'I'll need your notes, Dicky.'

'Notes?'

'To do the D-G's report.'

'Not much in the way of notes today, Bernard,' he said proudly. 'I'm getting the hang of these Tuesday morning talks nowadays. I improvise as I go along.'

Oh my God! I should have listened to what he was saying. 'Any rough notes will do.'

'Just write it the way I delivered it.'

'It's a matter of emphasis, Dicky.'

He threw the straightened wire clip into his large glass ashtray and looked at me sharply. 'A matter of emphasis' was Dicky's roundabout way of admitting total ignorance. Hurriedly I added, 'It's so technical.'

Dicky softened somewhat. He liked being 'technical'. Until recently Dicky's lectures had been a simple resume of the everyday work of the office. But now he'd decided that the way ahead was the path of hi-tech. So he'd become a minor expert – and a major bore – on such subjects as 'photo-interpretation of intelligence obtained by unmanned vehicles' and 'optical cameras, line-scan and radar sensors that provide monochrome, colour, false-colour and infra-red imagery'.

'I think I explained it all carefully,' Dicky said.

'Yes, you did,' I said and bent over far enough to flip through the cardboard-mounted pictures he'd used, in the hope that they would all be suitably captioned. To some extent they were: 'SLRR sideways-looking reconnaissance radar' the first one said, and there was a neat red arrow to show which way was up. And 'IRLS infra-red line scan photo showing various radiometric temperatures of target area at noon.

Notice buildings occupied by personnel, and the transport vehicles at bottom right of photo. Compare with photo of same area at midnight.'

'Don't take that material away with you,' Dicky warned. 'I'll need those pictures tomorrow, and I promised the people at Joint Air Reconnaissance that they'd have them back in perfect condition: no fingerprints or bent corners.'

'No, I won't take them,' I promised and slid the illustrations back in place. I was hopeless at understanding such things. I began to wonder which one of Dicky's staff, present at this morning's meeting, might have remembered his discourse well enough to recapitulate and explain it to me. But I couldn't think of anyone who gave Dicky their undivided attention during the Tuesday morning meetings. Our most assiduous note-taker, Charlie Billingsly, was now in Hong Kong and Harry Strang, with his prodigious memory, had artfully contrived an urgent phone call that granted him escape just five minutes into Dicky's dissertation. I said, 'But you used to be strongly opposed to all this stuff from JARIC, and the satellite material too.'

'We have to move with the times, Bernard.' Dicky looked down at the appointments book that his secretary had left open for him. 'Oh, by the bye,' he said casually. Too casually. 'You keep mentioning that fellow Prettyman…'

'I don't keep mentioning him,' I said. 'I mentioned him once. You said you didn't remember him.'

'I don't want to quibble,' said Dicky. 'The point is that his wife has been making a nuisance of herself lately. She cornered Morgan when he was in die FO the other day. Started on about a pension and all that kind of stuff.'

'His widow,' I said.

'Verily! Widow. I said widow.'

'You said wife.'

'Wife. Widow. What damned difference does it make.'

'It makes a difference to Jim Prettyman,' I said. 'It makes him dead.'

'Whatever she is, I don't want anyone encouraging her.'

'Encouraging her to do what?'

'I wish you wouldn't be so otiose,' said Dicky. He'd been reading Vocabulary Means Power again, I noticed that it was missing from the shelf behind his desk. 'She shouldn't be button-holing senior staff. It would serve her right if Morgan made an official complaint about her.'

'She wields a lot of clout over there,' I reminded him. 'I wouldn't advise Morgan to make an enemy of her. He might end up on his arse.'

Dicky wet his thin lips and nodded. 'Yes. Well. You're right. Morgan knows that. Far better that we all close ranks and ignore her.'

'Jim Prettyman was one of us,' I said. 'He worked downstairs.'

'That was a long time ago. No one told him to go and work in Washington DC. What a place that is! My God, that town has some of the worst crime figures in the whole of North America.' So Dicky had been doing his homework.

I said, This is not official then? This… this not encouraging Prettyman's widow?"

He looked at me and then looked out of the window. 'It's not official,' he said with measured care. 'It's good advice. It's advice that might save someone a lot of trouble and grief.'

'That's what I wanted to know,' I said. 'Shall we get the heading for the D-G's report?'

'Very well,' said Dicky. He looked at me and nodded again. I wondered if he knew that Cindy Matthews – one-time Mrs Prettyman – had invited me to a dinner party that evening.

'And by the way, Dicky,' I said. That lion looks very good on the floor in here.'

Mrs Cindy Matthews, as she styled herself, lived in considerable comfort. There was new Italian furniture, old French wine, a Swiss dishwasher and the sort of Japanese hi-fi that comes with a thick instruction manual. They'd never faced the expense that children bring of course, and I suppose the rise in London house prices had provided them with a fat profit on the big house they'd been buying in Edgware. Now she lived in a tiny house off the King's Road, a thoroughfare noted for its punks, pubs and exotic boutiques. It was no more than four small rooms placed one upon the other, with the lowest one – a kitchen and dining room – below street level. But it was a fashionable choice: the sort of house that estate agents called 'bijou' and newly divorced advertising men hankered after.

There were candles and pink roses on the dining table, and solid silver cutlery, and more drinking glasses than I could count. Through the front window we could see the ankles of people walking past the house, and they could see what we were eating. Which is perhaps why we had the sort of meal that women's magazines photograph from above. Three paper-thin slices of avocado arranged alongside a tiny puddle of tomato sauce and a slice of kiwi fruit. The second course was three thin slices of duck breast with a segment of mango and a lettuce leaf. We ended with a thin slice of Cindy's delicious home-made chocolate roulade. I ate a lot of bread and cheese.

Cindy was a small pale-faced young woman with pointed nose and little cupid's bow mouth. She had her wavy brunette hair cut short. I suppose it was easier to arrange and more suited to her senior position. Her dress was equally severe: plain brown wool and simply cut. She'd always been brimful of nervous energy, and arranging this dinner party had not lessened her restless anxiety. Now she fussed about the table, asking everyone whether they wanted more champagne, Perrier or Chablis, wholemeal or white rolls, and making sure that everyone had a table napkin. There was a tacit sigh of relief when she finally sat down.

It was a planned evening. Cindy always planned everything in advance. The food was measured, the cooking times synchronized, the white wines were chilled and reds at the right temperature. The rolls were warmed, the butter soft, the guests carefully prompted and the conversation predictable. It wasn't one of those evenings when you can hardly squeeze a word into the gabble, the guests stay too late, drink too much and lurch out of the house excitedly scribbling each other's phone numbers into their Filofax notebooks. It was dull.

Perhaps it was a tribute to Cindy's planning that she'd invited me on an evening when Gloria did a class in mathematics, part of her determination to do well at university, and so I went along to dinner on my own.