Ed fell silent and the others looked at me. It was hard to imagine the havoc Sherman Smith had wreaked on these lives, hard not to sympathize with the three of them, but who was I to judge?

‘It’s up to you now, Jack,’ Karen said, seeming to sense my dilemma. ‘You know the whole story now. We’re guilty of premeditated murder.’ She glanced at Ed. ‘If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think it’s helped any of us. I don’t think it’s going to make our lives any easier to bear – probably the opposite – but it’s done and you’re the only one who knows about it. We can’t kill you, but we’re not going to give ourselves up willingly, either. It’s your decision.’

So whether I liked it or not, it was up to me. I finished my bourbon, then I nodded and went back to my condo.

Almost exactly one year to the day later, I found myself in Chloe’s for ‘Happy Hour’. There were one or two faces I recognized around the bar, but most of the people were strangers. I still didn’t know why I kept coming back year after year. Especially this year. Maybe Karen had been right and I was looking for catharsis.

Or for Karen.

I looked across the bar at where I had first really noticed her last year, running her finger around the rim of a glass. Now a chain-smoking brunette with a hard face sat there instead.

‘Hi, Shamus.’

Al French slipped onto the empty stool beside me.

‘Beer?’ I offered.

‘My turn.’ Al ordered two beers. ‘Did you ever get to the bottom of that mysterious death?’ he asked.

‘Which one was that?’

‘You know. Last year. That asshole Bud Schiller.’

‘Oh, him.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think there was anything mysterious about it at all. I think he was drunk, he tripped and he fell into the pool.’

‘Yeah, and he pulled the piano in after him just for good measure. Come on, Jack.’

I shrugged. ‘You know, Al, sometimes the strangest of accidents do happen. Did I ever tell you about the guy they found dead on the subway tracks and couldn’t find his head?’

‘Is everything in order?’ the old man asked, his scrawny fingers clutching the comforter like talons.

‘Seems to be,’ said Mitch.

Drawing up the will had been a simple enough task. Mr Garibaldi and his wife had the dubious distinction of outliving both their children, and there wasn’t much to leave.

‘Would you like to sign it now?’ he asked, holding out his Mont Blanc.

The old man clutched the pen the way a child holds a crayon and scribbled his illegible signature on the documents.

‘There… that’s done,’ said Mitch. He placed the papers in his briefcase.

Mr Garibaldi nodded. The movement brought on a spasm and such a coughing fit that Mitch thought the old man was going to die right there and then.

But he recovered. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ he croaked when he’d got his breath back.

Mitch frowned. ‘If I can.’

With one bent, shrivelled finger, Mr Garibaldi pointed to the floor under the window. ‘Pull the carpet back,’ he said.

Mitch stood up and looked.

‘Please,’ said Mr Garibaldi. ‘The carpet.’

Mitch walked over to the window and rolled back the carpet. Underneath was nothing but floorboards.

‘One of the boards is loose,’ said the old man. ‘The one directly in line with the wall socket. Lift it up.’

Mitch felt and, sure enough, part of the floorboard was loose. He lifted it easily with his fingernails. Underneath, wedged between the joists, lay a package wrapped in old newspaper.

‘That’s it,’ said the old man. ‘Take it out.’

Mitch did. It was heavier than he had expected.

‘Now put the board back and replace the carpet.’

After he had done as he was asked, Mitch carried the package over to the bed.

‘Open it,’ said Mr Garibaldi. ‘Go on, it won’t bite you.’

Slowly, Mitch unwrapped the newspaper. It was from 18 December 1947, he noticed, and the headline reported a blizzard dumping twenty-eight inches of snow on New York City the day before. Inside, he found a layer of oilcloth. When he had folded back that too, a gun gleamed up at him. It was old, he could tell that, but it looked in superb condition. He hefted it into his hand, felt its weight and balance, pointed it towards the wall as if to shoot.

‘Be careful,’ said the old man. ‘It’s loaded.’

Mitch looked at the gun again, then put it back on the oilcloth. His fingers were smudged with oil or grease, so he took a tissue from the bedside table and wiped them off as best he could.

‘What the hell are you doing with a loaded gun?’ he asked.

Mr Garibaldi sighed. ‘It’s a Luger,’ he said. ‘First World War, probably. Old, anyway. A friend gave it to me many years ago. A German friend. I’ve kept it ever since. Partly as a memento of him and partly for protection. You know what this city’s been getting like these past few years. I’ve maintained it, cleaned it, kept it loaded. Now I’m gonna die I want to hand it in. I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.’

Mitch set the Luger down on the bed. ‘Why tell me?’ he asked.

‘Because it’s unregistered and I’d like you to hand it over for me.’ He shook his head and coughed again. ‘I haven’t got long left. I don’t want no cops coming round here and giving me a hard time.’

‘They won’t give you a hard time.’ More like give you a medal for handing over an unregistered firearm, Mitch thought.

‘Maybe not. But…’ Mr Garibaldi grabbed Mitch’s wrist with his talon. The fingers felt cold and dry, like a reptile’s skin. Mitch tried to pull back a little, but the old man held on, pulled him closer and croaked, ‘Sophie doesn’t know. It would make her real angry to know we had a gun in the house the last fifty years and I kept it from her. I don’t want to end my days with my wife mad at me. Please, Mr Mitchell. It’s a small favour I ask.’

Mitch scratched the side of his eye. True enough, he thought, it was a small favour. And it might prove a profitable one, too. Old firearms were worth something to collectors, and Mitch knew a cop who had connections. All he had to say was that he had been entrusted this gun by a client, who had brought it to his office, that he had put it in the safe and called the police immediately. What could be wrong with that?

‘OK,’ he said, rewrapping the gun and slipping it in his briefcase along with the will. ‘I’ll do as you ask. Don’t worry. You rest now. Everything will be OK.’

Mr Garibaldi smiled and seemed to sink into a deep sleep.

Mitch stood on the porch of the Garibaldi house and pulled on his sheepskin-lined gloves, glad to be out of the cloying atmosphere of the sickroom, even if it was minus ninety or something outside.

He was already wearing his heaviest overcoat over a suit and a wool scarf, but still he was freezing. It was one of those clear winter nights when the ice cracks underfoot and the breeze off the lake seems to numb you right to the bone. Reflected street lamps splintered in the broken mirror of the sidewalk, the colour of Mr Garibaldi’s jaundiced eyes.

Mitch pulled his coat tighter around his scarf and set off, cracking the iced-over puddles as he went. Here and there, the remains of last week’s snow had frozen into ruts, and he almost slipped and fell a couple of times on the uneven surface.

As he walked, he thought of old Garibaldi, with no more than a few weeks or days left to live. The old man must have been in pain sometimes, but he never complained. And he surely must be afraid of death? Maybe dying put things in perspective, Mitch thought. Maybe the mind, facing the eternal, icy darkness of death, had ways of dealing with its impending extinction, of discarding the dross, the petty and the useless.