Geraldine slipped down under the bench after the initial shot and , from his spot behind the lectern at the front , Cameron could not see much of her , only the whiteness of a cricketing sweater she had regularly appeared in lately , and the grey-streaked , fairish mass of her hair .sx The man with the pistol went to the aisle , stepped up two tiers , jumped on to the third bench and walked a few steps along it , scattering the books and papers of the couple of students between the aisle and Geraldine .sx He stood over the place where she lay and aimed the gun at her again .sx .sx " No , " Cameron yelled .sx " Why ?sx Oh why ?sx " He moved out from behind the lectern , the copy of The Friends of Eddie Coyle , from which he had been reading to illustrate irony , still in his hand .sx The man turned and stared at him for a moment .sx Her husband ?sx Geraldine was a mature student with sons , from one of whom she might have borrowed the sweater .sx Didn't Cameron recall drinking Chianti with this man at some social evening for students and partners in her first year ?sx A plumber ?sx A roofer ?sx " Mr Marques , " he shouted , " you'll never get away with this .sx Why don't we just talk it over like two sensible people ?sx " .sx The man turned back , then bent down as if to get a better sighting of Geraldine on the floor .sx She must have part-rolled under the seat .sx In a moment he did something very extraordinary , which to Cameron carried a kind of sparkling symbolism .sx The attacker actually kneeled on the third bench , his back to Cameron , the gun pointed down in front of him at Geraldine .sx The contradiction seemed to Cameron heavy with meaning - this traditional attitude of subjection , yet also this attitude of terrible dominance .sx In his teaching he always stressed the suitability of crime as a novelistic subject , because of its multitudinous complexities :sx hence today's look at irony , for instance .sx The man fired again , and , soon , Cameron glimpsed a large , spreading red rectangle appear on the shoulder and back of the cricket sweater .sx Again that seemed to him significant :sx this garment of a rigidly formulated , indeed venerable , game now touched by deep disorder .sx He could smell what he knew must be cordite , sharp , pleasant , lingering .sx The man straightened , then walked swiftly , assuredly , back along the bench towards the door .sx Yes , perhaps a roofer .sx He had on what looked to Cameron like remarkably expensive brown fashion boots , possibly even Timberland .sx Roofers made a bomb , and plumbers .sx But how absurd , he thought , to be noticing such things , when a woman lay dead and the murderer was escaping .sx Yet the mind was ungovernable , following its own streams of consciousness , not exactly regardless of events , but only contingent to them .sx He would diary his reactions with exactitude .sx To his classes he had continually pointed out that action , action and more action was the essence of crime writing :sx explicit philosophising , even character analysis , had to be brief , if not actually sketchy , in the interests of pace .sx Yearly he quoted to his pupils that saying of - or was it about ?sx - Len Deighton , the spy author , stipulating that if a narrative grew slack the way to recover was have somebody barge through the door holding a gun .sx And now it had really happened - and , yes , by God , it worked :sx the whole tempo of things had changed .sx This lecture theatre's atmosphere no longer seemed even vaguely comparable with what it was when he had been skilfully elaborating on the fierce irony in the title of George V. Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle - where 'friends' meant the reverse .sx No question , it had been a well-prepared and genuinely felt lecture of very bright insights , but certainly the students had reacted much more vividly to the interruption by the armed man and the shooting of Geraldine .sx In fact , they were still tense , still white or flushed , many of them , some weeping .sx So , then , action .sx The only relevant contribution he could think of now was pursuit of the gunman , who had left the room by the upper door , slamming it behind him .sx Cameron raced up the tiered floor after him .sx " No !sx " an undergraduate cried .sx " My God , Professor , he's armed .sx Let the police deal with it .sx " .sx Yet that was not how these things were shaped at all .sx If some innocent bystander is drawn in during a crime , he is drawn in and has no choice but to become involved , though fearful .sx This crisis was what in Hemingway - an occasional practitioner of crime fiction - would be called 'the moment of truth' , and one could only put one's manliness on the line and hope it was of due quality .sx Cameron still carried the paperback George V. Higgins novel .sx Would he throw this at the gunman should he encounter him now ?sx It was a paradigm situation :sx the pathetically ill-armed , run-of-the-mill , even insignificant man - one of life's ordinary Joes - willing to confront the violent brute , and able to offer against this threat only a farcially negligible missile , plus , though , his courage , determination and the blessed instinct of good's resistance to evil .sx He remembered Frederic March coping with Bogart and other hoodlums in The Desperate Hours .sx Somehow and eventually this good and typical figure always won :sx art's pressure towards tidiness ensured it .sx He felt wonderfully heartened as he ran , and considered it not foolhardy but obligatory to ignore the well-intentioned , frantic , yelled warning .sx Then , as Cameron neared the door , it was flung open again and the man stood there once more , his gun raised .sx Jesus , had all that rubbish stuff about Hemingway and blessed instincts knackered this narrative so badly that the technique of an armed intruder bursting through the door had to be given such an immediate second run ?sx Cameron stopped , horrified , and they stared at each other .sx This was the instant , wasn't it , when a fictional character would think lovingly of all those precious things that constituted the texture of existence - bird song , children's laughter , a modicum of Turkish delight , Mozart and/or Randy Crawford , plus , of course , the clean smack of a ball hit perfectly into the pool pocket .sx " Why ?sx You ask why ?sx " the man cried in a strangely hollow , yet at the same time immensely powerful , voice .sx " Yes , why ?sx " Cameron answered .sx There could be a remarkable strength from repetition in dialogue :sx the strength of incantation .sx " I'll tell you why .sx Oh , yes , I'll tell you why .sx " Perhaps this man attended evening creative-writing classes and also knew about incantation .sx One of the more promising students shouted :sx " What we are seeing here is violence as an outcrop of fundamental psychological disturbance .sx Character blazoned in action .sx " .sx " Come , " Cameron replied , leading down towards the lectern .sx He turned his back on the gun , knowing somehow that this was a gesture which could not provoke a shot .sx It would have been hopelessly outside the mode .sx " We are a university and everyone is entitled to his point of view .sx Tell me , are you Mr Marques ?sx Did we not take wine together , sir , on some earlier occasion ?sx " Often elaborate politeness darkened prevailing menace even further , by showing the formalities of society in peril and so indicating their extreme fragility .sx " It doesn't matter who I am .sx " .sx " But may I call you Mr Marques ?sx " .sx " Call me what you will .sx See me simply as someone with a mission .sx I have fulfilled half of it .sx " .sx " Half ?sx " .sx Cameron felt a terrible fear grip him .sx If this were fiction it would have been an example of that story-telling trick of not giving the reader too much too soon :sx standard in crime writing , where narrative flair was at the art of holding back .sx Lord , what was the other half of the mission ?sx Who was the other half ?sx As to halves .sx For half of half a term in Geraldine's second year Cameron had been banging her three or four times a week , after which she moved on to , he thought , Graham Liatt in the History of Political Ideas .sx The kind of ferocious sexual guilt that waylaid the hero in both Presumed Innocent and Fatal Attraction ravaged Cameron for a moment , though the actual circumstances in those tales were very different , naturally .sx Marques followed him down to the lectern .sx Cameron replaced The Friends of Eddie Coyle on it and addressed the class :sx " This is Geraldine's , well , husband .sx Was .sx We're often left without a full statement of the murderer's point of view .sx Perhaps we get excessively preoccupied with the restoration of legitimacy , the efficacy of the detective as agent of civic recuperation .sx Today this can be corrected .sx I don't know whether Mr Marques will agree to take questions later .sx " .sx Cameron could see Geraldine's body again , exactly as it had been , except that the red rectangle on the sweater had grown .sx The greyness in her hair had almost put him off that liaison in her second year , and had ensured that he did not grieve irreparably when , after a few weeks , she grew restless for Liatt , or some other teaching ram .sx Perhaps he should have forgone even that short affair .sx Regret , vain second thoughts , incomprehensibility at one's own actions - these were the essence of the grippingly dramatic .sx Watching her , inert , he realised she was what Martin Amis in his novel London Fields would rather jokingly call the murderee - the passive figure , to whom something is done , namely death :sx it could be significant that the term was applied to a woman , the exploited sex - the feminist critics might like to mull that .sx Geraldine's body bellowed body language .sx " She was moving away from me , losing me , " Marques declared .sx " That's why I am here .sx " .sx " Geraldine was ?sx " Cameron asked .sx " And so I decided to bring her to rest .sx She is mine again now , only mine , forever mine .sx Reclaimed at last .sx " Passionately , his voice rose to even greater force , easily reaching people in the back row , with which Cameron himself sometimes had difficulty , and Marques lifted both hands in a kind of agonised yet victorious declaration .sx He had placed the pistol on the copy of The Friends of Eddie Coyle on the lectern , within a couple of metres of Cameron .sx While Marques was stretching like that it might have been possible to snatch the gun .sx This did not seem at all the proper way things should go , though .sx Instead , there ought to come a moment - a moment when all the talking had been done , all the explanations covered , all the overtones and wider issues hinted at - when Marques would voluntarily surrender the weapon in a telling gesture and Cameron would shake his hand , look once more squarely into his eyes , seeing only agony and loneliness there , and then take him regretfully but unswervingly to justice .sx It was important to round off matters , hit a note of tragedy rather than of banal force majeure .sx This kind of touch was what produced resonances , lifted even brutal crime to a significant plane .sx In any case , Cameron was not sure he would be able to manage the automatic usefully even if he did grab it .sx It was of dark blue metal , horribly like the tint of a bruise , Cameron thought - upsettingly so , disablingly so .sx But how wimpish a reaction !sx Was this a sign of the essential impotence of the scholar and academic as against the Man of Action - the Man of Action whom scholars and academics battened on :sx historians with Attila or Wellington or Rommel ; himself - Cameron - in this particular course , with murderers , bank robbers , roofers ?sx " How do you mean she's yours again now , only yours , forever yours ?sx " Kate Bilton called from the end of the back row .sx " How can she be yours only yours ?sx She's stone dead .sx This is surely sloppy thinking .sx She's not anyone's now .sx Blast someone's skull to establish possession ?sx A bit roundabout , wouldn't you say ?sx " .sx This kid Bilton had always suffered from a foul dose of literalism .sx Why she was doing an English course at all Cameron found it hard to tell .sx Realising he had to say something to help Marques out of his probably limited articulation , Cameron replied :sx " Death can supply a kind of resolution , surely , Kate .sx