‘I had the impression,’ I said with a sense of danger, ‘that he would do anything you told him to do.’

‘Did you?’ Brond stole a glance at me and then turned his attention to the traffic. We left the main road and went along beside tenements of black scabbed stone. ‘Was that the impression you had?’

He sounded childishly pleased.

The front shop had Licensed Bookmaker and the usual kind of name beside it. I thought it must be the place where Kennedy worked. Brond got out and left me. There was nothing to prevent me from opening the door and walking away. He had left the key in the ignition and I could drive. I could drive up any road until the petrol ran out. When Brond came limping back I was still there.

‘He had a phone call,’ he said, putting the car into gear, ‘from his wife.’ I thought for a moment that Jackie had managed to deceive him. Afraid for her, I searched his face for a sign of anger. He did not look angry; but then he did not look surprised either. I did not believe in the possibility that Jackie could trick Brond.

When I recognised the route, though, and realised we were going back to Kennedy’s house, I grew afraid again for her sake.

Primo was standing where we had left him, talking to someone. When I saw it was Muldoon, I wondered if everyone in the world belonged to Brond; but, as the car stopped, he turned away abruptly as if to go into the house then changed his mind. I understood why as a change of angle showed me Primo’s hand covering Muldoon’s arm like a rockslide.

‘Open the door,’ Brond suggested and I stretched back and put down the handle.

Muldoon came into the car half lifted on Primo’s grip.

‘What’s the game?’

He was close to blubbering; the narrow face fragmented by fright and ratty anger. That was what I would have expected of him, so why did I feel he was acting? Acting as he asked what was going on, what kind of mistake had been made, who they were.

‘My name is Brond.’

Perhaps very special actors have bodily control that will let them drain colour out of flesh and leave a face grey and sick. I didn’t believe Muldoon was that kind of actor.

I wondered what the name Brond meant to him.

In Glasgow you can drive out of a slum street into one beside it that looks like an Adam terrace in Edinburgh. It is a city of contrasts. The house Brond stopped the car at was handsome. It was like the house some friends lived in; five students in a ground floor flat; they ate in a room that had a carved wood mantelpiece thirteen feet high. It was the kind of house the merchants and the shipping barons built for themselves when the city was rich. Now in my friends’ flat holes like woodworm in the mantelpiece showed where the lads played darts after they had been drinking. This house, however, was Brond’s. He said so when Muldoon, trembling, asked where he was.

‘My place,’ Brond said. ‘Come on.’

There were patches of green grass cut close on either side of the path. I noted every detail as if we were moving very slowly, even the dry yellow circles where cat piss had burned the lawn. When we went up the stone steps to the front door, I thought Brond would ring and that one of those smooth young men, like the ones who had whispered to him in the corridors at police headquarters and later in the hotel, would open the door to us.

Instead he took out keys and turned one, then another, and a third lock. The hall was dirty and shabby. The air smelled stale. The only furnishing was a low table with a telephone, but as we passed I saw there was no cord to connect the instrument to the wall. Our feet beat on the uncarpeted staircase. On the landing, we were faced by an open door. I glimpsed a sofa and a table with papers but we walked on down a crooked strip of matting until Brond stopped at the last door in the corridor.

‘My parlour,’ he said to Muldoon. ‘Walk into my parlour. You’ll know the verse.’

It was black until he reached inside and touched a switch. One unshaded bulb stirring in the draught threw a hard light on peeling walls, bare boards, heavy wood shutters sealing the windows.

The room was empty except for a kitchen chair under the light.

I understood the function of the room. There was a quality Sunday paper that condemned examples of torment with dates and details until the sufferings flowed together, even the ages and jobs of the victims seemed identical, and only the names of the continents changed. Stories of torture were the pornography of the middle classes on this island.

Muldoon sat down where he was told. That was strange too, since he knew what the function of the room was.

‘I want you to tell me about a young man – a boy really – called Peter Kilpatrick,’ Brond said. ‘I want you to tell me when you saw him last. I want you to tell me about Michael Dart.’

‘Michael who? I don’t know that name,’ Muldoon said.

There might have been a signal or maybe it was time, but Primo leaned down and hurt him. I waited and did not throw myself to his defence.

‘I’ll speak more clearly this time,’ Brond said.

‘I won’t stay here,’ and I turned for the door sure that they would try to stop me and then I would have to act.

Brond glanced round.

‘Wait along there,’ he said. ‘Don’t be foolish about going off.’

I sat behind the table of papers in the room at the head of the stair. From the sofa that once had been expensive, tears leaked dirty brown wadding. I remembered a night when I had been ill with bad wine and fever, how I had lain on the steps trying to grab Muldoon by the crotch. I had never liked him. And then I sat forward and put my hands over my ears and pretended I could hear only the shell sighs of my blood. Staring at the desk, I had a stupid idea. I imagined that everywhere over the whole world where people were being abused – political victims, children, frightened women – at this very moment the thumb of God would appear out of the air to crush each tormentor out of existence. I imagined that over and over again until a light touch fell on my shoulder.

It was Primo.

The touch of his hand was a horror to me but, as I flinched from it, he pulled it away as if my shoulder burned.

‘I never thought I’d sympathise with the IRA,’ I said. ‘You’ve done that for me.’

His face was shiny with sweat and he looked unwell.

‘Not ordinary policemen, Briody said that to you. By Christ, he was right!’

I took courage from the sound of my own voice and his silence.

‘I don’t think Brond’s a policeman. I don’t think anybody knows what he really is. Has he been pretending to the IRA that he’s one of them?’

‘Damn the IRA,’ Primo said in a slurred voice like drink, so that I could hardly make out the words. ‘What country do you think you’re in?’

Then I saw among the papers scattered across the table an old newspaper clipping. There had been rumours of Scottish republican movements, secret societies, but no one took them seriously. There had been a trial though. I remembered the headline. The government had set it up as a propaganda exercise and the papers were ready to play along; but it had crumbled under their fingers in court into a farce of blundering amateurs and comic opera robbery. Only the sentences had been serious. I held up the scrap of newsprint towards Primo.

‘Something new,’ he said. ‘Not like anything before.’

‘And Brond is part of it – a government spy.’

Primo lifted his clenched fist quivering above my face.

‘Because of him,’ he said, ‘this time things will be different.’

Beyond his arm, I saw Brond appear in the doorway. At the same instant, Primo felt his presence. His arm fell to his side.

‘Our friend next door is sleeping,’ Brond said. ‘Would you make sure that he is comfortable?’

When Primo went out, Brond closed the door.

‘Like the cavalry again,’ he said.