‘I really don’t know.’ Through the open door to the patio I could see both Spoder and Jeksid. Spoder looked wary and alert, but Jeksid was leaning back against one of the supporting pillars. He looked disagreeable.

‘There’s something mutating here,’ Frejah said. ‘In this room. You told me there was no mutability on Salay.’

I had no idea how to answer that, my feeling of ineffectuality deepening with every moment. Then she obviously noticed Jeksid standing on the patio. She strode forward purposefully, but halted in the doorway, deliberately allowing the gun to hang from her lowered hand.

Jeksid reacted immediately: with a slow movement he slipped his right hand under the front of his jacket, and extracted his gun. He held it between thumb and forefinger, showing it was there but that he was not about to use it. He allowed it to dangle.

Spoder moved bravely to place himself between them.

Three ex-cops, two loaded weapons, and me. And suddenly my cat too: Barmi, always unselectively social, had jumped up from the garden to the decking and was now rubbing himself affectionately against Jeksid’s legs. Jeksid seemed barely to notice. Cats are invisible to some people – I have never known why. His gun was pointing straight down at Barmi, the barrel only millimetres away from his trusting head.

I shoved past Frejah, idiotically raising both hands in the air, then bent down and grabbed the cat. I took him to the edge of the patio, lowered him to the grass. I tried to make him run away, but he sat down stubbornly and began washing.

Spoder said: ‘I want you both to put down your weapons.’

Frejah shook her head. Jeksid said: ‘Like hell.’

Spoder turned to me and said: ‘Sir, what should we do with these two?’

Somehow, without real preparation, almost accidentally, I had found myself in the role of the sleuth. I couldn’t avoid it. I had spent too long trying to work out what they had been up to. It had to be completed somehow.

Still feeling unequal to the task, I said: ‘I want to be sure I know the extent to which these were involved in the murders, then they can go off somewhere else. They can shoot each other there if they have to. Not here, not in my house.’

The angry silence persisted.

‘You say you want to be sure,’ Spoder said to me. ‘We know what they’ve done. Jeksid gave me his confession to read, and Frejah Harsent was obviously complicit in the murder of the first of the two brothers.’

‘I had nothing to do with that!’ she said, turning towards him. ‘I was sent as an investigating officer.’

‘We know what your version of that is,’ I said. ‘What you told me was full of lies. We know the two of you went to Lew’s house after he was murdered.’