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between?’
    â€˜â€œThe territorial imperative”, as it’s known.’
    â€˜That’s fanciful. Who can tell what the real intention was?’
    â€˜Yes, who can, Ralph?’
    He nodded, as though this was an answer, the strong, handsome face kept empty. Many saw him as very like the young Charlton Heston. Lusting slags, especially, got wowed by the resemblance. And Margaret had an idea that some of them got more than wowed. He said: ‘All sorts of hazy ideas. Bound to be. Imponderables. Ultimately, darling, such gab is useless.’
    â€˜But more or less inevitable, Ralph, surely.’
    â€˜Useless.’
    She could see he might be saying only what was obvious and true. The most frequently offered explanation for the Sandicott Terrace shootings rested mainly on guesswork and theory, not definite knowledge: intelligent guesswork and theory, perhaps, but, also, as Ralph said, possibly fanciful, and ultimately useless. But she felt at the same time that she might have been fended off. Had she just been told in the unspoken, indirect way introduced and refined by Ralph, and accepted by her and the children, that the executions were one of those areas which could certainly be mentioned – could not be absolutely ignored – but which lay off limits as a subject for digging into and for nosy discussion? A special commercial matter best considered mostly private to Ralph?
    But what made it special? She wouldn’t be asking, and he wouldn’t answer if she did. So, where did this leave her? It left her ignorant of the details of the Sandicott Terrace outrage and its background, and ignorant of whether Ralph knew about the details of the Sandicott Terrace outrage and its background – had, in fact, helped create the details and background of the Sandicott Terrace outrage.
    Without telling him, she drove there. She wanted some solidity, some reality. Streets and houses would give her that. She could not remember ever having been there before, though she’d seen plenty of media photographs and films of it just after the attack. She parked about a hundred metres away and walked to the junction with Landau Road. She stood at the place where, according to the Press and TV pictures, the gunman’s Mondeo must have waited. It chilled her a bit to be there. Did he have the gun on his lap as he watched in the mirror for the Jaguar’s arrival? It chilled her more than a bit to think Ralph might have briefed someone to take up station there, or briefed someone to brief someone to brief someone: Ralph was cagey, probably wouldn’t get too near the actuality. The buck didn’t stop with Ralph, because he took care that the buck didn’t reach him. She knew some people called him Panicking Ralph, or even Panicking Ralphy, which she particularly loathed. She thought ‘Cautious Ralph’ would suit him more exactly as a nickname. But maybe when the caution didn’t work or didn’t suit the situation he fell into panic.
    The Jaguar driven by Mrs Shale would have slowed when it approached the junction and as it went round the Mondeo. The Terrace there was not wide. For a couple of seconds the two drivers must have been within a few metres of each other, in separate cars. Although she knew nothing about guns, this had surely been an ideal set-up for the man in the Mondeo. He’d used an automatic weapon, apparently, spraying bullets. He was bound to have a hit, or more than one.
    She saw another factor in this nearness, though. At that distance, how could he have mistaken a woman for a man behind the wheel of the Jaguar – Naomi Shale instead of Mansel? But did the guesswork and theory contain the guess and theorizing that this young man with the gun was so nerve racked and inexperienced he blasted off as soon as he identified the Jaguar, incapable of narrowing his choices any further, and determined to get clear fast?
    An elderly woman came out into her front