Home Run

17

A good early start, because Henry Carter thought that Mattie would feel stronger at the beginning of the day. They ate breakfast of tepid scrambled eggs and cold toast. They discussed the possible make-up of the team for the first Test.

They had a chuckle over the new switch in the Socialists' defence policy. Henry told Mattie about Stephen Dugdale from Library who had been laid low last week with throm-bosis. It was a good room, the old dining room, fine sideboards, and a glasses cabinet, and a carving table, and the main table could have seated twelve in comfort. The worst thing about eating in the dining room and at the big table, in Carter's opinion, was that Mrs Ferguson having polished the table then insisted that it be covered with a sea of clear polythene.

"Shall we make a start then, Mattie?"

"Why not?"

He settled in the chair by the fireplace. Across the hearth rug from him Carter was fiddling with a cassette player. It was the sort of cassette player that Harriet had bought the girls when they were teenagers. He saw the spools begin to move on the cassette player. He could see the investigator, he could see the cellar walls, he could see the bed and the leather thongs, he could see the hook on the wall, he could see the length of electrical flex wire…

"How long is this going to take?"

"Hard to say, Mattie. Depends on what you've got to tell me. My immediate target is to get home."

"Goes without saying… Where shall we begin? Shall we start in Van?"

Mattie told the tape-recorder everything about the way the attack on his car had been carried out. He felt uncomfortable describing his carelessness. Henry looked rather schoolmarm-ish but didn't interrupt. Mattie's account was perfectly lucid.

He seemed to Henry to take pleasure in the clarity of the narrative, in the orderly compilation of details that would one day be of value at the Fort. At eleven Mrs Ferguson knocked and came in with coffee and a packet of chocolate digestives.

Mattie stood at the window until Henry said, "This house they drove you to?"

"I was blindfolded when we got there, I didn't see it. When I went out of it then, it was dark."

"Tell me what you can about the house."

"They didn't take me on a tour, they weren't trying to sell it me."

He saw the puzzle at Henry's forehead. Stupid thing to have said.

…

"Is there a problem, Mattie?"

"I'm sorry – of course, there's a problem. You are asking me to recall a house where I was tortured, where others have been put to death."

"We'll just take it slowly, that way it won't be so painful.

You've nothing to be ashamed of, Mattie."

"Ashamed?" He spoke in Henry's soft voice. He rolled the word. "Ashamed?" Mattie spat the word back at him.

The conciliatory raising of the hands. "Don't misunderstand me, Mattie."

"Why should I be ashamed?"

"Well, we've been working on the assumption…"

"What assumption?"

"We had to assume that you had been taken by agents of the Iranian regime, and that of course you would be interrogated, and in due course that you would be, well, broken or killed…

That was a reasonable assumption, Mattie."

"Reasonable?"

"You'd have made the same assumption, Mattie, of course you would."

"And at what stage did you decide that Mattie Furniss would have been broken?"

Henry squirmed. "I don't know anything about pain."

"How could you?"

"Myself, I wouldn't have lasted a day, perhaps not even a morning. I think just the knowledge of what was going to be done to me would have been enough to tip me into the confessional. You shouldn't feel bad about it, Mattie."

"So, I was written off?"

"Not by the Director General. I am afraid almost everyone else did."

"Most touching faith you had in me. And did you shake the dust off my obituary? Had you booked St Martin's for a Memorial? Tell me, Henry, who was going to give the Address?"

"Come on, Mattie, this isn't like you. You've been on this side of the fence. You know what the form is."

"It's just abominable, Henry, to realize that Century believes a senior officer of the Service will cave in at the end of the first day, like some damn Girl Guide – I'm flattered… "

"We made our assumption, we aborted the field agents."

A sharpness in Mattie's voice, "They're out?"

"We aborted them, they're not out yet."

Mattie sat upright in his chair, his chest heaved. There were still the pain pangs deep in his chest. "You assumed that I would be broken within 24 hours, can I assume that you aborted as soon as I went missing? How can it be that two weeks later the agents are not out?"

"It was felt, I believe, that aborting a very precious network was a big step, takes years to rebuild. It took them a little time to get to the sticking point. Part of it was that the DG convinced himself that you would never talk. All sorts of waffle about Furniss of the old school. Frankly, I don't think he knows the first thing about interrogation. Anyway, wiser heads prevailed, as they say, and the messages were sent, but the agents are not yet out. .. "

"Christ… "

Mattie stood. Dreadful pain in his face. Pain from his feet that were bandaged and inside bedroom slippers that would otherwise have been three sizes too large.

"It wasn't easy, knowing nothing, hearing nothing."

A cold whip in Mattie's voice. "I clung on, I went through hell – yes, hell, Henry, and at Century you couldn't get your fucking act together… it makes me sick to think of it."

"I have the impression that there was more interest, more interest even than in the safety of the field agents, in whether Eshraq was compromised… "

Mattie swung his shoulders. His eyes fixed on Henry.

"What do you know about Eshraq?"

"That he is of very considerable importance."

"While I was away my safe was rifled, yes?"

"Rifled? No, Mattie, that is unreasonable. Of course we went through your safe. We had to know about Eshraq… "

Henry paused. The silence weighed. He looked up at Mattie.

There was the attempt at kindness, and understanding, and friendship. "I gather that Charlie Eshraq is not just important for his potential in the field, but also that he is very close to your family."

"So my safe was gutted."

"Mattie, please… we had to know everything about the boy, and now we have to know whether he is compromised."

"So you burrow about in my private files and you find that he is close to my family, is that it?"

"That's right."

"Here you assumed that I would talk to my torturers about a young man who is like a son to me?"

"I'm sorry, Mattie, that has been our assumption."

"Your assumption, but not the Director General's?"

"Correct."

"But all the rest of you?"

"The Director General said he thought that you would go to the grave before you named names."

"You, Henry, what do you think?"

"I've seen the medical reports. I know the extent of your injuries. I have an idea of what was done to you. To have escaped after all that argues a phenomenal constitution, phenomenal courage."

"I killed three men getting away. I broke the neck of one, I strangled one, I drove one down."

"If there were doubters, Mattie, they will obviously keep their doubts to themselves. I didn't know that, of course, and I am horrified to hear it. One has no idea what one may be capable of in extremis."

"Am I capable of betraying Charlie, that's what you are asking yourself."

"To me, Mattie, God's truth, you are one of the finest men that I have known in my lifetime with the Service, but no one, no one in the world, is capable of withstanding torture indefinitely. You know that and nobody in the Service is holding it against you. Everyone thinks it was wrong to send you – my God, I hope the DG doesn't listen to this tape – and, well, to tell you the truth, quite a few people think you were a fair old chump to be gallivanting about on your own near the border. That's what comes of being an archaeologist, I suppose."

Mattie smiled at the irony. He walked to the window. He did not need to hold on to the chair backs. He walked as if there were no pain in his feet, as if he could straighten his back and there was no pain in his chest. He stared out. There was a brisk sunshine lighting the lawn.

"I may have named the field agents, I can't be certain.

There were times that I was unconscious, I might have been delirious. There were times when I thought I was dead and certainly prayed I would be. But that was, oh Christ, after days of agony. If the agents were not aborted immediately then I won't accept the blame for that… "

"And Eshraq, did you name Eshraq?"

The dog was barking in the kitchen, frustrated at being denied the run of the house. Mattie turned, stared levelly across the hearth rug at Henry.

"No, Henry, I couldn't have done that. I'd much sooner be dead than have done that."

"Mattie, truly, I take my hat off to you."

The lorry began the journey from the north of England to the port of Dover. Midday Saturday, and the lorry observed strictly the speed limits set for it. The driver would not approach the Customs checks at Dover until the evening of the following day. Lorry movement through the port of Dover was always heaviest on a Sunday night, when the drivers were jockeying to get a good start on the Monday morning on the through routes across Europe. The volume of traffic on the Sunday night sailings dictated that the Customs checks on outgoing cargo were lightest. And the early summer was a good time, also, for the sale of machine parts. The ferries' vehicle decks would be jammed with both commercial and holiday traffic. The chances of the lorry's cargo being searched, of the containers being stripped out right down to the four wooden packing cases, were very slight. The haulage company also took care to check whether there was any form of tail on the consignment. The lorry had been followed away from the warehouse at the loading depot by a car that checked to see whether it was under surveillance. The car varied the distance between itself and the lorry; at times it was a mile back, and then it would speed up and catch the lorry. The purpose of this was to pass the cars travelling in the wake of the lorry, and to look for the tell-tale evidence of men using radios in the cars, or vehicles that were too long in the slow lanes.

It was a wasted exercise.

The Investigation Division had no tail on the lorry.

Not yet six o'clock and she had already had her bath. She was at her dressing table. She could hear him in the next room, working at the final touches. It was the trip out with Bill Parrish that had set him behind. He hadn't told her where they had gone, and she hadn't asked. He might not have told her where he'd been, what he'd done, with Bill Parrish, but at least when he had returned he had peeled out of his work clothes and put on the old jeans and the sweatshirt and headed back to his decorating. He was pretty quiet, had been ever since he'd come back from the north of England, and she was almost sorry for him. More vulnerable than she'd ever known him. She thought he must have been wanting to please her, because he had set out to decorate the spare bedroom. Not that David would ever have admitted to a living soul, let alone his wife, that his case was up the river and no punt. She didn't care what he said. She'd liked coming home from work and finding the flat smelling of paint and wallpaper paste. It was a big change in her experience, that her husband had gone down to the DIY and had managed the best part of a week without referring to Bogota or the Medellin cartel.

"Who am I going to meet there?" she called out.

"A gang of complete morons."

She yelled, and she was laughing, "Will it all be shop talk?"

"Absolutely. Blokes all up at the bar, wives sitting down by the band."

"You'll dance with me?"

"Then you'd better wear boots."

He came into the bedroom. She could scent the paint on his hands that were on her shoulders. Christ, and she wanted them to be happy. Why couldn't they be happy? In the mirror, his face looked as though the light had gone from him. Her David, the Lane's Keeper, so crushed. It was a fast thought, she won- dered if she didn't prefer him when he was bloody minded and confident and putting the world into its proper order.

He bent and he kissed her neck, and he was hesitant. She took his hands from her shoulders and she put them inside her dressing gown, and she held them tight against her.

"I love you, and I'm just going to dance with you."

She felt his body shaking against her back and the trembling of his hands.

Past six o'clock, and a Saturday evening, and the magistrate sat at his Bench in a yellow pullover, and his check trousers were hidden under the desk top.

The convening of the court on that day of the week, and at that time of day, guaranteed that the public gallery and the press seats would be empty.

Parrish, in his work suit, stood in the witness box.

"I understand you correctly, Mr Parrish? You have no objection to bail?"

Boot-faced, boot-voiced. "No objection, sir."

"In spite of the nature of the charges?"

"I have no objections to bail, sir."

"And the application for the return of the passport?"

"I have no objection to the passport being returned, sir."

"You have no fear of the defendant going abroad and not surrendering his bail?"

"No fears, sir."

"What sort of figure of bail are you suggesting, Mr Parrish?"

"Two sureties, sir. Two thousand pounds each would be my suggestion, sir."

The magistrate shook his head. It was as though he had now seen everything, heard everything. Day in and day out the police sniped at the magistrates for their willingness to grant bail. There could be many reasons and he was not going to waste time speculating on them. If that's what the Investigation Division wanted, that's what they wanted. What he wanted was to get back to the golf club. He granted bail on two sureties of?2000.

The flight had been delayed, technical problems. The problems were resolved a few minutes after Leroy Winston Manvers and his common-law wife and children boarded the British Airways 747 to Jamaica.

When he'd seen the bird up then Bill Parrish drove home to change for the dance.

The detective thought that Darren Cole was very pale, and his fingers were nicotine stained because that was the only fix he was getting on remand.

He resented being pulled from home on a Saturday evening and told to drive halfway across the county. He wasn't in the mood for hanging about.

"You're coming out, Darren. Tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, you're walking out. The charges against you will not be pressed, but they will be held in reserve. The charges can be reactivated if you should be so silly as to open your dumb little mouth to any scribbler, anyone else for that matter. I wouldn't come home if I were you. You should stay away from my patch.

There are people who know that you grassed and if they know where to find you then they will most certainly come looking.

Take the wife and the kids and take a very long bus ride, Darren, and stay safe. Have you got me, young 'un?"

The detective left the necessary paperwork with the Assistant Governor. He could be phlegmatic. He reckoned that letting out young Darren Cole would save three, four, days of court time. He was not concerned with the morality of letting out a proven narcotics pusher. If his Chief Constable could cope with the morality then there was no way that a detective was going to get out his worry beads.

He would have liked to know why Cole was being given the heave, but he doubted if he ever would.

"Who was it, George?"

Libby Barnes called from her dressing room. She sat in front of the mirror in her underclothes and housecoat, and she worked with the brush at applying the eye shadow.

"It was Piper Mother."

"On a Saturday evening? Is it something serious?"

"Called about Lucy… I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you've the right to know. I've lost, dear. I wouldn't want you to think that I lost without a fight, but I've lost, and that's the long and the short of it."

The photograph was in front of his wife, at the right side of the dressing table mirror. A photograph of when Lucy was sixteen, and sweet. A happy teenager in a Corfu cafe.

The photograph had been taken the last time they had been together as a family, before Lucy had started her problem.

"What do you mean, you lost?"

"The boy who pushed to Lucy has been freed from remand in prison. He will not go to trial. The man who supplied the pusher will also not face charges and has been allowed to leave the country. The importer of those drugs, who has been under intense Customs and Excise investigation, will not be arrested… "

"And you've swallowed that?"

"Not lying down… It's for the best, Libby. A trial would have been awful, three trials would have been quite hideous

… all those bloody journalists at the front door… perhaps it's best to forget."

Libby Barnes whispered, "And best for your career."

She held the photograph tight against her chest and her tears made a mockery of the work at her eyes.

"Piper Mother did say that, yes."

Charlie watched her go, and he was left on the pavement where the streets merged into Piccadilly. He watched her through the traffic and he saw the hips swing, and he saw that her shoulders were well back, and once he saw her shake the long hair free of her collar and the hair tossed and caught in the last of the sun.

First he lost her behind a bus that was caught at the lights, and then she was gone. She had been carrying her bag loosely against her knee. She was going home with her new dress, because Polly Venables and Charlie Eshraq were going nowhere. She'd go back to Mahmood Shabro on Monday morning, and she'd try to forget Charlie Eshraq because he had told her that he was going back to Iran.

He turned. The other girl was still close to him. She was leaning against the shop doorway, and she wasn't even bothering to pretend. The car was behind her. All the time that he had been walking with Polly, the girl had been close to him, and the car had been hugging the kerb. She was a dumpy little thing, and he thought they must have cut her hair with garden clippers, and he didn't understand why she wore an anorak when it was almost summer.

He walked up to her.

"I'm going to have a drink, April lady. Would you join me?"

Token snarled back at him. "Piss off."

The truck driver was Turkish and he drove his Daf vehicle with the choke out so that the engine seemed to race, as if on its last legs. He manoeuvred into the narrow cul-de-sac and then killed the engine in front of the battered sheet metal gates. When the engine was off, when he could look around him, there came to him the curious quiet of the repair yard.

From his cab he could see over the wall and into the yard. No work there, no activity. He had been told they worked late into the evening.

There was a child watching him from against the wall, chewing at an apple.

The Turk called to the child. He asked where was the engineer.

The child scowled at him. The child shouted back the one word.

"Pasdaran."

Choke in, the engine running smoothly, the driver backed his truck out of the cul-de-sac. He drove at speed out of Tabriz, chewing and chewing and eventually swallowing the message that had been taped against the skin of his belly.

She had heard of all of them, heard their names, but she had never before been able to put faces to the names.

She knew them by their actual names and by their codenames too, because sometimes David referred to them at home by one and sometimes by the other.

If she had been honest, and she might be honest later when they were home, and that depended on how much she had drunk, then she might have said that she didn't think that much of them. There wasn't much that was special about any of them. On Ann's table were some of the names she knew best. There was dear old Bill, unusually quiet, and his wife who had not yet closed her mouth. There was Peter Foster, whose collar was too tight, and whose wife hadn't stopped talking about the standard of teaching at Infant and Primary school level since they sat down. There was Duggie Williams, who was Harlech, and he was in a foul mood because, according to David, he had been stood up. Mrs Parrish was talking about the holiday they were going to take in Lanzarote. Bill wasn't saying much, and looked as though he had had a death in the family, and Foster seemed as if he might choke. But she rather liked Harlech. She thought that Harlech might just be the pick of them, and she thought that the girl who had stood him up must be just a bit dumb. The music had started, the band had begun, but the floor was still empty, and there was no way she would get David on to his feet before there was quite a throng. The glasses were filling the table. The raffle tickets had been round, and they would be drawn, and then there would be the buffet supper, and after that she might get David on to the floor.

Duggie Williams brought her a drink and changed places with Maureen Foster to sit next to her.

"You must be half bored out of your knickers."

"I beg your pardon."

"How did Keeper get you to come along?"

"It was I that said we were coming."

"You must be off your pretty head."

"Perhaps I just wanted to have a look at you all."

"Then it's a bloody miracle you haven't run away already

… I'm Harlech."

"I know. I'm Ann."

Bill had started talking. Ann couldn't hear what he was saying, but David was leaning away from her to listen.

"We're not in the best of form."

She said drily, "I gathered."

"We've lost a nice juicy one."

"He told me a bit."

"We got fucked up – excuse me – your man, trouble with him is that he cares."

"Don't you?"

He had strong eyes. When she looked at Harlech then it was into his eyes. She had nowhere else to look. It was only from the side of her eye that she saw Bill's empty chair.

"Not a lot bothers me, that's because of where I used to work. I used to be at Heathrow…"

"So was David."

"… He was front of house… me, I was back stage. I was on the stuffers and swallowers drill. You know what that is? 'Course, you don't. Nobody tells a nice girl about swallowers and stuffers… I used to be on the duty that checks the daily in from Lagos – I never found anything else that the Nigerians were good at, but, Christ, they can stuff and swallow. Do you want to know all this? You do? Well, the women stuff the scag up their fannies, and the men stuff it up their arses, and they both swallow it. Are you with me?

They put it in condoms and they stuff it up and they swallow it down. We have a special block for the suspects, and that's where I used to work before I came to ID. We shove them in a cell, and we sit and watch them, and we feed them on good old baked beans, and we wait. God, do we wait… Has to go through, law of nature. Everything has to come out except from where the women stuff theirs, but that's a job for the ladies. You have to be like a hawk, watching them, and every time they go in then it's out with the plastic bag and on with the rubber gloves and time for a good old search around. They train by swallowing grapes, and they dip the condoms in syrup so they travel more comfortably, and they use something called Lomotil, because that's a binder. You know, once we had a flight in from Lagos and we pulled in thirteen, and we had every bog in action that we could lay our hands on. We were swamped, and just as well, because half of them were positive. When you've sat, hours and hours, watching guys crap, after that not a lot seems to bother you. Got me?"

"He doesn't tell me things like that."

"Complaining?"

She didn't answer. Bill was back, talking urgently into David's ear. She heard her man swear, quiet, then he turned to her.

"I'm sorry, I've got to go with Bill. It may take an hour or two. Duggie, will you look after Ann? Will you get her home?"

"You're joking." She didn't believe it.

Bill shrugged. He was standing at David's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, love, I'll see you when I do."

He was gone, and Bill was trailing after him. No, she didn't believe it.

" D o you like dancing?" Harlech asked.

The investigator reported to the Mullah.

A veteran in survival, the investigator had determined the necessity of reporting in person twice every day to the Mullah.

Twice every day he drove through the traffic jams to the expropriated villa where the Mullah held court. He held the cards in his hand, not as high cards as he had hoped, but cards of value. He had in those cells at Evin that were reserved for political prisoners of great sensitivity an engineer from Tabriz and a carpet merchant from Tehran.

He had a tail on an official of the Harbourmaster's office in Bandar Abbas, to see where the man would run, what else could be trawled.

He had the plan in his mind of the show trial at which confessions would be made. Confessions, their extraction and their presentation in court, were the great pride of the investigator. A confession was the closing of a book, it was the finishing of the weaving of a carpet, it was orderliness. The confessions of the engineer and the carpet merchant were near to being in place, and that of the official in the Harbourmaster's office would follow when he was ready to receive it.

On that evening, late, in the office of the Mullah, he reported on all these matters, and he received permission to continue the surveillance in Bandar Abbas. Later, sipping freshly pressed fruit juice, he talked of Charlie Eshraq. He was very frank, he kept back nothing.

"Mattie, I don't want to go on about this, not all night, but you are quite sure?"

"I'm getting very tired, Henry."

"The investigator was a professional, yes?"

"Old S A V A K man, knew what he was at."

"And it went on being pretty violent?"

"Henry, if you knew how ridiculous you sounded

…'pretty violent' for Christ's sake. If you've got any heavy duty flex in the garage here we'll see, if you like, if we can elaborate the distinctions. Violent, pretty violent, or we'll try twelve hours of continuous violence and see what that becomes. Or haven't we been through this all before…"

"Yes, Mattie, yes, we have… It's so important that we are absolutely clear on this. Your investigator is a SAVAK man, the worst of the breed, and violence was used against you, quite horrifying violence, on and on…"

"How many times do you have to be told, Henry? I did not name Charlie Eshraq."

"Easy, old chap."

"It is not easy to break out of Iran and then to come home to an inquisition."

"Quite right, point taken. Mattie, there were times that you fainted, other times when you were semi-conscious. When you were really groggy, could you have named him then?"

The room was shadowed and dingy. The light came from a ceiling triple, but one of the bulbs had popped early in the evening and George had stated that he had no replacements and would not be able to buy more bulbs until Monday. The furniture was old but lacking in quality, a Sotheby's man wouldn't have given the room a second glance, not as good a room as the dining room.

"When you're in a place like that, Henry, you cling to anything that's sacred. You hold on to your family, to your Service, your country, your God if you have one. Any damned thing that is important in your life you hold on to. When the pain's so bloody awful, the only things you can hold to are the kernels of your life. You have that feeling that if you broke, you would be giving them all that is sacred to you."

"I just have to be sure, that I understand you."

And it was such a damn shame… He thought that old Henry, tatty old Henry Carter who wouldn't have known a thumb screw from a bottle opener, might just be a better interrogator than the investigator in Tabriz.

•**

Park drove, and Parrish was beside him with the directions written on a sheet of paper. He'd asked where they were going, and Bill had said that the building was called Century House. He'd asked why they were going there, and Bill said it was because the Chief had told him to present himself with Keeper in tow. No point in any more questions, because Bill hadn't any more answers.

They came down the Albert Embankment, and the tower blocks loomed against the night skyline. There was only one block alive with light.

Parrish waved for Park to pull into the forecourt. The Chief Investigation Officer was on the steps, and looking at his watch, and the ACIO was beside him, and then coming forward to organize the parking space. They climbed from the car, and Park locked the doors. They walked towards the main entrance. He saw a small brass plate for Century House.

The Chief Investigation Officer nodded curtly at Parrish then moved to stand in front of Park.

"Inside, your opinion isn't wanted, you just listen."

They were offered drinks, and on behalf of all of them the Chief declined.

Not an evening for social pleasantries, Park thought, just an evening for learning the realities of power.

He stood in front of the desk and the Chief Investigation Officer was beside him, and the ACIO was on the other side and a half pace behind, and Parrish was out in the secretary's office with a young twerp watching over him. Parrish hadn't even made it inside. The lesson was delivered by two men.

One sat in an armchair, and did the talking, and was called DDG, and the other sat on the front of the desk. The one in the armchair drawled and the one on the desk, with his socks held up by suspenders, had a voice that was silk and honey.

He heard it from the armchair.

"You don't have a right to the detail, Park, but I will tell you what I can, and you should understand that everything I propose has been considered and approved by your immediate superiors… In your work for Customs and Excise Investigation Division, you are a signatory to the Official Secrets Act. That signature of yours is an obligation to life-long confidentiality, whatever recent events may have suggested to the contrary. What you hear in this room is covered by the Act. Between your superiors and ourselves, Park, there is a deal. You are being volunteered… "

"That's nice. What have I done to deserve this?"

"Just button it, Park," the Chief said, side of mouth.

"… Charlie Eshraq runs heroin. He is also a field agent of some value to the Service. Mr Matthew Furniss is one of the finest professional officers to have been reared by this Service in the last two decades. That's all fact. Eshraq, for reasons that are not your business, is about to return to Iran and he will be taking across the frontier a certain amount of hardware, purchased, as I am sure you will have deduced, with the proceeds of the sale of his last load of heroin. He is going back into Iran, and he will be staying there. He will be told tomorrow that should he renege on an agreement with us, should he ever return to the United Kingdom, then he will face prosecution on the basis of the evidence that you and your colleagues have collected against him.

"You will join Eshraq on Monday, you will accompany him to Turkey, and you will satisfy yourself and your superiors that he has indeed travelled back into Iran. Following your return to the U K, it has been decided by your superiors that you will then be posted as DLO to Bogota in Colombia. I can assure you that it will be my intention to make certain that you have there the full cooperation of Service personnel in that region. That's the deal."

"All neatly wrapped up between you, no loose ends. And if I tell you that it stinks, that I don't believe it? He doesn't belong to your outfit and if he does I'd like to know what's the point of my going to Bogota if you lot are running the stuff in the back door from Iran?"

"Watch it, Park."

"No, Chief, I won't… Just to get Mr Furniss' young friend off the hook and just to get me out of the way. That's it, isn't it?"

"Quite right, Park, we may just have to get you out of the way. Do you remember a Leroy Winston Man vers. An early morning interrogation, unsupervised, quite outside the book…? You do? I gather the file isn't closed yet, some ugly first shots across the Division's bows from his solicitor.

Isn't that so, Chief?"

"I think you're shit, sir."

"Five years' imprisonment, minimum. You could bet money that we'd know the judge. For the beating of a helpless black prisoner, it could be a bit more than five. Goodnight, Park. You'll enjoy Bogota. It's full of your type. Goodnight, gentlemen."

Park went for the door.

If he had looked into the face of the Chief Investigation Officer then he might just have put his fist into the man's teeth, and if he had looked at the ACIO then he might just have kneed the bugger.

"By the by, Park, a little note of warning…" The voice drawled behind him, an incoming tide over shingle. "Don't play any clever games with Eshraq, I think he'd give you more of a run for your money than Man vers did."

The dog slept in a wicker basket beside the Aga in the kitchen, on its back with its legs in the air, and wheezed like a drayman.

The sound of snoring filled the night quiet of the house. He thought that a burglar would have to have kicked over the kitchen table to have woken the brute. But it was not the Rottweiler's growled breathing that kept Henry Carter awake.

He would have been asleep by now, well asleep because it had been a hard enough day and rounded off with a good malt, if it had not been for the nagging worry.

The descriptions of the torture had been so wretchedly vivid. The telling of the brutality had been so cruelly sharp.

Never, not ever, would Henry have accused Mattie of telling

"war stories". Nothing was volunteered, everything had to be chiselled for, but in his own laconic way Mattie had transported Henry into a world that was deeply, desperately, frightening.

He understood why he had been chosen for the debrief.

Quite impossible that the Director General would have permitted any of those aggressive youngsters that now seemed to fill the building to be let loose on a man of Mattie's stature.

Perhaps the Director General had been wrong. Perhaps one of the young men, brash and cocksure, would have been better able to understand how Mattie had survived the pain, had survived and kept Eshraq's name safe.

God forbid that he should be selling Mattie short, but Henry, coward that he was and without shame of it, could not understand it.