I lay there, drinking whisky and trying to think, but found that my brains had seized up. The faces of all the people I had interviewed wheeled in front of my eyes as if in a kaleidoscope, and little bits of conversation reverberated in my skull as though it were an empty cavern. After a while I decided it was an empty cavern. I ordered a light meal from room service, undressed wearily and went to bed.

II

Hanna sat next to me in the car and looked at me in disgust. ‘So you had to break the law and park illegally,’ he said, and pointed to the right. ‘You parked in front of this alley and now, I suppose, you expect us to find the bullet.’

I grinned at him cheerfully. ‘So that’s it. I got shot for illegal parking.’ I was feeling pretty chipper: twelve hours’ sleep and a hearty breakfast had made a lot of difference. The pain at the back of my neck had dulled into a generalised ache and I only winced when I moved my head sharply.

Hanna tapped the side window of the car. ‘Why didn’t this get broken?’ He was looking better, too. The lines of strain about his eyes had smoothed out.

‘The car had been out in the sun. I opened both windows to get some air circulating.’

He nodded and opened the door. ‘All right, let’s have a look.’

In the alley we were joined by two of Hanna’s men and he told them what to look for. I didn’t think they’d find anything and even if they did it wouldn’t be enough to matter. It struck me that Hanna was merely going through the motions of police procedure.

Fifteen minutes later, one of Hanna’s boys gave a shout and we went to see what he had found. It was a streak of bright metal about six inches long on the side of a brick wall. Hanna stooped to look at it. ‘A soft-nosed bullet – that would have made quite a hole in you.’

‘Murderers aren’t bound by the Geneva Convention.’ I peered at the smear of the bullet, about three and a half feet from the ground. ‘You’re not going to get much from that – you certainly won’t match it to a gun.’

Hanna squatted on his heels. ‘No, but forensics will still have to try. We can weigh the lead, for instance, and that will tell us a lot about the gun it wasn’t fired from.’ He turned his head and stared down the alley at my car. ‘I’d say it was fired from another car. It’s at just the right height.’

‘Great!’ I said. ‘So we have a murderer on wheels.’

Hanna stood up. ‘It all helps,’ he said mildly. ‘And what makes you think he’s a murderer? You’re not dead – yet.’

‘Ogilvie is.’