People would probably say he had no feelings at all, to do the kind of work he did, but they would be wrong. He had a lot of feelings. Look at the way the fate he foresaw for the weapon that had been his standby and his pal for so long brought him almost to tears. He would heft the gun in his hand, playing with it, spinning the chamber and squinting along the barrel and gazing fondly at the prancing pony embossed on the badge on the side of the frame. He saw the weapon as the very emblem of himself, skimpy-looking, a bit on the short side, but hard, cold, deadly and unstoppable.

*

He came close to tears too on the evening when he shot Percy Antrobus and let his weighted, rubbery corpse slip soundlessly into the darkly gleaming, oily water of the Pool of London, down into the narrow space between the looming bulk of an oil tanker and the slimed side of the dock. He was sorry to have to do it, he really was, but there was no avoiding it, in the end. Percy had mocked him and slighted him and generally annoyed him too many times, and Terry just wouldn’t stand for it any more.

The opportunity to be rid of him once and for all presented itself handily enough – you could almost say the thing was done on a whim. Percy had to go down to the docks to see the captain of a freighter that had come in from Hong Kong, or maybe it was Saigon, Terry hadn’t paid much attention. Percy wouldn’t say what his business with the captain was, but the meeting was at night and he brought Terry along for protection. As Percy said, you could never trust a Chink.

When they got to the wharf there was a mist on the water, and all was dark and quiet – a real B-movie scenario. Percy went on board the ship, but told Terry to wait on the pier.

He walked up and down for a while, watching the drifting, ghostly mist and thinking about nothing much at all. It was cold, and he turned up the collar of his light-grey overcoat. At times like this he was sorry he didn’t smoke, since it would be something to do. Also, a cigarette would add to the Jimmy Cagney look.