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with a blanket over him. The couch was an insomnia-machine. It was cunningly constructed so that one arm clamped your head at a right angle to your body while the other etched a moquette pattern on your calves. His feet stuck out beyond the blanket and the big toe of his right foot, turned black when he stubbed his foot playing mid-field for the Crime Squad, seemed to accuse him of pretending to be younger than he was. He wastwenty-seven already. His toenail looked like falling off. What next?
    He had worked out where he was. At first he had thought it might be a girl’s place. He had gone to the disco at ‘Joanna’s’ last night. (What was he trying to do, find a third possibility?) But then he recognised the inimitable decor of Milligan’s poky flat, a kind of waiting-room baroque.
    The walls were dun and featureless, the furniture was arranged with all the homeyness of a second-hand sale-room and clothes were littered everywhere. It wasn’t a room so much as a suitcase with doors.
    There was the spatter of something hitting a frying-pan in the tiny kitchen and then Milligan’s voice cheerfully kicking ‘My Way’ to death.
    Harkness smiled. When he had worked under Detective Inspector Milligan in North Division before going to the Crime Squad he had become familiar with the infectious breeziness of Milligan, as if the world was a parade arranged for his benefit. Thinking of the tension of Laidlaw’s nature, Harkness thought he could understand why his present superior and his past one disliked each other. Their natures were a mutual contradiction.
    Milligan padded through, wearing a dark blue towelling Marks and Spencer’s bathrobe. It looked old enough to have been bought in their Penny Bazaar. He was laying the table. Always slow to come to the surface, Harkness thought he should at least show willing. He opened his mouth to speak and it came out distorted by a yawn, something like ‘Narrgh’.
    â€˜Can I quote you on that?’ Milligan said. ‘You were well on last night. What did you do? Fall into a vat?’
    â€˜Drowning my problems.’
    â€˜What problems? Your only problem is you don’t have enough.’
    Seeing Milligan bursting out of his acres of towelling, his rumpled hair going grey, his big face looking as if it had taken as much of life’s pounding as Beachy Head, Harkness felt suitably naive in the matter of problems. He was looking at a broken marriage, a stalemated career and a quality of survival that would have whistled through an air-raid.
    â€˜I keep thinking I have,’ he said modestly and got up. His feet were frozen. ‘Thanks for taking me in last night.’
    â€˜I thought you might have an extra bird with you. Like a carry-out.’
    Going through to the bathroom, Harkness washed himself and used Milligan’s only remaining blade, which was like shaving with a hacksaw. When he was dressed, he asked if he could use the phone.
    â€˜If they haven’t cut it off.’
    He phoned his father to see if there were any messages. It annoyed him that he hadn’t been there to talk to Laidlaw about Eck. He assured his father he would be in plenty of time to meet Laidlaw. He thought of phoning Simshill but, seeing five-to-eight on his watch, he let it go.
    Breakfast was a penance. The ham and eggs were doubtless good but he had only been able to clean his teeth with his forefinger and the crap still in his mouth made everything taste like feathers. Milligan’s ferocious brightness didn’t help.
    â€˜I think I’ll get married,’ Harkness said more or less to himself across Milligan’s monologue.
    â€˜Why not do something more sensible? Like playing Russian Roulette.’
    â€˜You don’t recommend it?’
    â€˜I hope you’re not proposing. Just because I’m good at making breakfast. Actually, I’m spoken for. Wife and me are thinking of patching it up. True. I was with