'It sounds like it, doesn't it? I suppose it had to happen eventually. Not my decision, but it's probably all for the best. You know how frightfully jealous the fuzz gets when you try to keep gunshot wounds to yourself.'

He lifted his forearm until it was vertical; from wrist to elbow, his thin suede jacket was black with blood. He looked at it unemotionally and then at the young man with the shot gun.

'You stupid little sod,' he said wearily.

It took time; it always does. These things start fast but finish very slowly – if ever. A bullet leaves a gun at around a thousand feet a second, and it starts a file that they keep going until long after you're dead, just in case somebody wants to check back to that night when…

By five o'clock things had settled down a bit. Charles and I had been to the hospital and I'd come back; the other lad was down at the local nick talking over his past and future with a chief inspector. All I had on the far side of the dining-room table was a detective sergeant, name of Keating.

He had my statement – two long, laborious pages of the police prose that makes every action sound so mundane and planned. Even mine, almost.

' "Mrs Fenwick seemed worried at the news I told her and asked me to spend the night at Kingscutt Manor to protect her," ' he quoted. Then looked up. 'Is that correct, sir?'

I nodded dully; I felt tired and stiff and the casualty ward had smeared my back with something that itched like a forest fire.

'You do realise that the defence will get a big laugh from this in court, sir?'

I shrugged again. 'I doubt it. They'll dodge the whole issue of why I was here.'

He was a stocky, broad-shouldered type with the sort of gut detectives get in their forties through too much 'observing' in pubs. Normally, his face would have been stolid and impassive; at this hour, expressions kept slipping on or off and he had to pull the pieces together again.

He said, 'Why do you think that, sir?'

'Because any argument about why I was here keeps bringing us back to Paul Mockby. I say it was because I expected his goons to come around, and sure enough around comes his chauffeur, at least. He doesn't want that argument, and who d'you think's paying for the defence – Father Christmas?'

'Who pays for a defence isn't something we can bring out in court.'

'Sure. That'll be why he does it. Have you got hold of Mockby yet?'

The new expression went on like a slide in a projector: I'm-only-a-sergeant-and-I-only-work-here. 'I just wouldn't know about that, sir. Coming back to your statement,… The question of why you had a gun with you, the Mauser – that could come up.'

'Same answer – for Mockby. I brought a gun because I thought Mockby would etcetera and etcetera and so on. It's licenced, anyway.'

He nodded; he'd seen the licence. He'd still got the gun, if it came to that, him or one of his mates. All neatly labelled and tied up in a polythene bag and the spent cases in other bags and the three bullets being dug patiently out of the woodwork of the hallway outside.

He sighed. 'These Ministry licences are tricky things.'

'I wasn't carrying it in public. This is a private house even if it isn't my home.'

'It didn't walk from London to Kingscutt, did it? Sir? '

Just then Lois came in. Carrying a tray with an elegant enamel-ware coffee-pot, two blue-striped mugs, cream and sugar.

'I thought you might like something by now,' she said brightly. 'You haven't finished yet? How these things do stretch on.'

Keating was torn between annoyance and politeness to his hostess; he half got his backside out of the chair, decided that was polite enough, and flopped back.

Me, I was glad to see the coffee and her both. She was wearing a long housecoat in royal blue with gold trimmings, although there'd been plenty of time to change into anything else by now. Certainly she'd had time to put on exactly the right amount of make-up – very little – for entertaining early-morning gangbusters.

Or maybe I'm being bitchy. Some women retreat into choosing exactly the right clothes and make-up and coffee-pot for an emergency the way others go into hysterics or the brandy bottle. I preferred it this way. Certainly the coffee part.

Lois looked at me with her cheery baby-faced expression, but perhaps a hint of anxiety behind the eyes. 'Is everything all right, Mr Card?'

'Fine. Fine, thanks, Mrs Fenwick.'

That was the password. She smiled and swept out.

Keating shovelled sugar into his coffee in a way that suggested his tummy wasn't built on beer alone. 'I admire an old hand like you, sir,' he murmured. 'Taking your shirt and vest off before you got shot. Saves all that danger of infection from dirty fibres. Brilliant, I call that.'

I murmured back, 'Screw you, Sergeant.'

'No thank you, sir, you're not my type. But her – I might take my shirt off to defend her, if anybody asked me.' He took a sip of coffee, blinked, and slid back into the present time continuum. 'Now sir, are you prepared to sign this statement?'

'Sure.'

He looked momentarily surprised, then pushed it across to me. I signed. 'Will you need me in the magistrates' court this morning?'

'Ah, we're not charg-' Then his expression snapped into midday form. 'We don't need witnesses when we're asking for a remand in custody on this sort of charge – sir. You should know that.'

'Silly of me,' I inhaled coffee fumes and he watched me. 'Tell me one thing, Sergeant – am I going to be charged?'

His face went blank and meaningless as an official form. 'I really couldn't say, sir.'

'You must know this chief pretty well. What d'you guess?'

'It isn't my business to go guessing, sir.' He slipped my report into a thin black plastic-leather briefcase and zipped it shut. 'But you did have a shooter and somebody did get shot.'

'How very true. Are you trying to get Mockby on conspiracy or accessory before?'

'I still couldn't say, sir.'

'How would the chief like a plea of guilty from the two goons and no other people or charges involved at all?'

After a time, he said slowly, 'Do you think you could arrange that, sir?'

'I think it might soft of arrange itself.'

He sat very still, working out the implications of this. Then he got up. 'I'll see what he says. That's all I can do.'

I poured another cup and waited. The phone pinged in the distance and slow footsteps came in behind me. 'No luck, huh?'

He says to mind your own bloody business and he's not making any promises to anybody.'

'Okay. There comes a time when you have to guard your own back.'

'The police guard people – sir. If the lady felt she was in danger she could have asked us.'

'And would you have come?'

'Nobody'll ever know, will they, sir?'

I nodded and stood up and walked with him to the front door. Away to the east there was a dirty yellow smear in the sky, right down on the horizon.

He stood on the steps in the cold nibbling wind and buttoned his coat. 'Are you really going to bugger things up?' he asked politely.

'I really couldn't say.'

'I'd've thought a man in your business would need friends in the police.'

"My business is what I've just been told to mind.'

He just nodded and walked down to his car.

Back inside the house, it was suddenly quiet again. The last bright-eyed young detective constables had finished their measurements and sketched out their plans and gone while we were in the dining-room. The study door was locked and guarded by a chair for when the fingerprint boys came around (it wouldn't do any good; both of them had worn gloves). I leaned against the wall by the downstairs phone and waited for the energy to go ahead and bugger things up, just like the sergeant had said.

Lois came out from the kitchen door behind the stairs. 'Have they all gone, Jamie?'