The special calls came very rarely. Once, when he had been in England about two years, the nameless caller — who was identified by code only — instructed him to kill a man who lived at a given address in Liverpool. Beaton had found the man, who looked like a retired sailor, and had knifed him the same night in a dark street. Back in Salford, he had read all the papers carefully, but the police seemed to be treating the affair as a simple dockland stabbing; it quickly faded from the regional news and there were no repercussions of any kind. Beaton wondered afterward if the killing had had no motive other than the checking of his own efficiency and loyalty, but such thoughts troubled him infrequently. In general the sort of assignments he received, at roughly yearly intervals, reminded him of his old tourist watching days — tasks like making sure that a given individual really was staying at a given hotel.

The Hutchman case, however, had all the portents of a major job right from the start. It had begun a day earlier with a notification of a high priority number, a statement that Hutchman was considered a focus of “continuing interest”, and an instruction to place himself on round-the-clock standby. Since then Beaton had not strayed more than a few paces from his private telephone.

The voice, when it came, sounded both urgent and grim.

“Mr. Beaton,” it said, “I’m a friend of Steel’s. He asked me to call you about the outstanding account.”

Beaton acknowledged the code by responding with his own credentials. “I’m sorry I haven’t paid — can you send me another statement?”

“This is ultimate priority,” the voice said without preamble. “You have been following the news about the disappearance of the mathematician, Lucas Hutchman?”

“Yes.” Beaton listened to all news broadcasts very carefully, and a less sensitive ear than his would have picked up its undertones. “I know about him.”

“Hutchman is believed to be in your area and his papers must be transferred to folio seven immediately. Is that clear?”

“Yes.” Beaton felt cold and excited at the same time. He had, for the first time in many years, been instructed to kill another human being.

“Folio seven. Immediately. We have no exact location for him, but we picked up a police radio report that a black Ford Sierra had been found abandoned between Bolton and Salford in Gorton Road.”

“Wasn’t Hutchman driving a blue—?”

“The police reported that the car did not match the description of the tax disc. The disc said blue.”

“That’s all very well, but if Hutchman has abandoned the car he certainly won’t have stayed in the vicinity. I mean “We believe the car was stolen from him, and then dumped.”

An alarming thought struck Beaton. “Just a minute. We’re discussing this thing very openly on the phone. Supposing somebody’s listening? What happens to my cover?”

“Your cover is no longer important.” The urgency in the voice had been replaced by a raw edge of panic. “There is no time to arrange meeting places and private talks. All efforts must be devoted to the Hutchman transfer. We are sending every available man, but you are the closest and must take what steps you can. This is ultimate priority — do you understand?”

“I understand.” Beaton set the phone down and walked across his apartment to a mirror. He was not the same man who had come to England. His hair was gray now, and the years of good living had thickened and softened his body. More dismaying was the abrupt realization that the years had also softened his thinking — he did not want to hurt anybody, or to kill anybody. And yet, what would an ideal be worth unless one was prepared to serve it? And what would life itself be worth without an ideal to bring some meaning to the endless alternation of pleasure and pain? Beaton removed a cloth-wrapped bundle from the recess behind a drawer in his writing table. From it he took a well-oiled automatic pistol, a clip of 9-mm. cartridges, a tubular silencer, and a black-handled switchblade knife. He assembled the pistol, slipped it into an inside pocket, put on his overcoat, and went out with the closed knife growing warm in his right hand.

It was early in the afternoon and a blue-gray mist was veiling the more distant buildings. The sun could be stared at without discomfort, a disc of electrum, slowly falling. Beaton got into his Jaguar and drove toward Bolton. Fifteen minutes later he parked in a narrow street and walked up an alley. It was not raining but there was enough moisture in the air to make the paving stones glisten blackly. Near the end of the alley he opened a small door and went through it into a cavernous brick building which had once been stables and now served as a garage. A mechanic looked up from the engine of an elderly sedan and eyed him incuriously.

Beaton nodded. “Is Raphoe in?”

“In the office.”

Beaton walked across the oil-blackened floor and up a stair to where a boxlike office clung to the ancient wall. Paraffin fumes gusted hotly around him as he opened the door. A fat man with a pendulous strawberry nose was seated at a desk in the office.

“Hello, Clive,” he said resentfully. “That was some horse you gave me for Friday.”

Beaton shrugged. “If you could pick winners every time there’d be no books.”

“So I hear, but I don’t take to the idea of my money being used to push up the odds on the real trier.”

“You don’t think I’d do that to you, Randy.”

“Not much, I don’t. Are you going to give me my hundred notes back?” Raphoe sneered.

“No, but I’ve one for Devon and Exeter on Saturday which is already over the line.” Beaton watched and saw the predictable flicker of interest in Raphoe’s eyes.

“How much?”

“The syndicate is charging me the odds of two thousand on this one, and that’s a lot of money to lay off, but you can have it free, Randy.”

“Free!” Raphoe gently pressed the end of his ruinous nose, as though hoping to mold it into a more conventional shape. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Beaton made it sound casual. “I just want to know where your boys picked up the black Ford Sierra they dumped in Gorton Road.”

“I knew it!” Raphoe slapped his desk gleefully. “I knew that one was radioactive as soon as Fred drove it through that gate. As soon as I saw the bum paint job and the brand-new plates I said to Fred, ‘Get that heap out of here and bury it.’ I said to him, ‘Never nick a car that somebody else has just nicked.’

“You told him the right thing, Randy. Where did he pick it up?”

“You say this horse is over the line?” Raphoe asked significantly.

“Master Auckland II,” Beaton said, giving a genuine tip. Raphoe was a notorious loudmouth, and giving him the information would set up a chain reaction of tip-offs which would bring the odds tumbling down and cost Beaton a considerable sum of money. He had an intuition, however, that he was not going to be worried about horses in the immediate future.

“It’ll be really trying, will it?”

“Randy, this time it doesn’t need to try. Now, about the car — where did you get it?”

“In the car park of the Cricketers. Do you know it? It’s a good alehouse out Breightmet way.”

“I’ll find it,” Beaton assured him, and now the knife seemed to be generating a pulsing warmth of its own, bathing his palm with sweat.