Mal loosened the flap on the Webley’s holster drew the pistol far enough to feel its weight and was struck by a peculiar sense of déjà vu. Always a solitary child Mal had spent many hours tracking redskins through the woodland around his home. A senior police officer’s it had never occurred to him that he could as well be tracking cowboys; when he eventually rebelled it was of a far more subversive nature. While his brothers took up commissions in the Inniskillings or sailed away to take up the white man’s burden Mal set his sights on an academic life. To his father’s shame he had become a mathematician.

As the last son to join the colours, if belatedly, his father had entrusted him with the service revolver he had used in Flanders (and, it was rumoured, back home in Ireland too). ‘That’s a .455 boy’ he had said ‘a proper man stopper though I doubt you’ll ever get the chance to use it in what you’re doing’. Mal had taken great delight in proving his father wrong on many occasions but he hoped this would not be another. His greatest fear was that he would shoot from the hip, fanning the hammer like Tom Mix. He glanced across at the expressionless Sergeant Morton cradling a much prized and much polished Thompson. Was he harbouring similar fears about Jimmy Cagney?

Mal had brought the sergeant alone through the woods leaving the rest of the platoon with its boorish subaltern to guard their quarry’s bicycle ‘in case he doubles back’. The two men were moving as silently as they could through the dead, winter undergrowth, every step it seemed causing a twig to crack underfoot. ‘We’re walking bloody sotto voce’ Mal thought freeing the Webley from its holster. In the end it was not a twig that betrayed them but a jay screeching overhead as they rounded a large oak.

‘Halt or I will fire’ Mal shouted in an Ulster accent he had not heard himself use since prep school. ‘Oh bugger’ he thought and squeezed off a round at the retreating figure.

‘Good shot Sir’ said Sergeant Morton as the fugitive folded over, a red stain spreading between his shoulder blades ‘twenty yards and him running. Damn good shot!’

‘Not really sergeant’ Mal said rather dryly ‘I was aiming for his legs. Let’s have a look at what he left behind here’. A shabby mackintosh had been spread out on the ground a half eaten corned beef sandwich hurriedly dropped along with a camera and a pair of field glasses; both beautifully made, both German. Not too unusual equipment for a birdwatcher which is what he had claimed to be when stopped nearby two days earlier. His papers seemed to be in order but the constable, a keen amateur ornithologist himself, had grown suspicious. All local reports of this nature found their way to Mal and when the unattended bicycle had been spotted again that morning he had swung into action with an alacrity that would have stunned the elder MacDiarmid.

‘Let’s have a look at what he was watching’ Mal muttered lifting the glasses to his eyes ‘hmm not so inept after all’. From his vantage point he had an unobstructed view of Helton, the field, the Hall, even the window of Mal’s office in the lodge. Fascinating as this was two figures tugged at his attention near the field’s edge, hidden from everyone else’s sight behind a sandbagged wall.

‘What? Oh yes’ Mal answered the sergeant’s inquiry, bundling the dead man’s gear inside his overcoat ‘bring up the rest of the men by all means. I’ll just hold onto these’. Once alone he turned the field glasses again to the figures that had arrested his attention, but they too had left. Although no stickler for regulation by any means Mal was certain that Sally Potter could be court-martialled for what she was doing to young Jemima Crabtree even if the latter seemed to be enjoying it.