‘Oh dear.’ Vee tried to look disapproving. ‘So do I need to stay?’

The usher lifted his watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time.

‘Sir Bentley has said he will wait until eleven before postponing, so that’s another twenty minutes.’

‘Where does that leave me?’ called a man sitting at the other end of the room, who must have turned up while Vee was dozing. ‘I’m a witness in the McCromarty case.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you,’ said the usher, ‘though clearly it won’t begin on time.’

‘I’ve got to get back to work.’

‘Could you telephone your employer?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t have one. Got my own window-cleaning business.’

‘I’ll endeavour to keep you informed,’ said the usher, actually sliding out of the room during the final word of the sentence.

‘Endeavour,’ repeated the man, derisively, folding his arms. He was fifty or sixty, suited and newly shaven for the court, his skin as mottled as if he used a scouring pad instead of soap. ‘This is a lark, I don’t think.’

‘At least it’s warm,’ said Vee. ‘This weather must be terrible on your hands, in your line of work.’

‘It is, yes.’ He sounded gratified. ‘I used to put paraffin oil on them every night, but you can’t get it now. Mac – that’s what we used to call McCromarty – he swore by goose grease, not that you can get that neither.’

‘Was he a friend of yours, then?’

‘I knew him. I can’t say he was a friend.’

‘Enemy?’ suggested Noel.

‘Enemy? No, we was in the same trade, we worked the same patch, didn’t we, so he had his houses and I had mine.’

‘Rivals, then.’

‘Yeah. Rivals. But friendly.’

‘So what happened to him?’ asked Noel.

‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What happened to him?’ The man folded his arms and leaned back, weighty with knowledge. ‘That … is … the … question,’ he repeated, nodding a few times.

‘And what’s the answer?’ asked Noel, who still didn’t know how to play along with these little manly games.

‘Go on, do tell us,’ said Vee, encouragingly.

The man turned slightly, so that he was definitely addressing Vee rather than Noel.

‘Well, I clean at four, six, eight, fourteen and twenty Wintergreen Terrace every other Wednesday, though it should be every week now, there’s that much filth in the air. We have a joke about it – there’s either no windows, or you can’t see through the ones you’ve got. Anyhow, Mac does the other side of the street on the same day, and then my next call is Myddleton Square and he goes on to Fairleigh Crescent. So on this particular day, I finished ahead of him, and I’d only walked a hundred yards when there was a bang and a whoosh and I was face-down in a hole.’

‘A rocket?’ asked Vee.

He nodded. ‘It landed smack in the centre of the road just at the end of Wintergreen Terrace. Water-main burst, all the roofs off, but no one dead. They thought.’