“No,” I said slowly. “But I might just ensure it doesn’t work properly before I hand it over.”

“That might be dangerous,” said Luca, grinning.

“You think so?” I asked.

“Yeah, but why not? Live dangerously.”

Or not at all, I thought.

Sophie came home on Sunday, and her younger sister, Alice, came to stay at our house in Station Road to help out.

“I don’t need any help,” Sophie said.

But we both knew she did. The change from institutional life to being at home was a huge step. Not least because there would be no one there to call on for help, for a chat or for a word of encouragement, especially when I was away at the races.

Alice was just the person we needed. She was busy, efficient, loving and free. And I was very fond of her, but in small doses. One week of busy domestic efficiency was enough for any man.

On Sunday morning, Alice arrived-very early, of course-from her home in Surrey and tut-tutted about the state of the house, especially the cobwebs in the bathroom and the unmentionable leftovers in the deeper recesses of the refrigerator. In no time, she had donned a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves and was transforming the place.

She wasn’t in any way angry about my domestic shortcomings, and she made no snide remarks about how men couldn’t keep themselves tidy, let alone the house, but Alice sometimes had a way of making me feel totally inadequate, and this was one of those times.

When we left together in my Volvo for the hospital at noon, the house was sparkling and fresh, and I was grateful. It wasn’t just that Alice wanted everything to be clean and neat for her sister’s homecoming, which of course she did, it was that she, and I, knew that Sophie would otherwise feel pressured into doing the house-work and that, in turn, would make her feel guilty about having been in the hospital. That guilt could be enough to restart the whole sorry manic-depressive sequence all over again. Sophie’s mania had always begun with obsessive cleaning of the house.

However, I was more confident that this time the drugs were doing their thing. But it was vitally important to make sure Sophie kept taking them. All too often in the past, she would eventually begin to crave the manic highs, flushing her medication down the lavatory, seemingly unconcerned and indifferent about the dire consequences and the prospect of another extended period of hospitalization.

She was packed and ready when we arrived. Her room, which had become so familiar to me, was now bare of her possessions and back to its “hospital ward” status. Jason, her favorite nurse, was there to wish her good-bye and to help take her bags down to my car outside the front door.

“Thank you,” she said to him, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you to all the staff.”

Jason looked embarrassed by this show of affection, but he took it in good grace.

“I won’t say it’s been a pleasure,” he said to me. “But Mrs. Talbot has been a model patient.”

He stood by the door and waved as we drove down the driveway, through the high gates and out into the real world.

Mr. John Smith, or whoever, was waiting outside our house when we arrived home about an hour later. As I parked the Volvo, he climbed out of the dark blue Ford that I had last seen disappearing ahead of me from the rest area near Stratford. He had not been sitting in the driver’s seat, so I assumed there must be another man with him, but again I couldn’t see properly against the reflection from the windshield.

Dammit, I thought. I really didn’t want to have to start explaining to Sophie about microcoders, bundles of banknotes and murder in the Ascot racetrack parking lot.

The last thing we needed was for him to force his way through my front door and disrupt Sophie’s longed-for return home, so I marched straight across the road to talk to him. He came forward to meet me.

“Is that your friend?” he asked, nodding towards the house.

I turned and saw Alice lifting Sophie’s suitcase from the car. It must have appeared to Mr. Smith that someone was arriving back from holiday.

“Yes,” I said, turning back to him.

“Where’s the microcoder?” he demanded.

“In her baggage, I expect,” I said. “You wait here, and I’ll go and get it for you.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” I said quickly. “If you want me to hand it over, you will have to wait here.”

I turned to walk back across the road, and he began to follow. “No,” I said again, this time more forcefully. “Either you wait here for me to get it or I will have to explain to my friend what you are doing here and about how I broke your wrist in my house. And she works for the police.”

He stopped. “You told me she was an electronics specialist,” he said.

Had I? I thought. I couldn’t recall.

“She maintains police radios,” I said. The trouble with telling lies is that they get more complicated as time goes on and more difficult to remember.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll wait here, but you have just two minutes. Understand?”

“Five,” I said. “I’ll bring it out in five.”

It wasn’t just threats I didn’t like. I didn’t respond particularly well to orders either.

I didn’t wait for him to reply but strode straight back across the road to follow Sophie and Alice through the front door. This time, he didn’t follow me.

“Who’s that man?” asked Sophie, turning in the doorway and looking back.

“Just a bookmaking friend. He’s come to collect something.”

“Aren’t you going to ask him in?” she said.

“I did,” I replied, “but he’s in a hurry to get home. He said he’d wait while I fetched it.”

“What is it?” she said.

“Just a TV remote that Luca has been fixing.” I went to the cupboard under the stairs and took out the microcoder. “This,” I said, holding it up to her.

She lost interest. “Fancy some tea?” she asked.

“Love some,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Sophie went into the kitchen with Alice to put the kettle on, and I waited a while in the hall, studying my watch, until its hands had moved slowly around a full five minutes. I didn’t want to give Mr. Smith, or whoever he was, the pleasure of having me come running at his command.

He was still standing where I’d left him. I held out the microcoder to him, and he took it.

“Thank you, Mr. Talbot,” he said. “And the chips?”

“You didn’t ask for the chips,” I said.

“Well, I am now.”

“Wait here.”

I went back across the road, collected the little bag of glass grains from the cupboard and went out to hand them to him. He studied the bag.

“Where are the rest of them?” he said.

“That’s all I have,” I said. “That’s all there ever were.”

“There should be twelve of them.”

“And how many are there now?” I asked innocently.

“Eight.”

“Sorry, that’s all I have,” I said.

He didn’t seem very happy. “Are you sure?” he demanded.

“Yes, I’m certain,” I said. “If I had any more, I’d give them to you. They’re no good to me, are they?” That might be true, I thought, but it hadn’t stopped me keeping a couple of them back: one complete chip and the one I had broken with the knife, just in case.

But there had definitely been only ten chips in the bag when I had found it in my father’s rucksack. So if there really had been twelve originally, two of them were indeed unaccounted for. Perhaps Paddy Murphy could enlighten me as to their whereabouts.

“It will have to do,” he said, as if to himself. Then he looked up at me. “Mr. Talbot, I won’t say I’ve enjoyed our little business together”-he held up his still-plastered right wrist-“but thank you nevertheless for returning the microcoder.”

He turned, walked over to the dark blue Ford, climbed in and was driven swiftly away by his unidentified chauffeur.