'Then how did you know about this… this vandalism?'

'I did not know. As I said before, I was merely suspicious.'

'But what made you suspicious? What are you not telling me?'

'Get a hold of yourself, Paul. Consider. Here we have Drago and his friend Shaun, two healthy Australian lads, and how do they spend their free time? Not racing their motorcycles. Not playing football. Not surfing. Not kissing the girls. No: instead they lock themselves up for hours on end in your study. Are they poring over smut? No: unless I am mistaken, you own singularly few dirty books. What then can it be that absorbs their attention but your photograph collection, a collection which according to you is so priceless that it must be donated to the nation?'

'But I don't see what motive they can have. Why should they go to all that trouble to fabricate' – he puts the tip of his crutch on the copy and grinds it into the carpet – 'a dummy?'

'There I can't help you. That is for you to work out. But bear in mind: these are lively young chaps in a dozy city that does not provide outlets for all the restlessness in their bones, all the buzz of schemes and desires in their heads. Time is accelerating all around us, Paul. Girls have babies at the age of ten. Boys – boys take half an hour to pick up a skill that took us half a lifetime. They pick it up and get bored with it and move on to something else. Perhaps Drago and his friend thought it would be amusing: the State Library, a mob of worthy old gents and ladies fanning themselves against the heat, some boring bigwig or other unveiling the Rayment Bequest, and – hello, hello! – who is this at the centre of the piece de resistance of the collection but one of the Jokic clan from Croatia! A capital jape – that's what Billy Bunter would have called it. Perhaps that is all it amounts to: an elaborate and rather tasteless jape that must have cost more than a little of their time and perhaps some expert guidance too.

'As for the original, your precious Fauchery print, who knows where it is? Perhaps it is still lying under Drago's bed. Or perhaps he and Shaun flogged it to a dealer. Be comforted, however. You may feel you have become the butt of a joke, and indeed you may be right. But there was no malevolence behind it. No affection, perhaps, but no malevolence either. Just a joke, an unthinking, juvenile joke.'

No affection. Is it as plain as that, plain for all to see? It is as though the heart in his breast has suddenly grown too tired to beat. Tears come to his eyes again, but with no force behind them, just a watery exudation.

'Is that who they are then?' he whispers. 'Gypsies? What else of mine have they stolen, these Croatian gypsies?'

'Don't be melodramatic, Paul. There are Croatians and Croatians. Surely you know that. A handful of good Croatians and a handful of bad Croatians and millions of Croatians in between. The Jokics are not particularly bad Croatians, just a little callous, a little rough on the heart. Drago included. Drago is not a bad boy, you know that. Let me remind you: you did tell him, rather loftily I thought, that the pictures were not yours, you were merely guarding them for the sake of the nation's history. Well, Drago is part of that history too, remember. What harm is there, thinks Drago, in inserting a Jokic into the national memory, even if somewhat prematurely – grandpa Jokic, for instance? Just a lark, whose consequences he may not have thought through; but then, among the unruly young, how many think through the consequences of their acts?'

'Grandpa Jokic?'

'Yes. Miroslav's father. You didn't think it was Miroslav himself in the picture, did you? But bear up, all is not lost. In fact, if you are lucky, nothing is lost. Ten to one your beloved Fauchery is still in Drago's hands. Tell him you will call the police if it is not returned at once.'

He shakes his head. 'No. He will just take fright and burn it.'

'Then speak to his mother. Speak to Marijana. She will be embarrassed. She will do anything to protect her first-born.'

'Anything?'

'She will take the blame on herself. She is, after all, the picture-restorer in the family.'

'And then?'

'I don't know. What happens after that is up to you. If you want to go on and make a scene, you can make a scene. If not, not.'

'I don't want a scene. I just want to hear the truth. Whose idea was this, Drago's or what's-his-name's, Shaun's, or Marijana's?'

'I would call that a fairly modest circumscription of the truth. Would you not like to hear more?'

'No, I don't want to hear more.'

'Would you not like to hear why you were chosen as the victim, the dummy?'

'No.'

'Poor Paul. You flinch away even before the blow can fall. But perhaps there will be no blow. Perhaps Marijana will prostrate herself before you. Mea culpa. Do with me as you wish. And so forth. You will never be sure unless you have a scene with her. Can't I persuade you? Otherwise what will you be left with? An inconsequential story about being taken for a ride by the gypsies, the high-coloured gypsy woman and the handsome gypsy youth. Not the main thing at all, the distinguished thing.'

'No. Absolutely not. I refuse. No scenes. No threats. If you knew, Elizabeth, how sick and tired I am of being nudged by you this way and that to further these crazy stories in your head! I can see what you want. You would like me to – what is the word? – exploit Marijana. Then you hope the husband will find out and shoot me or beat me up. That is the kind of main thing you are hoping I will produce, isn't it? – sex, jealousy, violence, action of the most vulgar kind.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Paul. You don't resolve a crisis like the present one, whose essence is moral, by beating someone up or shooting him dead. Even you must recognise that. But if my suggestion offends you, I withdraw it. Don't speak to Drago. Don't speak to his mother. If I can't persuade you, I certainly can't force you. If you are happy to lose your precious picture, so be it.'

Speak to Marijana, the Costello woman tells him. But what can he say? Marijana? Hello, how are you? I want to apologise for what I said the other night, the night I tripped in the shower, I don't know what came over me. I must have lost my head. By the way, I notice that one of the photographs in my collection is missing. Do you think you could ask Drago to look in his rucksack and see if he hasn't packed it by mistake? Above all he must not accuse. If he accuses, the Jokics will deny, and that will be the end of whatever tenuous status he still holds among them – patienthood, clientship.

Rather than telephone Marijana, perhaps he should write another of his letters, suppressing the lability this time, taking the utmost care with the wording, giving a cool, sensible exposition of his situation vis-a-vis her, vis-a-vis Drago, vis-a-vis the missing photograph. But who writes letters nowadays? Who reads them? Did Marijana read his first letter? Did she even receive it? She gave no sign.

A memory comes back: a childhood visit to Paris, to the Galeries Lafayette; watching scraps of paper being screwed into cartouches and shot from one department to another along pneumatic tubes. When the hatch in the tube was opened, he remembers, there came from the bowels of the apparatus a subdued roar of air. A vanished system of communication. A vanished world, rationalised out of existence. What happened to them, all those silvery cartouches? Melted down, probably, for shell casings or guided missiles.

But perhaps with Croatians it is different. Perhaps back in the old country there are still aunts and grandmothers who write letters to their far-flung family in Canada, in Brazil, in Australia, and put stamps on them, and drop them in the mailbox: Ivanka has won the class prize for recitation, the brindled cow has calved, how are you, when will we see you again? So perhaps the Jokics will not find it so odd to be addressed through the mails.