“You’re not going home. If you go anywhere, it’ll be to my place.” By that he must have meant the room in Chichele Road, where perhaps he’d been the night before. “Yes, that’s a good idea. We’ll have a bite to eat and then we’ll go straight over there.”

“I won’t,” Liv said.

Have you ever seen anyone stamp her foot from a sitting position? It’s an extraordinary sight. Jonny took no notice. He fetched her a drink. It was whiskey, I think, undiluted whiskey, and it was half a tumblerful. I knew then and Silver knew that Jonny had been keeping her docile, keeping her for him to use, by feeding her alcohol, indulging a taste she already had and had developed when she was with James and Claudia. She began to drink it in the greedy way no one should ever drink, the addict’s way. Wim remained quite still while all this was going on. Except that his long yellow eyes were wide open he might have been asleep. I suddenly noticed how beautiful his hands were, the color of pale unpolished wood, sycamore or yew, and grainy like wood, the fingers long but thickened at the knuckles by the climbing and swinging he did. Liv drank her whiskey, licking her lips so as not to miss a stray drop or two.

“I won’t go,” she said again.

It must have been plain to Jonny that if she refused to leave with him he had no hope of getting her out of the Silvermans’ house. Silver, having said in a very firm voice that she could stay with him until she went home to Sweden, was obviously not going to help Jonny manhandle her. Wim looked as usual as if helping anyone do anything was outside his design for living— though I was wrong there, as a later incident was to prove—and Jonny knew I disliked him as much as he disliked me. But instead of immediately caving in, he turned on Wim.

“You can keep your hands off her if you don’t want your fucking legs broken.”

Broken legs would be almost worse for Wim than a broken neck. People are always talking these days about “quality of life” and Wim’s depended on the use of his strong long legs. I could quite easily imagine Jonny putting a bullet into each of his knees.

Wim said in his languid voice, “Your meaning escapes me,” which was hardly honest of him since he had certainly slept with Liv once to my knowledge and probably several times. He moved only enough to cross one leg over the other, perhaps daring Jonny to carry out his threat. Jonny jumped up and stood over him in a way he could have done only when Wim was seated. There must have been ten or eleven inches’ difference in height between them.