Westerby's German is adequate,' Shatner said at last, 'but yours is rather better, from what I hear. You've worked there, haven't you?'

'Two or three times. I can pass for a native Berliner.'

'Can you now.' I was still standing by the door, and he said, 'For God's sake, come and sit down again.'

I compromised and perched on the arm of the chair, ready to get up and get out of here if he looked like arguing the toss for much longer. If he didn't give me the mission I'd do the thing I wanted to do some other way; I was ready to drop by now, and past the point where I'd lie staring at nightmares on the ceiling.

'You're more conversant, then,' Shatner said, 'with Berlin than Westerby is. That makes a difference.'

'I'm a bit surprised you didn't send for me in the first place.' He'd known my background; he must have. All the controls have got to do in this place is press a button and the computers throw you on the screen like an X-ray.

He stood still for a moment and looked at me. 'As I've told you, you're not my favourite executive.'

'That's a bloody shame.'

I was getting fed up with him.

'Now that we've got that over,' he said, 'let's remember that we've both had a rather trying night, and make mutual allowances. When can you take over from McCane?'

'The focus of this operation,' Shatner said, 'is on a man named Maitland. Or rather, on his death.'

We were already into preliminary briefing and the little room was full of smoke. He'd asked me if I'd mind his having a cigarette, which I thought was civil of him.

'Maitland was a cultural attache at our embassy in Berlin, fond of the city, active in his job, though for some reason not particularly well liked among his colleagues. A week ago he was murdered, and his body taken away. His flat had been broken into with some violence, and the police found evidence of massive blood loss. There were marks on the floor indicating that his body had been dragged out of the flat to the lift. The telephone was hanging by its cable – he'd been talking to a woman friend, who came forward, when the flat was entered. She reported sounds of the door being smashed in, an outbreak of voices and finally a cry. Maitland's car was also broken into and rigorously searched, the upholstery slashed open and the carpets dragged up.'

Shatner reached for the dented chromium ashtray on his desk. 'The Foreign Office suspected that the new generation of the Red Army Faction was involved, and asked us to make enquiries. I sent McCane out there.'

'The FO approached us, instead of DI6?

'We are able to do things, as you know, that DI6 cannot.'

'But I mean it's that sensitive?'

He flicked ash. 'I've been in Signals most of the night with some of our agents-in-place out there. They couldn't give me much more than a certain amount of raw intelligence, but the vibrations I'm getting are that there may be more to Maitland's death than some kind of crude wet affair.'

Yes indeed. They'd tagged McCane back to London and wiped him out as soon as they found him exposed. 'You didn't get anything useful from McCane when you debriefed him?'

'Surprisingly little. He ran into a lot of resistance when he started asking questions. His feeling was that people either didn't want to answer them, or were afraid to. That's not unusual, of course, when there's a strong terrorist faction at large and active.'

'Why did you call McCane in? For debriefing?' 'Partly.' He got up and went over to a window, freeing the fastener and thumping at the frame until it jerked open an inch, sending down flakes of paint. 'And partly because his enquiries led him to think that the person who might know more about what was going on is Maitland's wife. Widow.' He brushed bits of paint off his jacket and sat down again.

'And she lives in Reigate.'

'Yes. McCane was going there last night, to put up at a hotel and see her this morning.'

'That's where I start?

'That is where you start.' He crushed out his cigarette. 'I don't think I need to point out that you may well attract the attention of these people simply by showing up in Reigate. You don't normally like support, do you?

'Only when I ask for it.'

'That's a pity. It could finish you off, one fine day. I just hope it doesn't happen while I'm running you.'

I went back to my flat in Sloane Square and showered and slept for three hours. When I got up I put the clothes I'd worn last night into a plastic bag and phoned Harry and asked him to take them to the cleaners as soon as he could; the smell of burning was pervasive, lingering. Then I phoned the stage door at the St James's, but Thea was in the middle of rehearsal and I left a message saying I couldn't make it this evening, and phoned The Conservatory and asked them to send flowers for the opening night tomorrow.

It was eleven o'clock when I checked in again at the Bureau. They told me they'd arranged for me to have tea with Helen Maitland in Reigate at four, and that gave me time to look over the documented briefing that Shatner had given McCane and go over the present situation in Berlin regarding the Red Army Faction's activities. Shatner said there was no need for me to go through Clearance at this stage; a lot was going to depend on how much Helen Maitland was prepared to help us and whether she could give us any positive information to work on.

When I left Whitehall and drove south along Millbank by the Thames I didn't have any sense of professional engagement. Shatner had officially started running me but there was no actual mission on the board and the truth was, after all, that the reason that was driving me south from London on this cold November afternoon was purely personal. I owed a man a death.

She was standing in the middle of the lawn behind the house, perfectly still, her back to me. There was frost on the grass, and dead leaves, their edges silvered in the last of the winter daylight. A birdbath stood on a stone pedestal with ice in it, and something else, a small rounded object, perhaps a dead bird: I couldn't quite see from here. I'd rung the doorbell at the front of the house but couldn't hear any sound. I'd knocked, but not too hard; this was a house of grief. Then I'd come along the narrow redbrick path and through the gate by the hedge and seen her there on the lawn, a thin figure hunched in a sheepskin coat, facing away from the house. I couldn't see that she was watching anything in particular; there was a tennis court and a summer house and, farther away, a shed with some gardening tools leaning against it and the door half open. It was intensely quiet here, but in the distance there was traffic, its sounds muted, it seemed, by the cold and the lowering dark.

She turned round and saw me.

I hadn't gone close, not wanting to startle her. We stood facing each other for a time in silence. Then she spoke.

'Who are you?' 'Victor Locke. I'm sorry to disturb you.' I meant her reverie. She'd known I was coming; it was just four.

She seemed not to connect, then said, 'Oh yes. You're coming to tea.' She still didn't move. At this distance she looked insubstantial, a small cold face above the coat, her hands tucked into the sleeves, her feet together in their fleece-lined boots. There was a toy railway engine not far from where she stood, lying on its side among the frosted leaves. I hadn't been briefed that the Maitlands had any children.

I went towards her. That's right. I'm sorry about your husband.'

There was no expression in her cool grey eyes, though she looked at me without blinking. Not at me, perhaps, but at all the things I meant, because I was here, all the things she was going to have to do now that she was a widow. That was my impression. I was breaking into the small Confusing world that was taking its place between the old one, where her husband had been, and the new one, where he would not be.