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drugs.
    â€˜They were brought here last week,’ he grunted, ‘Just like you said.’
    Paul’s organisation had worked smoothly again. The special cases had been made in Antwerp and delivered to Corot pending his arrival.
    â€˜You’d better do it, I don’t understand these things,’ grumbled the baker, standing back.
    Paul opened the cases on the floor, threw the lids right back and began fumbling with both the locks and the lid hinges. In a few seconds, the whole of the taffeta lining came out in a single piece, stiffened beneath by a layer of fibreboard. Between the lining and the leather of the case, there was sufficient room to stack the thin plastic envelopes of drugs and still have room to spare.
    He stowed his illegal imports away and slid the linings back into place.
    â€˜OK, Papa … ready for another trip.’
    He picked up the light and apparently empty cases and made for the door.
    Without a word of farewell on either side, Jacobs left the alley and walked back to the Gare du Nord where he caught another taxi back to his hotel.
    Next morning he went down to the garage behind the hotel and looked out the foreman mechanic.
    â€˜I’m having some trouble with my carburation,’ he lied, patting the vast bonnet of the Jaguar. ‘Do you think you can get the Jaguar agent to check the carburettors while I’m away? I’ve to go to Liège for a night, but I can easily go on the train. I want the car perfect for the trip back to England.’
    With a few words more and a liberal tip, he had given himself a first class excuse for being away from the hotel without the car for the better part of two days.
    Collecting his cases, which he filled with some of his clothes and an assortment of stuff brought over in the car, he went by taxi to the airport.
    Here he caught a plane for Paris and Dublin, booked weeks earlier in yet another name.
    The amount of forward organising he had to do was immense. He worked out the details of each trip for a couple of months ahead, never using the same method or route more than once a year. It was the regular travellers that attracted the attention of the Customs, especially in the winter season. Every time Paul was in London, or abroad, he spent a great deal of time booking planes, rail tickets, hotels and arranging delivery of drugs. In fact it was like any other import business, but made more difficult by its clandestine nature and the sweat of having to do all the ‘office boy’ routine himself.
    Before he boarded the plane for Dublin, he put on a Germanic-looking raincoat and armed himself with a German newspaper and magazine. He used a passport, forged in Whitechapel, made out for Hans Korb, a textile representative from the Federal German Republic. There was such a boom in German-Irish industrial relations that such visitors were ten-a-penny in Eire and on arrival at Dublin, and the Immigration and Customs gave him the most cursory looking-over. They idly turned over the cloth samples that he had carefully provided himself with before leaving London then made the magic chalk marks on the cases.
    He had a meal in a hotel, shed his German coat and identity, and caught a train to Rosslare. The journey via the Fishguard ferry and train to Paddington took him all of the rest of the day and much of the early hours of the following morning.
    When the train approached Cardiff, though it was the middle of the night, he retired to the toilet and afterwards kept a wary eye out for anyone who might recognise him. There was no one, and he arrived in London tired, but undetected, with his precious cargo. At the station, he took a taxi to Bloomsbury and got out near the University Union. The streets were deserted and he went as near as possible to his second hideout to reduce the risk of a strolling constable getting suspicious about his cases.
    He walked to a block of service flats in Fenton Square and let himself into one on the third