'Guess who,' chirruped Chantelle.

Jeremy set down his crash helmet and gauntlets on the hall table, then stepped slowly into the room.

Umber rose cautiously from the couch. 'I'm sorry not to have phoned ahead,' he ventured. 'This must be a bit of a shock for you.'

'Aren't you going to say hello, Jemmy?' put in Chantelle, her smile stiffening. 'It's the -'

'Shadow Man.' Jeremy's voice was cold and hard. 'I know. David Umber.' He nodded. 'I've been expecting him.'

Chantelle blinked in surprise. 'Expecting him? You never said.'

'Do me a favour, sugar.' Jeremy took a coin out of his pocket and flicked it onto the bed. 'Pop down to the shop and buy an Evening Post.'

'My tea will get cold.'

'Just go.'

Chantelle flinched at the harshness of his tone and blushed slightly. She leaned forward and picked up the coin. Then, without looking once at Umber, she put down her mug, stood up and walked out of the room. She glanced at Jeremy as she passed him and laid a hand gently on his arm, but he only jerked his head towards the door.

A second later it had closed behind Chantelle, leaving the two men alone together.

'I had a call from the old man,' Jeremy cut in before Umber could say a word. 'Warned me you might pull something like this.'

'I only want to -'

'Dig up a load of stuff that's best forgotten. I know what you only want.'

'It's far from forgotten by you – according to Chantelle.'

'Leave her out of it.'

'Suits me.'

'There's nothing I can tell you about Sally.'

'Who said I meant to ask you about Sally?'

'What, then? No.' Jeremy shook his head. 'I'm not getting into this. Not here. Not now.'

'I don't know what your father said, but -'

'Here's the deal. The only deal you'll get from me. You're staying in St Helier?'

'Yes.'

'I'll meet you there tomorrow afternoon at La Fregate. It's a cafe on the seafront, shaped like a capsized boat. You can't miss it. Be there at four.'

'All right. But why can't we -'

'Shut up.' Jeremy levelled a threatening finger at Umber. 'We're playing to my rules, not yours, OK? It's tomorrow or nothing.'

'OK.' Umber tried to sound calmer than he felt. Why his unannounced visit had so enraged Jeremy he did not understand. But he could imagine that rage tipping over into violence all too easily. And his experiences of Monday night had left him with a strong sense of his physical vulnerability. He had not realized how acute that sense was until this moment. 'Tomorrow afternoon it is.'

'Now…' Jeremy moved to the front door and yanked it open. 'Get out.'

Umber noticed a tremor in his hands as he walked past Jeremy's motorbike and out beside the warehouse towards the harbour. The encounter had affected him more than he would have expected. He would have to pull himself together before he met Jeremy again. Seizing the initiative from the younger man would otherwise be beyond him.

He turned onto the Boulevard and made for the bus stop. It lay just beyond the road junction in the centre of the town. As he neared the junction, he spotted Chantelle making her way across it, a newspaper clutched in her hand. In the same instant, she spotted him and pulled up abruptly, then swivelled on her heel and headed for the higher road that would take her to the top of the steps above the flat. By the time Umber reached the junction, she had vanished from sight.

Back in St Helier, Umber was forced to admit to himself that he could not brush off his tangle with Walsh and baseball-bat man as readily as he had supposed. His nerves were fragile, his physical resources diminished. He could only hope a good dinner and an early night would hasten their recovery.

When he woke the next morning, he felt, if not quite his old self, then at least a closer approach to it. He had slept for ten solid hours and was momentarily uncertain where he was, until a distant shriek of gulls in the harbour told him that, yes, he really had come to Jersey.

He stumbled into the bathroom, emerging half an hour later showered, shaved and reassuringly alert. There was not even the trace of a headache, although the stitches in his wound tugged at his scalp occasionally to remind him of what had happened sixty hours or so ago.

He pulled back the curtains to confront a wide blue sky across which a strong wind was blowing fluffy bundles of cloud. Only then, with sunlight filling the room, did he notice, as he turned away from the window, the envelope that had been slid beneath his door.

The envelope was blank. Inside was a slim mailorder catalogue, advertising the pick of the stock of 'Jersey's premier antiquarian and second-handbooks dealer' – folded open at the page devoted to the eighteenth century.

Quires, of Halkett Place, St Helier (established 1975, proprietor Vernon Garrard), was clearly the place of first resort for Jersey bibliophiles: a multi-roomed glory-hole of Punch, Wisden, Whitaker's, Dickens, Scott, Austen, Defoe, Pepys, Shakespeare et al. When Umber arrived mid-morning, there were only a couple of other customers, none of them in the main room, where Garrard was conducting a telephone conversation at the cluttered cash desk in the corner.

The scene was about as safe and humdrum as could be imagined, but it did not appear so to Umber. The sense of being manipulated was not so very different from the feeling of being watched. He had no idea who might have slipped Garrard's catalogue under his door, but he knew what he had been supposed to infer. There were no editions of the Letters of Junius listed, but Junius was why he had been sent to Quires. There could be no other reason. Just as, for all his doubts and reservations, there could be no question of ignoring the clue he had been supplied with.

The eighteenth-century shelf in the antiquarian section, which lay within close view of the desk, was an unremarkable if well-bound selection of Pope, Swift, Hume, Goldsmith and Dr Johnson. Umber fingered his way slowly along the spines, wondering if he would chance on an uncatalogued Junius. But, no, he did not. Then he heard the telephone go down behind him and the sound of a chair being pushed back. He turned to find Garrard bearing soft-footedly down on him.

A balding, round-shouldered man of sixty or so, Garrard wore the dusty tweed and corduroy uniform of his trade and the resigned expression of one well aware that browsers outnumber serious customers in the second-hand-books world by a depressing margin. 'Can I help you?' he lethargically enquired.

'Not sure,' Umber replied. 'I was wondering if you had any editions of the Letters of Junius.'

'Junius? No. I'm afraid not. He doesn't crop up very often.'

'Ever?'

'Well…' Garrard scratched his cheek. 'Now and then. I had a nice Junius in a few months back, as a matter of fact.' He smiled weakly. 'Snapped up, I'm afraid.'

'Was that a first edition?'

'Er, no. Second, as I recall.'

'The 1773, you mean?'

'Do I? Probably. It sounds as if you'd know better than I would.'

'A two-volume set?'

'Yes.'

'How was it bound?'

'Handsomely, if… slightly unusually. Most Juniuses you see are in calfskin, but this was -'

'Vellum.'

'Yes.' Garrard frowned at Umber. 'So it was.'

'If you don't mind my asking, how did you come by it?'

'Rather oddly, as it happens. I never even knew I had it until a customer took it down from the shelf and asked to buy it. My brother Bernard sometimes minds the shop for me. He must have taken it into stock. We have sellers as well as buyers who call in. Bernard can be infuriatingly neglectful of recordkeeping, I'm afraid.'