The meter said six pounds, so I passed a ten pound note through the window and watched a fifteen-second production of ‘I’m Not Sure I’ve Got Change For That’, starring licensed cab driver 99102, before getting out and heading back down the street.

In those fifteen seconds, McCluskey had vanished. I’d just followed him for twenty minutes and five miles, and lost him in the last two hundred yards. Which, I suppose, served me right for being mean with the tip.

Cork Streetis nothing but art galleries, mostly with large front windows, and one of the things I’ve noticed about windows is that they’re just as good for seeing out of as they are for seeing in through. I couldn’t go pressing my nose against every art gallery until I found him, so I decided to take a chance. I judged the spot where McCluskey had dismounted, and turned for the nearest door.

It was locked.

I was standing there looking at my watch, trying to work out what an art gallery’s opening hours might be if twelve wasn’t one of them, when a blonde girl wearing a neat black shift appeared out of the gloom and slipped the latch. She opened the door with a welcoming smile, and suddenly I seemed to have no choice but to step inside, my hopes of finding McCluskey ebbing away with every second.

Keeping one eye on the front window, I sank back into the relative darkness of the shop. Apart from the blonde, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the place, which wasn’t all that surprising when I looked at the paintings.

‘Do. you know Terence Glass?’ she asked, handing me a card and price list. She was a frightfully pukka young thing. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve got three of his, as a matter of fact.’ Well, I mean. Sometimes you’ve just got to have a go, haven’t you?

‘Three of his what?’ she said. Doesn’t always work, of course.

‘Paintings.’

‘Good heavens,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know he painted. Sarah,’ she called out, ‘did you know that Terence painted?’

From the back half of the gallery, a cool American voice came back. ‘Terry has never painted in his life. Hardly write his own name.’

I looked up just as Sarah Woolf came through the archway, immaculate in a dog-tooth skirt and jacket, and pushing that gentle bow wave of Fleur de Fleurs. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking towards the front of the gallery.

I turned, followed her gaze, and saw McCluskey standing in the open doorway.

‘But this gentleman claims he’s got three…’ said the blonde, laughing.

McCluskey was moving quickly towards Sarah, his right hand sliding across his chest towards the inside of his coat. I pushed the blonde away with my right arm, heard her gasp something polite, and at the same moment McCluskey turned his head towards me.

As he swung his body round, I aimed a round-house kick to his stomach, and to block it, he had to pull his right hand down from his coat. The kick connected, and for a moment, McCluskey’s feet left the floor. His head came forward as he gasped for breath, and I moved behind him and slipped my left arm around his neck. The blonde was screaming ‘oh my God’ in a very posh accent, and scrabbling for the phone on the table, but Sarah stayed where she was, arms rigid at her sides. I shouted at her to run, but she either didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to hear me. As I tightened my grip round McCluskey’s neck, he fought to get his fingers between the crook of my elbow and his throat. No chance of that.

I put my right elbow on McCluskey’s shoulder, and my right hand at the back of his head. My left hand slipped into the crook of my right elbow, and there I was, the model in diagram (c) in the chapter headed ‘Neck-Breaking: The Basics’.

As McCluskey kicked and struggled, I eased my left forearm back and my right hand forward - and he stopped kicking very quickly. He stopped kicking because he suddenly knew what I knew, and wanted him to know - that with a few extra pounds of pressure, I could end his life.

I’m not absolutely sure, but I think that was when the gun went off.

I don’t remember the actual feeling of being hit. Just the flatness of the sound in the gallery, and the smell of burnt whatever it is they use nowadays.

At first I thought it was McCluskey she’d shot, and I started to swear at her because I had everything under control, and anyway, I’d told her to get out of here. And then I thought Christ, I must be sweating a lot, because I could feel it running down my side, trickling wetly into my waistband. I looked up, and realised that Sarah was going to fire again. Or maybe she already had. McCluskey had wriggled free and I seemed to be falling back against one of the paintings.

‘You stupid bitch,’ I think I said, ‘I’m… on your side. This is him… the one… he’s the one… to kill your father. Fuck.’

The fuck was because everything was starting to go strange now. Light, sound, action.

Sarah was standing right over me, and I suppose, maybe, if circumstances had been different, I’d have been enjoying her legs. But they weren’t different. They were the same. And all I could look at now was the gun.

‘That would be very strange, Mr Lang,’ she said. ‘He could do that at home.’ I suddenly couldn’t make anything of this. Lots of things were wrong, very wrong, the numbness down my left side being not the least of them. Sarah knelt down next to me and put the muzzle of the gun under my chin.

‘This,’ she jerked a thumb towards McCluskey, ‘is my father.’

As I can’t remember any more, I assume I must have blacked out.

‘How are you feeling?’

It’s a question you’re bound to get asked when you’re lying on your back in a hospital bed, but I wish she hadn’t asked it all the same. My brain was scrambled to the point where you usually have to summon the waiter and ask for a refund, and it would have made more sense for me to be asking her how I felt. But she was a nurse, and therefore unlikely to be trying to kill me, so I decided to like her for the time being.

With a mighty effort, I ungummed my lips and croaked back at her, ‘Fine.’

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Doctor will be along to see you shortly.’ She patted the back of my hand and disappeared.

I closed my eyes for a few moments, and when I opened them it was dark outside. A white coat was standing over me, and despite the fact that its wearer looked young enough to be my bank manager, I could only assume he was a doctor. He gave me my wrist back, although I wasn’t aware that he’d been holding it, and jotted something down on a clipboard. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

He kept on writing.

‘Well you shouldn’t be. You’ve been shot. Lost quite a bit of blood, but that’s not a problem. You were lucky. Passed through your armpit.’ He made it sound as if the whole thing was my own silly fault. Which, in a way, it was.