Brannigan looked- back at him. The boy's face was set hard as if against the pain of a dental drill. Durrant was the first to hang up. He put the phone down because he couldn't take any more. He got up slowly and took it over to the desk. He looked at Brannigan as if he were an apparition at the end of a long tunnel. And then he knew him.

"Thank you, sir."

Brannigan said gently, "Women – mothers included – are creatures of many moods. She probably liked your present very much. Someone misled her about the price – that's all."

He had intended asking Durrant about Corley, but couldn't. It would be like putting the boot in after his mother's vicious heels had trodden all over him.

Durrant went straight from Brannigan's study to the store-room off the gym. The sun slanting down from the high window warmed the pile of new coir mats so that they smelt and looked like gingerbread. They were the only new items in the place. He pulled a couple of them into a corner behind the door and sat down. He couldn't face anybody yet. Brannigan's last few words were like fire in his chest. He was as near to tears as he had ever been.

Damn his mother, damn his bloody mother. And then because that was too unbearable he switched his mind off her completely and let the force of his pain and rage fall on the man she was with. A photographer. A mincing, mealy-mouthed, – misinformed, shitting photographer. Eighty pounds! If Corley's camera had been worth eighty pounds Corley wouldn't have handed it over so easily. Anyway -• who would give a kid of ten, or whatever he was, a camera worth that much? What sort of daft parents would do a thing like that? What was Corley's old man – a bank-manager or bloody Croesus?

He regretted now that he had gone to Brannigan for the postage money. If he hadn't he couldn't have posted the bloody thing. A fiver for a Keats had seemed a nice round sum and a bit of a joke, too. It wasn't a joke any more. It would be even less of a joke if Corley split on him.

He wondered where Corley had gone. If he was aiming for home, then a kid with any intelligence would have arrived there by now. It had rained during the night. If he had been out in that, the cold and wet would probably kill him. His chest rattled when he breathed – or perhaps he just breathed oddly. When he'd held him down in the hollow his breath had squeaked out of him like rusty bellows and his lips had turned blue. It had been disgusting of him to get sick all over him.

The memory was unpleasant and he switched it off.

He began building an image of the photographer in his mind. He saw him as small, fat and frightened, but getting no satisfaction from that began building him bigger. An enemy had to be worthy of him. Fleming's father was worthy of him. His hatred made him ten feet tall. He tried making the photographer ten feet tall, but the imagery wouldn't work. He kept seeing him as small, fat and greasy, lying naked in bed with his mother. Despatching him would be like killing a pig. The blood would get on his mother and defile her. His inability at this moment to control his fantasies frightened him. He had always, until now, been able to walk the particular corridor in his mind he chose to walk. His own feeling of supremacy had never been shaken. Now he felt used – as if other hands were controlling the power-house and he couldn't pull them away.

There was someone crossing the floor of the gym and he sat quietly willing whoever it was to go away.

A small dark-haired boy with eyes as brown as pennies came and stood at the door. He hadn't seen this one before – or if he had he hadn't noticed him. He looked about seven.

"Excuse me…" The voice was high-pitched – very well bred. His mother would have mocked it as very "refained."

"Scarper!"

The boy looked as if he had heard, but didn't believe what he had heard. "I've come to fetch a rounders ball for Mr. Innis. I think I can see them in that basket over there."

He began treading delicately over Durrani's outstretched leg. Durrant raised it, tripping him. He came down heavily on his hands. His lips trembled. "I really can't go without it."

"No, you really can't, can you? Perhaps now you're here you can't go at all.".Durrant felt his dark mood lighten. "What's your name?"

The child, as still as a spider that is being watched from a vast distance by someone with a huge death-dealing foot, took a minute or two to answer. "Peter."

"You're not Peter here. You won't be Peter any more until you leave. What's your other name?"

"Christopher."

"Peter Christopher – what?"

"Nothing. Peter Christopher. My father owns the Christopher Potteries in Stoke."

"Oh, he does, does he? And what does he make in his pottery – piss-pots?"

The fair skin flushed. "He makes the best dinner services and tea sets in the world."

"He's rich – your old man?"

It was not done to speak about money. "I really don't know."

"You really don't know! You really aren't very bright, are you?" Durrant leaned over and pushed back the grey flannel cuff from the child's left wrist. He looked in disgust at the Mickey Mouse watch. "Is that the best your old man can give you?"

The tears were near the surface. "I like it."

"That's what I mean – you're dim."

"Mr. Innis will be wanting the ball… I really must get it."

Durrant raised his leg as a barrier. "I haven't finished talking to you yet. What did your old man give you for your birthday – a toy duck to put in your bath?"

"As a matter of fact," with great dignity, "he gave me a horse – a real one."

"Oh, I say – now isn't that something! So that piss-pot factory makes bread, does it?"

"I have already told you my father makes…"

"Piss-pots. You've ears like piss-pot handles, did you know that?" Durrant got on his knees and pressed the boy's ears back against his skull. "That's how they should be – flat."

"You're hurting me." As the ears whitened under pressure the child's eyes became bloodshot with tears. Fascinated, Durrant pressed harder and the tears spurted out and trickled down the sides of the tightly closed mouth. He wondered how hard he would have to press before the mouth gaped open and the kid began to bawl. His own pain was forgotten now and he began to feel euphoric. Dust danced in the beam of sunlight. The skin and gristle under his fingers were like organ notes – press harder and the noise would come.

Innis, at the doorway, snapped, "Durrant!"

Durrant, reorientating gradually, released the pressure and his hands dropped at his side.

The child, aware that the door of the torture chamber was open and that the liberator was beside it, began trembling softly from head to foot.

Innis said gently, "It's all right. Fetch the ball and go."

"Yes, sir."

As the child bent over the ball basket Innis saw that his ears under the fall of dark hair were scarlet. He waited for the child to leave the room before he rounded on Durrant. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Be at my study tonight at seven sharp – and I'll tell you precisely what I mean."

Durrani's eyes became limpet soft. "Yes, of course I'll be there. What you saw just now might have seemed – well – rather harsh treatment – but the boy's attitude – he…"

"Keep your excuses until later. I've a P.E. class outside. Seven o'clock."

"Yes."

"Yes, sir!" Durrant looked at him in mild surprise. "Yes, sir. As you say, sir."

"And get out of here and back to your class."

"I was just about to go, sir."

He moved indolently past Innis and out through the gymnasium. Innis, grim-faced, watched him go.