I Yes, he has finished his sentence, but does that mean he has nothing more to say? No, indeed, not by a long stretch. Here he is, in the chill brilliance of a breezy April morning, striding out into the world a free man, more or less. Whence came such spiffy raiment? There must be someone who cares for him, someone who cared. Witness the classy if outmoded camel-­hair overcoat, its belt not buckled but nonchalantly knotted, the hand-­tailored tweed jacket with a double vent at the back, the buffed brogues, the glint of gold at his shirt cuffs. Note in particular the high-­crowned hat of dark-­brown felt, new as the day, cocked at a dashing angle over his left eye. He bears lightly by its handle a gladstone bag, scuffed and scarred but discreetly good. Oh, yes, he is every inch the gent. The Squire was his nickname, one of his nicknames, inside.

Nickname: apt, that. His name in the nick. Words are all that remain, to hold the dark at bay. For his bright morn is my brumous twilight. Who speaks here? I do, little god, the great ones having absconded. As a matter of fact, he has decided to change his name. Few will be taken in by this ruse, so why should he bother? But his aim, you see, is nothing less than total transformation, and in that endeavour there was no more radical start he could make than to erase the manufacturer''s mark, so to speak, and replace it with another, of his own devising. The notion of an assumed identity excited him, the poor sap; as if a new name could hide old sins.

Nevertheless, he spent what turned out to be an exasperating half-­hour in his cell squatting cross-­legged on the narrow bunk with pencil and paper, like a backward schoolboy toiling over his lessons, collar awry and hair on end, trying to fashion a plausible anagram out of what already he thought of as his former name; but there were too many consonants and not enough vowels, and anyway he wasn''t any good at this kind of word game, and so he gave it up, frustrated and annoyed, and sought for a ready-­made moniker instead. The choice was bewilderingly wide, from John Smith to Rudolf of Ruritania. In the end, though, he hit on what he believes is just the thing. The simple pleasure of being free, or at large, anyway, is tempered by a dab of disappointment. He had always foreseen his release in the jet-­and-­nickel glamour of the gangster films of his youth. There would be a big blank wooden gate in which a much smaller, postern gate would open inwards and he would step briskly out, in double-­breasted flannel and a broad tie, with his few belongings tied up in a brown-­paper parcel under his arm and a tight cold smile notched in place at one corner of his mouth, and walk across a no-­man''s-land of cobbles and raked shadows to where a flash car awaits, with a toothpick-­chewing thug at the wheel, and lolling on the plump back seat a platinum blonde in a white fur stole and seamed stockings, smoking an insolent cigarette. Or something like that, if something can be said to be like something else; the Brahma theory, as we know, puts even self-­identity in doubt. But whatever potential there might have been for picturesque drama on the day was dissipated by the fact that the process of being released had been surreptitiously set in train long before the moment came when they shot back the bolts and flung the cell door wide and withdrew to a safe distance, bullwhips and pump-­action sawn-­offs at the ready--­I exaggerate, of course.

What I mean is that some years previously a directive had come from on high that he might be let out occasionally, for weekends and selected public holidays, on the quiet, and on the understanding that no precedents should be considered set thereby. Stressful outings they proved to be, he would have been better off staying safely inside. Then he was transferred from Anvil Hill, where the hammer of the law falls heavy, to the bosky latitudes of Hirnea House, a place of relaxed incarceration oxymoronically designated an open prison. He had not been happy there; he had much preferred the good old Anvil, where in a roomy but isolated block he had passed some twenty years of a mandatory life sentence contentedly among his mates, his china plates, lifers to a man, like himself. You understand, the word contentedly is employed here in a relative sense; durance vile is durance vile, however plentiful the perks. Anyway, they, we, the collective we, have sprung him loose at last, and here he is, briskly ascending a gravelled path to where a hackney car awaits him, a big black low-­slung old-­style petrol-­burning model--­you won''t see many of them on the roads nowadays--­with a front as blunt as a dugong''s snout, and dented chrome hub caps in which the encircling woods are curvaceously reflected. For we are in the countryside here, among low, sheep-­strewn hills which they have the cheek to call mountains, and he savours the birdsong and the breeze, the very emblems of freedom. Hirnea House, an isolated Victorian red-­brick many-­chimneyed pile, had hardly felt like jug at all, due in part to the fact that until recently it was not a prison proper but a secluded place of detention for the ordinarily insane.

The hackney driver, a gaunt-­faced oldster with a smoker''s yellowish pallor, watches him narrowly as he approaches; the fellow knows very well who he is, since the car was ordered in his name--­his former name, that''s to say--­which trails even yet the tatters of notoriety. Names, names. We could call him Barabbas. But in that case, who is it they are crucifying, over at the Place of the Skull? He draws open the rear door, slings in his bag and bends low and clambers in after it and slumps with a grunt on to the worn and shiny seat. Must shed some of this flab. No salutation called for, on either side. No apology for being late, either, of course. Drive, my good man.

Fuggy odours of stale cigarette smoke, rank sweat, greasy leather, to which medley he supposes he is adding the old lag''s tired, greyish reek. His good man regards him in the rear-view mirror with an oyster eye. "Grand day," he rasps. And I, where am I? Perched at ease as is my wont up here among the chimney pots, enjoying the panoptic view. We have met already, in one of the intervals of my faltering infinitude. Hello, yes, me again! See how my winged helm gleams in the morning radiance. He has a friend, name of Billy, a former cellmate from Anvil days. Somewhat more of a mate, when push came to shove, if truth be told, for in the aridity of those lonely reaches the fleshly fires must be fed with whatever fuel comes to hand.

But not another word on that score: time has long since quenched in him any lingering wisps of suchlike feu follet. Sweet Billy calls himself William now. Went legit and started up a little business, having always been keen on cars. Look here, we have his card here before us: Hipwell Hire Wm. Hipwell, esq.--­Prop. Motors for the Driven And we must have a car: places to go to, visits to pay. Driving licence long expired, but pish to that.

His pal Wm. will see him right. But it turns out his pal has funked it, and he is greeted not by the proprietor in person but by his assistant. This is a decidedly frisky-­looking young lady with a ring in her nose--­fashions, he notes, have turned feral in the long interval of his incarceration--­who from behind her metal desk gives him a measuring look and with a fat grey tongue deftly shifts a wad of chewing gum into the hollow of her left cheek preparatory to addressing his politely spoken enquiry. No, she says, the boss has been called away on business. This is plainly a lie, but she tells it with such barefaced aplomb that it doesn''t offend. She casts a chary eye at his Dr. Crippen bag where it rests on the floor beside his foot trying its best to look blameless.

A motor has been laid on for him, she says, "and here''s your licence, though that photo don''t look a bit like you, Mister Mordaunt." He is pleased, and rewards her with one of his rare and only slightly baleful smiles: this is the first time he has heard his new name, or the second half of it anyway, spoken aloud, and he approves. It has a suitably lugubrious ring. I am thinking not of mort or daunt, not at all, nothing so swankily allusive. What I see is, let''s say, some great lumbering moth-­eaten beast, a moose, or an elk--­is there a difference?--­huge of head and scant of haunch, destined to end up on a plaque on a wall in the hallway of a baroque baronial hunting lodge deep in the depths of some forgotten forest in, in, oh, in I don''t know where. You get my drift. Before pocketing the licence he cannot but glance at the mug-­shot. Faugh! When, where, was it taken? He can''t remember.

The girl is wrong, it does look like him. It''s true, the physical resemblance is poor, but the camera in its merciless way has caught something essential of him, in the menacing set of the chin, in the soiled expression of the eyes. We are speaking here of an inner essence, for the outer man is handsome still, in a brawny, blue-­jawed sort of way, though he is coarsened noticeably by now, in the springtime of his sixth decade. The office is cramped and cosily untidy, just like Billy''s side of their cell used to be. Although it is many years since they last were together, he fancies he can detect on the air a trace of his prison butty''s once familiar scent, mysteriously reminiscent of the salty fragrance of boyhood''s sunburnt summers. He is naturally put out that Billy--­I mean, ahem! Mr. Hipwell, as the nose-­ringed miss insists it must be, firmly correcting him and at the same time biting her lip so as not to laugh--­that he should have chosen.