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life.’
    ‘Yeah. And now I’ve got the sod dangling. You could do me an Old Pals’ Act and he would be out of my hair for good.’
    ‘Is that what you’re suggesting?’
    ‘I’m bloody tempted. Except I know you won’t play. And except I’ve been listening to you turning him over, and I’m not so sure about him any more.’
    ‘He’s still the lad with the blood on his sleeve.’
    ‘Yeah, but he was telling his story better. At times I was almost just going to believe him, had to keep reminding myself he was Rampant.’
    I got up. ‘Too soon,’ I said. ‘We may circle round and come back to Rampant. It could be that he saw that job done, even though he didn’t use the knife himself.’
    Hanson huffed smoke. ‘Is that your verdict?’
    I hunched a shoulder. ‘Rampant will keep. Meanwhile I have another appointment.’
    Hanson nodded slowly. ‘And she smells sweeter.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    R AMPANT WASN ’ T LEFT-HANDED: which helped his case, though it didn’t exonerate him. On the other hand, I knew he wasn’t Dainty’s squeaker the first time he opened his mouth. He spoke with a Norchester street-accent, a debased form of the more vigorous Northshire; no Met officer would have missed it, though Rampant had talked through a dozen scarves.
    In fact, Dainty had made no mention of accent: a negative point that was slightly suggestive. What accent, or nuance, wouldn’t register with a Met man? Quick answer: his own. Thus the squeaker most likely was a Londoner, though not one with a coarsely cockney accent. A man indifferently educated, perhaps a rival gang-leader – in which case the snouts should be able to finger him.
    Though they hadn’t, yet. My next move was to ring Dainty, who had no news: he sounded uffish.
    Lunch. I invited Hanson, but he had got hung up with some petty villainery – two chummies who were impersonating council rent-collectors, and making a good thing of it. I took Dutt to The Princess, a cellar-like establishment in the neighbourhood of the provision market, known to me from that early case involving a Dutch timber-importer and his ingenious manager. The Princess had changed little that I could see. The same dimly-lit cosiness and competent waitresses. We had their mixed grill followed by gateau, and the years had altered the quality of neither.
    ‘Done any thinking?’ I asked Dutt.
    ‘No sir. Excepting I don’t like Rampant.’
    ‘You don’t think he came clean?’
    ‘That’s the trouble, sir. I’ve a nasty feeling that he did.’
    ‘So leaving the field open.’
    Dutt chewed and nodded. ‘I reckon it’s a queer old job altogether. I can see another villain putting a squeak in, but knocking off Freddy would be just stupid.’
    ‘Especially the way it was done.’
    ‘Exactly, sir. It isn’t the style of our villains. They’d have picked up Freddy coming out of a pub, not tailed him out to no heath.’
    ‘Somebody with more than a professional motive.’
    ‘Yes, but the snouts would know about that, sir. And we don’t hear nothing. I’m getting the notion the bloke we’re looking for is a strict amateur.’
    I gnawed some liver. ‘Yet there was a squeak. The professionals come into the act somewhere.’
    We ate up and paid. Our waitress was elderly, and my vanity hoped that she might remember me. She didn’t, of course. I was just a stranger, betrayed by the unwonted size of my tip.

    I collected the Lotus and we drove out of Norchester by a route made unfamiliar by one-way systems. The Barge-House was at Haughton St John (pronounced Hoffen-John by Hanson), a riverside village eight miles distant. This too I had known in past times; it is a sort of hire-boat metropolis. But in autumn, when the motor-cruisers have stopped knocking value off each other, it is also a station for pike and bream.
    The road led through a gentle, paintable country of suave undulations and psychic trees, with once a glimpse of a square flint tower to give a fix in centuries. Followed