Ridger walked purposefully across and rapped on the counter, I following him more slowly.

No one came. Ridger rapped again, louder and longer, and was presently rewarded by a youngish fair-haired man coming through another swinging door at the back of the bar area, sweating visibly and struggling into a white jacket.

'Give us a chance,' he said crossly. 'We've only been open five minutes.' He wiped his damp forehead with his fingers and buttoned his coat. 'What can I get you?'

'Is the restaurant open?' I said.

'What? Not yet. They don't start serving before twelve.'

'And the wine waiter, would he be here?'

The barman looked at the clock and shook his head. 'What do you want him for? Whatever drinks you want, I'll get them.'

'The wine list,' I said humbly. 'Could I see it?'

He shrugged, reached under the bar, and produced a padded crimson folder. 'Help yourself,' he said, handing it across.

He was not actively rude, I thought, just thrown off the rails by the boss's demise. Practised, a touch effeminate, with unfortunate pimples and a silver identification bracelet inscribed with 'Tom'. I could feel Ridger beginning to bristle beside me, so I said mildly, 'Could I have a scotch, please?'

The barman gave a half-exasperated glance at the wine list in my hand but turned away and thrust a regulation glass against the optic measure on a standard-sized bottle of Bell's.

'Something for you?' I said to Ridger.

'Tomato juice. Without Worcester sauce.'

The barman put my whisky on the counter. 'Anything in yours?' he asked.

'No, thanks.'

I paid for the two drinks and we went to sit at one of the tables furthest away from the bar.

'This isn't what we came for,' Ridger said protestingly.

'First things first,' I said, smelling the whisky. 'Start at the bottom and work up. Good wine-tasting tactics.'

'But...' He thought better of it, and shrugged. 'All right, then. Your way. But don't take too long.'

I sucked a very small amount of whisky into my mouth and let it wander back over my tongue. One can't judge whisky with the taste buds at the tip, up by the front teeth, but only along the sides of the tongue and at the back, and I let everything that was there in the way of flavour develop to the full before I swallowed, and then waited a while for the aftertaste.

'Well?' said Ridger. 'What now?'

'For a start,' I said. 'This isn't Bell's.'

Ridger looked unexpectedly startled. 'Are you sure?'

'Do you know anything about whisky?' I asked.

'No. I'm a beer man, myself. Drink the odd whisky and ginger now and then, that's all.'

'Do you want to know?' I flicked a finger at the glass. 'I mean, shall I explain?'

'Will it take long?'

'No.'

'Go on, then.'

'Scotch whisky is made of barley,' I said. 'You can malt barley, like is done for beer. You let the grains start to grow, to form shoots about an inch or two long. Then for whisky you smoke the shoots, which are called malts, over burning peat, until they pick up the peat and smoke flavours and are crisp. Then you make a mash of the malts with water and let it ferment, then you distil it and put the distillation in wooden casks to age for several years, and that's pure malt whisky, full of overtones of various tastes.'

'Right,' Ridger said, nodding, his crisp hair-cut clearly concentrating.

'It's much cheaper,' I said, 'to make the barley into a mash without going through the malting and smoking stages, and much quicker because the aging process is years shorter, and that sort of whisky is called grain whisky and is a great deal plainer on the tongue.'

'O.K.' he said. 'Go on.'

'Good standard scotches like Bell's are a mixture of malt and grain whiskies. The more malt, the more varied and subtle the flavour. This in this glass has very little or no malt, which doesn't matter at all if you want to mix it with ginger, because you'd kill the malt flavour anyway.'

Ridger looked round the empty room. 'With this place full, with smoke and perfume and ginger ale, who's to know the difference?'

'It would take a brave man,' I said, smiling.

'What next, then?'

'We might hide the scotch in your tomato juice.' I poured the one into the other, to his horror. 'I can't drink it,' I explained. 'Do you want a drunk expert? No good at all.'

'I suppose not,' he said, weakly for him, and I went over to the bar and asked the barman if he had any malts.

'Sure,' he said, waving a hand along a row of bottles. 'Glenfiddich, down at the other end there.'

'Mm,' I said doubtfully. 'Do you have any Laphroaig?'

'La-what?'

'Laphroaig. A friend of mine had some here. He said it was great. He said as I liked malts I should definitely try it.'

The barman looked at his stock, but shook his head.

'Perhaps it's in the restaurant,' I said. 'I think he did mention drinking it after dinner. Perhaps it's on the drinks trolley.' I pulled out my wallet and opened it expectantly, and with a considering glance at the notes in sight the barman decided to go on the errand. He returned quite soon with a genuine Laphroaig bottle and charged me outrageously for a nip, which I paid without demur, giving him a tip on top.

I carried the glass to the far table to join Ridger.

'What do you do now?' I asked. 'Pray?'

'Taste it,' he said tersely.

I smelled it first, however, and tasted it slowly as before, Ridger sitting forward tensely in his chair.

'Well?' he demanded.

'It's not Laphroaig.'

'Are you certain?'

'Absolutely positive. Laphroaig is as smoky as you can get. Pure malt. There's almost no malt at all in what I've just tasted. It's the same whisky as before.'

'Thanks very much, Mr Beach,' he said with deep satisfaction. 'That's great.'

He stood up, walked over to the bar and asked to see the bottle from which his friend had just drunk. The bartender obligingly pushed it across the counter, and Ridger picked it up. Then with his other hand he pulled out his identification, and the barman, angry, started snouting.

Ridger proved to have a radio inside his jacket. He spoke to some unseen headquarters, received a tinny reply, and told the bartender the police would be prohibiting the sale of all alcohol at the Silver Moondance for that day at least, while tests were made on the stock.

'You're barmy,' the bartender yelled, and to me, viciously, 'Creep.'

His loud voice brought colleagues in the shape of a worried man in a dark suit who looked junior and ineffective, and a girl in a short pert waitress uniform, long fawn legs below a scarlet tunic, scarlet headband over her hair.

Ridger took stock of the opposition and found himself very much in charge. The ineffective junior announced himself to be the assistant manager, which drew looks of scorn and amazement from the waitress and the barman. Assistant to the assistant, I rather gathered. Ridger explained forcibly again that no liquor was to be sold pending investigations, and all three of them said they knew nothing about anything, and we would have to talk to... er... talk to...

'The management?' I suggested.

They nodded dumbly.

'Let's do that,' I said. 'Where's the manager?'

The assistant to the assistant manager finally said that the manager was on holiday and the assistant manager was ill. Head office was sending someone to take over as soon as possible.

'Head office?' I said. 'Didn't Larry Trent own the place?'

'Er...' said the assistant unhappily. 'I really don't know. Mr Trent never said he didn't, I mean, I thought he did. But when I got here this morning the telephone was ringing, and it was head office. That's what he said, anyway. He wanted to speak to the manager, and when I explained he said he would send someone along straight away.'

'Who ran things last night?' Ridger demanded.

'What? Oh... we're closed, Sunday nights.'

'And yesterday lunchtime?'

'The assistant manager was here, but he'd got 'flu. He went home to bed as soon as we closed. And of course Mr Trent had been here until opening time, seeing that everything was all right before he went to Mr Hawthorn's party.'

All three looked demoralised but at the same time slightly defiant, seeing the policeman as their natural enemy. Relations scarcely improved when Ridger's reinforcements rolled up: two uniformed constables bringing tape and labels for sealing all the bottles.

I diffidently suggested to Ridger that he should extend his suspicions to the wines.

'Wines?' he frowned. 'Yes, if you like, but we've got enough with the spirits.'

'All the same,' I murmured, and Ridger told the assistant to show me where they kept the wine, and to help me and one of his constables bring any bottles I wanted into the bar. The assistant, deciding that helpfulness would establish his driven-snow innocence, put no obstacles in my way, and in due course, and after consulting the wine list, the assistant, the constable and I returned to the bar carrying two large baskets full of bottles.

The spirits bottles all having been sealed, there was at our return a lull of activity in the Silver Moondance Saloon. I unloaded the bottles onto two tables, six white wine on one, six red on another, and from my jacket pocket produced my favourite corkscrew.

'Hey,' the barman protested. 'You can't do that.'

'Every bottle I open will be paid for,' I said, matter-of-factly. 'And what's it to you?'

The barman shrugged. 'Give me twelve glasses,' I said, 'and one of those pewter tankards,' and he did. I opened the six bottles of varying white wines and under the interested gaze of six pairs of eyes poured a little of the first into a glass. Niersteiner, it said on the label: and Niersteiner it was. I spat the tasted mouthful into the pewter tankard, to disgusted reaction from the audience.

'Do you want him to get drunk?' Ridger demanded, belatedly understanding. 'The evidence of a drunk taster wouldn't be acceptable.'

I tasted the second white. Chablis, as it should have been.

The third was similarly O.K., a Pouilly Fuisse.

By the time I'd finished the sixth, a Sauternes, the barman had greatly relaxed.

'Nothing wrong with them?' Ridger asked, not worried.

'Nothing,' I agreed, stuffing the corks back. 'I'll try the reds.'

The reds were a St Emilion, a St Estophe, a Mcon, a Valpolicella, a Volnay and a Nuits St Georges, all dated 1979. I smelled and tasted each one carefully, spitting and waiting a few moments in between sips so that each wine should be fresh on the tongue, and by the time I'd finished everyone else was restive.

'Well,' Ridger demanded, 'are they all right?'

'They're quite pleasant,' I said, 'but they're all the same.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean,' I said, 'that notwithstanding all those pretty labels, the wine in all of these bottles is none of them. It's a blend. Mostly Italian, I would say, mixed with some French and possibly some Yugoslav, but it could be anything.'

'You don't know what you're talking about,' the barman said impatiently. 'We have people every day saying how good the wines are.'

'Mm,' I said neutrally. 'Perhaps you do.'

'Are you positive?' Ridger asked me. 'They're all the same?'

'Yes.'

He nodded as if that settled it and instructed the constables to seal and label the six reds with the date, time and place of confiscation. Then he told the barman to find two boxes to hold all the labelled bottles, which brought a toss of the head, a mulish petulance and a slow and grudging compliance.

I kept my word and paid for all the wine, the only action of mine which pleased the barman from first to last. I got him to itemise every bottle on a Silver Moondance billhead and sign it 'Received in full', and then I paid him by credit card, tucking away the receipts.

Ridger seemed to think paying was unnecessary, but then shrugged, and he and the contable began putting the wine into one of the boxes and the whiskies into the other; and into this sullenly orderly scene erupted the man from head office.

FIVE.

The man from head office was not at first sight intimidating. Short, fortyish, dark-haired, of medium build and wearing glasses, he walked enquiringly into the saloon in a grey worsted business suit as if not sure of the way.