It was possible that Kennedy-Dart had done that; but Brond had known where to find the body. And the old politician who had been beaten to death in the Riggs Lodge hotel (‘of ancient Scottish family’ – ‘a man of honour’ – ‘much loved’: the newspapers said so; how else would my father know what to believe?) he had died that same night while I shared a narrow bed with Margaret Briody. But before he died he had been tied up with a piece cut from the same cord that had bound Kilpatrick. Whether it was Kennedy or Brond himself who had carried Kilpatrick out and hidden him under the sacks to die, I had no way of knowing. The only evidence from my own five unsure senses was a hotel door wrecked by a strength like Primo’s.

The silver-haired man wandered through the idle groups to confront us again.

‘Remembered a funny story,’ he said. ‘Maisie had heard it.’

He was perceptibly less sober.

‘Excellent,’ Brond said. ‘My friend here loves a good story. He’s amused me a number of times.’

And he caught my arm and turned me so that I blocked the way for a woman who was moving past us out of the room. I knew her. Some kind of social apologetic foolishness came to my lips. I knew her—

It was the prostitute I had watched Brond strangle to death. The look on my face alarmed her and she stepped back, directing beyond me a conciliatory grimace.

‘So simple.’ Brond patted my arm. ‘It’s all so simple. Why did you think people came here if it wasn’t to buy illusions?’

He followed her out, but when I started after him the little man took me by the sleeve, a full handful with his weight behind it.

‘Don’t be a boor. I’ve to tell you this story.’

‘Let go!’ I gave a jerk that tore my sleeve free, but he snatched again.

‘Listen!’ he shouted.

There was silence and then people hurried back into talk. Side glances policed us. The room was too full of portly, prosperous, guilty men. I stood still and fixed a smile on the little man.

‘It’s about this chap who’s on the bench for the first time. It’s his first time – local government kind of chap. Knows nothing about the law. First case – drunk and disorderly. Ten a penny sort of thing. Thirty shillings or thirty days’ imprisonment – usual sort of nonsense.’

Shillings? He must have retold his joke on years of occasions like this.

‘Chap listens to the evidence. Then – worst case in my experience; this kind of thing will not be tolerated; I was born and bred in this town; stamp it out – fourteen years’ penal servitude. Consternation in court! All gather round him – psst psst psst. Whisper whisper whisper. Chap clears his throat – hum – heh – hum. On further consideration, I will commute that sentence to thirty shillings or thirty days. Bring in the next criminal.’

Bring in the next criminal.

‘It’s supposed to be funny.’ He released my sleeve. ‘No one tonight has any blasted sense of humour.’

In the hall, Primo was near the front door. He had a glass in his hand, but standing there alone it looked like a disguise, something put there to pretend it was only by accident that he could watch anyone coming in or trying to leave. Brond was nowhere in sight, but the woman was in front of a mirror tidying her hair.

‘The gentleman says you’ve to see him in the room up the stair.’

She had a broad Glasgow accent nothing like my golden girl’s. She smelled of stale sweat; her cheeks were scarred with acne pits; on a corner of Bath Street she would have been in place any wintry Saturday night.

‘What gentleman? The gentleman you were performing with up— the stair?’

She dangled her disgusting udders at me, belching bad air and bewilderment.

‘You were seen. I was watching – and I wasn’t the only one. We were watching you earn your money.’

I hated her bovine corruption.

‘Ah didnae know.’ She was not resentful. She wanted to explain ‘He wis angry wi me. He had tae keep tellan me what to do. Every damnt thing, he said he’d to tell me. But ah’ve been hurt masel. One morning ah tried tae get oot o bed and ah was stuck. Ah had weeks o pain after that, doctors an jags an operations. Since then ah don’t know why people would want to be hurtit. Ah know ah wis wrang. Ah didnae mean tae make him angry. It just slipped out – ah tellt him – ah’ve been hurt masel. And that’s when he lost the rag. But, ken, it was just that ah’ve been hurt masel.’

In the upstairs corridor, the Hindu faithful still danced on the rim of the brass gong. I looked in the room where I had stopped being a virgin, but it was empty. I ran from one room into another and found Jackie Kennedy sitting on the bed. She stared at me in horror.

‘In the Name of God!’ she cried, like an Ulster cleric preaching of Hell, ‘where did you come from?’

‘Get up! We’ve got to get out of here. Get up!’ I reached out as if to pull her up from the bed. ‘Don’t you know the kind of place this is?’

‘Get away from me!’ She pushed at the air between us. ‘It’s you that shouldn’t be here. The young fellow didn’t say anything about you.’

‘Tell me when we’re out of here. I don’t—’

‘Listen to me!’ she cried. ‘He came to the house. Just a young fellow, well dressed and nicely spoken. Listen! It was him I came here with. Somebody has to listen! He said terrible things to me.’

She was wearing her best coat, brown cloth with some kind of fur at the collar that I had seen her put on to go visiting on a Sunday. I had a picture of one of Brond’s smooth young men talking quietly at her as she sat beside him in a car, very upright in her best coat for visiting. I wondered what smooth words he had found for telling her that in their eyes she was Kilpatrick’s whore and that her husband had killed him for it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Please!’ and I held out my hand to her again.

‘Why didn’t he trust me?’ she asked, and I didn’t know whether she was talking of her lover or her husband.

‘Please, come!’ Stinging tears of frustration; I pitied her and I was afraid. ‘It’ll be all right if you come. I won’t let them hurt you.’

‘You’re only a boy,’ she said. ‘What could you do? I have to wait here. He’s going away tonight – out of the country. Oh, God, I’m so frightened.’ She swung her head from side to side. I had seen a fox caught in a trap doing that. ‘I feel he’s watching me.’

If the lie Kennedy had lived for so long was unimaginable to me, how strange a judgement she must feel he had passed on her. Yet this play-actor had killed for her.

‘I don’t know how he would come to know a place like this,’ Jackie said so quietly I had to strain to hear. ‘I won’t believe that he sleeps with that woman. I don’t know why they tell me such terrible things. She put me here and told me to wait.’

I sat beside her on the bed and put my arm around her shoulders.

‘Her name’s Maisie,’ I said. ‘An older woman with an Irish accent.’ And trying to help, ‘Maybe it’s just that he knew her a long time ago – in Ireland. She’ll be a friend.’

Jackie shook her head.

‘No. She was young. Just a girl. And very nicely spoken.’

My golden girl. I had lain with her on the bed in the next room. In an hotel room, I had sat on a bed – and they had yelled at me that a man had died in it – too suddenly for me to evade it, Kilpatrick’s poor dirtied corpse lolled out from under the sacks.

‘I’m so frightened,’ Jackie said. ‘I’m supposed to go away with him tonight.’

‘You don’t have to go anywhere with him. If we can just get out of here, I’ll look after you.’

I meant it. Sitting on the whore’s bed, I could have been in love with her. I touched her cheek with my lips and she did not move away.

Above her head, I saw the bed and squalid room reflected in the mirror, and her in my arms. I feel he’s watching me, she had said. Kennedy was watching us. Gently I put her away from me, and getting up went to the mirror, close against it – so close my own face blurred into eyes. The cold glass touched my skin.