That was nice. Perhaps I could have both drinks and take the glasses home with me if I asked. The oarsman shot his cuffs and went off somewhere, no doubt to fold up some untidy money. The door slid apart and I went out into the harsh sun. The balcony was got up like the deck of a ship with railings and ropes and bits of canvas draped about. I started to walk towards a man sitting by the railing in a deck-chair about twenty feet away. Abruptly I stopped. He was a picture of concentration, resting his arm on the railing and taking careful sight along it and the barrel of an air pistol. His target was a seagull, fat and white, sitting on a coil of rope ten yards from his chair. He squeezed the trigger, there was a sound like a knuckle cracking and the seagull’s black-rimmed eye exploded into a scarlet blotch. The bird flopped down onto the deck and the man got up quickly from his chair. He took a dozen long, gliding strides and kicked the corpse under the rail out into the bushes below.

I felt sick and nearly spilled the drinks as I moved forward.

“That’s a shitty thing to do,” I said. “You Gutteridge?”

“Yes. Do you think so, why?”

Despite myself I handed him the drink — there didn’t seem to be anything else to do with it.

“They’re harmless, attractive, too easy to hit. There’s no sport in it.”

“I don’t do it for sport. I hate them. They all look the same and they intrude on me.”

I had no answer to that. I look like a lot of other people myself, and I’ve been known to be intrusive. I took a pull on the drink — Scotch, the best. Mr Gutteridge didn’t look as if he’d be nice to work for, but I felt sure I could reach an understanding with his money.

Gutteridge stabbed a block of ice in his glass with a long finder and sent it bubbling to the bottom. “Sit down Mr Hardy and don’t look so disapproving.” He pointed to a deck-chair, folded up and propped against the railing. “A seagull or two more or less can’t matter to a sensible man and I’m told you are sensible.”