‘Tell them I’m out,’ I snarled, ‘or dead, or bankrupt, I don’t care; but I’m not answering that machine, tell the Post Office to take it away in the morning, we’ll be better without it.’

‘It’s for you, Mr Charlie,’ said Jock a moment later.

‘Look, are you incapable of …’ I started, but then I saw Jock’s expression. I went to the telephone, wiping my lips. Sam was on the line. It was a Sam I had never heard.

‘Get round here, Charlie, fast. It’s Violet.’

‘You mean …?’

‘Yes. Get here.’

I got. To be exact, I told Jock to get there on his motor-bike, carrying his low friend (perhaps glad to be free from the domino-lesson) on the pillion; while I bundled Johanna into the Mini. I knew she was probably safe from rapists (they rarely have the stamina to strike twice in one night) but I knew, too, that all women love to comfort their frailer sisters in adversity.

At La Gouluterie, Sam was in the courtyard, giving Jock and his domino-friend orders in the ugliest voice I have ever heard. He sent them off and turned to me.

‘Charlie, send Johanna up to Violet; the doctor and police are coming. Jock is patrolling on his motor-bike towards Belle Etoile Bay and back via Wutherings; his friend is working the fields – don’t shoot him by accident. You will drive me to Sion and I’ll work back from there. Then you will drive like hell to St John’s Church and come slowly back without lights. Are you armed?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Then grab anyone in trousers; if they can’t give a wholly satisfactory account of themselves force them into the car. I’ll pay any fines for wrongful arrest. Got all that? Then let’s go.’

‘What’s George doing?’

‘Nothing. They’re out.’

With that he opened a gun-case and assembled his beautiful Churchill XXV shotgun with a brutality which made me wince. Off we sped. We saw no one. I left him at Sion, drove fast to St John’s, crawled back, stopping to look and listen from time to time. One party of drunks arguing bitterly about football. One burly she-hitch-hiker from Wigan: she hadn’t seen anyone. One sinister chap who was a rapist if ever I saw one but he already had a local maiden with him: the dirty look she gave me indicated that she was actually hoping to lose her maiden status even if it meant braving a hedgerow and that I was delaying things. Her swain claimed to have heard, ten minutes earlier, a large motor-bike driving towards the Route Militaire very fast, then stopping. A few minutes later it had started up again and gone North, much more slowly. That had evidently been Jock: this lad, for all his saucy looks, was a good witness. His restless sacrifice was tugging at his sleeve, saying –