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and the hand closed. Easy. Unfortunately there was a slight delay between the impulse and the action and, consequently, I had broken the eggs and almost everything else I gripped. Nowadays, the thought processes were second nature but I still tended not to stop the impulses soon enough and breakages were common. Hence I had learnt to live a mostly one-handed life to match my one-handed body.
    One could sleep with the arm in place but I almost never didas it was hard and very uncomfortable to lie on, its unfeeling fingers having a tendency to dig in to real flesh. Once I had almost knocked a beautiful bedfellow unconscious when turning over in my sleep. A couple of pounds of steel and plastic was definitely not an aid to romance.
    The open end of the arm-cylinder fitted over my elbow, a plastic cuff gripping tightly around the ends of what was left of my ulna and radius bones, the bumps on each side of the elbow. I was impressed by the strength of the join between the genuine me and the fake. I had recently discovered that the fit was so good that, if I locked my elbow straight and stressed my biceps, I could hang my whole body weight by the arm. Not that I really fancied testing it with my life.
    Removing it was consequently quite a challenge. I bent my elbow as far as it would go and gradually eased the plastic away from my skin. I placed it on the shelf over the washbasin. A tight-fitting rubber cosmetic glove covered the hand and wrist, protecting them from rain and beer spills. Shapes had been moulded into the rubber to represent fingernails and tendons, with bluish lines for veins. I preferred to wear it than not for the appearance it gave me of being two-handed. Lying there on the shelf, alone and disembodied, it looked gruesome and ghoulish. I covered it with a towel.
    I padded in bare feet along the hallway to the kitchen to get some water and noticed the flashing light on the answering machine through the open door of the bedroom that doubled as my office. I pushed the button and the mechanical voice answered: ‘You have six messages.’
    The second was from Huw Walker.
    ‘Hi, Sid,’ he said in his usual jovial manner. ‘Bugger! I wishyou were there. Anyway, I need to talk to you.’ The laughter had faded from his voice. ‘I’m in a bit of trouble and I…’ he paused, ‘I know this sounds daft but I’m frightened.’
    There was another brief pause.
    ‘Actually, Sid, no kidding, I’m really frightened. Someone called me on the phone and threatened to kill me. I thought they were bloody joking so I told them to eff off and put the phone down. But they rang back and it’s given me the willies. I thought it was all a bit of a lark but now I find that it ain’t. I need your bloody help this time, mate, and no mistake. Call me back. Please call me back.’
    There was another long pause as if he had waited in case I picked up at my end. Then there was a click and the next message played. It was from my financial adviser reminding me to buy an ISA before the end of the tax year.
    There were, in fact, two messages from Huw, not one. Message four was also his.
    ‘Where are you when I need you, you bugger?’ His voice was slurred and he had obviously been drinking in the time between messages. ‘Come on, pick up the bloody phone, you bastard! Can’t you tell when a mate’s in trouble?’ There was a pause in which I could hear him swallow. ‘Just a few losers, they says, for a few hundred in readies, they says. OK, I says, but make it a few grand.’ He sighed loudly. ‘Do as we tell you, they says, or the only grand you’ll see is the drop from the top of the effing grandstand.’ He was now crying. ‘Should have bloody listened, shouldn’t I?’
    The message ended abruptly.
    I stood in the dark and thought of him as I had last seen him; three closely grouped deadly holes in his heart.
    Yes, he should have bloody listened.

C HAPTER 4
    Archie Kirk called me at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning as