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captain invited his passengers to disembark on a convenient sandbank. Stretch your legs, why don’t you, while you have the chance, is what he said: there’s a long journey ahead.
    â€˜The Jews were so crammed into that little cockleshell they were glad to take advantage of the offer, perhaps even pleasantly surprised at such kindness from a Gentile. Except that when the tide turned and there was once more enough water under the keel to get moving, but before the Jews had time to climb on board again, the captain gave the order to weigh anchor and off they went, the ship and the sailors, leaving the Jews to drown as the water rose higher and higher and, at last, covered the sandbank completely. One of the crew said later that the Jewish fathers held their children high on their heads so that they would be the last to go. Funny: if it had been me out there with my child, and the water creeping up to my chin and my mouth and my eyes, I think I’d have held it under right away. Why prolong the agony?’
    In the same level tone Miriam continued, ‘Today it couldn’t happen quite like that. Even if human nature is still capable of such behaviour, at least we’ve learnt to swim. But just the same, just in case someone should ever again take it into his head to turn the Jews of Angleby out on to a sandbank and sail merrily away, just in case – I want to be dead sure the man I marry is right there beside me, not waving goodbye from the shore.’
    At that moment the floodlights went out. Reduced to the general level of night, the figures on their crosses became no more than the rest of the Market Place clutter.
    Starded, the two drew together. Miriam gave a little ‘Oh!’ of concern. Jurnet laughed for the pleasure of finding her unexpectedly close. ‘Wrath of the Lord!’ he proclaimed.
    â€˜You!’ protested Miriam, but not disengaging herself. ‘They must be on a time switch.’
    â€˜Aren’t we all? Time for bed, like I said.’

Chapter Seven
    The telephone rang. Jurnet had the impression that it had been ringing for a long time. Even so, he made no move to reach out, lift the receiver off its hook.
    The telephone went on and on. The cloud of bronze hair on the adjacent pillow, the one bare shoulder showing above the duvet, did not move. Little liar, the detective thought acidly, regarding hair and shoulder with love but not all that much liking. Worn out, was she, by the exertions of the night?
    Oh yes, they had finally made it; gone to bed together, made love – if those were the right words to describe a hasty and vacuous greed it shamed him to remember. If that, he thought, the phone dinning in his ears, was what an evening of pop music did for you, come back, Ludwig van B., all is forgiven.
    A body deliciously warm and buoyant pressed itself against him. From under the duvet a voice cooed, ‘You aren’t going to answer – oh, good!’
    The options thus put into words, there was no alternative. Coppers always answered the phone, God rot that clever dick, Alexander Graham Bell.
    There was no further sign of life from the bed as Jurnet dressed hurriedly, sluiced face and hands in the bathroom, grimacing with distaste at his reflection in the mirror, the chin rimmed with the dark stubble which every morning made him look more like something the Mafia had dragged in than a pillar of Angleby law and order.
    No time to shave. The digital clock on the bedside table, one of Miriam’s few so-called improvements, which he never glanced at without a pang of regret for the dear old wind-up alarm she had given to a CND jumble sale without even asking, jerked out 5.01 in its baleful green, and then 5.02 before he had comfortably accommodated himself to the earlier figure. With the old clock, time slid away unnoticed, not in a convulsive St Vitus’ dance. God rot him too, the saintly jerk, along with AGB.
    Outside, on the crumbling concrete of