The superior smile had disappeared from his face, and I suddenly felt like bounding out of bed.

O’Neal gave a fat little snort. ‘McCluskey and Woolf are one and the same man?’ he said, his voice cracking into a falsetto. ‘Are you entirely sane?’

Solomon looked to me for confirmation.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ I said. ‘Woolf is the man who approached me inAmsterdam, and asked me to kill a man called Woolf.’

The colour had now completely dribbled out of O’Neal’s face. He looked like a man who’s just realised that he’s posted a love letter in the wrong envelope.

‘But that’s not possible,’ he stammered. ‘I mean, it makesnosense.’

‘Which doesn’t mean it’s not possible,’ I said.

But O’Neal wasn’t really hearing anything now. He was in an awful state. So I pushed on for Solomon’s benefit.

‘I know I’m only the parlour maid,’ I said, ‘and it’s not my place to speak, but this is how my theory goes. Woolf knows that there are some parties around the globe who would like him to cease living. He does the usual sort of thing, buys a dog, hires a bodyguard, doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going until he’s already got there, but,’ and I could see O’Neal shake himself into concentrating, ‘he knows that that isn’t enough. The people who want him dead are very keen, very professional, and sooner or later they’ll poison the dog and bribe the bodyguard. So he has a choice.’

O’Neal was staring at me. He suddenly realised that his mouth was open, and shut it with a snap.

‘Yes?’

‘He can either take the war to them,’ I said, ‘which for all we know, may not be feasible. Or he can ride the punch.’ Solomon was chewing his lip. And he was right to, because this was all sounding terrible. But it was better than anything they could come up with just now. ‘He finds someone who he knows isn’t going to accept the job, and he gives them the job. He lets it be known that a contract is out on his own life, and hopes that his real enemies will slow up for a while because they think that the job will get done anyway without them having to take any risks or spend any money.’

Solomon was back on Post Office Tower duty, and O’Neal was frowning.

‘Do you really believe that?’ he said. ‘I mean, do you think that’s possible?’ I could see that he was desperate for a handle, any handle, even if it came off with the first flush.

‘Yes, I think it’s possible. No, I don’t believe it. But I’m recovering from a gunshot wound, and it’s the best I can do.’ O’Neal started to pace the floor, runninghis hands through his hair. The heat in the room was getting to him too, but he didn’t have time to get rid of his coat.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘somebody may want Woolf dead. I can’t pretend that Her Majesty’s government would be heartbroken if he walked under a bus tomorrow. Granted, his enemies may be considerable, and normal precautions useless. So far, so good. Yes, he can’t take the war to them,’ O’Neal rather liked that phrase, I could tell, ‘so he puts out a fake contract on himself. But that doesn’t work.’ O’Neal stopped pacing and looked at me. ‘I mean, how could he be sure it would be fake? How could he know that you wouldn’t go through with it?’

I looked at Solomon, and he knew I was looking at him, but he didn’t look back.

‘I’ve been asked before,’ I said. ‘Offered a lot more money. I said no. Maybe he knew that.’

O’Neal suddenly remembered how much he disliked me. ‘Have you always said no?’ I stared back at O’Neal, as coolly as I could. ‘I mean, maybe you’ve changed,’ he said. ‘Maybe you suddenly need the money. It’s a ridiculous risk.’ I shrugged, and my armpit hurt.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘He had the bodyguard, and at least with me he knew where the threat would come from. Rayner was hanging around me for days before I got into the house.’

‘But you went to the house, Lang. You actually…’

‘I went there to warn him. I thought it was a neighbourly thing to do.’

‘All right. All right.’ O’Neal got stuck into some more pacing. ‘Now how does he "let it be known" that this contract is out? I mean, does he write it on lavatory walls, put an advertisement in theStandard, what?’

‘Well, you knew about it.’ I was starting to get tired now. I wanted sleep and maybe even a plate of something brown and foul-smelling.

‘We are not his enemies, Mr Lang,’ said O’Neal. ‘Notinthat sense, at any rate.’

‘So how did you find out that I was supposedly after him?’ O’Neal stopped, and I could see him thinking that he’d already said whole volumes too much to me. He looked over at Solomon crossly, blaming him for not being a good enough chaperon. Solomon was a picture of calm.

‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t tell him that, Mr O’Neal,’ he said. ‘He’s had a bullet through his chest through no fault of his own. Might make it heal quicker if he knows why it happened.’

O’Neal took a moment to digest this, and then turned to me.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We received the information about your meeting with McCluskey, or Woolf…’ He was hating this. ‘We received this information from the Americans.’

The door opened and a nurse came in. She might have been the one who patted my hand when I first woke up, but I couldn’t swear to it. She looked straight through Solomon and O’Neal, and came over to fiddle with my pillows, plumping them up, pushing them about, making them considerably less comfortable than they had been. I looked up at O’Neal.

‘Do you mean the CIA?’

Solomon smiled, and O’Neal nearly wet himself. The nurse didn’t even flicker.

Six

The hour is come, but not the man.

WALTER SCOTT

I was in hospital for seven meals, however long that is. I watched television, took painkillers, tried to do all the half finished crosswords in the back numbers ofWoman’s Own.And asked myself a lot of questions.

For a start, what was I doing? Why was I getting in the way of bullets, fired by people I didn’t know, for reasons I didn’t understand? What was in it for me? What was in it for Woolf? What was in it for O’Neal and Solomon? Why were the crosswords half-finished? Had the patients got better, or died, before completing them? Had they come into hospital to have half their brain removed, and was this the proof of the surgeon’s skill? Who had ripped the covers off these magazines and why? Can the answer to ‘Not a woman (3)’ really be ‘man’?

And why, above all, was there a picture of Sarah Woolf pasted on the inside of the door of my mind, so that whenever I yanked it open, to think of anything - afternoon television, smoking a cigarette in the lavatory at the end of the ward, scratching an itchy toe - there she was, smiling and scowling at me simultaneously? I mean, for the hundredth time, this was a woman I was quite definitely not in love with.