Ned’s face was white and spittle creamed at the corners of his mouth as it did on the lips of some of the real lunatics they saw every day. Babe leaned forward to touch his arm. ‘It’s all right, my friend. It’s all right. Take it slowly. You may have landed on the truth here

‘Of course I have! That’s it! How in hell could I not have seen it before?’

‘You know how you didn’t see it before. I told you. You didn’t see it before, because you were not looking clearly. Look clearly now. Four schoolboys, a stupid prank played on one them, that is what you are talking about. Nasty perhaps, certainly nasty, but don’t allow yourself – ‘

‘They laughed, Babe! They laughed at me.’

Martin’s voice intruded on them. ‘What exactly is going on here? You two having some kind of lover’s quarrel?’

Ned almost betrayed his understanding of Swedish by leaping in with an angry retort, but Babe beat him to it.

‘Not a quarrel, Martin… can’t remember the numbers.

Can’t remember the numbers,’ he said in a dazed mumble, staring down at the invisible backgammon board.

‘You two,’ said Martin in English, ‘both crazy. Everyone here crazy,’ he spread his arms to include the room, ‘but you two most crazy of all. Is time now you go to rooms. Tomorrow shall be an inspection. Shave in the morning, be behaving well.’

Ned did not sleep that night. Around in his head revolved three laughing faces. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. The names repeated in his mind like the rhythm of a train or the thunder of hooves on a racetrack.

Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade.

Babe also lay awake that night, and for many subsequent nights. He had detected a change in Ned that worried him.

‘I don’t like to see you thrashing your engine like this,’ he would say. ‘There is nowhere to take it. It can only burn you up.

Ned seemed to take no notice and retreated more and more into the past where he relived his final days in the world over and over, hearing again each syllable that had been spoken to him by Fendeman, Garland and Cade, seeing once more in his mind’s eye every glance and gesture they made. He had built up a picture of himself through their eyes.

He saw from Rufus Cade’s point of view an image of Ned the arrogant, Ned the cocky, Ned the careless and vain. Every sweet smile, every polite mumbled apology seemed to him now an obvious cause of resentment.

Ned understood how to Ashley he must have represented everything assured, everything attractive, everything unattainably privileged, perfect and graceful. Even the act of securing him summer employment as his father’s assistant could appear patronising and offensive.

Gordon too, arriving in a foreign land, would naturally look upon Ned Maddstone as the living image of all that was remote, English, gentile and alien. To see his cousin Portia ignore him in her obsession with a boy so opposite to himself could certainly drive Gordon to hatred.

Everything Ned had and was he could now interpret as repugnant, ugly, oppressive and obscene. Everything in and of him – the V-neck cricket sweaters, the flopping fringe of hair, the rueful smiles and pretty eyes, the lazy athleticism, the delicate skin and peachy blush, the voice, accent, manner and gait – all of Ned Maddstone stood as a monument that those of spirit would cry out to despoil.

Yet how dared they? How dared they not see that Ned had been unaware of all this? How dared they not understand that he was blamelessly unimaginative, gentle and innocent? Whatever arrogance he may have displayed, Ned would never in those days have assumed that his feelings had primacy over those of others. That they could be so confident in their interpretation of him was an arrogance way beyond anything he had been capable of. They hid their rage. They pretended to like him. They coldly planned to disgrace him in the eyes of his father and his lover, as if he had no emotional life, no point of view and no right to happiness of his own. That they could treat him as a symbol without life or capacity for pain marked them down as evil beyond imagining. There did not exist the faintest possibility that Ned could ever forgive them.

Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade.

‘I have been trying to apply the same thinking to what happened after my arrest,’ he said to Babe one morning, while Babe sketched a circuit diagram.

‘Let’s just concentrate on what we’re doing, shall we? Have you an idea what it is yet?’

‘It’s a hi-fl amplifier circuit.’

Babe shook his head. ‘You’re not trying. Count the capacitors.’

‘An electronic calculator. A central heating thermostat. Controls for an automatic milking parlour. Who cares? Babe, we’ve got this far, we’ve got to go further. I’m right about everything that happened up to my arrival at the police station, I know it. Those three planned my arrest. But they knew nothing about the letter. I need to understand what happened next.’

Babe sighed and put down his pen. ‘A burglar alarm, and such an elegant one too,’ he said, folding the diagram in half. ‘Here, you can study it later. I shall be asking you questions about it another time.’

Ned took it impatiently. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Another time.

‘Tell me once more,’ said Babe. ‘You were taken by a man called Oliver Delft to a house in the country. You sat in the kitchen and explained to him how you came by the envelope and its incriminating code words. You are there again now. Picture it. Feel yourself there, Delft in front of you with a glass of wine, you at the table with your carton of milk.’

Ned closed his eyes and tried to recall the dialogue.

‘… you’ll be home before the News at Ten … Don’t mind a tape-recorder do you? Tell me more about your friend Leclare … He wasn’t my friend, he was just the school’s sailing instructor … We went on lots of school trips … More questions. Endless questions.

‘Can you remember them all?’

‘He asked me everything. Everything about the sailing trip. How long did we stay at the Giant’s Causeway…’ Ned screwed his eyes tighter. ‘He was relaxed, bored almost. You’re doing well, Ned, very well. Not too far to go now…, was it a moonless night?… That’s good, Ned. Excellent, excellent. And the envelope came from where? … Well, a shop I suppose, a stationer’s … No, no, he produced it from where? His pocket? A safe? What? … Oh, from a small bag on the chart table … Any maker’s name? Adidas, Fila, that sort of thing? … Good, good. Nearly there, old son. Your chum Rufus Cade still out of earshot, was he? I see. Nothing written on the envelope was there? … On and on came the questions.

‘And he’s standing over you,’ Babe’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘He’s questioning you, the tape is running and you say he looks almost bored?’

‘He had a sudden twinge of cramp and that woke him up a bit,’ said Ned.

‘Cramp?’ said Babe, frowning. ‘What do you mean cramp?’

‘Well, he leapt out of his seat and started walking up and down. I asked him if he was all right and he said it was just a touch of cramp. Then he went out of the room for a moment and came back with a bag of clothes…’

Babe leaned forward. ‘What had you said?’ he asked. ‘What had you said just before he got cramp? What exactly were your words?’

‘He had been asking me about the envelope, who Paddy wanted me to deliver it to, all the details…’

‘But what exactly had you said?’

‘Well, I told him what Paddy had asked me to do – I told him the envelope was to be delivered to a Mr Blackrow, Philip R. Blackrow in… what was the name of the street? It was a square, Heron Square, W1. Number Thirteen, I’m pretty sure – ‘ Ned broke off. Babe was staring across the table at him with a look of horror on his face. ‘What? Babe, what on earth is the matter?’