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start. Another name, another kind of life. You must see that.’
    Charlie made no comment on that. ‘I wanted to see you. But tell me what you wanted me for, first.’
    ‘They’ve given me six months’ pay. You’ve lost a pretty good client, and it wasn’t your fault. I ought to pay you something.’ Put like that, it sounded offensive, and he was not surprised that Charlie shook his head.
    ‘No need. I’ve lined up a replacement client already. Besides, if I hadn’t given you that stuff about Bond you wouldn’t have blown your top. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Bond, I mean.’
    ‘Bond?’ Whatever he had expected, it was not this.
    ‘I know a sergeant at the station, and he gave me the inside story.’ Charlie always knew a sergeant, or an electrician, or an understudy, who could give him the inside story. His life was passed in interpreting hints, putting two and two together, reading something – but was it the truth? – between the lines. ‘The police think Bond was being blackmailed.’
    He looked at the dark beer in his glass, then wonderingly, up at the barmaid, who returned his stare. It crossed his mind that she might have recognised his picture in the paper. Charlie was talking again.
    ‘This sergeant may have been dropping a story deliberately. You know that inspector on the case, Crambo? He’s smarter than he sounds. He may have told the sergeant to drop the story to me, reckoning it would get back to you.’ Hunter shook his head vaguely, to show that he did not know or care whether Crambo might have done this. ‘But I don’t think so.’
    Charlie put a toothpick in his mouth, twisted it thoughtfully. ‘Bond took dope, that’s the way my sergeant boyfriend tells it, probably reefers. He left a note, can’t go on and all that. He’d been quite a boy this Bond, in Parliament at twenty-seven, made a splash with his first speech, possible advancement, so on. Then none of it happened and he resigned his seat for reasons of health. Ran this Bellwinder Company, but that was on the skids. Hard up. Now, what does all that add up to?’
    He was conscious of pure indifference to Melville Bond, and even to Charlie Cash. ‘Does it matter?’
    ‘It matters this much, cock, that the cops have been giving me an uncomfortable time of it this last day or two. Where did my information about Bond come from, that kind of stuff. They seem to take it all pretty seriously.’
    ‘And you told them.’
    ‘Yes, I told them.’ Charlie took the toothpick out of his mouth, broke it, put it in an ashtray. ‘Trouble is, it’s not that simple. There’s a geezer I know named Twisty Dodds, kind of a small-time crook you might call him, and I got this story from Twisty, he’s got a girl named Maida. Now Maida’s cousin is –’
    He ceased to listen. Exhilaration about the future filled his mind to the exclusion of anything else. The words, a clean break, were repeated over and over. What kind of a break? On the money now in the bank he could live for how many months – six, nine, twelve? – in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Southern Italy. He would settle there, merge imperceptibly into the life of the country. O’Brien, Hartley, Hunter, Smith, they would all become one anonymous figure living peacefully in the country of his choice…
    A name brought him back. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’
    Charlie looked surprised. ‘I just told you. This sister of Maida’s cousin, this Queenie, is going about with a man named Paddy Brannigan.’
    Paddy Brannigan. The name brought with it a face, square and vicious, young, with expressionless grey eyes. Captain Brannigan of the Irish Republican Army, Captain Brannigan who had told them just what to do and how to do it. Captain Brannigan, not long out of his teens himself, who had given a boy a gun and told him to use it.
    ‘Brannigan. You said Brannigan?’
    Charlie looked at him sideways, slyly. ‘That’s right. You know