'I believe I do,' I said. I'd spent long enough with Dicky and his devious schemes to guess how his mind was working. 'We'll get some friendly surveyor to write a long and fearsome report . . . We'll say it's about to collapse on to the swimwear factory next door.'

'Is next door a swimwear factory?' I said.

'Bernard, Bernard. Are you the spy or am I?' said Dicky, and turned to G1oria and winked. Gloria nodded. Dicky said, 'Yes, I checked out the whole street. I know which occupiers are leaseholders and which are the freeholders. And I know the "use and purpose" as defined by the owners and permitted by local by-laws. You never know when you might want to jump on your neighbors for misuse. I always do that when property is involved. Yes, a swimwear factory.'

'You'll ask for another building?' I said.

'Yes, and if 'Treasury want this place, let them come in and get it back into shape. There's a lovely little building the Education Ministry have in Mayfair that would suit us perfectly.' Dicky looked at Gloria and at me; I heard the ratchets grinding in his brain. 'Is this a tryst?'

'No,' I said hurriedly, too hurriedly.

Dicky gave us his Cheshire-cat smile: 'You both can rely on my discretion. Bernard knows that already,' he told Gloria. 'Your secret is safe with me.'

'Gloria was looking for you,' I said.

'Well, as long as I'm not intruding.' He gave another smile to show that he now considered himself a party to our conspiracy. Then saw the polystyrene box.

I said, 'Gloria brought this package. She was looking for you. It came in the pouch from Warsaw.'

Dicky lifted it briefly to estimate its weight. Then he picked up my Swiss army folding knife, which, when Gloria arrived, I'd been using to pry open a catering-sized tin of powdered coffee. He used my knife to slash the sticky paper which sealed the two halves of the polystyrene box and the pieces fell apart to reveal a large jar. It was a preserving jar, the sort of heavy glass container used in kitchens back when wives stayed at home and cooked things, sealed at the top with a heavy wire clip and a red rubber washer. Its contents were completely hidden by a large label wrapped around the jar. 'It's in Polish,' complained Dicky as he tried to read the typewritten label. Having given up on it he ripped the label off to see for himself what he'd been sent from Warsaw. 'What's that say?' he asked, pushing the label at me.

Dicky said afterwards that he fully expected it to be a kilo of caviar, which he'd discovered to be relatively cheap and relatively plentiful in Warsaw. If so, the shock must have been all the greater as he impatiently ripped away the remaining parts of the label and held the jar aloft. It was filled to the top with liquid, almost clear liquid, apart from a few large specks of organic matter disturbed by the sudden movement. Held so close to the overhead light the jar shone brightly. The thickness of the glass distorted and elongated the shape of the contents but the clarity of the liquid provided a good view of the severed human hand that was suspended in it, with shreds of skin and tendon swinging and swaying in the glittering preservative.

'Ahhh!' said Dicky. His face contorted in disgust and he almost dropped it. Gloria took a step back. I was the last to look up and react because I'd been trying to decipher the typewritten label. 'George Kosinski, it says,' I told Dicky. 'It's an excerpt from a post-mortem report dated last week.'

'With gold rings still on his fingers?' said Dicky, as if refusing to believe it was a human hand at all. He'd put the jar on the table by now, and was keeping his distance from it.

'Fingers too swollen to get the rings off,' I said. 'They must have decided not to amputate the fingers if it was going back to the relatives.'

'This will be definitive,' said Dicky, plucking a succession of paper tissues from the box on the table and wiping and rewiping his fingers with them. 'Now we'll stamp out all this argument about Kosinski not being dead.' He dropped the tissues into a waste bin and looked at me.

It was while we were looking at the jar — our backs turned towards the door — that it opened and the bearded man stepped in. 'I'll take that,' he said, and reaching forward took the jar from the desktop and backed out through the door.

With the glass jar tucked under his arm, he put his other hand into the pocket of his jacket and pointed it at Dicky. 'I don't want anyone to get hurt,' he said. 'You just stay there and stay quiet.' Then he backed out into the corridor, closed the door, and moved away still watching us through the glass panes.

As soon as the intruder was beyond our vision, Dicky was pulling the door open and racing after him along the corridor and out of sight. There came the sound of a shot.

'I've got the bastard!' shouted Dicky. When I got to the corridor I was amazed to see Dicky posed in that legs apart, knees bent posture that they started teaching at the training school when they replaced the traditional circular targets with ugly drawings of pugnacious humans. Clasping both hands together, Dicky was holding a revolver, another one of those old 'Official Police' models, and aiming along the corridor at the fleeing man. 'Come on!' said Dicky and fired, although by the time the shot rang out the bearded man had disappeared down the stairs.

Dicky raced along the corridor and I followed him. By the time I reached the far end of the corridor the bearded man had made the most of his good start. He was a small lightweight fellow, and in an excellent state of physical fitness, judging by the sound of his feet echoing in the narrow space of the stairwell.

I glimpsed Dicky as he raced down the flights of stairs but I couldn't see the man he was chasing. As I got to the next level a shot rang out, and two flights lower I passed a long smear of blood on the wall and spots of it on the stairs. Then there was the sound of another shot. The sound of the footsteps continued uninterrupted, which made me guess that Dicky was firing as he ran and his quarry was simply running. There were more blood smears at the next level; one of them was a smudged handprint dribbling with shiny-wet blood.

As I got to the ground floor Dicky was flattened with his back against the corridor wall holding his .38 Colt at arm's length. His face was flushed and glistening with sweat, his chest was heaving and his hand trembling.

But whatever shape Dicky was in, one glance along that long corridor, which led past three rubbish bins and the double back doors, made every fiber in my body go out to the poor devil who was trying to escape through the exit door alive.

'Stop shooting, Dicky!' I called loudly. 'Let him go.' But Dicky was past reasoning or listening or thinking. The adrenalin was pumping, his sinews stiffened, blood summoned up, and his eyes opened wide. He couldn't stop. I know what it's like, I'd been there.

Before I could claw at Dicky's arm the crack of his gun deafened me. There was a whine followed by a doleful clank as the spent round ricocheted and hit a metal bin. It was the subsequent shot that brought the fleeing man down. It hit him somewhere about the middle of the back and threw him full-length, as effectively as a footballer grabbed by his ankles in a flying tackle. He crashed to the wooden floor with a sickening thud that would have hospitalized most men.

The jar flew from his clasp, went tumbling through the air and smashed against the wall, so that a sudden smell of ether and formaldehyde was added to the faint smell of the burned powder. But the little man got up from the spreading puddle of blood and chemicals. He staggered forwards a couple of steps and with a superhuman effort of will threw all his weight against the doors. His weight on the crush-bar was enough to activate the fastenings, and the door banged open as he fell through it into what must have been someone's waiting arms, for there came the almost immediate roar of a revving car engine. Before Dicky or I could reach the back yard they were burning rubber on the far side of the car park. The parked cars were in the line of fire and there was only a blurred glimpse of the speeding car as, with horn blasting, it accelerated through the open gates and recklessly forced its way into the London traffic.