He nodded. ‘That’s an honest answer. I had that coming.’ He paused. ‘The word is going around that you think David Salton was murdered. True?’

I wagged my head wearily: he’d obviously been talking to the same snitch as Roker. ‘Untrue. It was just one of a number of suggestions that happened to come up. The medical evidence at the inquest was hardly satisfactory.’

‘I can accept that, I suppose.’

‘I don’t give a hoot in hell whether you accept it or not,’ I said feelingly, adding, ‘And I’d like to know who’s been eavesdropping on my private conversations.’

‘It’s immaterial, of course,’ said McKittrick. ‘What matters is what people think you think. That must be straightened out or there’s going to be trouble. Suppose you make a statement to the Chronicle that Salton wasn’t murdered?’

I stared at him. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?

‘Because I don’t know that he wasn’t. There’s no evidence one way or the other.’

McKittrick was waspish. ‘There’s such a thing as being too honest.’ He leaned forward and said urgently, ‘Mr Kemp, there’s trouble coming and people are going to die on the streets. Campanilla is coming to the boil because of this rumour. There’s already been violence.’

‘I saw some of it,’ I said, and pointed to the window. ‘Just out there.’ It had crossed my mind that Roker might somehow have laid that little performance on especially for my benefit, but now another thought occurred to me. ‘I don’t suppose you stirred that one up, did you?’

McKittrick appeared genuinely shocked. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said. ‘My job is to heal people, not to get them killed or hurt. Where did you get that idea – from Stern?’

‘No, but Mrs Salton told me of your quarrel with her husband and said that since then you’d gone even further towards radicalism. In fact, she called it a bloody revolution.’

That hit him. ‘She said that of me?’

I offered him a concession. ‘She said it might not be what you wanted, but you were heading that way despite yourself, maybe.’

‘Nobody wants that kind of revolution – well, I don’t, at least.’

‘But there are some who do?’ I studied him. ‘It seems to me you’ve got yourself into a trap, Dr McKittrick. You’d have done better staying with Salton. If he’d lived, he’d have been the leader of the next government, by all accounts. His way was better than yours. And now you’re out on a limb.’

‘Let’s forget about me,’ he said tightly. ‘And keep to the point at issue.’