Hyde looked around her, noting the rodent droppings on the floor. Definitely not an A rating from the Board of Health.

Reminders of her less accomplished relatives were on the faces of every drunk at the bar. Her glass had lipstick stains from the previous customer. The slatternly waitress had actually seemed amused when she complained, but a dollar bill had bribed the girl back to the table with a clean glass, and Hyde had slugged back the whole shot. With enough whiskey, anything could be borne.

She leaned forward as she spoke to the younger woman who sat on the other side of the small table.

‘Mallory, how do you find these places?’

Of course, she understood the logic. No one from the Coventry Arms was likely to wander in, not without their own private security. The bulge under Mallory’s coat could only be a gun. Now that was comforting.

‘Tell me more about Eric Franz,’ said Mallory.

‘Anything specific?’ And what did Eric have in common with a judge and a gigolo?

‘Are you sure he’s blind?’

‘Dead sure,’ said Betty Hyde.

‘How so?’

‘If the blindness was fraud – the wife didn’t know. How does a man keep a thing like that from his wife?’

‘Maybe she did know.’

‘No, Mallory. Annie believed he was blind.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Well, I did tell you his wife had an interesting sense of humor… for a bitch. She used to flirt with men in front of him. Nothing spoken – only the rubbing up, the nuzzling. What Annie did with other men were the sort of things Eric couldn’t see or hear. It was quite a show – the two of them in public. And there were other jokes at his expense, the faces she made, the obscene gestures. It was the darkest humor. You couldn’t look away. You couldn’t tell her to stop. You were a prisoner to every exhibition.’

‘Why did she hate him so much?’

‘Because he loved her so much – too much. If only he’d been rude to her occasionally, it might have gone a long way toward improving the marriage. She was that type.’

‘And his type? He was a doormat?’

‘A nice guy. But you’re right. She had nothing but contempt for him in all the time I knew them.’

‘Is that why they never had children?’

‘You know, there was a time when I could’ve sworn Annie was pregnant. She had that certain aura of impending motherhood. That special glow that comes from vomiting every morning. But then, when I saw her again, she was her old self – drop-dead gorgeous and frighteningly awake.’

‘You think she got rid of it?’

‘Abortion? Yes, I do, but there’s no way to confirm it. I pride myself in being a hardcase, but I can’t ask a blind man if his wife aborted their only child. Well, I could if it had the makings of a good story. Does it?’

‘Did you tell Eric I was a cop before I joined the consulting firm?’

‘No, dear. I only told him you might be interested in any little tidbits about the judge. But it was all over the news. Every channel said you were a dead cop.’

‘A fireman was killed on Monday. Do you remember the news story?’

‘Yes, he died saving an old man. It was a long story.’

‘What was the fireman’s name?’

‘I don’t remember… Oh, I see. Yesterday’s news – who remembers the details, the names and faces? But you, my dear, have a memorable face.’

‘And Eric Franz is blind.’

When she returned home, she hung up her clothes in the closet as Helen had taught her to do. The cat had already sensed her presence and was pounding its hello on the bathroom door with the soft thuds of paws. She pressed the play button on her answering machine, and went into the kitchen to open a can of tuna for her star witness.

It was Riker’s voice on the machine.

‘Mallory, do any of the suspects have a dog?’

Charles dimmed the lights of the front room and settled back on the couch, long legs splayed out in front of him. An early Christmas present from Mallory lay in the midst of its green velvet wrapping paper.

He was staring down at yet another of Mallory’s attempts to lure him into the current century. He had a remarkable record collection and the finest turntable money could buy, but he was a dinosaur in her eyes. It was not the music which counted with her, but the technology. Every old thing be damned, technology ruled.

He picked up her gift, the portable CD player. Did she really expect him to go about the streets wired up to the age of electronics?

How perverse was their gift giving. He gave her jewels in antique settings, which she never wore. She gave him expensive high-technology, which collected dust between visits from Mrs Ortega.

He pushed the button to open the top of the machine, just on the off chance she’d had the plastic cover inscribed with a sentimental message. He gave the same odds that two moons might appear in the sky tonight. A disk lay in the machine, ready to play at a touch. It was only a mild shock that it should be Louisa’s Concerto.

Could she have known about the ruined record in the basement? Probably not. More than likely, she had noticed the concerto was not included in his record collection after he had made a point of saying it was a popular recording for any classical music buff.

Earphones grew out of the small dark box in his hand. But he didn’t actually need the earphones, did he? The concerto was locked in his memory now and running through his conscious mind.

What had happened this afternoon had stunned him in the way cattle are stunned with a bat before they go into the slaughterhouse blades. He understood how it had happened. The music had always been a trigger in his childhood fantasies of Louisa. Now the concerto was keyed to his eidetic recreation of Amanda. She was archived in his freakish memory, and she would probably live there forever.

He didn’t want to touch on this again. The fear was real. It was no ghost story this, but something threatening to his mind.

Mallory would not be frightened so. And what exactly was he frightened of? It was only an illusion, wasn’t it? Something he had made with a child’s memory of a magic act and nothing more, a mere holograph of remembering. Malakhai’s magical insanity had been a gift of sorts, and that was his field, wasn’t it, exploring gifts. Furthermore, he had actually found a practical application for the old magician’s delusion. If Amanda was true to life, if he was faithful to her in creation, she might be able to tell him something useful to Mallory’s investigation. If Mallory could face bullets, he could face Amanda. It was not so insane. A mere conversation in the mind.

Memory led him back through the setup for the act. He was a child again. The conductor’s baton was rising as the concert hall quieted to heart-stopped silence. The concerto had begun. The inner music fled the confines of his braincase and rose around him in a wall of sound which opened on to bleak corridors filled with the scent of roses. The lull of music was the warning of the great dark hole which sprawled out before him. In that magic silence where the listeners placed the phantom notes rather than endure the emptiness, there he heard a woman keening, wailing for a death, softer now and coming toward him into the light.

She wore the clothes she died in, the blazer, the blue jeans and running shoes. His memory had faithfully recreated the stain on the material and the uglier stain of the golden hair where the wound matted it to wisps of red strings.

How did Malakhai begin? Oh yes. So simple.

‘Good evening, Amanda.’

She gave him a shy smile as she sat down in the chair opposite his own. There was a moment of relief when he realized his creation did not have the substance to make an impression in the plush upholstery. She rested her hands on the arms of the chair. He looked to the wall, further relieved because she cast no shadow to sit with his own.