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Jack? Don’t you want to talk to me?’
    ‘Of course I do, so where can we meet? We need to sort out this silly business.’
    ‘All in good time, Jack, all in good time. The game’s just beginning.’
    The telephone went dead again.
    ‘You are a messy pup!’ the elderly woman snapped as she bustled away.
    He ignored her, instead quickly interrogating his telephone. Janet’s call came up as ‘Unknown application’.
    ‘Bugger it!’ he snarled, slamming the phone on the table and attracting curious glances from the other diners.
    ‘Bad news, Mr Fulton?’
    He looked up quickly and scowled at the thin bearded man in the faded blue anorak who was standing there. ‘What do you want, McGuigan?’ he said. ‘Come to gloat, have you?’
    The other laughed and pulled out a chair. ‘That’s not very nice, Mr Fulton. Mind if I join you?’
    ‘Yes, I do, so sod off!’
    McGuigan sat down anyway. ‘How’s the old murder inquiry going?’
    ‘Why don’t you read the bloody newspapers? They must all have the story by now.’
    ‘No point really, since I wrote it.’
    Fulton glared at him. ‘Didn’t you just, and a heap of the smelly stuff is soon going to drop on you from a great height.’
    McGuigan’s grin faded. ‘I simply report the news as it happens, Mr Fulton.’
    ‘Yeah, and foul up a police murder inquiry in the process.’
    ‘The public have a right to be told about violent crime.’
    Fulton leaned forward, studying him with absolute contempt. ‘Listen, McGuigan, I’ve known you too long to expect anything decent from you, but what kind of scumbag actually photographs a victim at a murder scene, then sells the pic to a national newspaper? You have to be sick.’
    The journalist flinched. ‘Selling stories is what I do as a freelance news agency, Mr Fulton,’ he snapped. ‘But it so happens that I didn’t take the picture this time. It was sent to me.’
    ‘Sent to you? How could that be? Damned body was only found a few hours ago.’
    McGuigan shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that, but the photo was pushed through my letterbox last night in a sealed envelope, accompanied by a sheet of A4, giving full details of the incident and its location. Then someone rang my doorbell repeatedly to make sure I got out of bed and found it.’
    ‘I don’t believe you – you’re spinning me a line.’
    ‘And what would be the point in my doing that? According to you, I’m in the mire for filing the story anyway, so why would I bother to make all this up?’
    ‘To protect a source maybe?’
    McGuigan shook his head firmly. ‘You’re way off beam this time.’
    ‘And I bet you didn’t get a look at your nocturnal postman?’
    ‘Unfortunately, no. By the time I got to the front door he or she had gone.’
    ‘Convenient. Didn’t you think of looking out of the window before going to the front door?’
    ‘Why would I?’
    ‘So you just went downstairs to answer the door in the middle of the night, not knowing who was on your doorstep? You were either very brave or plain stupid.’
    ‘Maybe I was stupid then, but that’s what I did, and when I opened the door there was no one there, just the envelope on the mat and an empty street – well, almost empty.’
    ‘What do you mean, almost?’
    McGuigan shrugged again. ‘There was a police patrol car cruising past. I waved to him actually and he waved back.’ He grunted. ‘Maybe you should have a word with the copper who was covering my area. You know where I live.’
    ‘I’ll do just that; you can count on it. I might even get your letterbox printed to see what else we can find.’
    ‘Be my guest, though I think that that would be a bit of a long shot. There must be any number of different fingerprints on it from a whole variety of callers.’
    Fulton grunted. ‘So, what time did your postman call?’
    ‘About twelve-forty-five.’
    For a moment the detective’s brain froze as the full implication of what McGuigan had just said dawned on him.