I found myself automatically taking what one might call a memory snapshot, a clear frozen picture of the moving scene outside. It was a habit from boyhood, then consciously cultivated, a game to while away the boring times I'd been left in the car while my mother went into shops. Across the road from the bank I used to memorise the whole scene so that if any bank robbers had rushed out I would have been able to tell the police about all the cars which had been parked nearby, make, colour, and numbers, and describe all the people in the street at the time. Get-away cars and drivers would never have got away unspotted by eagle-eyed ten-year-old Andrew D.

No bank robbers ever obliged me, nor smash-and-grabbers outside the jewellers, nor baby snatchers from prams outside the bakers, nor muggers of the elderly collecting their pensions, nor even car thieves trying for unlocked doors. A great many innocent people had come under my sternly suspicious eye - and though I'd grown out of the hope of actually observing a crime, I'd never lost the ability of freeze-frame recall.

Thus it was that from behind the darkened glass, after a few moments' concentration, I had such a sharp mind's-eye picture that I could have described with certainty the numbers of windows in the block of flats facing, the position of each of the carabinieri cars, the clothes of the television crew, the whereabouts of each civilian inside the police circle, even the profile of the nearest press photographer, who was hung with two cameras but not at that moment taking pictures. He had a roundish head with smooth black hair, and a brown leather jacket with gold buckles at the cuffs.