‘You know what a Glaser slug is, Thomas?’ He spoke softly, almost dreamily.

‘No, Rusty,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what a Glaser slug is. Sounds like it’s a chance for you to bore me to death instead of shoot me. Off you go.’

‘The bullet of the Glaser Safety Slug, Thomas, is a small cup made of copper. Filled with fine lead shot in liquid teflon.’ He waited for me to take this in, knowing I would know what it meant. ‘On impact, the Glaser is guaranteed to dump ninety-five per cent of its energy on the target. No shoot throughs, no ricochets, just a lot of knocking down.’ He paused, and took a sip of whisky. ‘Big, big holes in your body.’

We must have stayed like that for quite a while. Barnes tasting whisky, me tasting life. I could feel myself sweating and my shoulder blades started to itch.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Maybe I won’t try and kill you just at the moment.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Barnes after a long while, but the Colt didn’t move.

‘Putting a big hole in my body isn’t going to help you much.’

‘ Ain’t gonnahurt me much either.’

‘I need to speak to her, Barnes,’ I said. ‘She’s why I’m here. If I don’t speak to her, there’s no point to any of this.’ Another couple of hundred years went by, and then I started thinking that Barnes was smiling. But I didn’t know why, or when he’d begun. It was like sitting in a cinema before the main feature, trying to work out whether the lights really were going down.

And then it hit me. Or caressed me, rather. Nina Ricci’s Fleur de Fleurs, one part per billion.

We were down on the river bank. Just the two of us. The Carls paced somewhere, but Barnes had told them to keep their distance and they did. The moon was out and it spilt across the water towards where we sat, lighting her face with a milky glow.

Sarah looked terrible and wonderful. She’d lost some weight, and she’d been crying more than was good for her. They’d told her that her father was dead twelve hours before, and at that moment I wanted to put my arm round her more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything. But it wouldn’t have been right. I don’t know why.

We sat in silence for a while, looking out over the water. The cabin-cruisers had switched off their lights, and the ducks had turned in long ago. Either side of the moon stain, the river was black and quiet.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Yeah,’ I said.

There was another long silence, as we thought about what had to be said. It was like a big concrete ball that you know you’ve got to lift. You can walk round and round looking for a place to take hold of it, but it just isn’t there.

Sarah had the first try.

‘Be honest. You didn’t believe us, did you?’

She nearly laughed, so I nearly answered by saying that she hadn’t believed that I wasn’t trying to kill her father. I stopped myself in time.

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said.

‘You thought we were a joke. Mad pair of Americans seeing ghosts in the night.’

‘Something like that.’

She started to cry again, and I sat and waited until the squall passed. When it did, I lit a couple of cigarettes and handed her one. She drew on it heavily, and then flicked nonexistent ash into the river every few seconds. I watched her and pretended not to.

‘Sarah,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry. For everything. For what’s happened. And for you. I want…’ I couldn’t for the life of me think of the right thing to say. I just felt I ought to be saying something. ‘I want to put things right, somehow. I mean, I know that your father…’

She looked up at me and smiled, to tell me not to worry. ‘But there’s always a choice,’ I blundered on, ‘between doing the right thing or the wrong thing, no matter what’s happened. And I want to do the right thing. Do you understand?’

She nodded. Which was damn good of her, because I hadn’t the faintest idea what I meant. I had too many things to say, and too small a brain to sort them out with. Post Office, three days before Christmas, that was my head.

She sighed.

‘He was a good man, Thomas.’ Well, what do you say?

‘I’m sure he was,’ I said. ‘I liked him.’ That was true. ‘Didn’t really know it until a year ago,’ she said. ‘You kind of don’t think of your parents as being anything, do you? Good or bad. They’re just there.’ She paused. ‘Until they’re not.’

We stared at the river for a while. ‘Your parents alive?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My father died when I was thirteen. Heart attack. My mother four years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I couldn’t believe it. She was being polite, in the middle of all this.

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘She was sixty-eight.’

Sarah leaned towards me and I realised I’d been speaking very softly. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was respect for her grief, or perhaps I didn’t want my voice to puncture the little composure she had.

‘What’s your favourite memory of your mother?’

It wasn’t a sad question. It really sounded as if she wanted to know, as if she was getting ready to enjoy some story of my childhood.

‘Favourite memory.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Every day, between seven andeight o’clock in the evening.’

‘Why?’

‘She’d have a gin and tonic.Seven o’clock on the dot. Just one. And for that hour she became the happiest, funniest woman I’ve ever known.’

‘What about afterwards?’

‘Sad,’ I said. ‘No other word for it. She was a very sad woman, my mother. Sad about my father, and about herself. If I’d been her doctor, I’d have prescribed gin six times a day.’ For a moment, I felt like I wanted to cry. It passed. ‘What about you?’

She didn’t have to think very hard for hers, but she waited anyway, playing it over in her mind and making herself smile. ‘I don’t have any happy memories of my mother. She started fucking her tennis coach when I was twelve and disappeared the next summer. Best thing that ever happened to us. My father,’ and she closed her eyes at the warmth of the memory, ‘taught my brother and me to play chess. When we were eight or nine. Michael was good, took it up real quick. I was pretty good, too, but Michael was better. But when we were learning, my dad used to play us without his queen. He’d always take the black pieces and he’d always play without the queen. And as Michael and me got better and better, he never took the piece back. Kept playing without his queen, even when Michael was beating him in ten moves. Got to the point where Michael could have played without his own queen and still won. But my dad just kept on, losing game after game, and never once played with a full set of pieces.’