‘Did I see correctly there?’

His voice was unexpectedly high and thin.

‘Sir! I was—’

‘Never mind all that! Was he trying to pull your hand away?’

My tormentor had lost the thread. He mumbled and stopped, finally offered, ‘I suppose so.’

‘I mean trying. Putting an effort in.’

More confidently the answer came fast, ‘Yes, sir. He was trying.’

‘No luck though?’

Complacently, ‘No, sir.’

The man paced closer.

And you’re not Tarzan, are you, sergeant?’

The fat sergeant was lost again.

‘So it would follow chummy here wouldn’t be the world’s strongest, eh? Big fellow,’ his eyes measured me, ‘plenty of muscle. But you’ve handled worse?’

‘Yes, sir. Plenty worse, sir.’

‘Well, then, sergeant,’ the voice squealed with frustration, ‘would that suggest anything to you? You did hear the technical boys’ opinion about what had happened? Does that sound like chummy? Or was he bluffing about fighting you off?’

The sergeant seemed to understand all of this. He looked at me thoughtfully. I hadn’t expected him to think as well; it seemed vaguely unfair.

‘He wasn’t bluffing, sir. I’m sure of that . . . Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be an accessory. If he knew the hotel, he could have given the inside plan.’

‘But we’d still be looking for the man we really want to find.’

They studied me together.

‘If this one knows . . .’ The sergeant let his voice die away.

‘You’d like me to take a walk. Come back in half an hour or so?’

‘If he knows, I’ll get it out of him.’

Above the beak nose was a pair of pale blue eyes: they looked not at me but at a sum of problems filling the space I occupied.

There was a gentle tap at the door. I had never imagined I would be glad to see Brond.

He smiled peaceably at the picture we made.

‘There you are, sergeant. I wondered where you had got to,’ he said, ignoring the other man. ‘I hope you haven’t been living down to your reputation.’

‘I don’t know what you’re hinting at, Brond,’ the officer’s thin voice sounded strangely subdued, ‘but what happens next if we don’t run this maniac down?’

From behind his back Brond produced a stick which I recognised as the one he had given me.

‘You left it in the car,’ he said, and passed it across the table to me.

‘What kind of tomfoolery is this?’

‘Our friend here had a broken foot,’ Brond said reasonably. ‘The stick supports him.’

Both the sergeant and his officer gaped at me. I was beyond surprise at anything anyone said or did.

‘Foot? Foot!’ the officer squealed. ‘Get up! Up!’

I got to my feet and almost keeled over. I had been kept in that seat since the questioning started.

‘Good God!’

‘Quite,’ Brond said. He sounded complacent.

‘But this is—’ He mastered his temper with an effort. ‘Not the world’s strongest man. And just to round it off he’s a bloody cripple. Why did no one say he was crippled?’

‘I’m not a cripple,’ I said. My tongue felt as if it had rusted. ‘I hurt my toes moving furniture.’

The officer jerked his clenched fist. He looked as though he wanted to strike me, the sergeant, somebody – anybody perhaps but Brond.

‘A monkey on a bloody stick!’

‘With respect, sir,’ the sergeant said, ‘doesn’t mean he isn’t an accessory.’

‘Charge him!’

‘Surely not,’ Brond said. ‘I’d leave the hotel side of things – for the moment.’

‘I take it that’s not meant to be anything more than advice,’ the officer said. I think despite himself, it came out sounding like a question.

‘I leave the details to you,’ Brond said sweetly. He began to laugh, ‘Take care of the ponce and the pounds will take care of themselves, eh, sergeant?’

They didn’t think that was funny. The officer said so. ‘Not funny. You know what happened at the hotel is all anybody is going to care about. But we don’t forget that the boy Kilpatrick’s father and his uncles – damn it, the whole family were policemen. The father John Kilpatrick was a well-respected man on this force. We don’t like it happening to one of our own.’

‘I disapprove of murder,’ Brond said, ‘as a general principle. That overrides its particular applications. If you feel so strongly about Kilpatrick, bring a charge. I still doubt if the other matter is ripe . . . Stick to Kilpatrick. It’s not certain anyway that the other business will have much to do with you by morning . . . You stick to Kilpatrick – if the two are connected it might give you a toehold in the big one. Keep the London boys from pushing you completely out of it.’

The sergeant looked from me to Brond. Clearly this was not his idea of a conversation in front of a suspect . . . from the way his eyes flickered down to avoid his superior officer, I guessed he did not feel hearing this would do him much good. Muddled and frightened, I had the wild idea Brond was trying to give me some clue as to what was going on, but all I could think of was Kilpatrick: that he had been a policeman and that he was dead.

Not long afterwards they took me out of the room where I had been questioned. Brond went away somewhere and left me. While the men spoke around me, I could only see that there was a wash of grey light across each pebble of frosted glass in a window. The night was over.

They charged me with the murder of Peter Kilpatrick, and then they put me in a cell where there was a bed and allowed me at last to sleep.

THIRTEEN

I had only been a prisoner for a day and some part of this day, and yet as they hustled me out to the car my heart hurt me with the relief of being under the sky again; and as we were driven through the streets I could not have enough of looking at the women on the pavements. How could I come to harm when the city was full of mothers buying food and bargaining?

We were held up at the lights outside a jeweller’s. Above the door I saw the words Mappin and Webb and we edged forward and there were three clocks arranged in a window. As I watched, their hands shaped eleven o’clock in unison and in my silence I imagined their chimes.

I was wide awake; everything was sharp-edged and clear; I was beyond exhaustion. They had shaken and lifted me out of sleep. It was like the times after parties this winter when I had wakened in the morning still drunk. I thought my mind was clear. At intervals I considered that I had been charged with murder. It was a true event which referred to someone else. Under all that pretence, a silent mouth inside me screamed.

The dark man’s stomach rumbled.

‘So much for sandwiches on the plane,’ he said pleasantly, as much it seemed to me as anyone.

The fair-headed one on my other side grunted agreement. On the next corner, he eased himself up and farted.

‘Sandwiches,’ the dark one said and they laughed.

They were both Cockneys. The Noel Coward song kept jingling in my head, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner . . . Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner . . .’

‘What a bloody dump!’ the dark one said.

‘The arsehole of Europe,’ the fair one said.

They both laughed again. They were like a cross-talk act.

The dark one nudged me.

‘That bother you, Jock?’

‘I don’t come from Glasgow,’ I said. He seemed to think I was a member of the Tourist Board.

‘Funny that,’ the fair one took it up. ‘You not getting angry. I’d have thought that would have made you angry. Believing what you believe.’

‘Eh?’

‘Easier to shoot your mouth off in a pub?’ the dark one said. ‘With your mates. In pubs like. Not so easy here. Tell me! I’m listening.’

I kept my mouth shut.

‘Fucking berk!’ the fair one said.