He walked to the elevator, pocketing the razor. His breathing eased. He looked back along the hotel corridor, half expecting his father to come running after him. But the door of the suite remained closed, and Greg boarded the elevator and went down to the lobby.

He entered the hotel bar and ordered a dry martini.

(iii)

On Sunday Greg decided to visit Jacky.

He wanted to tell her the good news. He remembered the address – the only piece of information he had ever paid a private detective for. Unless she had moved, she lived just the other side of Union Station. He had promised her he would not go there, but now he could explain to her that such caution was no longer necessary.

He went by cab. Crossing town, he told himself he would be glad to draw a line at last under his affair with Jacky. He had a soft spot for his first lover, but he did not want to be involved in her life in any way. It would be a relief to get her off his conscience. Then, next time he ran into her, she would not look scared to death. They could say hello, chat for a while, and walk on.

The cab took him to a poor neighbourhood of one-storey homes with low chain-link fences around small yards. He wondered how Jacky lived these days. What did she do during those evenings she was so keen to have to herself? No doubt she saw movies with her girlfriends. Did she go to Washington Redskins football games, or follow the Nats baseball team? When he had asked her about boyfriends, she had been enigmatic. Perhaps she was married and could not afford a ring. By his calculation she was twenty-four. If she was looking for Mr Right she should have found him by now. But she had never mentioned a husband, nor had the detective.

He paid off the taxi outside a small, neat house with flower pots in a concrete front yard – more domesticated than he had expected. As soon as he opened the gate he heard a dog bark. That made sense: a woman living alone might feel safer with a dog. He stepped on to the porch and rang the doorbell. The barking got louder. It sounded like a big dog, but that could be deceptive, Greg knew.

No one came to the door.

When the dog paused for breath, Greg heard the distinctive silence of an empty house.

There was a wooden bench on the stoop. He sat and waited a few minutes. No one came, and no helpful neighbour appeared to tell him whether Jacky was away for a few minutes, all day, or two weeks.

He walked a few blocks, bought the Sunday edition of the Washington Post, and returned to the bench to read it. The dog continued to bark intermittently, knowing he was still there. It was the first of November, and he was glad he had worn his olive-green uniform greatcoat and cap: the weather was wintry. Mid-term elections would be held on Tuesday, and the Post was predicting that the Democrats would take a beating because of Pearl Harbor. That incident had transformed America, and it came as a surprise to Greg to realize that it had happened less than a year ago. Now American men of his own age were dying on an island no one had ever heard of called Guadalcanal.