‘Just checking. We need to be sure that there is something in this story before we go public. But go and see him again now and find out, discreetly, if his money has come through. Go and see him and say that the paper wants to send someone to photograph the cast and slip in a question about his money. See what you can find out. OK, here’s some petty cash for the ticket and here’s a hundred for incidentals. If you go over let me know when you come back. Don’t speak to accounts. I’ve arranged cabs to take you to Mr MacCleod and to the station. And good luck tomorrow.’

He’s made her uneasy with his talk of nutters and public places and the vow of silence regarding accounts.

Artair’s usual transport refused to move the sets to Newquay when he couldn’t pay in advance and the new man, who is supposed to be moving them in a horse box – he’s guaranteed that it has been mucked out – has broken down in a lay-by on Bodmin Moor. And the Royal National Lifeboat people, his landlords, have written to him, despite accepting his offer of free tickets, asking him to vacate the lifeboat station within thirty days, unless payment, plus interest, is made by the end of the week. The bank has refused him an overdraft, despite the twenty years he has been a customer; he probably shouldn’t have written to that little shit the manager, Trefelix, to say that he was a money-grubbing intellectual pygmy. The manager wrote back saying that the bank had a zero-tolerance policy towards any form of racial and religious denigration. The word ‘pygmy’, Artair replied, was used as a metaphor for small-minded; it was not in any way a reflection on the heroic race of small people inhabiting the dense and unforgiving jungles of Central Africa. The manager did not take up the challenge of a long intellectual correspondence. Only Binster’s Pies and Pasties have remained loyal, sending him a box of their product each week.