The man advanced casually and confidently and the dark space received him. Dick stepped out from among the trees, raised his arm and struck. The man gave a grunt, not much louder than a hiccup, and fell heavily. There was no blood, not a spot. Bracing himself to withstand the disgust contact with a warm heavily-fleshed body would bring, Dick thrust his arms under the sagging shoulders and dragged him under the lamp. He was unconscious and would be for five minutes – except that in five minutes or less he’d be dead.

Dick didn’t waste time examining the face. He had no interest in it. He put his cosh back in his pocket and brought out the cord. A slip knot here, slide it round here, then a quick tightening of pressure on the hyoid . . .

A soft sound stayed him, the cord still slack in his hands. It wasn’t a footstep he’d heard but a light padding. He turned sharply. Out of the tunnel, tail erect, nose to ground, came a hound dog, a black and tan and white basset. It was one of the handsomest dogs Dick had ever seen, but he didn’t want to see it now. Christ, he thought, it’d be bound to come up to him. They always did.

And sure enough the hound hesitated as it left the darkness and entered the patch of light where Dick was. It lifted its head and advanced on him, waving its tail. Dick cursed fate, not the dog, and held out his hand.

‘Good dog,’ he whispered. ‘You’re a cracker. You’re a fine dog, you are. But get out of it now, go off home.’

The hound resisted his hand with an aloof politeness and, bypassing him, thrust its nose against the unconscious man’s face. Dick didn’t like that much. The guy might wake up.

‘Come on now,’ he said, laying his hands firmly on the glossy tricolour coat. ‘This is no place for you. You get on with your hunting or whatever.’

But the basset wouldn’t go. Its tail trembled and it whined. It looked at Dick and back at the man and began to make those soft hound cries that are half-way between a whimper and a whistle. And then Dick loosened his hold on the thick warm pelt. A terrible feeling had come over him, dread coupled with nausea. He felt in the pocket of the black fur-collared coat and brought out what he was afraid to find there – a plaited leather dog leash.

That God-damned woman! Was that what she’d meant about one other thing but it didn’t matter? That this guy would be coming along here because he was taking his dog for a walk? Didn’t matter – Christ! It didn’t matter the poor little devil seeing its owner murdered and then having to make its own way home across one of the busiest main roads out of London. Or maybe she’d thought he’d kill the dog too. The sheer inhumanity of it made his blood boil. He wanted to kick the man’s face as he lay there, but didn’t like to, couldn’t somehow, with the dog looking on.