“But they didn’t. I remember taking the gun out of my pocket. Everything was blurred in front of my eyes, like I was crying. Maybe I was. I don’t remember shooting⁠—I mean I don’t remember deliberately aiming and pulling the trigger⁠—but I can remember the sound the shots made, and that I knew the noise was coming from the gun in my hand. I don’t remember how Willsson looked, if he fell before I turned and ran up the alley, or not. When I got home I cleaned and reloaded the pistol, and put it back in the paying teller’s cage the next morning.”

On the way down to the City Hall with the boy and the gun I apologized for the village cut-up stuff I had put in the early part of the shakedown, explaining:

“I had to get under your skin, and that was the best way I knew. The way you’d talked about the girl showed me you were too good an actor to be broken down by straight hammering.”

He winced, and said slowly: