Hartmann had said the older wog was a brilliant cameraman. Waechter insisted on having him in his crew. The boy was his nephew, apparently. They were Chilean, Hartmann said. Native Indians. Dunwich accepted that Hartmann knew his business. And it was nothing to do with him really. But he didn’t like the way the wog boy was looking at him and it was a rum do having the help here at the party. These film people had a queer way of going about things, that was for sure.

He didn’t like the Chilean connection either. He had mentioned it to Hartmann, but the German had shrugged it off. He said he could vouch for Diaz, and Diaz could vouch for his nephew, and that was good enough for Hartmann.

Well, it wasn’t good enough for Dunwich. Not since the business with the billiard ball.

She was back beside him in the darkness. Her voice went straight for his aching phallus. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Where to?’

‘We can go back to my flat.’

‘But what about … Novak?’

‘He has other plans.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying, you have a strange marriage.’

‘Why should it worry you?’ The darkness soothed away his fears with a gentle pressure at the place he needed it most. ‘Novak doesn’t care what I do.’

He groaned. ‘But do you like me a little bit, Dolores?’ He knew that he had revealed his weakness in the question. And he knew in the callous tinkling of her laughter that she would do everything she could to exploit it.

The sound of Will Oakland’s voice grated more than ever. His song of shattered dreams was the last thing Dunwich wanted to hear.

The gramophone played on. Harry Macdonough was singing now, ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’.

Whenever Bittlestone heard this song, he could only think of his proprietor, Harry Lennox, whose Irish eyes never smiled. They occasionally narrowed in a look of low cunning; satisfaction at a rival’s misfortune, for example, or the besting of a supplier in a deal, or any advancement in the irresistible career of Harry Lennox.

No doubt Lennox considered himself a principled man. He was, after all, the proprietor of a principled newspaper. And there was the rub. His principles were largely commercially motivated, which is to say he was ruthless in private and righteous on paper. The one exception was the question of Home Rule, in which he not only held a conviction but also allowed his newspaper to be used as a mouthpiece for it. But the line he held was the same as that of the government of the day (and of all intelligent men, Lennox would no doubt add). It was unlikely to threaten his commercial concerns.

Bittlestone found it unsettling to be in this social situation with his employer. He was wary; nervous of putting a foot wrong. He decided the best course of action was not to say anything unless he was directly addressed. Meanwhile, he had ample opportunity to study the interesting people around him. The most interesting of whom was Konrad Waechter.

He recognized the telltale signs in Waechter: the familiar lightness and precision, the secret vigilance he might even say, with which such men – men of his own kind – carried themselves. And Waechter betrayed himself too by his fluttering eyelids as he presented his cheeks to be very nearly kissed by Jane Lennox. ‘Vell, dah-link, did you like my film?’

Bittlestone smiled to himself. Yes, Waechter was most definitely one of the brotherhood.

Jane Lennox blew out a long funnel of opium-scented smoke. ‘I loved it, darling. You’re such a clever old thing.’

‘You understood vot I voz sayink mit der film?’

‘Of course, darling. You were saying how horribly frightful it is to have one’s eyes plucked out.’ Jane Lennox gave a brittle, broken laugh. Bittlestone detected the welling of suppressed hysteria.

Waechter must have sensed it too. He became suddenly solemn. ‘I voz werry sorry to hear about your fiancé.’

‘Let’s not talk about it now, sweetie.’

Harry Lennox shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was evidently struggling with some dilemma, sensitive to his daughter’s reluctance to dwell on the past, but nevertheless eager to get something off his chest. In the end his dominant nature prevailed. He was a man who spoke his mind, or he was nothing. ‘Did you see him? Here! Quinn?’

‘Don’t mention that man to me, Daddy.’

‘He has a lot to answer for, that’s for sure. Bittlestone, do you not agree?’

‘Oh, I do, Mr Lennox. I most certainly do.’ If in doubt, agree.

‘And will the Clarion be the paper to hold him to account?’

‘Of that you can rest assured, sir.’

‘What’s our angle on this eye attack business? Have you filed your story yet?’

Lennox’s eyes were piercing and expectant. This was a sensational story. The Clarion had been first on the scene. If they could not capitalize on it, they did not deserve to be newspapermen. ‘I was just about to, sir. I thought I might garner a few quotes from the film people first. Herr Hartmann has kindly allowed me to use the company’s telephone to call through the story when I’m ready.’

‘Do you have a headline for me?’

‘I was thinking of …’ Bittlestone hesitated. In point of fact, he had not given a thought to the headline. Inspiration came to him suddenly: ‘Eyeless in Cecil Court. There is a strange irony about it, given that this alleyway happens to be the centre of the English film industry.’ Bittlestone broke off anxiously. It might have been too ‘clever’ for Lennox, too intellectual. Literary, even.

‘Can’t you give me something snappier?’

Jane Lennox’s head assumed an angle that infuriated Bittlestone. It seemed to express the conviction of her father’s infallibility – more than that, of his genius. She certainly took her father’s interference as a cue for her own critiquing of his work. She blew out more smoke and subjected him to a look of slow, bovine scrutiny. ‘She’s not eyeless,’ she said, at last. ‘She still has one eye left. Eyeless would be if she had lost them both.’

‘She has one … eye … less,’ insisted Bittlestone with slow, deliberate emphasis. His irritation was heightened by the suspicion that she might have a point.

Jane Lennox shrugged. It didn’t matter to her in the slightest. In fact, it bored her. Her face spasmed into a grimace of a smile for Waechter’s benefit.

Lennox was on the attack again. ‘Who’s the girl? That’s the question. For crying out loud, Bittlestone! What are you doing here, when you should be out tracking her down? You could be the first to get her story!’

‘But even the police don’t know who she is.’

‘Don’t you worry about the po-lice! Find out which hospital she was taken to. Get to see her, man. Get her story.’

‘I rather thought she might need some time to recuperate from her experience. Besides, the hospital won’t let me see her at this hour, I’m sure.’

‘Do you have no gumption, man? To be sure, when I was a cub reporter such lily-livered, weasel-minded equivocations never got in my way!’

His daughter confirmed this with a terse nod, as if she had been there to witness her father’s early reporting triumphs.

Bittlestone produced his notebook and pencil. ‘Very well, if that is what you wish me to do. However, if you have no objection, sir, I think it wise first to file an intermediate account based on what we know already. That way, we will have something in the morning edition. While I’m here, I will take some statements. Herr Waechter, how do you feel about this bizarre attack happening so soon after the showing of your film? Given the fact that, according to the police, she attended the screening.’

‘My film is proven to be ein Werk of prophecy.’

‘There, Bittlestone, you have your film people quote. Now find the girl. Cherchez la femme! That’s the thing!’

Jane Lennox blinked her eyelids rapidly before turning on Bittlestone a look of focused contempt.