'Tilney phoned me,' he said, 'just after you left him. I know you don't want to talk about it but at least you can listen.' Daisy came limping over with some tea for us and wiped the table down and left wet streaks and went away again and Holmes turned his dark serious eyes on me and said, 'From what I gather, you couldn't have done anything. If you'd blocked off the Mercedes when it came up in the mirror it could have gone off the road and you could have found out it was a perfectly innocent citizen out for a joy ride and going a bit too fast and you could have got him killed. When you realised what that car was going to do you had about half a second to get in its way and you were something like a hundred yards behind, not terribly easy.' He sipped his tea reflectively. 'So what we finish up with is a perfectly competent shadow executive sitting here flaying himself alive in front of his old friend Holmes without the slightest justification, and said Holmes finds it thoroughly distasteful.'

I didn't say anything. He didn't want me to.

The first of the winter daylight was coming through the small high windows. It would be creeping among the trees out there, touching the blackened wreck, giving it highlights.

'It isn't,' Holmes said, 'that I don't know how you feel. I just want you to stop feeling it. If you like, we could go along to a funfair tonight and bash the bumpers off the dodgem cars and get some of that lovely adrenaline out of the bloodstream. Would that be nice?'

He watched me from under his thick black brows, trying to size up exactly how bad things were with me. He would have a rough idea. Holmes is the most sentient being in the whole of this bloody building.