He held up his glass and smiled at me through its amber light.

‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘in this warm room with a glass of Laphroaig. What can we have done to deserve it?’

Everything under my eye was clear and sharp-edged so that I knew about the grain of the table as well as the light changing in the glass and each of Brond’s words separately like objects you could weigh in your hand. He sat opposite me. The table stood just at the height of my knees as I lay back in the deep chair. The parcel lay on the table between us.

‘Slainte!’ he said, grinning as if at a private joke.

The whisky plucked at my temples.

‘So what’s inside?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’ve been carrying it around, quite reluctant to be parted from it and yet you weren’t curious?’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t curious.’

‘To take a peep inside must have been a temptation.’ He turned the box and I saw the dent from its fall when Margaret pushed it away in the library. ‘Was that how this happened?’

‘The wrapper’s still across it. There’s no way of telling what’s inside.’

He picked at the tape. It held firm and he eased place after place till it curled free. Once started it lifted off in one piece bringing with it a skin of brown paper. Unhurriedly, he picked at the tape until he had cleared the top. Gently then he started to tease out the knots on the string. I must have let out a breath for he smiled at me.

‘Like sharpening pencils,’ he said, ‘one of the not quite mechanical tasks that soothes.’

‘Wouldn’t scissors be faster?’

Just then, though, another knot parted and he folded back the wrapping paper. I could have cursed to see the box inside was also taped.

‘No need to be consistent,’ Brond said and he pushed his fingers in under the edge and ripped off the lid. It tore and shredded against the tape and he brushed the wreckage aside until the opening was cleared.

I craned forward so that our heads almost touched. Brond sat back.

‘Satisfy your curiosity.’

There was a towel folded round something. The cloth was stained, dull patches like fruit stains.

‘Someone’s been hurt,’ Brond said. He lifted the bundle out and laid it beside the box. All down each side of the cloth was marked. ‘Someone’s been hurt badly.’

Using the tips of his fingers, he flipped the bundle open.

‘Recognise that?’

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I said.

‘You know what it is though?’

‘I’m not blind. It’s a gun.’

His smile seemed genuinely amused.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you would have to drop this little box into the Brazilian jungle before there would be a chance of a finder who wouldn’t recognise that much.’

‘Has it been fired?’ I looked uneasily at the stains on the cloth.

‘More than once. Someone has been angry or frightened. I wonder which.’

The towelling would soak liquid up and there was so much staining. I was afraid. I had done nothing but, as I had learned the shapes of guns without handling them, heard them fired in films, seen newsreel deaths, so I had learned being innocent was no excuse.

‘I’ve never seen that thing before. It was a parcel I was trying to get rid of.’

Brond gathered the cloth round the grip and lifting the gun pointed it towards me.

I knew the function of a gun; its operations as a mechanism and their consequences. I understood what Brond was doing when he put his finger into a fold of the cloth and laid it on the trigger. I expected to die. I watched the slow pressure of his finger as he squeezed.

‘You were telling the truth,’ Brond said. ‘You don’t know anything about hand guns.’

‘You must be bloody mad. I might have died of fright.’

‘Young healthy man. You’re not fragile.’ He laid the gun down. ‘Czechoslovakian. A favourite weapon of terrorists.’

He put more whisky into a glass and laid it beside the one I had only sipped.

‘Neat this time, eh?’

I drank it off, choking a little, but the warmth ran down the centre of my body. I put my hand to my face and the index finger of my left hand touched my lips. They trembled and I willed them to be firm. Then as my upper lip pressed against my finger I felt the strong beating of my heart. I was alive.

‘A gun, a cloth that tells its own story – though pages are missing. If it tells of an end, we should be even more anxious to hear the middle and the beginning.’ He tipped up the box, stirred the wrappings with his hand. ‘No letter, no cryptic message. Only yourself and the question what is to be made of you.’

‘All this is nothing to do with me. I was asked to keep it—’

‘For a friend.’

‘No, for you.’

‘I had asked you to keep this for me?’

‘The girl who was with me in the restaurant. She brought it to my digs. She said she’d got it from Peter Kilpatrick.’ I waited but he gave no sign of recognising the name. ‘She told me Kilpatrick was going away and I was to keep the parcel. She told me you would collect it.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why. Jackie wouldn’t keep it for me and I wanted her to but she wouldn’t. And I—’

‘You got suspicious.’

He sipped whisky and I looked down to avoid his eyes. He was a good listener; at least he hadn’t interrupted me to ask who Jackie was. It was possible, of course, that he didn’t need to ask. The shoe on his right foot had a raised platform sole. With a shoe like that, you would limp; the upper body dipping at each step. When I looked up, his eyes were on my face. It felt as if he was reading my thoughts.

‘The girl interests me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘Her name’s Briody. Margaret Briody. She’s a student – in her first year. I think – yes, it must be her first year, she’s in two of my Ordinary classes. You know her. She was at the Professor’s party.’

It tumbled out, whatever I knew; if I had known more, I would have told him. I had not thought of myself as being like that, but at the time I had no shame.

‘ “I want to be shot of it.” You said that a moment ago.’ Brond looked at me thoughtfully. ‘It’s an idiom, but an odd one. Yet you had no idea what was in the package?’

He picked up the gun again. My stomach clenched, but this time he pointed the muzzle at his own head.

‘The package you want to be shot of.’

In the silence, I could hear the parts slide across each other as he squeezed the trigger for a second time.

‘Russian roulette,’ he said, ‘devised in an obscenity of boredom. Your turn.’

‘For God’s sake!’

He put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger, then pointed it at my stomach. I had had enough. I clutched my stick and headed for the door. Brond made no attempt to stop me. I tore it open.

Primo was sitting astride a chair facing me. Without getting up, he shook his head in warning. His hands rested on the chair back. The flesh across his fingers was pulpy and liver-coloured. It looked bad, as if one or more fingers might be broken.

I closed the door on him.

‘You still have some of your drink left,’ Brond said.

Slowly I went back and sat down. Since there was nothing better to do, I drank the whisky. It was a taste in my mouth, nothing more.

Brond brought the bottle and put it between us. We had a still life – the whisky, a muddle of wrapping paper, a length of marked towel, a gun.

‘I don’t want any more to drink.’

‘Nonsense.’ He poured into both glasses. ‘You’re what – six feet? With a sound pair of kidneys, excited as you are, you could finish the bottle and keep your wits.’

It was easier to drink than to argue.

‘We’ll have a longer chat another time. You’re an interesting young man. When I’m less pressed for time, you’ll tell me all about yourself.’

The absurd idea came into my head it was like a job interview; only instead of a knife to see if you balanced peas on it as a test there was malt whisky and a Czech gun.