"You've done it now, haven't you?" Maxim said.

Farthing straightened up painfully. "I said I didn't mean to shoot you. I was just trying to get arrested."

"Last time it was something like football hooliganism. This time it has to be attempted murder. There's a big difference. You committed it while out on bail so you won't get bailed for this one. And you won't get any suspended sentence, either. In about twenty minutes you will be in a cell in Warminster and you will stay in cells for just about all you could call your life. You've probably had your last drink and by the time you get out you won't even remember what women are for. Oh, you may get buggered in jail, if you look clean enough, but Charles Farthing, that was your life."

"I didn't mean to shoot you," Farthing whimpered. "I didn't try to shoot you."

"Don't tell me. I'm not the jury. I'm only giving evidence."

A light glowed from the first floor, a window creaked up and a voice – standing well back, it sounded – called: "Are you all right? I've rung the police."

"Fine," Maxim answered. "Everything's under control." Except the temperature. It must be only just above freezing and he was in pyjamas and the combat jacket. His breath steamed in the dim light, but he had to stay. In maybe five minutes Farthing would become public property; for those minutes he wanted him private.

Farthing said: "I just wanted to… to get into court again."

"It's funny you should say that. When I felt the shot going through my hair, I thought: 'This bloke just wants to get into court, he isn't trying to hurt me or anything,' "

"It was an accident. I didn't want to harm anybody."

"Tell them why you didn't bother to take the shot out of the cartridges." Maxim clunked the three shells in his hand.

Farthing was quiet for a while. Then: "I was going to. I meant to, but it didn't seem to matter that much…"

"You've no idea how much it matters to me."

"Can you… I mean, if I was just firing that gun to get arrested, and… I mean, if I told you what I was going to say, and you know I wasn't really trying to hurt you."

"I'll listen until the cops get here."

Farthing sat on the low stone wall of the porch. "After Warrington dropped me, I went abroad. To Canada. It wasn't a very certain job, they just wanted somebody to advise them on export markets. Elizabeth didn't come with me, and that was about the end of the marriage. After I'd been there nine months, something like that, I got hepatitis, you know, liver trouble. They thought it might have been cirrhosis – well, I had been drinking a lot. And I was in the same ward as this Bob Bruckshaw."

He took out a packet of cigarettes and then asked: "Is it all right if…"

"Ask your doctor."

Farthing lit a cigarette. "But this chap Bob, he really did have it. The way he was swelling up, I mean… it was splitting his pyjamas. He'd come from Yorkshire, too, so we were talking. He wasn't very bright by then, but… he said about this Professor Tyler. He'd been with him in the war, he said, and he knew something about him that he said had spoiled his whole life. That was why he'd left England. He gave me this letter."

"What letter?"

"The one he gave me. He said it wasn't fair that Tyler had gone on and become a professor and written famous books and all that. He wanted me to get this letter to somebody back in England."

"And did you".

"Yes. When I came out of hospital I'd lost my job, so I came back to England. I found out where this man was and I posted it to him."

"What happened to the man in hospital?-Bruckshaw."

"Bob died just two days after he gave me the letter."

"Did he tell you what was in it?" Maxim's voice was beginning to shiver as much as the rest of himself.

"No. He said he was too ashamed. He'd have to explain it to God soon enough. He became a Catholic in hospital, at the end."

"Did you read the letter?"

"No I didn't."

Far down the empty road, the police car sounded its pointless hee-haw.

"Who was the letter to?"

"D'you mean you don't know?" Farthing's voice came alive. "After you people had him framed and he killed himself and then what happened to the letter? You tell me!"

"I don't know who the hell you're talking about."

"Your Mr Jackaman at the Mine of Dung."

"Never heard of him."

The outburst bad drained Farthing's aggression. He began to cry silently, his wet face glinting in the thin light from the windows above. Up there, the murmur of voices blended in the growing hum of the police car.

"And so," Maxim said, "you are going to stand up in court and say that somebody now dead knew something you don't know about Professor Tyler and it's in a letter to another man who's dead and you don't know where the letter is? Have I got that right?"

"I promised Bob," Farthing said sulkily. "And I said I'd make sure Mr Jackaman had got the letter… and I didn't. I didn't make sure. He couldn't write back because I hadn't given him an address, but I could have rung him up. I promised Bob."

"Get yourself together." The headlights glowed very close down the road.

"What are you going to tell the police?" Farthing asked.

"What are you going to say when you get into court?"

After a moment, Farthing muttered: "Nothing."

"All right. You fired in the air. And I'll do what I can to look into this letter and Jackaman – do you believe me?"

Farthing grunted.

"And do you also believe that if you speak up in court I will one way or another make the rest of your life very unpleasant indeed for you?"

"Yes." He sounded convinced of that, at any rate.

"Good." Maxim sat down on the opposite wall, still holding the pistol and still watching Farthing instead of the sudden blaze of light from the police car as it dashed onto the gravel drive.

"Oh God," Farthing began, muttering the old soldier's bitter and blasphemous prayer; "if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul."

"Shut up." It was still going to be a long night, but at least Maxim could now put some clothes on. In all his life, he had never been so cold.

It was a very long night indeed – or a very short one, depending on which way you looked at it. Maxim flatly refused to leave Tyler and go back to Warminster with the police, or to hand over his revolver for some vague forensic reason. George had to be rung up. Tyler had to be moved to a new room because of the broken lock, and the landlord had to be assured that somebody would pay for it. Brock quickly offered to. Statements had to be taken, and the police – who were now far from certain that the world was a better and brighter place for having a Major Harry Maxim in it – had to be persuaded not to take one from Tyler, since his version of 'on hearing what sounded to me like gunshots' wouldn't really be better than anybody else's rendering.

Behind the scenes, the lady with the lipstick decor vanished like (and probably with) the morning mist, never even getting a mention. At last, Maxim flopped back into bed, setting his alarm clock for eight-thirty.

George and Agnes woke him at eight.

"We fort as ow yer might like brekfuss in bed for a chiange," Agnes said, putting down a loaded tray on Maxim's feet. She started to pour coffee for all three.

Maxim tore his eyelids open; it was at such times that he wished he still smoked. Only a cigarette could bridge that interstellar gap between unfinished sleep and the feeling that you might live. It was a small consolation that George looked even worse than Maxim felt.

"What got you up at this time, George?"

"Following up the gunfight at the Warminster corral. And it isn't this time: I haven't been back to bed since you rang me. Oh God. What have they done with friend Farthing?"