Silver and I were in bed. Desire had seized us simultaneously. I hoped very much that on his part it wasn’t actuated by seeing Judy again, but I didn’t seriously think this. Liv was in her own room and we were lying side by side having a postcoital cigarette when the doorbell rang. Silver can get dressed faster than anyone I know. He pulled on a T-shirt and stuck his head out of the window. I heard him say, “I’ll be right down.”

I followed him, fastening my jeans, running my fingers through my hair. He didn’t really think this could be something to do with James and Claudia, did he, I asked him as we ran down.

“I’m wondering if it could be about Liv’s father,” he said.

He was right. The hotel manager had told the police. They didn’t tell us how they discovered where I lived but Silver thought it probable the manager had spotted me in Mrs. Houghton’s garden, it being quite near the hotel, and asked her where I lived. This in fact was the case, as Mrs. Houghton herself told me rather apprehensively the following Monday. Had she done the right thing? She hadn’t known what to do. For my part, I was quite gratified to learn that she was unwilling to lose her gardener.

Silver took the police into his parents’ charmingly furnished living room, all cleaned and polished by Beryl, and they were obviously impressed by its respectability. There were many facts we’d have liked the answers to that they didn’t reveal. I suppose they never do. For instance, it was a long time before we found out why the manager had called the police. They took me, quite reasonably, for Håkan Almquist’s daughter. I denied it at once. Silver and I hardly knew what to do, how to act. Why did they want his daughter?

“He’s in the Royal Free,” the older policeman said. “He was mugged. Hit on the head. He’s got a fractured skull but he’ll be okay. His wife’s come over and she’s with him.”

Something, at any rate, was explained.

“We know his daughter,” Silver said. “We’ll tell her.”

That was the end of the police responsibility, apparently. Looking around him, the younger one said that was a nice picture, he was fond of landscapes. Silver said, “Was he robbed of anything?”

They looked cagey. Then the older one said, “A wallet perhaps. When he was found he hadn’t a wallet on him. He had loose change in his jeans pocket and a Swedish identity card and driving license in his jacket breast-pocket. That’s how we knew who he was.”

“You’ll let the daughter know, won’t you?” This was the younger one. He cast a longing look behind him at Erica Silverman’s painting of a Scottish glen.