‘I’m going to be coarse again,’ I said.

She looked relieved when I scrubbed the plate with the buttery end of the last roll.

‘Run out and get the same again, would you?’ I licked pale flaky crumbs from the wet tip of my finger.

‘Are you still hungry? Would you like something else?’

There certainly seemed to be a hint there that she was ready to forage out again with her little shopping list. That was very compliant of her. She seemed to split her personality between the night and the daylight hours.

‘Don’t tempt me.’ A thought cracked my jaw in mid yawn: ‘Kilpatrick will be missed at his work. He told me he worked in an office somewhere.’

‘Oh, no. When he left the Army, he joined—’

She stopped abruptly, and though I waited she didn’t say any more.

‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘wherever he is, he’s not here.’

I wondered if the look in her eyes could be relief. If it was, guilt made her more emphatic.

‘I’m worried sick about him,’ she said.

‘I know, you lay awake all night worrying.’

She looked more seriously offended this time. I watched uncomfortably as she cleared away and ran water over the dishes.

‘That won’t clear the grease off them if the water’s cold,’ I said.

As a way of ingratiating myself, it didn’t work. She slammed off the tap.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

She was cramming back into her shoulder sack all the odds and ends that had got themselves unpacked.

‘Going?’

‘And you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to lock up.’

‘No, Miss Briody,’ a voice said behind me. ‘I can’t let you do that.’

Without turning round, I knew who it was. Margaret stared over my shoulder wide-eyed with shock at the interruption. As Brond spoke, he moved into the room until I could see him.

‘If you would wait here, Miss Briody,’ he said, ‘it would only take us a minute to make sure.’

‘Sure of what?’ she asked.

He tilted his head and almost smiled: the whole effect seeming to say, If you want to pretend, that’s your business, of course.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice trembled.

But it was his name she had used when she brought me the parcel. She had met him at Professor Gracemount’s party – but, of course, that was weeks ago. Perhaps I was the only one who could not forget what Brond looked like.

At a movement of his hand, I followed him through the door into the passage that took us out into the yard. We left Margaret standing by the table, her ridiculously crammed shoulder bag swinging from her hand.

‘There’s no one in there,’ I told Brond as he crossed to the unpainted padlocked door.

‘You’ve looked?’

‘Both of us looked.’

‘Last night? I see. Miss Briody has a key then.’

‘You don’t need one – the padlock’s broken.’

I pushed it open with my finger and lifted it clear. He took it from me and examined it, then looked about as if searching for a place to lay it. There was a box round a standpipe and he stood the lock on top of it at a careful angle.

‘Didn’t you find it strange?’ he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door.

‘Didn’t you find it strange that a businessman should go off on holiday and leave his property so badly protected?’

‘I didn’t give it a thought,’ I lied stubbornly.

‘Extraordinary,’ Brond said, looking at me with interest.

The store seemed smaller than during the night. Builders’ material was stacked everywhere. What I had taken for ladders were lengths of timber propped against the far wall. There were ladders as well, hung on hooks from a beam. Light drifted down from dirty skylights. Slowly Brond paced the length of the place.

He stopped in front of a pile of empty sacks in the corner farthest from the door.

‘Well?’ he asked.

I could see no reason for the question. It seemed to me he was playing another of his obscure games with me.

‘Well?’ he asked again and swung his forefinger like a pointer. I could see nothing.

‘Are you joking?’

‘What an odd impression you must have of me.’ The note of his voice was as solemn as a Sunday bell. ‘Doesn’t it seem strange that the floor here is so clean?’

There was a path through the dust.

‘Shift them away.’

The sacks were dirty. I lifted one and a shower of grime settled on my shoes. I held up my hands. Each was oiled with a sooty smear.

‘This is stupid.’

‘Don’t stop. It would look bad if you refused.’

The bewilderment he imposed on me and the fear I would never admit made me turn again to the task. I tugged at the next sack trying to slide it off to keep down the mess. It would not move. I pulled again but something was holding it. I was doing Brond’s bidding. What kind of man was I? In blind anger I took a double grip on the sack and, too excited to be careful, gave a great heave. It came with a sudden release and I staggered back in an uprising cloud of dirt as the body of Kilpatrick turned stiffly out from among the sacks and sprawled at my feet.

Fastidiously, Brond waited until the dust settled. He bent over the body and turned back the shirt to look underneath.

‘Shot,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice question who killed him. The person who fired the gun or the one who brought him out here. If the two acts are traceable to the one culprit, the problem resolves itself.’

I did not understand. A broad smear of black grease striped the dead face from one eye to the side of the mouth. I felt in my pocket for a handkerchief although I never carry one.

‘Why did he come out here?’ I hardly knew what I was saying.

Brond stood up impatiently.

‘Come out? Without help? And burrow under the sacks? First being agile enough to bind himself.’

With the shoe that had the thick raised sole, he touched the body’s legs at a place where they were tied with a piece of cord.

‘His thumbs are lashed together also.’

The same shoe lifted the body over without effort. It was true. But what horrified me was to see how poorly the body was dressed – trousers, a cotton shirt, the feet were bare.

‘This would be a cold place at night,’ Brond said as if reading my thoughts. ‘He’d lost so much blood, of course, otherwise he would have struggled from under there at least. He must have been half dead already.’

It was too horrible to accept.

‘He must have been dead.’

‘No.’ Brond’s shoe scuffed at the sack. The body’s clenched fist lay on a corner of it as if to claim possession. ‘He bled on this while he was lying here. Not much – but then by that time he didn’t have a great deal left. Given his all for Queen and country. Or whatever he did give it for.’

I had never seen anything colder than Brond’s smile.

The door we had come out by lay open and so did the next two, until in the front shop I stared blankly at the last door which lay open to the street. Margaret was gone. Outside stood the sleek hulk of the car that had taken me to see Brond a lifetime ago. Primo sat behind the wheel.

‘Why didn’t he stop her?’

‘Would you have wanted that?’

‘Yes. Why would she—’

‘Well?’

Well? Well?

I shook my head. Was it conceivable that Margaret could have known while we lay in bed together that Kilpatrick was dying out there in the cold under a bundle of greasy sacks?

Nothing could make me believe that.

TWELVE

The man in the grey shirt and old flannels asked, ‘How long is that now?’

He had been asking at five minute intervals.

‘More than an hour,’ I told him.

‘It’s incomprehensible to me,’ he said.

‘Something’s happening.’

We listened to the sound of running feet and a voice shouting with an edge of panic.