Hanna was laying his career on the chopping block. I couldn’t see him surviving in his job for very long if he went on this way. It was all right bucking a junior officer who probably didn’t know which end was up anyway, but when Barstow caught up with him it could be different. On the other hand, perhaps Hanna knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps.

Once out of town, he started to drive really fast. Sometimes there would be a jitney ahead, a beaten-up bus painted gaily and with slogans scrawled across it. The jitneys were the lords of the road and usually drove plumb in the middle, straddling the white line. But a touch of a button set the siren wailing, and the jitney would veer over, usually to bump heavily on the hard shoulder.

I said, ‘When I talked to Joe Hawke in the Rainbow Rooms, he told me something of Conyers’s methods.’

Hanna was sardonic. ‘Did you believe him?’

‘Not entirely. But he implied that Conyers, as well as controlling the police, sometimes used means of enforcement that were, shall we say, outside the normal legal channels.’

‘You’re thinking of the attack on Ogilvie,’ said Hanna, and he sighed. ‘That sergeant last night – I checked back. He and the three other men were all off-duty the night Ogilvie was attacked.’

‘Does that mean something?’

‘I think they were told to lean on Ogilvie a bit, to scare him. There’s nothing takes the guts out of a man more than a physical hammering. I doubt if they intended to kill him. That was an accident. But if he’d claimed that four cops had beaten the hell out of him, then there’d be trouble. So it had to be done when they were in plain clothes. That way, even if Ogilvie yapped, there’d be no comeback.’

‘What about me? They were in uniform when they attacked me.’

‘You were different,’ said Hanna patiently. ‘You were caught up in a riot. Somebody took a chance and hoped to get away with it.’

I said, ‘Who would have given the order for Ogilvie?’

‘It’s not a matter of orders,’ said Hanna. ‘Look, someone in Cardew Street mentions to Conyers that Ogilvie’s asking questions, and isn’t that awkward. Conyers expresses the same sentiments to Barstow, and so it goes down the line. Then someone, somehow, does something about it. No direct orders beyond, maybe, a wink.’ His voice hardened. ‘But no one had the guts to wink at me.’

I thought of the anonymous caller who threatened me and realised how important it had been that I’d made very clear what I would do if my movements were hampered. I had laid it on the line with both Roker and Hosmer and that had saved me. For a while.

I said, ‘But who shot me?’