He talked the younger cop through the scene examination – start at the body and work out, drink in the detail, don’t disrupt the blood spatter going for his pocket contents – and then he came back down the aisle to where Marshall was sitting.

‘You the guy that saw what happened?’

In the interest of completeness, Marshall was of a mind to tell him there were five guys who saw it: one was dead, one was outside in an ambulance, one pulled the trigger, one drove, and he was the fifth. But from the cop’s demeanor, Marshall gathered he was abreast of the semantics.

Marshall said, ‘Yeah. I was drinking with him.’

The detective sat down in the chair opposite, knees coming almost to table level. He wore a blue suit and a tie and small rimless spectacles. A thin beard disguising old acne scars, pockmarks, as if he’d been hit in the face with a load of number 10 birdshot. Marshall figured he must’ve been six foot six at least, maybe a hundred seventy pounds if you hosed him down in his suit and he kept his shoes on. He had a pen and a bound notebook with him.

‘I’m Detective Floyd Nevins, NYPD.’

He took a business card from his coat and slid it across the table, as if to prove the statement.

‘Are you happy to answer some questions?’

Marshall read the card and leaned to slip it in his pocket, the same reflex motion that had maybe saved his life thirty minutes ago, and said that he was. Nevins found a clean page, flipping past half a book’s worth of notes from other nights, other murders. He took down Marshall’s name and address, and then asked him what had happened. Marshall gave him the crux of it, said they were having a drink at the table down the back and a guy came up and shot Vialoux through the window. Got in the back of a waiting car and escaped uptown on Fourth.

The detective called Nevins looked down the aisle to where the damage was, as if making sure the story fit. He said, ‘Ray Vee-loo, huh? What’s the spelling on that?’

Marshall told him.

Nevins took it down, and seeing the name written seemed to spark something in his memory. He looked at the paper a long moment, fanned his pen absently in two fingers.

‘You get a look at the shooter?’

‘Lean guy, short, maybe five-seven with his boots on, one-fifty.’

‘You see his face?’

‘No. He wore a mask.’

‘No hair or skin exposed?’

Marshall shook his head. Outside, one of the uniformed cops was saying backup might be a while. The President was staying at his Fifth Avenue place. Half of NYPD was on guard duty in Manhattan.

Nevins said, ‘So nothing at all that stood out?’

‘Nothing physical. They knew what they were doing, though. That’s pretty distinctive with this sort of thing.’