‘A certain Mr Crad, I believe. No doubt the same Mr Crad who founded The Black Crad Movement.’

‘Oh,’ said Norman. He looped the end of the yo-yo’s string over his finger and sent the little bright wooden toy skimming down. It jammed at the bottom and didn’t come up.

‘Typical,’ said Norman, worrying at the string. ‘Oh no, hang about. There’s something jammed in here. A piece of paper, look.’

‘Perhaps it’s a map showing the location of the secret laboratories.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘No.’ I snatched the tiny crumpled piece of paper from his hand and did my best to straighten it out. And then I looked at what was written on it and then I said, ‘Blimey!’ once again.

‘What is it?’ Norman asked.

‘A list of six names. But I don’t recognize them. Here, do they mean anything to you?’

Norman screwed up his eyes and perused the list. ‘Yes, of course they do,’ he said.

‘So who are they?’

‘Well, remember when we watched that secret meeting, when the Doveston came out with his idea for the government to take over the importation of drugs?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Well, these were the six people present. That’s old silly-bollocks. And that one’s what’s-his-face. And that’s the bald-headed woman who usually wears the wig and—’

‘Norman,’ I said. ‘Do you know what this means?’

‘That one of them might know where the secret laboratories are?’

‘No! Don’t you understand? This list wasn’t put into the yo-yo by accident. It was put there for us to find. You and me, the people who watched that meeting taking place. His bestest friends. The stuff in his office wasn’t taken away to be destroyed, it was nicked. By one or more of these people.’

‘I don’t quite see how you come to draw these conclusions.’

‘Norman,’ I said. ‘Read what it says at the top of the list.’ Norman read the words aloud. There were just two of them. The words were ‘POTENTIAL ASSASSINS’.

‘Norman,’ I said. ‘The Doveston did not die in any freak accident. The Doveston was murdered.’

‘Murdered!’ cried Norman and he whistled.

It was a nice enough tune, but I soon tired of it. ‘Stop that bloody whistling,’ I told him. ‘We have to think.’

‘About what?’

‘About what we’re going to do! Our bestest friend has been murdered.’

Norman opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. ‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Oh, nothing. I was just going to say that it was how he would have wanted to go. But I don’t suppose it was. Yet if you think about it, it was probably how he was bound to go. He must have made hundreds of enemies.’

‘Yes, but we’ve got the list.’

‘So what? If he was murdered, it could have been anybody.’

‘Then we have to narrow it down to the most likely suspect.’

‘That’s easy,’ said Norman.

‘It is?’

‘Of course it is. You just have to figure out which one single person had the most to gain from the Doveston’s death. That will be your man for sure.

‘But how do we do that?’

‘That’s easy too. I sighed.

‘Would you like me to give you a clue?’ I nodded.

‘All right. The one single person who had the most to gain from the Doveston’s death is standing in this room — and it isn’t me.’

‘You twat,’ I said to Norman. ‘I do have an alibi, you know. I was with you in the Flying Swan when it happened.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Turn it in. I think we have a duty to bring the Doveston’s murderer to justice.’

‘Why? Just look at this room. It’s like Ed Gem’s kitchen. Or Jonathan Doe’s apartment in that movie Seven. All the evidence is here for the crimes he committed. He got his just desserts, why not leave it at that?’

It was a reasonable argument, but I wasn’t happy with it. All the evidence was here. The Doveston had left us the clue in the yo-yo, but he had also left all the evidence for us to find. He had also left me all his money, which did make me the prime suspect, if there was ever a murder investigation. And it also made me something else.

‘Oh shit!’ I said.

‘Excuse me?’ said Norman.

‘I’ve just had a terrible thought.’

‘No change there then.’

‘No, shut up and think about this. If the Doveston was murdered for the money, whoever murdered him didn’t get it, did they? Because I got it. Which means—’

‘Oh dear oh dear,’ said Norman. ‘Which means that they’ll probably kill you next.’

‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!

‘It’s not my fault.’

‘No, not you. The Doveston. He’s stitched me up again. Stitched me up from beyond the grave. I get all the money, but if I don’t get his murderer, his murderer gets me.

‘Still,’ said Norman. ‘He gave you a sporting chance. He did leave you the list of POTENTIAL ASSASSINS. That was very thoughtful of him.’

We returned to my office. I sat down in my chair and allowed Norman to park his bottom upon my desk. ‘The six names on the list,’ I said. ‘Have those six people been invited to the ball, do you think?’

‘Definitely.’

‘And how can you be so sure?’

‘Because it was my job to vet the list. I decided who got sent an invitation and who didn’t.’

I gave Norman a somewhat withering look.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Perhaps yours got lost in the post.’

‘Get your arse off my desk,’ I said.

Money being no object, I employed the services of a private detective. There was only one listed in the Brentford Yellow Pages. He went by the name of Lazlo Woodbine. I figured that anyone who had the gall to name himself after the world’s most famous fictional detective must be good for something.

Lazlo turned out to be a handsome-looking fellow. In fact he bore an uncanny resemblance to myself. He had just completed a case involving Billy Barnes. I remembered Billy from my school days at the Grange. Billy had been the boy who always knew more than was healthy for one of his age. Small wodd!

I explained to Lazlo that I needed all the information he could get me about the six POTENTIAL ASSASSINS. And I wanted it fast. The Great Millennial Ball was but two months away and I meant to be ready.

The final months of the twentieth century didn’t amount to much. I had expected some kind of buzz. Lots of razzmatazz. But it was all rather downbeat. It seemed to rain most of the time and the newspapers became obsessed with the Millennium Bug. We’d all known about it for years. How many computer clocks would not be able to cope with the year two thousand and how computers all over the world would shut themselves down, or go berserk, or whatever. But only a very few people had actually taken it seriously and the newspapers hadn’t been interested in it at all. Until now. Until it was too late to do anything about it.

Now it was news. Now it had the potential to spread panic.

But it didn’t spread panic. The man in the street didn’t seem to care. The man in the street just shrugged his shoulders. The man in the street said, ‘It will be all right.’

And why did the man in the street behave in this fashion? Why the complacency? ‘Why the couldn’t care less and the glazed look in the eyes?

And why almost every man on almost every street?

Why?

Well, I’ll tell you for why.

The man in the street was on something.

The man in the street was drugged up to his glazed eyeballs.

The man in the street took Doveston’s Snuff

Yes, that’s tight, Doveston’s Snuff ‘A pinch a day and the world’s no longer grey.’ It was all people talked about in those final months. All people did. Tried this blend, that blend and the other. This one brought you up, this one took you down and if you mixed these two together, you were off somewhere else. It was a national obsession. It was the latest craze.