Shuttlecock

[15]

There is nothing to stop me making inquiries of my own. In fact there is every facility to assist me. I have only to procure the standard forms and covering letters from the office and send them to the right addresses. Such requests for information, of course, should really be authorized and signed by Quinn, but it is ten-to-one in my favour that, given the obtuseness of bureaucracy, they will be taken in by the official documents and not query my own signature. I know where the forms are kept. How many times have I filled up at Quinn’s behest these formidable sheets of paper headed sternly ‘STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL’? In fact, only now does it strike me — perhaps I am a naïve and simple-minded creature, after all — what opportunities exist for such as I for delving into untold privacies, for obtaining almost unlimited access into the darker byways of other people’s lives. All I have to do is to pick out the forms, draft my request — ‘Details of the personal histories of X and Z prior to their employment in H.M. service’ — have it typed — not by Quinn’s secretary, I will ask Maureen, who won’t be aware of what she is doing — and have it franked and despatched. The only risk is if Quinn or any of my colleagues catches me at it. I will have to choose some time when the office is quiet. Not at night, after normal hours. Quinn will be working late too. That is the one time when I will look most suspicious. At lunch-time perhaps. Or, better still, early in the morning. Quinn himself rarely appears before half past nine, and I can invent some pretext for the office messengers to let me in before eight. I can have everything done by nine and then take it through to the typing pool with a batch of routine items later in the day.

And if my correspondents at the Home Office don’t fail me, if they don’t hesitate to give information they must already have imparted once, then I shall have it both ways. I shall know, a little at least, of what is in File E, without having to challenge Quinn for it. And if I discover something he is trying to hide — then, I shall be able to challenge him.