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Shaw, the detective-sergeant at West Central he’d had a few drinks with now and then. Maybe he’d do that.
    He rang West Central, and was told that Shaw was on holiday for a week. Did he want to talk to anyone else? No, he didn’t.
    Two days later Belinda buzzed him and said she had Mr Salvatore on the line again.
    ‘Mr McKechnie, still well? Good. I won’t take up all that much of your time. I take it you’ve had your think. You haven’t been back and made your little confession, of course.’
    McKechnie was silent.
    ‘No, of course you haven’t. Now, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do for me. You’re going to give me some money. Not very much money. Very little money, really. Twenty pounds. No, let’s say twenty-five. Now, you go to your bank in the morning – or you take it from your float, I really don’t mind which – and you wait for me to ring again and tell you what I want you to do with it. It’s quite straightforward, Mr McKechnie. Oh, and you can be assured that even if you haven’t done this before, I have.’
    The phone went dead. McKechnie took a deep breath, put on his jacket, told Belinda he was going out for a few minutes, and walked round to West Central police station.
    West Central was one of those stations which they kept on not getting around to modernising. Ten years ago they took away the blue lamp mounted on its wall bracket, and five years after that they put up a new sign, a long thin white one, lit by a neon tube, which said WEST CENTRAL POLICE STATION . But then things slowed down considerably: the grey paint inside got blacker; the canteen plates got more chipped by the year; tempers got shorter.
    Shaw was still on holiday, and instead McKechnie was shown in to see Superintendent Ernest Sullivan, twenty-five years in the force, ten on this patch, a surly, fleshy man unimpressed by all forms of crime and by most forms of complainant. McKechnie told his story – the assault on his wife, the spitting of his cat, the phone calls, the demand for money – while Sullivan shuffled some papers round his desk and occasionally picked his ears with a matchstick.
    When he’d finished, Sullivan merely said,
    ‘Never heard the cat thing before. Heard the rest before. Must take quite a bit of strength to push a spit through a cat. Probably get scratched, wouldn’t you?’
    McKechnie was impatient with the amount of interest shown by the police in the death of his cat.
    ‘What about the wounding of my wife and the blackmail?’
    ‘How do you know it is blackmail?’
    ‘Well of course it’s blackmail.’
    ‘Did the man say what he’d do if you didn’t pay?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then maybe he’s just trying it on. Maybe the two things aren’t connected. Maybe he just read your local paper and thought he’d try his luck.’
    That couldn’t be the case, McKechnie thought, as the Salvatore fellow had known about Barbara, and nothing of that had been in the paper. But all he said was, ‘Not very likely, is it?’
    ‘It’s possible.’ Sullivan seemed keen for the case to give him the minimum trouble. McKechnie waited. Eventually, Sullivan shifted in his seat, picked his ear again, and said, ‘I suppose I could get the case transferred up here.’ He showed little sign of enthusiasm. ‘Shall I do that?’
    ‘If you think that’s best. Whatever’s happening, it’s obviously got nothing to do with where I live.’
    Sullivan nodded, got slowly to his feet, and disappeared. When he came back, he seemed, if possible, even less keen on McKechnie’s presence in his office. If only McKechnie would go away, his look implied, he could get on and give his ears a real cleaning out.
    ‘Well, they’re sending me the file,’ he said. ‘Chap named Bayliss. Said that forensics reported the cat had been on the spit for about three hours. Nasty smell, was there?’
    ‘I don’t remember.’
    ‘Come, come, Mr McKechnie, I’m sure you do. And, er, while we’re on the subject of nasty