'… I could tell at once he was very seriously ill…, sent Cade off to find a bottle of whisky … no, Jameson’s … seemed to find it funny ‘… made me swear … whatever was most holy to me…

Oliver drained his wine glass.

‘Excellent, excellent. And the envelope came from where?’

‘Well, a shop I suppose. A stationer’s. He never said.’

‘No, no. He produced it from where? His pocket? A safe? What?’

‘Oh I see. From a small bag. It was on the chart table.’

‘Colour?’

‘Red. It was red nylon.’

‘Any maker’s name? Adidas, Fila, that sort of thing?’

‘N-no… pretty sure not.’

‘Good, good. Your chum Rufus Cade still out of earshot, was he?’

‘Oh yes, definitely.’

‘You’re sure of that? You could see the hatchway from where you were?’

‘No, but Paddy could and he would have seen if Rufus had come back.’

‘Fair point. On we go.

‘Well, that’s when he told me to deliver the letter.’

‘There’s nothing on the envelope. Not written in invisible ink is it?’

‘No.’ Ned grinned at the idea. ‘He made me memorise the name and address.’

‘Which were …

‘I was to deliver it to Philip R. Blackrow, 13 Heron Square, London SW1.’

It was as if a bolt of electricity had shot through Oliver Delft’s body. Every nerve end tingled, his heart gave a great leap and for a second blackness crowded in on his vision.

Ned looked at him with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s cramp. Cramp that’s all. Nothing to worry about.’

Oliver stood up, turned off the tape-recorder and walked away from the table, pushing hard down on the toes of his right foot, as if trying to stretch out a muscle spasm. It was absolutely essential that he remain calm now, completely calm and completely in control.

‘Um listen,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a moment. Wait here, would you? Make some toast or something. There’s more of that milk in the fridge. I need to do a few things. Put in a call. Find you some clothes, that kind of thing. You’ll be all right?’

Ned nodded happily.

Mr Gaine was still wrestling with the crossword.

‘Everything all right, Mr Delft, sir?’

‘He’s a plausible little bastard,’ Oliver said. ‘We’re going to need to do a D16 on him. I’ll go up and clear it. Thank Christ we’re only half an hour away.

Mr Gaine’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A D16? Are you sure, sir?’

‘Of course I’m bloody sure. This is ultra, Gaine. Absolutely ultra. Whistle up a couple of your own, the tougher and dumber the better. You can use their car when they get here. I’ll be needing yours straight away. I’ll meet you at D16 tomorrow morning with the paperwork. Go on, go and call them up. Use the clean phone. Go now, now! What the fuck are you waiting for?’

Gaine headed for the door, alarmed at his first sight in four years of his master looking anything less than in total control.

Oliver stood in the middle of the room thinking furiously.

It was unbelievable, unbelievable! The name and address, spoken clearly out loud into a live microphone – well, that tape was going to have to be wiped, for a start. No, not wiped. London would need something. The flash from West End Central had been logged, there was Maureen, there was that Detective Sergeant.

Christ, the boy was a cabinet minister’s son. There’d be hell to pay if he played this wrong.

Oliver forced himself to take a mental step back and focus his thoughts. The Detective Sergeant and the arresting officers could be dealt with easily. They’d be signing the Official Secrets Act and swearing eternal silence by midnight, he would see to that personally. Besides, they didn’t even know Ned Maddstone’s name. Oliver had come into the interview room just as Floyd was asking Ned to reveal it.

The long weekend was shot to pieces now, no doubt about it. Oliver wasn’t even going to have a short one. And there was the problem of the tape. He needed a tape with a name and address spoken on it, that was certain, but not the name of Philip R. Blackrow and not that address.

It had been a horrible shock to hear that name, but when you came down to it, thought Oliver, it could be looked upon as a kind of gift from God. If the flash had come through just five minutes later, it would have been Stapleton here now, not Oliver. And if Stapleton had been given the name Blackrow…

No – all in all, God had been abundantly good. The boy had been picked up on the street. No one knew. No one knew. That simple fact gave him almost limitless power over the matter. From now on it was merely a question of finesse.

Oliver’s first instinct, almost before the name and address were out of Ned’s mouth, had been to undertake immediate terminal action, but he discarded any such thoughts now. In his world, whatever the contrary assumptions of newspapers and writers of fiction, death was always a very final resort – so final indeed, as to be almost beyond consideration. This was less a question of scruples than of options. An enemy might one day be turned into a friend and a friend into an enemy, a lie might be made true and a truth rendered false, but the dead could never, not ever, be transformed into the living. Flexibility was everything.

Besides, death had a way of loosening tongues. Dead men may not talk, but living men do and Oliver had great need of living men if he was to survive this crisis. He was confident, of course, that Gaine was as trustworthy as they made them, but the long view had to be taken. There were many bleak scenarios that Oliver could project, and many more, he knew, that he could never even guess at, life being life. There was always the threat of the development of a conscience in Gaine, or of a sudden religious conversion that might bring with it a flood of remorse and confession. Old-fashioned guilt-sodden liberalism was a dangerous prospect too, come to that. There was a descent into the bottle to consider, bringing with it threats of indiscretion or blackmail. Oliver had seen Gaine drunk – pissed as an eft, as it were – and while he knew that the man’s head was as strong as the rest of him, he could not possibly be sure how he would be in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time. Given the impermanence and uncertainty of everything, the permanence and certainty of death could prove the most disastrous choice of all. It was paradoxical but true.

Oliver was the kind of man who had never understood the status accorded to Hamlet. For him, thought and action were one and the same thing. Even as he went upstairs to search the bedroom cupboards for clothes, the beautiful idea was forming itself in his mind to the last detail.

Gordon had arrived back in time to witness Portia’s blazing row with her parents.

‘He is not like all men!’ she yelled at Hillary. ‘Don’t you dare say that!’

‘Probably saw some of his friends going to Harrods and forgot all about you,’ Peter offered. ‘His type are like that. No sense of loyalty. Look at how they behaved in Palestine. Look at Ireland. Well rid of the chinless ass if you ask me.

‘Palestine? Ireland? What has Palestine got to do with anything?’

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Gordon cooed as Portia flung herself onto his chest. ‘Cool it, Pete. Can’t you see that she’s upset? What’s up, Porsh? You and Ned have a fight?’

‘Of course not,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, Gordon, he’s disappeared!’

‘Disappeared? How do you mean?’

‘I mean disappeared. Vanished. I … I went for that job interview. He was supposed to be down in the street waiting for me when I came out, but he wasn’t. And he wasn’t at his father’s house in Catherine Street either. I hung around outside for hours but there was no sign of him. And then I thought perhaps he might have phoned here, so I came home as fast as I could, but there was no message, nothing. And anyway,’ she said, rounding on Peter. ‘What do you mean chinless? Ned’s got a wonderful chin. What’s more, he doesn’t have to hide it under a scraggy moth-eaten beard like some people.’