'Is that how you came by this one?'

'Not quite. This one lost his life, too. There're always some, every year. Run a coach over a cliff, caught in an avalanche, hotel burns down, or they just freeze to death waiting for it to be built. The Army's got nothing on these tours, Major. And if the passport's still with the courier or. hotel, well, who can prove it?'

And there's always somebody to remember there's a market for these things. In some countries, of course, it's a state monopoly: the KGB could make them, all right, but an agent's too valuable to risk with a forged passport that needs only a single check to show its number was never issued, or to a different name. It takes longer to pin down a real one, even if the owner's dead; how many widows remember it's their duty to turn hubbie's passport in once he's planted?

I nodded. 'And after that, what?'

'Once you're on the boat you're on your own. Use your own passport – you've got it, haven't you? – to get off at Dunkirk. No problem.'

'And nobody cares that I've gone AWOL from the tour?'

'It's no crime, even if anybody noticed. Same thing for the passport control over there: they get twenty-four passports, they count twenty-four heads. Just don't wiggle your hips at any rich widows in the coach: they might start asking what happened to the nice man with the military manner.'

'I'll try and remember, Dave.'

'Fine. This Sunday work knocks hell out of me. Care for a quick one?'

Before I could answer he'd lifted the bottle out of the deep file drawer on the right of the desk – just like the classic private detective. So? So you get plenty of people behaving like the popular image of themselves, including judges and politicians as well as private eyes and sergeant-majors. It keeps their clients reassured.

It was a very pale single-malt Scotch; good, maybe too good for me. I still prefer my whisky soaked in soda. There had to be a good reason why the Cards left Scotland.

We toasted each other. Outside in the main office the phone rang and got answered, the typewriter clattered, a drawer in a filing cabinet screeched.

Tanner said, 'There's just the sordid business of money, Major.'

'Of course.' I took out my wallet and dealt him a double flush in fivers. He collected them slowly and stacked them on one side by the desk intercom, and asked, "You're sure you don't mind about it being France?"

'I'll survive.'

'I expect so. Did you have time to get some protection into your luggage, or d'you want to borrow something? Hire it, I mean."

I smiled a little bleakly. 'No thanks, Dave. I'm all right.' At any rate I wasn't going to land in France carrying an extra, and unfamiliar, pistol. The derringer on my arm was risk enough.

'Okay. You heading anywhere in particular?'

'Norway.'

'Again?' But he didn't press it. 'Had you thought of hiring us totry and clear things up for you so's you can come back?'

'Not yet. I think things'll just blow over.'

'You ought to know.'

'That's what I keep telling myself.'

We had one more drink and it got to be after half past four. He stood up. 'The wife's got people coming in, and you'd better not be late, either.* I gulped the last of my Scotch and then waited while he locked and double-locked the office door behind us. Every serious private detective has files he doesn't want his employees to see, and maybe particularly the employees junior enough to land the Sunday-evening switchboard watch. There's more than one way to the top in private detection.

I picked up my suitcase from near the door and followed him downstairs. We shook hands before we left – separately, just in case. I had to walk right down to Theobald's Road before I caught a taxi.

Victoria coach station late on a winter Sunday was a draughty parade ground with a sketchy pretence at a glass roof. A few dark buses stood around like abandoned hulks, and little clumps of shivering passengers huddled against the walls below posters for Italy and the Devon coast and waited for the overnight to Scunthorpe.

One of the two lit buses had denniston's in big flowing script down the side, yellow on green. It already looked crowded and most of the windows were solidly steamed up.

A busy little man in a quilted anorak pounced on me. 'Are you Mr Evans?'

Was I? Christ, yes. 'That's me.' The driver appeared, snatched my case, and hurried it round to the back. I heard the hatch slam.

'You're the last,' the courier said, ticking me off on a typed list. 'Got your passport?'

I handed it over. He skimmed it quickly, nodded, and shoved it into a sort of satchel slung from his shoulders. 'If anybody in the coach asks you, I should say you belong to the firm. Just hitching a ride to Dunkirk. That'll help explain it when you scarper.'

'Good idea.' I climbed aboard and he followed.

A few seconds later and we were on our way.

We had the road pretty much to ourselves and made as good a time as I've ever done to Dover. The seats were good – high-backed, airliner-style – but so they'd ruddy well better be; the other poor sods were going to sit in them for forty-five hours out of the next eighty.

The bloke next to me was a widower in his fifties, as quiet and dull as I'd hoped when I chose to sit by him. I asked if he'd been to Belgium or Holland or Germany before and he said. 'Yes, the hard way.' It turned out he'd been a gunlayer on a Cromwell in the Third Armoured Division from late 1944, so we talked about tanks most of the way.

At Dover docks the immigration boys came aboard, did a quick head count and a shuffle through the stack of passports, and we were allowed out for twenty minutes' drinking and leaking, no more, dinner to be served aboard the boat itself.

I stuck to my gunner in the terminal bar, although it cost me a double Scotch. He was useful cover – two men look far less conspicuous than one solitary drinker. We were all back in the bus in a bit over twenty-five minutes, and it drove on board soon after.

The courier gave us a little lecture about getting back into the bus before we docked, and turned us loose – for nearly four hours on that route. I made sure I was last off.

'Nice to have had you with us – Mr Evans,' he said insincerely. Or maybe not – he'd be earning more from me than anybody else on that tour, and probably only for the cost of typing up a second set of papers.

'What about my case?'

'Oh, God, of course. Where's Harry?' But there wasn't any Harry with the luggage-hatch key. 'Pick it up when we come back on, right?'

I didn't exactly have a choice. I nodded and found the stairs up to the main decks.

I tried to shake off my co-tourists immediately, though it wasn't too easy since the boat was anything but crowded; over half the vehicles below were loaded trucks or brand-new cars going for export. In the end I simply skipped dinner and then roosted in the bar; they weren't likely to be expense-account drinkers if they were going on this sort of holiday.

Halfway across there was the usual announcement about passengersnot with cars or suchlike going to the passport office to pick up a landing ticket. So now I went back to being James Card again, although I didn't like it, not going into France. But hell – I wasn't that important; Arras could never have got a permanent look-out set up for me, even if they'd thought I might be stupid enough to come back so soon.

I had no trouble at the office, anyhow.

We docked about a quarter of an hour late, just on midnight. I was one of the first down to the bus and this time Harry the driver was around with his key. My case had been last in, so there wasn't any problem to hauling it out. I carted it back up to the deck where the mere pedestrians were waiting.