reborn Jesus, mysteriously lying on Will's desk. Had Walton put it there?

Will would ask him direct, right now. He swivelled around to see the next desk even clearer than usual. Will called to Amy. 'Hey, where's Terry?'

'He's already gone. Straight to the airport apparently.'

It was too late. Will slumped back into his seat, deflated.

He would have liked to thank Walton and to ask him a hundred questions. Now he would never have the chance.

'Shame, I wanted to say goodbye properly.'

'Didn't he leave you a gift? He gave me a book,' she said, holding it up. 'The Juggler: How to Balance Work and Family. Thanks a lot, Terry.'

Will had not spotted it until then: a neatly-wrapped box, balanced on the partition between their desks.

He brought it down and tore off the paper, to reveal a brown carton, no more than six inches square. He opened the lid: bubble wrap. Underneath, Will pulled out what seemed to be a desk-toy, perhaps a gyroscope. It was only once he got it fully out of the box that Will understood what Walton had given him.

It was a model of Atlas, the statue outside Rockefeller Center. A man carrying the universe on his shoulders, holding up the world. There was a note:

An ancient Jewish teaching holds that to save a life is to save the whole world. I know you did one; you may even have done both.

Good luck, T.

Will put it down on his desk, next to the Saddam Hussein snowdome he had stolen from Walton and never returned.

It was not yet on the Woodstein scale, but Will was developing his own, personalized corner of office real estate. Pride of place went to a framed photograph of Beth, now showing the full curve of pregnancy. Next to it was a picture of Will and his mother. And next to that was an empty space, ready for a picture of the boy he already loved.