“Sorry, sir,” he said rather formally. “Nothing else I can do.”

“Don’t you have a spare cell I could use?” I asked.

“We can’t go offering cells as hotel rooms, now can we?” he said sarcastically.

“Why not?” I said. “If I was drunk and disorderly, you’d put me in a cell to sleep it off.”

“But you’re not,” he said.

“I could be,” I said, grinning at him. “It’d be cheaper than taking a taxi to Kenilworth.” And back again tomorrow, I thought. Much cheaper, even allowing for a fine, and more comfortable than sleeping in my car.

“I’ll see,” he said. “Wait here.”

He disappeared into the police station for a few minutes.

“OK,” he said. “On compassionate grounds only. I’ve had to say that you are distraught over the death of your father and in no state to be allowed to go home. And, for God’s sake, don’t tell Chief Inspector Llewellyn. He thinks you’re up to your neck in something dodgy.”

“Well, he’ll know where to find me, then.”

I didn’t sleep very well, but, in fairness, it was mostly due to having a thumping headache rather than the starkness of my surroundings. Understandably, my night’s accommodation hadn’t been designed with comfort in mind, but the kindly night-custody sergeant had provided me with a second blue-plastic-covered mattress from an empty cell next door. It had helped to make the hardness of the concrete sleeping platform almost bearable.

“We’re not very busy tonight,” he’d explained. “Just a couple of drunk drivers from the races. Bit too much of the champers, silly buggers.” He rolled his eyes. “Friday and Saturday nights are our busy times. We sometimes need camp beds and two or more in a cell.”

I was luckier than the two other residents as I slept with the light off and the door slightly ajar. Even though my cell had its own basic en suite facilities in the corner, I was invited in the morning to make use of the more salubrious staff washroom down the corridor, where I found a shower, shampoo and a disposable razor.

I looked at myself in the washroom mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My left eyebrow was swollen and turning a nice shade of deep purple, while my white shirt was decidedly pink around the collar where the previous evening I had unsuccessfully tried to wash out the blood that had run down my neck. It would have to do, I thought. No one really cares how their bookmaker dresses. The pinkish shirt would go well with the green-stained knees of my trousers.

Breakfast was also provided by my hosts.

“We are required to feed the drunks before their court appearances so I ordered you a breakfast too,” said the custody sergeant.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the offered tray of cornflakes and toast with a mug of sweet white tea. “Don’t have a copy of the Racing Post as well, do you?”

“Don’t push your luck, Mr. Talbot,” he said with a grin.

My opinion of the police had risen a few rungs, except, that was, for Chief Inspector Llewellyn. But, fortunately for me, there was no sign of him as I took my leave of their hospitality and rode in a taxi back to the racetrack.

I walked into the still-closed parking lot two at ten minutes to eight to find my old Volvo was exactly where I had left it the previous evening. It stood all alone on the grass not very far from the gap in the hedge, where there was now a white tent surrounded by blue-and-white POLICE / DO NOT CROSS tape. A bored-looking police constable stood guard on one side of the tent whilst a three-man television crew were setting up close by on the other, no doubt for a live broadcast for breakfast news.

I didn’t volunteer to them that I was the star witness to the crime. Instead I went over to my car, started the engine for warmth and used the cigarette lighter socket to charge up my mobile phone.

I then used it to call Luca.

“Sorry,” I said to him. “I can’t pick you and Betsy up today. Can you make it here by train?”

“No problem,” he said sleepily. “See you later.” He hung up.

I sat in the driver’s seat of my car and took stock of the situation.

The previous afternoon I had discovered that I hadn’t been an orphan all those years, only to be violently orphaned for real a little under an hour later. Or had I? Had the man in the linen suit really been my father? I had told Chief Inspector Llewellyn that I believed so, but did I still believe it in the cold light of a new day? Did I really have two Australian sisters? If so, shouldn’t someone tell them that their father had been murdered? Would they care? Did they know about me? And were their names Talbot or Grady? Or something else entirely?

I pulled the copy of the driver’s license from my trouser pocket and looked at the black-and-white photograph of my father. He had looked straight into the camera, and it seemed that his eyes were staring into my soul. Alan Charles Grady, the license read, of 312 Macpherson Street, Carlton North, Victoria 3054. I wondered what his home was like. There was so much I didn’t know.

I also wondered, as I had done for much of my sleepless night, if the sergeant had been right and the purpose of the attack had been specifically to do my father harm rather than to rob me. I realized that I still thought of him as my father, so that, at least, answered one of my questions. But why would anyone do him harm, let alone murder him?

“Where is the money?” the murderer had hissed at him. I had thought at the time that he meant the money from the bookmaking. But did he? Was there some other money that my father had had? Or owed? The police had shown me the total contents of his pockets. Other than the driver’s license and the credit cards with the name Grady on them, there had been a return ticket from Ascot to Waterloo, a packet of boiled sweets, the TRUST TEDDY TALBOT betting slip I had given him myself and about thirty pounds in cash. Surely that wasn’t enough to kill for.

“Be very careful,” my father had said to me as he lay dying on the grass where the white tent now stood. “Be very careful of everyone.”

But who in particular, I pondered. I glanced around me as if there might have been somebody creeping up on me. But I was still alone in the parking lot, save for the police guard at the tent and the TV crew, who were now packing up their equipment, the broadcast over.

I called Sophie. Rather, I tried to, but she wouldn’t answer her phone. She was cross with me. She had told me so at great length when I had telephoned her from Wexham Park Hospital to say I wasn’t coming to see her. I had thought about what I should say and had decided not to mention the sudden appearance of a living father in my life followed by his equally sudden permanent removal. Stress caused by unexpected situations did nothing for her condition and could bring on a severe bout of depression. Currently she was improving, and I was hopeful that she would soon be coming home, until the next attack.

Sophie rode a roller-coaster life with great peaks of mania followed by deep troughs of despair, every cycle seemingly taking her higher and lower than ever before. Between the extremities there were generally periods of calm, rational behavior. These were the good times when we were able to lead a fairly normal married life. Sadly, they were becoming rarer, and shorter.

“Have you been drinking again?” she’d asked accusingly.

I wasn’t an alcoholic. In fact, quite the reverse. I had never drunk to excess, except perhaps an excess of Diet Coke. But Sophie, in her irrational mind, believed absolutely that I lived for alcohol. However, her obsession was probably good for my health, as I now rarely touched the stuff. It made for a quieter life.

I’d had a single beer four hours previously, but I had still promised her that I hadn’t touched a drop. She wouldn’t be convinced.

“You’re always drinking,” she had gone on at full volume down the line. “You won’t come and see me because you’re drunk. Admit it.”