THE DIARY OF THORNTON LYNE Tarling should have been sleeping.

Every bone and sinew in him ached for rest.

His head was sunk over a table in his flat.

Lyne's diaries stood in two piles on the table, the bigger pile that which he had read, the lesser being those which Tarling had yet to examine.
The diaries had been blank books containing no printed date lines.

In some cases one book would cover a period of two or three years, in other cases three or four books would be taken up by the record of a few months.