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Maxwell had asked her to walk a straight line, he felt she’d have had no problem at all with that.
    At the door, she met Joe Public, who looked less surprised than he might have done, all things considered. She flashed him a basilisk-style smile and hissed ‘Brilliant!’ before sauntering into the beer-fumed night and the strains of Don’t Fear the Reaper.
    The three of them stood in the Little Teachers’ Room; Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, Leighford High School; Alan Whiting, Chief Inspector, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate; Joe Public, who turned to the urinals and unzipped. For a second, it reminded Maxwell of that splendid three-way shootout at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , where the camera flashes from gun-butt to eyeball to gun-butt – you remember the picture. Except ‘Clint Eastwood’ had already emptied ‘Eli Wallach’s’ six gun – Joe Public had turned his back on them, whistling to The Reaper as he pissed half a day’s wages up the wall. Bad old ‘Lee Van Cleef’ aka Mad Max decided to see it out. He stood, iron-jawed and steely-eyed until Alan Whiting cleared his throat, straightened his tie and followed his co-operative colleague into the inner sanctum of the Vine.
    â€˜All right, mate?’ Joe Public reached for the holdall he’d put on the floor.
    â€˜Top hole,’ smiled Maxwell, still digesting the events of the last few moments. ‘You?’
    â€˜Triffic,’ beamed Public in a passable Del Boy and then he too was gone.
    Maxwell found himself looking into the mirror again. Maybe, just maybe, he was too old for all this. Life was passing him by. Time to get home, to his cat, his slippers, his cocoa, his incontinence pads.
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    The lights burned blue. Through his skylight, Peter Maxwell could see the moon in its silver quarter frosting the sea out beyond the Shingle. He lolled back in his swivel chair, the gold-laced pill box cap he always wore in this attic at a jaunty angle over his left eyebrow. How did they keep these things on, those soldiers of yesteryear, riders to hounds and masters of the gallop? Before him on the modelling table under the powerful glare of the lamp and the magnifying glass, his latest acquisition, sat his charger. Horse and man were still grey at the moment, the raw material provided by Messrs Historex, model-makers extraordinary. But under Maxwell’s expert hand, patience and the excellent colours of Messrs Humbrol, he would soon – perhaps by week Thursday – be Captain Bob Portal of the 4 th Light Dragoons, complete with blue tunic and overalls and black oilskin-cased shako.
    â€˜Freefolk House, Count,’ Maxwell was talking to his cat again. ‘Portal’s birthplace. Lovely name, isn’t it?’
    Metternich was curiously unmoved. Dunmousin was good enough for him.
    â€˜He exchanged from the 83 rd Foot,’ Maxwell was in full flow. ‘Must have cost him a bit, that transfer. Makes Rio Ferdinand look like an amateur. He’d been a captain for eight years by the time of the Charge. Oh, don’t worry, he survived – the 4 th were in the last line, of course, Paget’sreserve. Horse got shot, though.’
    Metternich was ambivalent about that. The animal rightist in him could empathize, but horses were big buggers and they were so cack, it would be nothing to them to bring one great steel-shod hoof down on an unsuspecting feline. As far as cats could shudder at the thought, Metternich did. Damn! There was that shrill sound again, the one that shot through his eardrum to his spine and sent his tail into spasm. And sure enough, Maxwell did what he always did, reached across for that bit of white plastic.
    â€˜War Office,’ he spoke into it.
    â€˜Max. How the Hell have you been?’
    â€˜Policewoman Carpenter. It’s been … hours.’
    â€˜Sorry, Max. I’ve just got in. How did it go,