In fact, it wasn’t Cagney so much as Richard Widmark that he secretly imagined himself as, especially in the part of  Harry Fabian in Night and the City, which he had seen four times and would go to again if it was reshown. The picture had been shot in London, in locations much like the place where he was right now, whiling away the cold minutes until Percy came back from doing whatever it was he was doing with the sea captain up there on deck. Of course, it was only the look of Widmark that Terry admired, not the part of the two-bit hustler that he played. Harry Fabian was slick, all right, but in the end he had no style. And if Terry had learned one thing from Percy, it was the importance of having style.

Percy was a good half hour on the ship, and came back in a jumpy mood, and snapped at Terry when he asked him what was up. There was something in Percy’s tone, an edge of disdain, of dismissiveness, that made Terry lose his rag. For the first time in his life he understood exactly what that phrase meant, to ‘see red’. A crimson mist came down in front of his eyes, like a wavery version of the curtain in a picture house, and for a second or two his chest tightened all across its front and he could hardly breathe.

All right, Percy, he thought, all right. That’s it.

They walked along the wharf. Percy suddenly quickened his pace and hurried forward, as if he had a premonition of what was about to happen. Terry waited until they had entered a low brick tunnel over the narrow-gauge rail line that the coal skips ran along. He would still see those bricks long after he left London, even though it was dark under there. He would smell the rancid air, too, and the stink of stale piss, and see the faint shine on the rails, and the cuffs of Percy’s sagging trousers trailing in the mud as he slouched along – all of it, clear as anything.

He increased his pace, and, catching up with Percy, he brought out the pistol and jammed the barrel under Percy’s left shoulder blade, against the thick material of his overcoat, and fired twice, a quick one-two. He had always admired the smooth, rapid action of the little gun.