‘I’d have kept my promise to be there, Munro. If this hadn’t happened.’

It was past one in the afternoon. They were sitting in a room in the East Ham police station, overcoats on against the dead, damp chill of the place. Munro was sitting by a scarred wood table, from time to time rapping his knuckles on it in either frustration or impatience.

‘You might have told us,’ he said.

‘There wasn’t time.’

‘You ought to have told us.’ Munro rapped with his knuckles. ‘More tea?’ When Denton shook his head, Munro looked at the third man in the room, an aristocratic face above an impeccable suit and a fur-collared overcoat. ‘Sir?’

‘Thank you, no.’ He was, as Denton had to keep reminding himself, Denton’s lawyer - sent out by his publisher as soon as they could gear themselves up to action.

‘I don’t like being treated like the criminal in the thing,’ Denton said.

‘You are the criminal in the thing. Until we prove otherwise. ’

The solicitor cleared his throat. Munro looked at him, shrugged. The man of law said, ‘I think you would be wise, Sergeant, not to slander Mr Denton.’

‘I’m here as a friend, Sir Francis, not as a copper.’

The long, lawyerly face - similarities to some horses in the nose and upper lip - smiled, and he said, ‘Once a copper, always a copper. You must be careful what you say.’

Munro shrugged again. He hugged himself, poured some now cold tea from the brown earthenware pot that sat on the unpainted table. He sipped and made a face, then rapped on the wood. ‘Guillam had a fit when he heard.’

‘Good.’

‘He’s raving about prosecution, or was when I saw him at the Yard. Georgie wants to make super, I told you.’

The lawyer shifted his long, elegantly trousered legs. ‘Any policeman who prosecutes the man who shot a brute who had just stabbed his own daughter and a workman and was holding an innocent woman at knife-point is likelier to find himself a constable on a beat than a superintendent. There isn’t a jury in England who would convict. And not a judge who’d be patient with the prosecutor who brought such a case.’

Munro frowned. ‘You may know that, Sir Francis, and let’s say for the sake of argument that I may know that, but George Guillam has decided that he despises Denton, and he’s a man who can let his rages run away with him.’

‘Happily, then, the decision to lay charges is not your Sergeant Guillam’s. It’s East Ham’s.’

Munro made a sound, doubtful, equivocal. ‘CID’re in it now.’

‘They at least believe in prudence.’

Munro had surprised Denton by turning up an hour before, explaining not too helpfully that he had ‘picked up a ride with the deputy super’ of CID. Only as the hour wore on did Denton gather that Scotland Yard was in a subdued uproar over the coming together of the Mulcahy and Stella Minter cases, resulting in the postponement of the coroner’s inquest on Mulcahy. Denton himself, held now in the death of Harold Satterlee, had been treated like both a criminal and a hero - two hours of questioning, but no jail cell, and an immediate response to his request to send a message off to his publisher. (He’d thought first of Hench-Rose, but had decided he didn’t want that indebtedness.) He’d thought that Lang would send the legal nonentity who advised the publishing firm on contracts, but, to his astonishment, Lang had sent Sir Francis Brudenell, of whom even Denton had heard; he had introduced himself as ‘your solicitor, not the one who’d represent you in court - that’s a barrister - but we’ll never go to court.’ Now here they were, waiting for Denton didn’t know what - news of the girl or Mrs Striker, perhaps, or the evidence that Sir Francis insisted was all that was needed to send him out a free man.

‘Well,’ Denton said, ‘I did shoot a man.’

Sir Francis made a face. ‘Sergeant Munro will forget he heard that, I hope. Mr Denton, you must stop offering information.’

‘But I—’

‘Hush, sir! At once!’

Munro was embarrassed; he jumped up and said, ‘More tea,’ to nobody and everybody and rushed out with the teapot. While he was gone, Sir Francis gave Denton a lecture on saying nothing; in fact, he had already given it, in short form, earlier. When Munro came back with the teapot newly filled and obviously hot - he was carrying it in a not very clean towel - Denton and the lawyer were sitting as they had been, both quiet. Munro tried to bustle, offered tea, poured, produced from a pocket two scones wrapped in baker’s paper, apologized for the lack of a plate, and said, ‘The woman’s going to be all right.’

‘Mrs Striker?’

‘She’ll have a bad scar.’ Munro shook his head. ‘Pretty much all the way down one side of her face, I’m afraid. Terrible for a woman.’

‘Not for that woman,’ Denton said. ‘What about her hand?’

‘They’re trying to save her fingers.’ Munro offered the scones and, refused, took one for himself and perched with one buttock on the table. ‘Local men didn’t want to deal with it, so they took her off to Bart’s. Word just came back.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Pierced the intestine, opened her abdomen, but she’ll survive. Or so they say. Lot of problems when you cut into the gut - sepsis, all that.’ He chewed his scone. ‘The workman got it in the shoulder and arm, won’t be doing any lifting for a couple of months, poor devil. They’re trying to get a statement from the mother, but the medico says she’s catatonic, and anyway she’s still drunk and they want to dry her out. We’ll get something from her eventually, I’d say, but - not right away.’ He rubbed his fingers together and brushed crumbs from his partial lap. ‘Bit tricky, what we’ll get from those two.’

Denton glanced at Sir Francis, then said, ‘You won’t get much from the girl. Not until she admits - what happened to her. And she won’t tell that to a man.’

‘You think he molested her, too.’

‘Of course he did.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Denton looked at him, hard-eyed. ‘You only had to see her move. To listen to her.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘She’s only a kid. She knows he did something terrible to her, but she also knows she gets a lot of butter with it. She’s the queen of the household. Woman of the house. She may even think she loves him and loves - it.’

‘But you can’t know that.’

Denton looked at him between his fingers. He said nothing. Munro sat at the table again, rapped, shifted position. ‘You’re in a foul mood, I must say,’ he muttered to Denton.

Denton looked up at him again. ‘Ever kill anybody?’ Munro grunted. Denton put his face in his hands. Munro was embarrassed and made desultory talk with the solicitor. Denton, taking a turn around the room, stopped in front of Munro and said, ‘When can I see Mrs Striker?’

‘You can’t go anywhere.’

Sir Francis said something about patience. Denton had a cup of tea, fidgeted, waited. After a few more minutes, a constable put his head in and said to Munro, ‘You’re wanted, please.’ Munro gave Denton a half-comical look and went out. Sir Francis said, ‘The plot thickens.’

However, it was another half an hour before things were thick enough to produce a result. The door opened and a constable held it for Munro and the East Ham detective who had questioned Denton, and then for a burly man, whom Sir Francis seemed to know. The burly man was introduced as the deputy superintendent of CID, and he said, ‘No touching.’ He indicated a wooden box, which the East Ham man had put down on the table. ‘We want an untainted evidence trail. Everyone clear on that?’

Sir Francis said that he must take them for fools; both he and the deputy superintendent chuckled. The deputy super said, ‘Munro, this is your party, I think. Your stroke of genius, isn’t it?’

‘I happened to get there first.’ Munro looked at the others. ‘This is stuff from the remains of a fire out behind Satterlee’s. Ashes were still warm.’ He took the top off the box, which was far too big for the things inside. Using a pencil as a pointer, Munro indicated one of them - a blackened, at first shapeless mass the size of a doll’s head. ‘Know what that is?’ he said to Denton.

Denton bent down, studied it, saw bulges that seemed to suggest pattern but couldn’t make it out. He looked up at Munro.

‘Decorative knot from the end of a rope. A red rope.’ He grinned at Denton. ‘You were right; we hadn’t done our best when we went into Mulcahy’s. You seemed so sure of torture when I talked to you that night, I thought, “Maybe he’s got something; maybe I missed it and he got it.” So I went back next day. It took me two hours to catch on to the missing red rope, but once I got that, I looked at the chair. I did see the fibres without a hint, thanks very much. Now we’ll see if our experts can match them to what’s left in that burned mess.’

‘He told me about somebody’s maybe torturing Mulcahy yesterday,’ the deputy superintendent said. ‘Strictly sub rosa, as they say. A good copper isn’t supposed to go outside the lines of command, but a really good copper does, now and then.’ He winked at Sir Francis Brudenell. ‘If we can match the fibres, we can put Satterlee at Mulcahy’s, and the thing’s as good as done.’

Munro pointed his pencil at several bent wires, what appeared to be a blackened metal plate. ‘Remains of a photographic camera. The lens is cracked but it’s still there, and we think there’re letters around the rim. If we can identify it as definitely one of Mulcahy’s, with his “Inventorium” on it - I’ve got a man up there now, looking at his other cameras - then we’ll go to court with your theory, Denton, that Mulcahy left a camera behind in that closet where he had the peephole, and Satterlee found it.’

He pointed at a blackened key. ‘Might be the key to Mulcahy’s closet. Mr Denton believed that Mulcahy carried it off with him that night - maybe Satterlee found it in Mulcahy’s clothes. Would have taken it to keep anybody from connecting him with the peephole and the girl.’

‘Another nail in the coffin,’ the solicitor said.

Munro indicated a shallow brick of burned paper and scorched cardboard. ‘What’s left of a book. Denton told Sergeant Cobb here -’ he indicated the East Ham detective - ‘that the real Stella Minter may have had a book that the Satterlee girl took - borrowed or stole, doesn’t matter. This is certainly a kid’s book - the other side has some titles you can read, all for kids - and we’re hoping the Minters can identify this one. If we’re fantastically lucky, there’ll be a legible name written in it. We haven’t opened it - that’s for the experts.’

Denton said, ‘Satterlee didn’t do a very good job of burning.’

The deputy super shook himself, said, ‘Books are hard to burn, actually. He managed to destroy the camera and most of the rope well enough. But this type of man may like souvenirs. May have been reluctant to get rid of them.’ He looked at Sir Francis. ‘Seen it twice before.’

‘Plus he’s reckless,’ Denton said. ‘Very reckless.’

Sir Francis put his long nose down towards the box as if to smell it. After some seconds, he said, ‘So you believe that you have evidence that links the man Satterlee to the man Mulcahy and to the murdered girl, is that right?’

‘We think so, yes.’

Sir Francis put a hand through the deputy superintendent’s arm. ‘May we talk?’ he said, and they went out. A moment later, the East Ham man had closed the box and taken it to the door, cradled in his arms like a baby. Munro said, ‘Mind that doesn’t leave your sight! We’ll want an affidavit—!’

The detective turned in the doorway, the door hooked into his right foot so he could pull it closed. He gave Munro a look that meant What do you take me for? With the slow delivery that mocks patience and suggests the speaker is talking to a fool, he said, ‘It’s going back with you and the super in the CID van.’

‘We’ll still want your affidavit!’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah—’ He went out and pulled the door to with his toe.

Munro smiled at Denton. ‘Hurry up and wait some more, eh?’

‘I want to see Mrs Striker.’

‘She, uh—Is she a, umm, your—?’

Denton was grim. ‘She risked her life so that bastard wouldn’t get away.’

Munro nodded his head. ‘Right. Right.’

Five minutes later, Sir Francis came back in. He put his hand on Denton’s shoulder. ‘No charges will be laid. You’re free to go on my recognizance until they’re certain of the evidence.’ He gave Munro a small smile, turned back to Denton. ‘I have my motor car; may I give you a ride to town?’

‘I’m going to Bart’s.’

‘I can drop you, then.’ He nodded at Munro. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again, Sergeant.’ He turned back to Denton. ‘I’ll just have a word with my chauffeur.’

When he was gone, Denton said, ‘“Seeing you again”?’

Munro looked sheepish. ‘They want to talk about me going back to CID.’ He leaned back against the table. ‘Metropolitan Police were about to do something that would have been wrong and stupid - close the Mulcahy case. They were doing it because it was easy and because, let’s face it, people had persuaded themselves they were right. Powers that be were, so they say, beside themselves when this broke this morning. Even though I was in too little and too late, they think I fell down the privy seat and came up with a diamond, so maybe I can go back to CID despite the leg.’ He grinned. ‘I owe you one.’

‘Not at all.’ He put out his hand. ‘All’s well that ends well.’

‘I do have a question, though.’

Denton waited.

‘What would you have done if your shot had hit the woman instead of Satterlee?’

He had Denton’s hand; Denton returned his pressure, withdrew his hand. His voice was gruff. ‘I’d have got him with the second shot.’

‘They’re all there for you,’ a voice said behind him.

‘Harris!’ It was as if the man had materialized out of the stale air in the corridor. ‘What the hell?’

Frank Harris, less red-eyed than usual, smiling his shark’s smile, rubbed a thumb and three fingertips together. ‘Lucre changed hands, copper showed me up the back stairs. Corruption in the bastion of law.’ He grinned. ‘Always think the worst of your fellow man - you’ll get farther.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Little bird told me a notorious murderer had been shot by a well-known author. I bustled. Rather early in the day for me to bustle - I do my best work in the dark - but I made an exception, and here I am with an offer that’s going to make your heart twitter with delight! You may want to kiss me, in fact.’

‘What’ve you done?’

Harris craned to peek out the window. ‘Not a word to that crowd of poltroons. We’re dedicated to one rag and one rag only, the News of the World, because they’re paying us a hundred pounds for your story!’ He grinned again, preened. ‘How I Tracked and Shot the East Ham Monster with my Colt .45! ’ He waited. Clearly, he expected more than Denton was giving. ‘Well? Well?’

‘It wasn’t a .45; it was a .36. And what’s this “we”?’

‘Ah, well, y’see, I thought that as I negotiated, in fact invented and negotiated this arrangement, fifteen per cent seemed justified. For me. Of a hundred pounds, Denton! That’s eighty-five for you, man - any money troubles you had are over! Eh? Eh?’

Denton stared at him. Anger had hit him first, now was giving way to some sort of humour, perhaps hysterical, a reaction to the shooting. He found that he was laughing. The more he laughed, the more perplexed Harris looked, making Denton laugh that much more. Denton leaned against the wall, feeling himself light-headed and knowing it was nervous reaction; soon he would feel emptied, then despairing. Pulling a trigger is easy; the labour comes after. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Harris.

‘Sorry for what?’

‘Can’t do it, Harris. No deal.’

‘I can’t get you more than a hundred. I tried - I said, “A hundred guineas!” but they wouldn’t budge. It’s no good—’

‘No deal. I won’t do it. No. N-O.’

Harris’s voice was hoarse. ‘Why in the name of God not?’

Denton thought how best to explain it, saw that there was no way to explain it that would pierce Harris’s cynicism. He said, ‘I can’t make money from killing somebody.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘I just can’t.’ Denton shrugged. ‘I just can’t.’

Outraged, Harris put his swollen eyes close to Denton’s face and shouted, ‘Don’t you try to give me any crap about honour!’

Below, an elegant motor car was slowly herding the newsmen out of the way as it pulled up close to the station entrance. He smiled at Harris. ‘I wouldn’t have the guts to try.’ He raised a hand.

‘You may come along now,’ a sister said. She was young, sweet-faced, but severe in her manner. ‘We’re making an exception for you.’ He supposed this to mean that it still wasn’t visiting hour.

She led him along a tiled corridor and through a pair of double doors, seemingly into a different building - older, darker, a lingering smell of ether and carbolic. Ahead, a door was open and a trim, small man with a moustache was standing outside it. No introduction was made; he simply grasped Denton’s arm and turned him away from the open doorway, through which Denton had seen a small room, not much more than a closet, with a railed bed and a lot of white sheet.

‘We’ve brought her out here rather than have you on the ward. All-female, and so on.’ He was a lot younger than Denton but clearly in charge, certainly patronizing. ‘The police wish us to accede to your wishes as much as possible. You’re the husband?’

Denton had to swim up from his exhaustion to say, ‘A friend. I was there when she was hurt.’

‘It was my understanding you were the husband. This is irregular. Well, as you’re here—I’ll have to ask sister to stay in the room with you.’

A hard remark occurred to Denton, but he suppressed it.

‘She will have a scar.’

‘I know that.’

‘Her left hand is another matter. There is damage to nerves and tendons; I don’t know how much use of it she’ll have. We had to transfuse her twice - great loss of blood.’

‘You were there for the, whatever it is. Operation?’

‘I performed the surgery. I am a specialist.’

Denton couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Something seemed required - hosannas, perhaps. He said, ‘Can I see her now?’

The surgeon arched his eyebrows once and said a little stiffly that of course, if that’s what he wished. He steered Denton back into the tiny room.

The room was almost too small for the two men and the metal bed. The insistence on propriety - he couldn’t go on the ward out of hours - seemed stupid to him, wasteful. She was walled off from him by metal bars that were painted pale yellow and chipped along the upper edges, as were the head and foot of the bed. Her right hand, even against the white sheet, was pale. The left side of her face was covered with white gauze, secured under her chin with plaster; her left hand was entirely swathed. Behind him, the nursing sister muttered, ‘They gave her morphine. She’ll be going to sleep any time.’

She looked asleep now. Denton said, ‘Can I talk to her?’

‘You can try.’

He leaned over the bed. Before he could speak, her eyes opened. They were unfocused, in fact not looking at him but at the ceiling. They swung towards him and she frowned.

‘I came as soon as they’d let me,’ he said.

She seemed to concentrate, to recognize him. ‘Did you kill him?’ she said in a hoarse voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

‘Well—’

‘It weighs on you?’

‘Yes.’

She drifted away, came back. ‘That’s good, too.’ Her eyes closed, and he thought she had fallen asleep, but after several seconds she stirred and even moved her right arm, as if to turn towards him. ‘They say I shall have a scar,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t matter!’

‘It does to me. Astonishingly. “Vanity, vanity…”’ Her eyes closed and her voice sank away.

He glanced at the sister, who looked annoyed. Mrs Striker’s breathing became slow and regular, then caught, and her eyes opened. ‘You’re still here.’

‘It hasn’t been long.’

‘You saved my life.’

‘No, you saved your life. You were - magnificent.’

She didn’t say anything for several seconds, her eyes narrowed as if she was perhaps seeing it all again, evaluating it. ‘Better a scar and no fingers than having my throat slashed.’

Denton laughed. He knew he shouldn’t have, because he heard the sister’s sharp intake of breath, but he laughed for the relief and the release of it. ‘You’re a tough bird,’ he said.

She smiled, winced as the smile pulled on her slit cheek and jaw. ‘A tough - sparrow—’ she said, and again her eyes closed and her breathing fell.

Denton waited. This time, he didn’t think she would come out of it. The sister said, ‘She’s fallen asleep, sir. She’ll sleep for twelve hours now. The morphine.’

‘Well—’ he began. Then Janet Striker’s eyes opened and searched for him; when they found him, she smiled again and winced again. ‘Come back,’ she murmured, and fell asleep for the night.

His own house looked strange to him. The evening was dark now and cold; the morning’s frost had never melted where the shadows lay. A wind had risen, nosing around chimneys and skittering leaves and pieces of paper. He shivered.

He went up the stairs and let himself in and was astonished to see Diapason Lang sitting in his own green armchair. Denton stared at him stupidly.

Lang bounced out of the chair and rushed towards him. ‘Oh, my dear boy! Oh, you’re all right - are you all right? Oh, sit down, do sit down - brandy? Have brandy. Where’s that man of yours? Hoy! Was it horrible? Yes, of course it was. How horrible for you! Horrible, horrible!’ Denton was trying to get out of his overcoat; Lang was dancing around him, getting in his way; surprisingly, the man had tears in his eyes. ‘Brandy - servants quite useless when you want them—’ Lang had rushed to the table behind the armchair; something fell over with a crash. ‘There!’ Lang poured from the decanter, his hands shaking so that the neck rattled against the glass. When he handed it to Denton, the brandy slopped over their hands. ‘Oh, look what I’ve done! Oh, I’m such a useless old fool. Did the lawyer come? Are you a free man?’

‘Free, yes - he came—’ It seemed long ago.

‘I went right to Gwen as soon as I had your message. Gwen was a brick! “The best, we must have the best!” he said. I had no idea of such things, so I asked Frewn, you remember Frewn, crime is his hobby - he said Brudenell. Was Brudenell good? Frewn said that up to the moment you go into court, Brudenell’s the best man in England. Was he good? Did we do well by you?’ He had fetched a chair from farther up the room and carried it behind Denton and was pushing it against Denton’s knees, almost forcing him to sit. ‘Is that comfortable? Are you sure?’

Despite his fatigue and his racing brain, Denton was touched. This was an utterly different Lang from the dry androgyne of the publishing office: now emotional, now unsure, now concerned, he was like a very nervous hen with too many chicks. Denton assured him and assured him again, and finally Lang fell back into the green armchair and took a sip of sherry and calmed himself. Then, abruptly, he sat up again.

‘Oh, you must think me insane! I haven’t told you what I’m here for. I’ve been here since four. Your man gave me sherry and biscuits. I may have drunk too much of the sherry. At any rate, I have a purpose that I’ve never told you!’ He nodded his head several times. ‘Good news!’ He banged his hand on the arm of his chair. ‘I’ve good news! I think. I hope you’ll think it’s good news. Oh, dear! I think it’s good news.’ He leaned towards Denton. ‘Gwen loves your idea!’

Denton wondered if he was drunk already. ‘What idea - the new book? The Machine?’

‘By Motor Car to the Land of Vampires! He absolutely loved it. I told you he’s a motor-car enthusiast, quite mad, he’s the money, of course, but noisy contraptions, smelly, too, but he adored the idea. “Lang,” he said, “row fifty for the minute on this one. Go all out! This is a twentieth-century idea!”’ Lang sat there and enjoyed his own good news. ‘Here is the arrangement: eight hundred pounds in advance against your usual royalty plus expenses plus the firm will provide the motor car. Between you and me and the gatepost, Gwen means to pick out the motor car himself but he was going on about making a trip to Paris with you to find absolutely the right one, because he believes the French make the best motor cars in the world, which is not very loyal, if you ask me.’ He sipped his sherry again. ‘Where was I? Expenses, the car - yes, subsidiary rights, ah, yes. We want to serialize - sixty per cent for you, the rights already sold in England - oh, yes, my dear, I moved quickly - to Every Other Week for three hundred pounds, including Ireland. I have a cable from Chapman at Century in New York - where is it, where is it—? Doesn’t matter, he’s offering ten thousand dollars for North America. I haven’t heard from L’Affiche d’Aujourd’hui or Kunst, but I will. You’re assured, in short, of at least three thousand pounds.’ He looked up with the guilelessness of a child. ‘Is that all right?’

‘All right?’ As Lang had talked, Denton had felt the black mood slipping away. Everything’s going to be all right, he thought. Everything. He jumped up and pulled Lang from the armchair and threw his good arm around him. The editor gasped; Denton tightened his grip into half of a bear hug. ‘Oh—’ Lang cried, ‘oh, this is too—Oh, dear—You Americans are so emotional—Really, you needn’t—’

And then Atkins was coming from the stairs, Rupert lumbering behind him. Atkins was shouting, ‘Congratulations, General! Well done, sir! No need now to go to the agent’s, nor did I want to—!’ Any pretence of not having eavesdropped was out of the window. ‘Three thousand pounds! Out of funds, my hat!’

Everything would be all right; he would be rich - and then he thought of Janet Striker, the injured face, the moment when he pulled the trigger, and he understood that if he accepted Lang’s offer he would be gone for months. What would she think of him? Or - what was worse - would she even care?

Denton let go of Lang, who fell back into the armchair. Atkins poured him another sherry without taking his eyes from Denton.

‘You heard?’ Denton temporized, his mind still on Mrs Striker.

‘I couldn’t help, the gentlemen having a rather carrying voice and clear enunciation.’

‘Transylvania,’ Denton said. ‘It’s a long way.’

‘In Europe, in’t it?’

‘By motor car. We’d be gone a long time.’ Thinking, we can write to each other; maybe it will be even better - get to know each other a different way—But he wanted them to get to know each other in the usual way - dinners, walks, then—

Atkins grinned. ‘Three thousand pounds!’

‘You’d have to learn to drive, Sergeant.’

‘How difficult can it be? Look at the fools what smashes them up all over London.’

‘To Transylvania, Sergeant. You’re willing to travel with me all the way to Transylvania?’ Wanting Atkins to say no, to cause him not to go. Knowing he had to go, had to have the money, and at the same time wanting that damned woman who lay in a hospital bed with her face slashed.

Atkins raised his head, pushed out his lips, then hesitated. ‘If there’s room for Rupert.’ He looked down at the enormous dog. ‘You’d like to see Transylvania, wouldn’t you, old fellow?’

The stump of tail thumped on the floor. Denton stared at it. He sighed. He would write her lots of letters.