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in?’
    ‘Not since he was a teenager,’ Harry said, ‘I should imagine. Not ezzackly Ken’s class of caff, the Galley.’
    ‘Yeah, well, erm—’ Frank said. ‘Right, Harry.’ He wavered, then said to Black Sam: ‘Let’s try the Speedwell,’ and as soon as the door was opened for him disappeared.
    Sam said, grinning: ‘You see ’em in all conditions in my trade.’ He followed his fare out, and soon afterwards the glow of his tail-lights lit up the sweating window.
    ‘Jesus wept,’ said Charlie, ‘what have you been doing to that man De Vere, Harry? You in the habit of beating him up, or something?’
    ‘Search me,’ Harry said. ‘Made me think of my old cat when she get the idea she see ghosts. Well, he weren’t quite as sober as what we are.’
    ‘He often like that?’ Charlie asked Dave. ‘You know him?’
    Dave, from under his black forelock, was watching Harry, who was fiddling with a fork. Dave’s black eyes were brightly inquisitive but not intelligent. From the far end of the room the Yugoslavs were watching Harry too.
    ‘No,’ Dave said, ‘I int never sin him so nervy, like, before. Harry—’
    ‘What?’ said Harry, looking up from the fork.
    ‘Frank fink he know somefing, I reckon.’
    ‘Or else,’ Harry said, coolly, ‘he think I might have a foo theories of my own, and he don’t like the idea.’
    ‘That was an act?’ Charlie asked.
    ‘I don’t know, boy,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t know what he thinks, don’t properly know what I think, neither. All I know is, once you start suspectin, you might not be able to stop in time before you goo mad. Thass the mischief of it.’ He lost interest in the fork which dropped from the tattooed fingers with a clang, and glanced impatiently towards the kitchen door. ‘Ah, thank Christ, here come our chow at last.’
    At his usual table by the window in the Speedwell Commander Pryke was improving his acquaintance with Taffy Hughes, who was something quite high up in the Customs, though the Commander had never gathered exactly what. He had known Taffy, after a fashion, for years, but it was only now, when he was bereaved of his usual companion, that the broad and portly Welshman sought him out. The Commander took that very kindly. There was a reminder of Paul Ramsey in the way bearded Taffy sucked at his pipe and sat meditating over a pint; but he was an older man by a generation, and the Commander, who was older still, had quickly fallen into a sort of younger-brotherly relation with him which Taffy’s great solidity and a certain unwitherable boyishness in the Commander himself made natural. After testing him with certain political observations, about equally offensive to trendy Lefties and Visigoths, which only had the effect of making Taffy smoke with greater enjoyment, the Commander had come off it—that seemed to be Taffy’s silent message—and subsided into the decent bewilderment about everything which was his normal state. He felt sorrow that this reassuring person meant to leave him as soon as his pipe was out.
    The pipe was even then laid to cool in an ashtray, and Taffy showed signs of gathering his large body to rise.
    ‘Nice to see,’ said the Commander, ‘that fellow—Black Sam, don’t they call him?—wandering in here so naturally. I’d heard that some of the rumour-mongers had been trying to make him the scapegoat in this awful business.’
    ‘I don’t think,’ said Taffy, ‘that he wants to be here; or not in that company. He’s been standing for twenty minutes saying nothing at all, holding a glass of fruit-juice for comfort.’
    ‘My wife,’ said the Commander, ‘once had a Mrs Mop who said about some woman they both knew: “Yes, we’re friends, but not
nice
friends.” I should say that a lot of Frank De Vere’s friends have made that discovery. As a matter of fact, I should have expected Sam to be busier than usual, in the circumstances. I don’t think there’ll be so many pedestrians tonight