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patch.’
    ‘So what do we do now?’
    ‘We try again.’
    ‘What about my hundred quid?’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way to write that off, Mr McKechnie.’ Why did everyone seem so certain that his losses were tax deductible? Were they trying to make it easier for him – or for themselves?
    A fortnight later Salvatore called again; another drop was made, and another hundred lost as Sullivan’s men failed to spot the pick-up, or were distracted for a few vital seconds, or, as McKechnie suggested down the phone, fell asleep.
    ‘Now these slanderous suggestions won’t help anyone, you know,’ Sullivan said. He sounded formally apologetic about his men’s failure, but not deeply unhappy.
    McKechnie was deeply unhappy. He’d agreed to let Sullivan take over the case in the hope of getting some action. Since then, the file on the cutting of his wife had been moved from Guildford to West Central, and that was about all the action he’d had. He’d lost £250 in four weeks, no one knew who had attacked his wife, and Sullivan didn’t seem to care. He couldn’t even go and visit Sullivan because Salvatore or his mates were obviously following him, or had a spy somewhere; so all he could do was sit in his office by the telephone and wait for Sullivan to report the bad news to him.
    It was when Sullivan lost him the third hundred that McKechnie decided on a new initiative. He called West Central and asked for Det-Sgt Shaw. He explained that he needed to see him urgently and privately; could they meet for a drink in the next day or two, but well away from their normal stamping ground? Shaw agreed.
    They met at a drinkers’ pub near Baker Street Station, a large, cheerless place where they never bothered to get rid of the fog of cigarette smoke between shifts; the drinkers relished it mainly because it was so murkily different from what they were going home to. They were going home to wives and children and cleanliness and their favourite dinner, so they valued the pub for its dirt and its smell and its maleness and its churlish refusal to go in for peanuts or crisps or new types of mixers or anything which might attract gaggles of typists after work and disturb their serious masculine drinking. Shaw often stopped off on his way home up the Metropolitan Line; McKechnie had never been here before.
    ‘I want advice,’ said McKechnie. ‘I want you to listen to me while I talk. I’ll tell you everything that’s happened to me, and if at the end you think you can’t say anything without compromising yourself or your job, then I’ll quite understand if you just down your drink and head for the door. All I ask is that you don’t pass on what I tell you. Is that a deal?’
    Shaw nodded. He was a small, foxy man, always too worried to smile. McKechnie told his story. When the name of Sullivan first cropped up, he thought he saw a slight twitch of a muscle on Shaw’s face, but no more. When he had finished, Shaw lit a cigarette to add to the general fug, drew on it a few times, and then spoke without looking at McKechnie. It was as if he were avoiding responsibility for his words, as if McKechnie were simply overhearing him in a pub.
    ‘Let’s say that I appreciate your problem. Let’s say that it could have happened before. Let’s say that once a case is with an officer of a certain rank, it’s not easy to get that case transferred except at the officer’s own request. As a general rule. I’m naturally speaking in very general terms,’ Shaw drew in another lungful, ‘and it would be more than my job is worth to speculate on motives in individual cases.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And nothing I say must be read as criticism of any officer.’
    ‘Of course.’ There was a long silence.
    ‘If we were in America,’ said McKechnie, ‘I suppose I would go to a private detective.’
    ‘You could do that here,’ said Shaw, ‘if you fancy hiring an active pensioner who once used to be good at catching couples on