But in the light that remained the man before my eyes was moving. He was cuffing the idiot once again, inches away from me, and miles away too. 'Now do you take my meaning?' said Brilliantine, as the air rushed into my mouth, and my lungs rose faster still. The idiot was back where he'd started from, on the bench, giving me a strange, sideways look. 'He's round the twist' said Brilliantine. 'I'll bloody say' I said, as I set my collar and tie to rights. 'Usually it's me that cops it. He ought not to take a drink. In and out of the nutty house like a fiddler's elbow, that bugger is.' 'Under the doctor, is he?' Brilliantine nodded. 'Bootham,' he said, meaning the York asylum. He then went back to his snooker, with the idiot in position as before, holding his cue, waiting for the shot that never came.

As I saw off my first drink, and bought a second – to unstring my nerves – I couldn't help thinking that I'd been bested twice over by the pair. I sat back down, and carried on with my reading; or at least picked up my book and looked at the entry after 'Accomplice' which was 'Aiding and Abetting', but I had to keep a corner of one eye on the nearby loony, and couldn't concentrate. The brothers carried on their one-sided game until half-past six, when they walked out. By then I was looking at – but not reading – the entry for 'Arrest'.

I finished my pint, pocketed my book, and walked out of the Institute, skirting around the shadowy wagons in the goods yard that lay between the Institute and the Lost Luggage Office (which scrap of railway territory was called the Rhubarb Sidings, I knew), only to see a notice propped in the door of the latter office: CLOSED. Looking beneath, I read the advertised office hours: 6.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. I stood in the rain before that notice, and cursed the bloody Camerons.

Chapter Two