They walked again. She could, as she had told Rizzo, walk all day without fatigue. They visited dull churches. They looked in the windows of shops and he noted how, nose to the glass, she peered in with real desire at dresses and hats, at shoes that would not last more than a day or two on the island. They went down to the river, crossed and recrossed the bridge by the Broomielaw. He pointed out the steps, almost hidden now under high water, where he had come ashore from the silent cousin’s boat. She knew the story of that visit, though there were pages of it he had removed, mostly to do with the orange seller (his thoughts, her kicks). He wondered what he would do if he saw her again. Would he know her? Would he be sure? And what would she do? Run? Laugh? Or fetch her friends and this time strip the shirt off his back, a trick he imagined them having a special, rapid method of performing. But more than the orange seller, he hoped to avoid coming upon the men who had helped him that night, the new police. He was grateful to them, of course, but thought of them as the type who would deliver you to the scaffold without rancour or any ill-will, regretfully even, because that was where their enquiries, their written records, had directed them. They were the type who remembered things. The slow, methodical men of the future.

At six they went back to the inn. They spoke to the landlord about rooms. Emily was given her room of the night before, though this time she would not need to share it.

“I cannae do so well for you, sir,” said the landlord. “We’re packed like a herring barrel on account of it being a club night. I can only offer ye a bed wi’ a foreign gentleman.”

“Foreign?”

“I’m no expert but I have him down as a gentleman of Spain. Came in wi’ an Englishman I took to be his manservant, but then the way he spoke to him I’m no sure I could say any more who is servant and who master. Anyway, seems they prefer to be apart for the night so I put the Englishman in the attic.”

“Then the Spaniard is the master,” said Lacroix. “If the other is in the attic.”

“Not necessarily. For the Spanish gentleman had the room on the understanding he would gi’ up one half of the bed. If there was a need for it.”

“Yes,” said Lacroix, perplexed, irritated. “Whatever is most convenient.”