Someone was ringing the front door bell. Late sunlight had slipped from antlers to hooves in the picture above my bed I had christened ‘Son of Stag at Bay.’ The bell went on ringing after any reasonable person would have given up. When I had that thought, an instinct got me out of bed to answer the door.

‘I thought you’d help me,’ Margaret Briody said.

She was in jeans with some kind of tatty shirt hanging over them, and she was the most desirable thing I had ever been close enough to touch.

‘What kind of help?’ I asked.

I sometimes had these bad attacks of caution.

‘Please,’ she said.

My father had advised me about the dangers of being helpful in an undiscriminating sort of way to girls in the big city.

‘Wait here,’ I told her.

‘If you won’t,’ she called after me, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’

I went upstairs at the fast limp and collected the stick and my jacket. After a hesitation, I took all three notes out of their hiding place in the shoe under the bed. It was only money. If Paris was worth a mass, my father’s advice was a fair swap for Margaret Briody even in a mess.

She made a forlorn figure standing at the door. A gentleman would have asked her in; but then no one had ever mistaken me for one of those.

‘I don’t think my landlady’s too keen on you,’ I said. ‘We can get a seat in the park. It’s not far.’

Before we got there she had told her story. We sat on a bench near the statue of Carlyle; the massive head emerged out of a column of uncut stone like a tethered lion. Behind us, the river made quiet noises whenever there was a break in the traffic.

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Kilpatrick’s hurt. And you want me to help him?’

‘To help me.’ She was crying again. ‘I took him to Daddy’s yard. It was the only place I could think of. It’s empty because of the holiday.’

‘Why, in God’s name, didn’t you get an ambulance? If he’s hurt, he should be in hospital.’

‘But he wasn’t really bad – not until I moved him. But now he’s lying there and I can’t waken him. I’m frightened.’

‘That’s what I’m telling you – he should be in hospital. What else can I tell you? There isn’t anything I can do.’

‘Help me.’ She touched my arm. ‘If you come with me – and we could get him into the car – and we could take him to the hospital. You’re right – that’s where he should be. Only if we took him up to the door, we wouldn’t have to go in ourselves. You could help me with him. He might not want to go, you see.’

I saw; suddenly, I saw. ‘We take him to hospital,’ I worked it out, ‘and if he doesn’t want to go, I persuade him. But we don’t go in with him, because then we’d have to give our names. We just leave him and drive away. That makes everything lovely. Nobody needs to know that he got himself hurt while he was in your house – for some reason, in your house. Not even Daddy and Mummy since they’re away on holiday. Are you serious?’

Visibly, she decided to ignore any hint of indelicacy in what might have brought Kilpatrick to her house, Daddy being on holiday. Instead, she clung to the point at issue. ‘I’m sure Peter wouldn’t mention our names,’ she said.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

‘I’ve told you what happened.’ When she sobbed, her breasts took big silhouettes out of the evening park. ‘I don’t know why you should want to be nasty to me. I’d gone out to do some shopping. I was going to make him – make him a lovely dinner. And when I came back, he was sitting on the floor in the hall and there was blood— blood—’ Her voice edged towards a hysteria that was only half intended.

‘He’d been shot,’ I said.

She made a movement of protest.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Shot. With a gun. You said he was hurt. Now you’re talking as if he might be dying. He didn’t get into that state falling downstairs. And don’t tell me you live in a bungalow.’ I felt she was capable of anything.

‘He wouldn’t let me phone a doctor. I did want to! But he said it wasn’t serious and he would phone his boss and find out what to do. He made me help him into the living room and then I’d to go outside while he phoned. And then I’d to get him the stuff to make up a parcel and—’

‘You brought it to me,’ I said, ‘just like he asked. What harm had I ever done you?’

The sun was going down the sky and a little wind stirred in our faces.

‘That’s not fair to Peter,’ she said. ‘He didn’t tell me to take the parcel to you. I was to take it to an address he gave me. But I was frightened. He’d used the towel I’d given him for the blood and I’d seen the gun although I said nothing – I didn’t want to make him angry with me.’

‘He was lucky. It didn’t matter how I felt, so I get the gun.’

‘Do you have to talk like that?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t know for sure what he’d put in the parcel. He asked me to take it to this address he gave me and—’

‘What address?’

She could fix those wide violet eyes on you for a long time without blinking. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. There was no way of telling if she was lying.

‘Anyway,’ she sighed, ‘I couldn’t find it. He’d given me directions, but I got them muddled. I didn’t think it could be the right address, the streets were so awful. And then this man started following me. I couldn’t take the parcel back to Peter. You don’t know what a temper he has. And then I remembered you were in the same lodgings as Peter. You always look as if you know what to do – You were the only person I could think of when I was so frightened.’

The brightest woman in the world couldn’t have found a better method of persuading me.

‘Stop crying,’ I said in my rough, competent way. ‘We’ll work it out.’ Something struck me. ‘When you gave me the parcel, you said that Brond was going to come for it. Why did you say that?’

‘It was just a name,’ she said. ‘I had to tell you something.’

I shook my head. ‘No. That’s no good. There has to be a reason. Was it his address Kilpatrick gave you? Were you supposed to take the parcel to Brond? It was him Kilpatrick phoned, wasn’t it?’

For instructions. Because things had gone astray. Because something disastrous had happened. A knock on the door, you open it, smiling probably since it’s this young pretty girl (damn it, beautiful, damn it, damn it) who’s come back with stuff for dinner and herself for afters (no wonder the bastard was smiling), only it wasn’t her but someone else, someone unexpected. The gun must have looked like a cannon. It was the kind of trick they pulled off all the time now in Northern Ireland. Bang! Bang! you’re dead. Only whoever it was must have hesitated since Kennedy had got the gun from him. It hadn’t stopped him getting shot though. Smiling, he had probably gone to the door with an erection. It must have felt strange when he realised it was death that had knocked.

‘He phoned Brond, didn’t he?’ I said.

‘When I went back, he wouldn’t believe that I’d taken it where he told me.’ She gulped and bit her lip in a child-like movement. ‘I had to tell him I’d given the parcel to you. He made me. And then he was angry.’ She made the same child-like and vulnerable movement of her mouth. ‘It was worse than that, he was frightened. He said I’d have to find somewhere else for him to hide.’

‘Because you’d given it to me?’ I didn’t understand.

‘Yes – till the man he’d phoned could help him. And I thought of Daddy’s yard. It’s got a room behind the shop with a bed in it. My father used to sleep there often in the early days – so he could be on top of things.’

She said the last bit like a phrase rehearsed in the house so often it had turned into rote.

‘How long can Kilpatrick stay there?’

‘Till Monday. The men don’t come back from holiday till Monday.’

‘What men, for God’s sake?’

‘My Daddy’s men. He has more than twenty men work for him.’ She glinted lunatic irrelevant pride. ‘He has the demolition contract with the District for that side of the city – after fires and things.’