"Cameron! Kirkton of Bourtie."

"What's that, Frank?"

"It's a wee village near Inverurie."

"Where?"

"Never mind. Guess what —?"

"Give in."

""Kickoff of Blurted"! Ha ha ha!"

"Stop, I can't breathe."

I've taken the weekend off and spent it detoxing myself, laying off the powder and drinking nothing more deleterious to the system than strong tea. This regime has had the added advantage of helping to keep my tobacco cravings in check. I've played Despot a lot, ramping my era-level into something resembling the beginnings of an industrial revolution before my nobles revolted, the barbarians from the south and west struck together, and there was a major earthquake which resulted in a plague. By the time I've finished dealing with that lot I'd dropped back to an era-level comparable to Rome after the schism with the Eastern Empire and there was even a danger that the southern barbarians weren't so barbaric after all; maybe they were more civilised than my lot. This could be shaping up to a strategic defeat. My Empire licked its wounds and I took great delight in ordering the ceremonial execution of several generals. Meanwhile my cough's getting worse and I think I'm coming down with a cold and Mr bloody Archer never did call but on the other hand the credit-card company wrote to me being nice for a change and hiked my limit so I've got a bit more money to play with.

"Think that nice Mr Major's going to get away with the Maastricht vote?" Frank asks, his big ruddy face appearing round the side of my screen like the moon from behind a hill.

"Easily," I tell him. "His backbenchers are a bunch of spineless brown-noses and, even if there was any danger, those asshole Lib-Dems'll save the Tories" skins as usual."

"Care to make a small wager?" Frank twinkles.

"On the result?"

"On the size of Uncle John's majority."

"Twenty says the margin's into double figures."

Frank thinks about this. He nods. "You're on."

I've been back on naval stuff again today, interviewing people at Rosyth dockyard, which may or may not be closed soon, putting another six thousand on the local dole queue. A lot depends on whether they get the contract to service the Trident subs or not.

I'm a few hundred words into the story when the phone goes.

"Hello. Cameron Colley."

"Cameron, oh Cameron, oh thank goodness you're there. I was sure I'd got the time difference wrong again; convinced. I really was. Cameron, it's ridiculous; I mean it really is. I'm just at my wits" end, I really am. I just can't talk to him. He's impossible. I don't know why I married him, I really don't. He's mad. I mean literally mad. I wouldn't mind so much but I think he's driving me mad, too. I wish you'd talk to him; I wish you'd say something, I really do. I mean I'm sure he won't listen to you either but, but, but… well, at least he might listen to you."

"Hello, Mum," I say wearily, and reach for my jacket pocket where the cigarette packet ought to be.

"Cameron, what am I to do? Just tell me that. Just tell me what on earth anybody's supposed to do with such an impossible man. I swear he's getting worse, he really is. I wish it was just my imagination but it isn't, I swear it isn't. He's getting worse, he really is. It's not me. It's him; I mean, my friends agree. He'll be the —»

"What's the problem, Mum?" I lift a pencil from the desk and start gnawing the end.

"My stupid husband! Haven't you been listening?"

"Yes, but what —?"

"He wants to buy a farm! A farm! At his age!"

"What, is it a sheep farm?" I ask, because she's phoning from New Zealand and I understand they aren't short of a sheep or two out there.

"No! It's for… angoras. Angora… goats or rabbits or whatever it is they get the stuff from. Cameron, he's just getting impossible. I know he's not actually your father but you seem to get on all right and I think he listens to you. Look, sweetheart, could you come out and try and talk some sense into him, because —?"

"Come out there? Mum, for goodness" sake, it's —»

"Cameron! He's driving me up the wall!"

"Look, Mum, just calm down…"

And so begins another of my mother's marathon phone calls in which she complains at length, depth and breadth about some potential new business venture of my stepfather's she is certain is about to ruin them both. My stepfather Bill is a rotundly fit, quietly amusing Wellingtonian who retired from the used-car business; he met my mother on a Caribbean cruise three years ago and she moved out to New Zealand a year later. They live perfectly well off pensions and investments but Bill does occasionally express a hankering for getting involved in a business again. These schemes never come to anything, and usually turn out not even to be serious commercial propositions in the first place; as a rule Bill just says something quite innocent like "Oh look, you can pick up a fast-food franchise in Auckland for fifty thousand," and my mother instantly assumes he plans to do just that and then lose the lot.

She gibbers on while I browse the wires on the terminal, idly scrolling Reuters and PA to check on what's happening. This is pretty much an instinctive journo-reaction, and fully compatible with the equally programmed dutiful-son «hmms» and «mmms» I'm feeding my mum at intervals during her monologue.

I get her off the phone eventually, reassuring her that Bill is not about to sink all their savings into some decrepit hill farm and that — as ever — the answer is to talk to him about it. I promise to come and visit next year, probably. It takes a few attempts to say goodbye — Mother is one of those people who'll wish you well, say goodbye, thank you for calling or for being there when she called, say goodbye again and then suddenly tear into some whole new conversational seam — but I get the final «Goodbye» in at last and connect handset with desk unit without actually cutting her off. I sit back.

"Take it that was the mater, was it?" Frank calls jovially from the far side of my screen.

Before I can reply, the phone rings again. I jump, grabbing the device and dreading it being her again, remembering something she forgot to say.

"Yes?" I squeak.

"Hello, civilisation calling," says a slightly plummy English voice.

"What?"

"Cameron, it's Neil. You wanted to talk."

"Oh, Neil, hi." Neil is an ex-colleague who went to London to work in Fleet Street when Fleet Street wasn't full of Japanese banks. His father served in the Intelligence Corps during the Korean War, where he met Sir Andrew (Our Ed and recovering coronary patient). Neil is the coolest fogy I know; smokes opium and believes utterly in the Royal Family, despises socialism and Thatcher almost equally and votes Liberal because the family always has since Liberals were called Whigs. Shoots stags and hooks salmon. Hurtles down the Cresta Run each year. Drives a Bentley S2. They could have invented the word «urbane» just for him. These days he freelances in Intelligence matters, occasionally for the broadsheets though mostly for corporate clients. "How are you?" I say, frowning towards my screen. Just then, however, Frank stands up and saunters off, Biro between his teeth.

"Well, and busy," Neil drawls. "What can I do for you?"

"You can tell me what you found out about those five guys who popped their clogs in such suspicious circumstances between "86 and "88. You know; the guys who all have connections with Sellascale or Winfield or Dun-Nukin" or whatever they're calling it these days."

There is a pause. "Oh," Neil says, and I can hear him lighting a cigarette. My mouth waters. You lucky bastard. "That old thing."

"Yeah," I say, putting my feet up on the desk. "That old thing that reads like a spy novel and nobody ever came up with a decent explanation for."