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shock unhinging my thought processes. "Where are my photographs?"
    "I don't know."
    "You .. . botched this somehow?"
    "No, Ian. I just did my normal job. There must be something badly wrong with your camera."
    "There's nothing wrong with it. It's working perfectly."
    "The results suggest otherwise."
    "Tim, for God's sake tell me you're joking. Where are my bloody photographs?"
    "They don't exist."
    "They must exist. I took them."
    "I believe you. The trouble is, you lost what you took. I don't know how or why."
    "Well, I certainly don't."
    "It's a mystery, then."
    "Just a minute." I stepped closer. "You didn't wreck this job for me, did you, Tim? As some sort of mark of your disapproval?"
    "Of course I didn't. What do you take me for?"
    "Sorry. I .. ." His hurt look was genuine. There was no doubt about it. "I'm not thinking straight. I just... don't understand."
    "Neither do I."
    "Exposed? The whole lot?"
    "Every single one."
    "This is insane."
    "But true."
    I struck out at thin air in frustration and began to walk up and down, thoughts whirling in my head. It couldn't be true, but apparently it was. I was scheduled to deliver my portfolio of Viennese photographs the very next day. But I had none to deliver. Except... "There's one film left," I announced, snapping my fingers. "It's in the camera now. A few last shots of Vienna nothing important." That wasn't quite true, of course. It contained the pictures I'd taken of Marian at the Imperial, which naturally I hadn't wanted Tim to develop. "But it'll prove the camera isn't at fault. I'll take the film to the lab, if that's all right by you, and develop it myself."
    "Now?"
    "Why not? Is there a problem? I know my way round the place. I won't break anything."
    "I know you won't. But '
    "Then humour me. I'd like to do the job myself. It's not that I don't trust you."
    "Sounds like it."
    "I'm going to be in one hell of a jam if I've got nothing to show them tomorrow, Tim. Let me do this my way, will you?"
    He shrugged. "All right. But my bet is you'll just get another load of duds. It has to be the camera. Either that or .. ."
    "What?"
    "There is only one other possible explanation, Ian. And you don't need me to tell you what it is."
    Sabotage. That was the explanation Tim hadn't cared to name. Like he'd said, it was as if I'd opened the back of the camera when winding on the film. Only I hadn't, of course. But somebody else might have. It certainly looked as if they had, because the film I developed that night was the same as the ones Tim had developed earlier: black and ruined. Including the frames I hadn't even used. Which suggested they'd been wound on with the camera open, then wound back, in a deliberate and calculated act of destruction.
    I must have sat in Tim's darkroom for an hour or more, trying to reason out a response to what had happened. The camera looked fine. It was old enough to make light seepage a remote possibility, but not on a scale to account for total exposure. The films had come from a regular source and I'd already used several from the same batch without any problems. There were the X-ray machines at the airports to consider, of course. They could have been wrongly adjusted. Still, it would have to have been a pretty gross error to produce such a devastating result. No, no. The overwhelming probability was that the films had been got at, before or after my arrival in Vienna. As to why, I hadn't the inkling of an idea. As to who, just about the only person who'd had an opportunity to do such a thing was the one person I had to believe, for the sake of my own sanity, couldn't be responsible.
    I phoned the Imperial from the lab. It was late enough now to be confident of finding Marian in her room. And so she was.
    "Are you all right, Ian? You sound ... I don't know .. . odd."
    "There are some problems with the pictures I took of Vienna."
    "Serious problems?"
    "You could say that. You don't remember seeing anyone .. . tampering with my camera, do