A song in the morning

* *

Jack was lucky to have caught Dickie Villiers in the afternoon, a miracle that he wasn't hacking his way down the fairways. Villiers was at his desk. A quizzical look upwards from his boss. Nicholas would have briefed him, that in a bit over a week Jack was a changed man. Out of the office without explanation, effing and blinding in front of the girls, hangovers, an extraordinary creature coming in to collect him. Villiers had been steeling himself to call the lad in.

"I gather there are some problems, Jack." Villiers fondled his polka dot bow tie, chaffing at the awkwardness.

He thought Jack Curwen was one of the best, one worth keeping.

"I have to go away, Mr Villiers," Jack said.

"You're not leaving us…?" The blurted question. "I'm sure we could find more money."

"No, it's for three weeks only. I'm going tomorrow."

"That's damned short notice." Dickie Villiers leaned forward, his avuncular manner. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"I've a problem, I've three weeks to beat it."

"It's often better to talk something through."

"I am afraid I can't do that."

"Where are you going?"

"Sorry…"

Villiers' patience was failing. "That's just impertinence."

"I hope my job stays open to me, Mr Villiers, and I hope to be back in three weeks."

"Are you involved in anything criminal?"

Jack smiled at him, shook his head.

"Let's not beat around, you're very fortunate to have this job." Villiers recovered quickly. "There're enough graduates looking for work, not to count those who never made it through. We gave you a real break. I made it my business to find out why you were sent down from university, and I've never held it against you. This is no way to be repaying my kindness."

"I've worked hard for you, Mr Villiers, but I'm not begging any favours. I'm going to be away because I've no choice. If you've given my job to someone else when I get back, I'll just have to find another one. Goodbye, Mr Villicrs."

And before the older man could answer him, he was gone.

Jack went to his desk and picked up the contracts pending file and took it to Nicholas Villiers' desk, dumped it. He put on his coat. He waved a kiss to Janice and winked at Lucille.

He went out of the door. He walked out of the building.

He had turned his back on the world he knew.

lack heard it on the car radio. He was driving across Leatherhead towards Churchill Close. He had just bought his ticket, open return, to Johannesburg, for the following evening.

"… The soldier who has not yet been named was a member of a foot patrol in the strongly Republican Creggan district of Londonderry.

"A junior diplomat has been found dead below the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn in the Snowdonia range. It is believed that he fell more than 400 feet onto a ledge where his body was found by a mountain rescue team. He has been named as James Sandham. Mr Sandham, aged 52, was on a walking holiday in North Wales. It is thought that he lost his way last night and fell to his death while trying in darkness to make his way down from the 3,400 foot summit of the mountain which is described by local experts as treacherous for the inexperienced.

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer said this morning at a news conference before leaving for…"

Numbly he switched off the radio.

He was living in Britain. He was living in the oldest democracy and he was frightened. He was living where the government's agencies existed through the will of the people.

Crap… Jimmy Sandham didn't look like a man who would have climbed two flights of stairs if there was a lift. He had taken Jack into his confidence, into the area of the Official Secrets Act, Section I, and into the area of the D-notice.

Jimmy Sandham hadn't died on a walking holiday, for Christ's sake, he had died because he thought he'd found something rotten at the core of his country's government and had had the guts to say so.

In deep, controlled anger, Jack drove home.

• • •

Since Peter Furneaux had made the announcement of Sandham's death to the staff of South Africa desk, that office had been a sombre, lack-lustre place. The staff had packed up, gone home, on the stroke of half-past four, turning their backs on the empty table beside the radiator and the window.

Only Peter Furneaux stayed. He knew Sandham could be a cursed nuisance. He had seen him called to a meeting by the secretary of the P.U.S.; he had no idea what the meeting was about and he hadn't seen him again. He had received a memorandum from personnel informing him that the Grade 2 officer was going on immediate and indefinite leave.

Sandham hated physical exercise, despised joggers, sneered at the lunchtime keep fit fanatics. With a straight face, with a stolid voice, he had told his colleagues that Jimmy Sandham had died in an accident while walking in Snowdonia.

Furneaux remembered the meeting when he and Sandham had faced the son of a man who was to hang in South Africa.

He knew a little of the history of James 'Jeez' Carew, enough to realise the sensitivity surrounding the man. He deliberated and he decided. He would make no mention to his superiors of the meeting with Jack Curwen. He would not report it.

He had not put a minute of the encounter on the file and he wouldn't do so now. To have reported the meeting would have been to involve himself, to have put a spotlight on…

Well, the odds were that the meeting with the P.U.S. had nothing to do with Carew. Furneaux's decision ensured that the operatives of the Secret Intelligence Service, the men of Century, had no line on James Curwen's son during the twenty-five hours that remained before the departure of his flight to South Africa.