“Did Tommy buy you presents?” George asked.

Terry shook his head in disappointment. “He never bought Terry presents. He never took me out neither. He used to go to the bar with Dennis, but they never asked me. And I was Tom’s friend.”

“Was Dennis a friend of Tom’s?”

Terry made a movement with his head as if he did not understand.

“We were Tommy’s friends too, Terry,” George said carefully. He did not want to frighten the man into a change of mood. “ If you talk to me about Tommy we’ll buy you a present. We’ll give you lots of cigarettes.”

“What do you want to know?” Terry was suspicious, but overeager to give the right information, to tell the man what he wanted to hear. As he waited for the reply, George realized that it was almost dark. The trees were black silhouettes against a colourless sky. Then, like a child who knows the answer to a test, Terry waved his arm excitedly. He turned his face towards them, and even in the fading light they could see that it glowed with pride and achievement.

“I know,” he said. “I know. You want me to tell you about seeing him dead that morning.”

“That’s right, Terry,” said Molly very gently. “ That’s just what we want to know. How clever of you to guess. Will you tell us about it?”

“About seeing Tom going down the marsh track?”

“No, Terry.” Molly could sense George’s impatience, and put her hand on his arm to stop him interrupting. “About seeing Tom dead.”

“That’s right,” said the man, nodding his head vigorously. “Dead. Going down the marsh track. In the fog.”

“Why don’t you tell me all about it, Terry? Start from the beginning. Where did you first see him? Was anybody with him?”

They could see that he wanted to tell them. He was fighting to form the words to tell his story, frustrated because he was so inarticulate. He nodded his head in answer to the last question. Then a car drove along the road and swung into the drive of the hotel. Terry was caught in the beam of the headlight, like an actor in a spotlight. The light had startled him, as an animal or a very small baby is frightened by a sudden noise. Before they realized what he was going to do he had run away, across the lawn and into the darkness. They called after him, but he did not seem to hear them.

George helplessly watched him go, confused by his story, but relieved that at last they had found someone who claimed to know a little about Tom’s death. He felt old and tired and knew that they could not follow him.

“I presume that he works in the hotel,” he said, “so we’ll have the opportunity to speak to him tomorrow. Do you think he knew something, or was he just making it up to please us?”

Molly considered, trying to compare Terry with former clients with the same degree of disability.