He didn’t see a living soul which was hardly surprising considering the weather. Finally he came to an old folks’ pavilion, the kind of place where pensioners congregated on calmer days to gossip and play dominoes. The door was locked, but a bench beside it was partially sheltered from the rain by an overhanging roof. He slumped down, hands thrust deep into the pockets of the old raincoat and stared into the grey curtain. He was alone in a dead world. Completely and finally alone.

16

When Faulkner got out of the taxi there was no sign of Nick Miller. Faulkner was surprised, but hardly in a mood to shed tears over the matter. He hurried up to his flat, unlocked the door and went in. The fire had almost gone out and he took off his wet raincoat, got down on one knee and started to replenish it carefully. As the flames started to flicker into life the door bell sounded.

He opened it, expecting Miller, and found Joanna and Jack Morgan standing there.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Faulkner said.

‘Cut it out, Bruno,’ Morgan told him. ‘We had a visit from Nick Miller early this morning and what he told us wasn’t funny.’

Faulkner took Joanna’s coat. ‘This whole thing is beginning to annoy me and there’s a nasty hint of worse to come. Visions of a lonely cell with two hard-faced screws, the parson snivelling at my side as I take that last walk along the corridor to the execution room.’

‘You should read the papers more often. They aren’t hanging murderers this season.’

‘What a shame. No romance in anything these days, is there?’

Joanna pulled him round to face her. ‘Can’t you be serious for once? You’re in real trouble. What on earth possessed you to bring that girl back here?’

‘So you know about that, do you?’

‘Miller told us, but I’d still like to hear about it from you,’ Morgan said. ‘After all, I am your lawyer.’

‘And that’s a damned sinister way of putting it for a start.’

The door bell rang sharply. In the silence that followed, Faulkner grinned. ‘Someone I’ve been expecting. Excuse me a moment.’

When Miller left the judo centre he was feeling strangely elated. At the best of times police work is eighty per cent instinct – a special faculty that comes from years of handling every kind of trouble. In this present case his intuition told him that Faulkner had something to hide, whatever Mallory’s opinion might be. The real difficulty was going to be in digging it out.