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kleptomaniac with personality-scarring caused by traumata broadly classifiable as paranoid.’ He snorted, was silent, then said on an altered note, ‘Look, do you think you were wise to do that?’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Go to that inquest. People will think . . . I mean, it’s possible they might think . . .’
    ‘People will think!’ Wexford scoffed. ‘You sound like a dowager lecturing a debutante. What will they think?’
    ‘I only meant they might think there was something fishy about the death. Some hanky-panky. I mean, they see you there and know who you are and they say to themselves, he wouldn’t have been there if it had all been as straightforward as the coroner . . .’
    He was saved from an outburst of Wexford’s temper by an intervention from outside. Mr Haq had glided up to beam upon them. He was small, smiling, very black yet very Caucasian, with a mouthful of startlingly white, madly uneven, large teeth.
    ‘Everything to your liking, I hope, my dear?’ Mr Haq called all his customers ‘my dear’, irrespective of sex, perhaps supposing it to be a genderless term of extreme respect such as ‘excellency.’ ‘I see you are having the rice Ruwenzori.’ He bowed a little. ‘A flavourful and scrumptious recipe from the peoples who live in the Mountains of the Moon.’ Talking like a television commercial for junk food was habitual with him.
    ‘Very nice, thank you,’ said Wexford.
    ‘You are welcome, my dear.’ Mr Haq smiled so broadly that it seemed some of his teeth must spill out. He moved off among the tables, ducking his head under the polythene fronds which trailed from polyethylene pots in polystyrene plant-holders.
    ‘Are you going to have any pudding?’
    ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Wexford, and he read from the menu with gusto, ‘Cake Kampala or ice cream eau-de-Nil – does he mean the colour or what it’s made of? Anyway, there’s enough ice about without eating it.’ He hesitated. ‘Mike, I don’t see that it matters what people think in this instance. Camargue met his death by misadventure, there’s no doubt about that. Surely, though interest in the man will endure for years, the manner of his death can only be a nine days’ wonder. As a matter of fact, the coroner said something like that.’
    Burden ordered coffee from the small, shiny, damson-eyed boy, heir to Mr Haq, who waited at their table. ‘I suppose I was thinking of Hicks.’
    ‘The manservant or whoever he was?’
    ‘He found that glove and then he found the body. It wasn’t really strange but it might look strange the way he found the dog outside his back door and took her back to Sterries and put her inside without checking to see where Camargue was.’
    ‘Hicks’s reputation won’t suffer from my presence in court,’ said Wexford. ‘I doubt if there was a soul there, bar the coroner, who recognized me.’ He chuckled. ‘Or if they did it’d only be as Stewardess Curtis’s dad.’
    They went back to the police station. The afternoon wore away into an icy twilight, an evening of hard frost. The heating came on with a pop just as it was time to go home. Entering his living room, Wexford was greeted by a large, bronze-coloured Alsatian, baring her teeth and swinging her tail. On the sofa, next to his daughter, sat the girl who had crept away from the inquest, Camargue’s pale bride.

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    He had noticed the Volkswagen parked in the ruts of ice outside but had thought little of it. Sheila got up and introduced the visitor.
    ‘Dinah, this is my father. Pop, I’d like you to meet Dinah Sternhold. She was engaged to Sir Manuel, you know.’
    It was immediately apparent to Wexford that she had not noticed him at the inquest. She held out her small hand and looked at him without a flicker of recognition. The dog had backed against her legs and now sat down heavily at her feet, glaring at Wexford in a sullen way.
    ‘Do forgive me for bringing Nancy.’ She had a soft low unaffected voice.