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silence then, too shaken to talk, McManus keeping his eyes on the street ahead, while Liz kept a lookout behind through the rear-view mirror. It must have been ten minutes before a car pulled up in front, and Cardew and Purvis got out.
    Cardew came over and spoke through the open window of the passenger seat. ‘No trace. The boys are out combing the streets but it looks as if they’ve got clean away. We don’t know the car and we’ve got no description so there’s not much chance. Jesus, Guv, we were wondering what the hell Mata Hari was doing, driving down like that.’
    McManus stared at him. ‘She was saving my life, Officer, while you were sitting picking your toes. And don’t call her Mata Hari. Her name is Liz.’

Chapter 6
    Word spread quickly in the Special Branch office that Liz had saved McManus’s skin and the atmosphere got a lot more friendly; even Nellie the typist began to talk to her. When Avery stopped offloading Whitehall’s paperwork onto her and started asking her to analyse the intelligence reports coming in from Belfast to see if they threw up any leads to local activity, she felt that at last she’d been accepted as someone who might have something useful to contribute.
    That wasn’t all that changed. Looking back on it now, she supposed it had been inevitable that after their run-in with the IRA she and McManus would be drawn together. Their shared danger formed a bond which at first made them friends, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, something more than friends.
    It didn’t happen right away. McManus was cautious about getting involved with the Spook, the woman from MI5, and at first he was just cordial. Three days after the drama of what they now all accepted had been an assassination attempt, he casually asked her to join him for a drink – but when she walked into the pub she saw that Purvis and Cardew were sitting at the table with him. A week later he asked her again, this time on his own, but before he’d even got her a drink, he was called on his mobile and had to go – an informant had been arrested for benefits fraud and he had to sort things out.
    A few days later she had left her car at a local garage for its MOT on her way to work and to her annoyance the garage had rung late in the afternoon to say the car wouldn’t be ready until the next day. She was waiting for a bus down the street from the office when a man’s voice called out, ‘Want a lift?’
    She turned, ready to tell the man to buzz off, when she saw it was McManus at the wheel of a smart Audi. He lifted his hands in mock-surrender. ‘Don’t shoot. It’s only me.’
    She laughed. ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘Looking for damsels in distress. Hop in.’
    ‘What happened to the Range Rover?’ she asked as she got in.
    ‘Strictly for operations,’ he said, as he accelerated away. ‘This one’s mine. Now where are you going?’
    When she told him he gave a little groan. ‘That’s a very respectable address.’
    ‘Well, of course,’ she replied with a grin. ‘I’m a very respectable person. The lady who owns the house is the widow of some former contact of the Service. I don’t know the details. I’ve got a couple of rooms on the top floor.’
    ‘I bet she watches you like a hawk. That can’t help your social life.’
    Liz suppressed the temptation to ask, What social life?
    ‘Tell you what,’ said McManus, glancing sideways at Liz, ‘why don’t you come back to my place for a drink? Then I’ll run you home,’ he added quickly, as if he didn’t want to scare her off.
    He accelerated past a dawdling queue of cars, his eyes straight ahead. Liz considered what to say. She sensed her answer was going to make a big difference to her relationship with McManus, and she wasn’t sure it was a step she wanted to take. But then she thought of what otherwise awaited her that evening in her flat – a quick glass of medi­ocre wine, a shallow bath (the hot water tank