His reward for this friendly gesture when Johnson finally left, late, in a taxi, had been for Ellie to say, “This game of squash, Peter, you will be careful.”

Indignantly Pascoe said, “I’m not quite decrepit, you know.”

“I’m not talking about you. I meant, with Sam. He’s got a heart problem.”

“As well as a drink problem? Jesus!”

In the event it had turned out that Johnson suffered from a mild drug-controllable tachycardia, but Pascoe wasn’t looking forward to describing to his wife the rapid and undignified conclusion of his game with someone he’d categorized as an alcoholic invalid.

“Mate of Ellie’s, eh?” said Dalziel with a slight intake of breath and a sharp shake of the VCR which, with greater economy than a Special Branch file, consigned Johnson to the category of radical, subversive, Trotskyite trouble-maker.

“Acquaintance,” said Pascoe. “Do you want a hand with that, sir?”

“No. I reckon I can throw it out of the window myself. You’re very quiet, mastermind. What do you reckon?”

Sergeant Edgar Wield was standing before the deep sash-window. Silhouetted against the golden autumn sunlight, his face deep shadowed, he had the grace and proportions to model for the statue of a Greek athlete, thought Pascoe. Then he moved forward and his features took on detail, and you remembered that if this were a statue, it was one whose face someone had taken a hammer to.

“I reckon you need to look at the whole picture,” he said. “Way back when Roote were a student at Holm Coultram College before it became part of the university, he got sent down as an accessory to two murders, mainly on your evidence.