‘WHAT I DISLIKED about him at first sight,’ Martins told me, ‘was his toupée. It was one of those obvious toupées – flat and yellow, with the hair cut straight at the back and not fitting close. There must be something phoney about a man who won’t accept baldness gracefully. He had one of those faces too where the lines have been put in carefully, like a make-up, in the right places – to express charm, whimsicality, lines at the corners of the eyes. He was made up to appeal to romantic schoolgirls.’

This conversation took place some days later – he brought out his whole story when the trail was nearly cold. We were sitting in the Old Vienna at the table he had occupied that first morning with Kurtz, and when he made that remark about the romantic schoolgirls I saw his rather hunted eyes focus suddenly. It was a girl – just like any other girl, I thought, hurrying by outside in the driving snow.

‘Something pretty?’

He brought his gaze back and said, ‘I’m off that for ever. You know, Calloway, a time comes in a man’s life when he gives up all that sort of thing …’

‘I see. I thought you were looking at a girl.’

‘I was. But only because she reminded me for a moment of Anna – Anna Schmidt.’

‘Who’s she? Isn’t she a girl?’

‘Oh, yes, in a way.’

‘What do you mean, in a way?’

‘She was Harry’s girl.’

‘Are you taking her over?’

‘She’s not that kind, Calloway. Didn’t you see her at his funeral? I’m not mixing my drinks any more. I’ve got a hangover to last me a lifetime.’

‘You were telling me about Kurtz.’ I said.

It appeared that Kurtz was sitting there, making a great show of reading The Lone Rider of Santa Fé. When Martins sat down at his table he said with indescribably false enthusiasm, ‘It’s wonderful how you keep the tension.’

‘Tension?’

‘Suspense. You’re a master at it. At the end of every chapter one’s left guessing …’

‘So you were a friend of Harry’s,’ Martins said.

‘I think his best,’ but Kurtz added with the smallest pause, in which his brain must have registered the error, ‘except you, of course.’

‘Tell me how he died.’

‘I was with him. We came out together from the door of his flat and Harry saw a friend he knew across the road – an American called Cooler. He waved to Cooler and started across the road to him when a jeep came tearing round the corner and bowled him over. It was Harry’s fault really – not the driver’s.’

‘Somebody told me he died instantaneously.’

‘I wish he had. He died before the ambulance could reach us though.’

‘He could speak, then?’

‘Yes. Even in his pain he worried about you.’

‘What did he say?’