'I don't know,' admitted Pascoe. 'It has a quality… I've seen a few fights, and that kind of…'

He tailed off, uncertain if he was speaking from even the narrowest basis of conviction. If he had seen the film without Shorter's comments in his mind, would he have paid any special attention to the sequence? Presumably hundreds of people (thousands?) had sat through it without unsuspending their disbelief.

'I've seen people burnt alive, decapitated, disembowelled and operated on for appendicitis, all I hasten to add in the commercial cinema,' said Haggard. 'So far as my own limited experience of such matters permitted me to judge, I was completely convinced of the verisimilitude of these scenes. I shouldn't have thought dislodging a few teeth was going to present the modern director with many problems.'

'No,' said Pascoe. He was beginning to feel a little foolish, but under Dalziel's tutelage he had come to ignore such social warning cones.

'Can I see the titles, please?' asked Pascoe.

Haggard addressed Maurice Arany again and as the titles rolled, Pascoe made notes. There wasn't a great deal of information. It was produced by a company called Homeric Films and written and directed by one Gerry Toms.

'A name to conjure with,' said Pascoe.

'It must be his own,' agreed Haggard.

'You don't know where this company is located, do you?'

'It's a mushroom industry,' said Haggard. 'It probably no longer exists.'

'But there have been other films from the same people?'

Haggard admitted there had.

'Perhaps your distributor could help.'

'I wouldn't bank on it, but you're welcome to the address.'

Upon this co-operative note, they parted. Pascoe sat in his car in the Square for some time until other members of the audience began to leave. There were no overt signs of drunkenness, no undue noise in the way they entered and started their cars, and certainly no suggestion that anyone was about to roam around the Square all night in search of some luckless resident to assault and ravish.