“One of the reasons I’m here is that you’re never in your God… damn office where you’re supposed to be, and the other one is about that murder on the east approach yesterday. It wasn’t an AC, as you put it — it was a Goddamn murder, and I want to know what you’ve done about it.”

“There isn’t much more we can do,” Werry said placatingly.

“Isn’t much more we can do,” Morlacher mimicked. “A VIP comes to this city on business and gets murdered by some crazy shit-head punk, and there isn’t much more we can do!”

Hasson, driven by the expression on Theo’s face, stood up with the intention of closing the interconnecting door. He turned without having made sufficient preparation for the move, and froze as his back locked with a sensation like a glass dagger having been thrust between his vertebrae. He leaned on the table for a second, then carefully extended his hand to the door knob.

“Now, Buck, he wasn’t really a VIP,” Werry said in the other room.

“When I say the son-of-a-bitch was a VIP,” Morlacher ground out, “that means the son-of-a-bitch was a VIP. He came up here to…,

Hasson slammed the door shut, reducing the overheard exchanges to a background rumble, and did his best to stand up straight. Pridgeon, who was walking around the room picking up small objects and replacing them, watched him with a kind of amiable contempt.

“Boy, you’re really in a mess, Al’s cousin from England,” he said, smiling through the wisps of his moustache. His teeth had the almost-greenish tinge that comes from a permanent accumulation of food residue, and there were charcoal-coloured pockets of decay close to the gums between the incisors. “Car smash, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.” Hasson fought to keep back a conciliatory smile. Pridgeon shook his head and hissed in his breath. “Shouldn’t have been fruiting about in a car, Al’s cousin from England. You shoulda been treading sky like a full-grown man. Look at young Theo! Theo’s going to show “em something as soon as he’s able. That right, Theo?”

Theo Werry tightened his lips, disdaining to speak.

“Theo was on his way up to his room,” Hasson said. “I think he had finished breakfast.”

“Bull ! He hasn’t touched his coffee. Drink your coffee, Theo.” Pridgeon winked at Hasson, pressed one finger to his lips in a silencing gesture and poured a thick stream of sugar from the stainless steel dispenser into the boy’s cup. He stirred the resultant sludge and guided the cup into Theo’s hand. Theo, his face alert and suspicious, gripped the cup but did not raise it to his mouth.

“I think you put in too much sugar,” Hasson said lightly, sickened by his own complaisance. “We don’t want Theo to get fat.”

The playfulness disappeared from Pridgeon’s face on the instant. He performed his intimidatory trick of abruptly fixing Hasson with a frowning, baleful voodoo stare, then came towards him, head thrust forward, moving silently on the balls of his feet. This can’t be happening to me, Hasson thought, as he found himself nodding, smiling, shrugging, backing out of the kitchen, unable to bear the idea of the other man entering his personal space. Still under Pridgeon’s threatening gaze, he reached the foot of the stairs and put his hand on the banister.

“Excuse me,” he said, listening in fascinated dread to hear what words his mouth would utter next. “Nature calls.”

He went up the stairs with the intention of going to his bedroom and locking himself inside, but the bathroom door was directly ahead and — spurred on by the notion of trying to make it appear that he really had needed to relieve himself — he went through it and thumbed the concave button on the handle. The silence in the bathroom beat inwards upon him.

“Nature calls,” he breathed. “Oh, God! Nature calls!” Pressing the back of a hand to his lips to prevent their trembling, he sat down on the white-painted cane chair, remembering with a keen sense of loss the treasure trove of green-and-gold Serenix capsules he had so blithely thrown away. I’ll see a doctor and get some more, he thought. I’ll get some more Sunday morning pills, and I’ll get some television cassettes, and I’ll be all right. He lowered his head into his hands, feeling much as he had done while suspended in the high purple archways of the stratosphere — cold, remote, abandoned — and entered a period of timelessness.

His numb reverie ended with the sound of a door opening downstairs and a corresponding increase in the relentless, pounding surf-noise of Morlacher’s anger. He waited a few seconds and opened the door just enough to give him a vertically slitted view down into the hail. Morlacher and Pridgeon were standing in it, occupying most of the floor space while they closed up their suits in preparation for flight. The door to the downstairs front room was closed and there was no sign of Al Werry. Pridgeon opened the entrance door, admitting a white blaze of snow-reflected daylight, and went outside. Morlacher was on the point of following him when there was an extra movement and a darkening of the trapezium of brilliance on the hall floor, and May Carpenter came into the house. She was carrying a net shopping bag and was dressed in a traditionally styled tweed jacket and skirt trimmed with fur which gave her an oddly demure quality. Morlacher looked down at her with evident appreciation.

“May Carpenter,” he said, putting on a rakish grim which was totally unlike any expression Hasson had seen him use previously, “you get prettier every time I see you. How do you do it?”

“Clean living, I guess,” May replied, smiling, apparently unperturbed by his standing so close to her in the confines of the hail.

“That’s one for the book,” Morlacher chuckled. “All flower arranging and rug tying down at the PTA, is it?”

“Don’t forget the cake competitions — you should see what I can do with a piping bag.”

Morlacher laughed loud, put his hands on May’s waist and lowered his voice. “Seriously, May — why haven’t you been over to see me since you got back into town?”

She squared her shoulders. “I’ve been busy. Besides, it isn’t a girl’s place to go calling on a man, is it? What would people say?”

Morlacher glanced towards the room where he had been talking to Al Werry, then drew May closer to him and kissed her. She relaxed into it for a moment and Hasson saw the slight grinding movement of her hips which had thrown every organic switch in his body the night before. He remained transfixed at his vantage point, terrified of being caught spying and yet completely unable to move away.

“I have to go now,” Morlacher said as they separated. “I’ve got urgent business in town.”

May looked up at him through quivering eyelashes. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

“I’ll call you,” Morlacher whispered. “We’ll fix something up.” He turned and disappeared into the white radiance of the outside world. May watched him depart, closed the entrance door and — without pausing to remove her outdoor jacket — came straight up the stairs towards the bathroom, taking the steps two at a time. Hasson almost slammed the door shut before realising the action was bound to be noticed. Dry-mouthed and sick with apprehension, he whirled away from the door and stooped over the washbasin as though busy cleaning his hands. May passed the bathroom and went into a bedroom further along the landing.

Hasson, moving with the exaggerated stealth of a burglar in a stage production, left the bathroom and plunged into his own sanctuary silently locking the door behind him. The discovery that his heart was labouring like a museum-piece engine strengthened his resolve to stay in his room as much as possible and avoid direct contact with the rest of humanity. He sat on the edge of the bed, turned on his television set and tried to become part of its miniaturised and manageable world. He had been alone for some thirty minutes when there was a knock on the bedroom door, and on answering it he found Al Werry waiting on the landing. Werry had left off his uniform in favour of duracord slacks and a black sweater, and the change had made him look younger.