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neighbour, Mrs Finneghan, was standing in her front garden. Having once seen Edgar talking to the traffic policemen on the seafront, she had become convinced that this was his job.
    ‘How are the cars, Mr Stephens?’
    ‘There seem to be more of them every day, Mrs Finneghan.’ He had given up trying to tell her his real profession and, besides, it was soothing to think of a parallel existence where all he had to do was stop cars crashing into each other.
    ‘There ought to be a law against it,’ said Mrs Finneghan comfortably. She went back to feeding the seagulls.
    Edgar let himself in and went straight for the whisky. One of the benefits of living on the ground floor was the use of a dusty square of garden. Edgar took his drink and sat on the back step, watching the birds swooping downto avail themselves of Mrs Finneghan’s soup kitchen. Seeing Max again had brought back all sorts of memories; memories that, for five years, he had sought to expunge by working his way through the police ranks and trying not to antagonise Frank Hodges. Now he knew that if he let them, they would take him over and he would be there again, drifting on the open sea with Max and Diablo, watching Charis die.
    It had been odd seeing Max in his own milieu. He had known, of course, that Max was a magician and it was the memory of seeing him on stage that had sparked the idea about The Zig Zag Girl. But it had been strange seeing him in his backstage world of greasepaint and showgirls and men doing sword-swallowing impressions. Seeing Madame Foo Foo in the corridor, dressed in basque and stockings and smoking a pipe, he hadn’t been able to stop himself trying to imagine what his mother would have said. He wondered if he was drawn to Max because he was the antithesis of everything his parents stood for. Max, who had thrown off his upper-class background and replaced it with a showman’s cape. What would have shocked his mother most about Max? The Italian mother (reputedly an ex-opera singer), the titled father or the life spent in seedy boarding houses, a different woman in his bed every night and the same woman disappearing on the stage every evening? ‘Rich people are all very well,’ his mother had said once, ‘as long as they keep in their proper place.’ Max, performing on stage at the Alexandra Music Hall, was about as far from his proper place as youcould imagine. Or perhaps he was in it? Edgar couldn’t imagine Max stalking grouse or taking tea in drawing rooms (he admitted that his view of upper-class life was rather limited). Even during the war, in the wilds of Inverness, there had been a showbiz glamour about Max.
    Who had taken him to the end-of-the-pier show where he had seen Max perform the The Zig Zag Girl trick? It couldn’t have been his parents. Maybe it was his rather raffish Uncle Charlie, who had grown rich from the black market and now drove a purple Rolls-Royce. He did remember that they had eaten fish and chips afterwards and Jonathan had been so excited that he’d been sick. ‘Things always go to Jonny’s stomach,’ their mother said when they got home. When Edgar heard that Jon was at Dunkirk, his first – ridiculous – thought was to worry that he would be seasick. What wouldn’t he give to have him here now, his smiling, sensitive brother who had never lived long enough to have a job or a woman or even a proper shave?
    That was the problem with whisky. It made you maudlin. He wouldn’t think about Jon or the war and certainly not about Charis. That part of his life was over. Edgar went back indoors to search in the cupboard for a tin of corned beef.
    *
    When Max arrived at the theatre on Wednesday, the letter was waiting for him. At first he didn’t recognise the handwriting and the brown envelope looked ominous. He put it aside and carried on with his make-up. Wednesday firsthouse was always tough. Max knew he’d get them in the end, but they were sticky. He had to work hard to get the laughs and