The two broke off their talk and looked sharply up at us; hard, hostile faces. The bald one was in his late twenties, large, well-built and handsome, but with more than a touch of cruelty round the fleshy mouth. The fair one with the wart on his brow had narrow, greyhound-like features, and his expression held the same cold intensity as a hunting dog’s.

Loudly enough for the other patrons to hear, I said, ‘Gentlemen, we are making a citizen’s arrest upon you, for the murder of Armistead Greening on the tenth of this month.’

The fair man tensed, his eyes narrowing to slits, but the bald fellow looked at us with large, unreadable brown eyes, and then laughed. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked.

‘That we aren’t,’ Okedene said, raising his knife. ‘You were seen running with a bloody club from Armistead Greening’s workshop after killing him.’

There was a murmur of voices from the other tables. A couple got up hastily and left.

‘You’re not the authorities,’ the fair man growled.

‘We do not need to be,’ Nicholas answered, putting his hand to his sword. ‘Not for a citizen’s arrest.’

The bald man laughed. ‘What are you, a law student, by your little robe? Scratchy clerks come to arrest us?’

I said, ‘I am Matthew Shardlake, Serjeant at Law, charged by the victim’s family with investigating the murder under the coroner.’

The two glanced at each other, and I realized with a shiver that they had recognized my name. They looked over our little group more closely, weighing us up. The fair-haired man quietly slipped the hand furthest from us towards his sword, then jerked back as Nicholas swept his own sword from its scabbard and pointed it at the man’s throat, a glint of sunlight on the razor-sharp edge. ‘Don’t dare move, churl,’ he said, ‘or I’ll slit you. Hands on the table.’ I had wondered whether, when it came to it, Nicholas’s bravado would be matched by action. Now I knew.

The fair man sat stock-still. He looked at me, eyes boring into mine. ‘You’d do best to let us go,’ he said very quietly, ‘or there’ll be big trouble from those above us. You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, hunchback.’

‘I can make a guess,’ I said, thinking of Richard Rich. ‘In any case, you’re under arrest.’

Both men were looking at me now. With his right hand Barak reached swiftly under the table on the bald man’s side, his left holding the knife on the table. ‘I’ll take your sword, matey,’ he said.