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take on so,’ Cubitt said. ‘All you’d got to do was to come straight across.’
    ‘I had to tidy up,’ the Boy said. He beckoned to the waitress. ‘Four fish and chips and a pot of tea. There’s another coming.’
    ‘Spicer won’t want fish and chips,’ Dallow said. ‘He’s got no appetite.’
    ‘He’d better have an appetite,’ the Boy said, and leaning his face on his hands, he watched Spicer’s pale-faced progress up the tea-room and felt anger grinding at his guts like the tide at the piles below. ‘It’s five-to-two,’ he said. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? It’s five-to-two?’ he called to the waitress.
    ‘It took longer than we thought,’ Spicer said, dropping into the chair, dark and pallid and spotty. He looked with nausea at the brown crackling slab of fish the girl set before him. ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘I can’t eat this. What do you think I am?’ and they all three left their fish untasted as they stared at the Boy—like children before his ageless eyes.
    The Boy poured anchovy sauce out over his chips. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Go on. Eat.’ Dallow suddenly grinned. ‘He’s got no appetite,’ he said and stuffed his mouth with fish. They all talked low, their words lost to those around in the hubbub of plates and voices and the steady surge of the sea. Cubitt followed suit, picking at his fish: only Spicer wouldn’t eat. He sat stubbornly there, grey-haired and sea-sick.
    ‘Give me a drink, Pinkie,’ he said. ‘I can’t swallow this stuff.’
    ‘You aren’t going to have a drink, not today,’ the Boy said. ‘Go on. Eat.’
    Spicer put some fish to his mouth. ‘I’ll be sick,’ he said, ‘if I eat.’
    ‘Spew then,’ the Boy said. ‘Spew if you like. You haven’t any guts to spew.’ He said to Dallow, ‘Did it go all right?’
    ‘It was beautiful,’ Dallow said. ‘Me and Cubitt planted him. We gave the cards to Spicer.’
    ‘You put ’em out all right?’ the Boy said.
    ‘Of course I put ’em out,’ Spicer said.
    ‘All along the parade?’
    ‘Of course I put ’em out. I don’t see why you get so fussed about the cards.’
    ‘You don’t see much,’ the Boy said. ‘They’re an alibi, aren’t they?’ He dropped his voice and whispered it over the fish. ‘They prove he kept to programme. They show he died after two.’ He raised his voice again. ‘Listen. Do you hear that?’
    Very faintly in the town a clock chimed and struck twice.
    ‘Suppose they found him already?’ Spicer said.
    ‘Then that’s just too bad for us,’ the Boy said.
    ‘What about that polony he was with?’
    ‘She doesn’t matter,’ the Boy said. ‘She’s just a buer—he gave her a half. I saw him hand it out.’
    ‘You take account of most things,’ Dallow said with admiration. He poured himself a cup of black tea and helped himself to five lumps of sugar.
    ‘I take account of what I do myself,’ the Boy said. ‘Where did you put the cards?’ he said to Spicer.
    ‘I put one of ’em in Snow’s,’ Spicer said.
    ‘What do you mean? Snow’s?’
    ‘He had to eat, hadn’t he?’ Spicer said. ‘The paper said so. You said I was to follow the paper. It’d look odd, wouldn’t it, if he didn’t eat, and he always put one where he eats.’
    ‘It’d look odder,’ the Boy said, ‘if the waitress spotted your face wasn’t right and she found it soon as you left. Where did you put it in Snow’s?’
    ‘Under the table-cloth,’ Spicer said. ‘That’s what he always does. There’ll have been plenty at that table since me. She won’t know it wasn’t him. I don’t suppose she’ll find it before night, when she takes off the cloth. Maybe it’ll even be another girl.’
    ‘You go back,’ the Boy said, ‘and bring that card here. I’m not taking chances.’
    ‘I’ll not go back.’ Spicer’s voice rose above a whisper, and once again they all three stared at the Boy in silence.
    ‘You go, Cubitt,’ the Boy said. ‘Maybe it had better