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when Empathy said Tom would never come, he spoke from info only he possessed – only he of the four of us, that is. Not including Leo, naturally. I had an idea Jamie’s decision was a mistake – as useless and gallant as that step out into the storm by Captain Oates. I wonder if Oates had a cardie on under his other gear. I jumped into the passenger seat. We left.’
    D.H.: ‘Abidan seemed to know Tom was not going to appear, did he?’
    A: ‘I didn’t see how he could. Not logically. But I felt it, sort of sensed it somehow. You know how it can be.’
    D.H.: ‘Anyway, Abidan is not a Wheels, and so the disaster?’
    A: ‘No, he’s not a Wheels, and we were doing big speed.’
    D.H.: ‘Leaving Jamie behind.’
    A: ‘He chose that.’
    D.H.: ‘Abidan didn’t stop, but drove on to the change car you had parked ready at Pallindon Lane?’
    A: ‘He was driving like a loony. Up on to the pavement, knocks into those three girls from behind on their way to some clubbing, then we’re down on to the street again. It seemed to me the kind of . . . sort of, yes, contempt – not spoken, but real all the same from Jamie – this contempt had upset Empathy’s balance. I was yelling at him to slow down. I wouldn’t let him do the next leg, when we got to the replacement car.’
    D.H.: ‘You drove the Ford?’
    A: ‘I had to take over.’
    D.H.: ‘Which makes you an accessory to double manslaughter – woman slaughter – and failing to stop after an accident. Plus stolen vehicles and maybe a few other charges. Even a tie-in to the death of Tom Parry.’
    A: ‘Which is why I’m coughing the lot for you, isn’t it? It wasn’t me driving at the hit. And I don’t want to be fixed up with the Parry death. I’m not involved, you know I’m not involved, but that might not stop you trying to magic a link. I want a note to let the judge know I’ve been helpful and can be rewarded by a cut sentence and some protection.’
    D.H.: ‘I’ll see what can be done.’
    And Harpur knew D.H. did manage something for Wolsey.

SIX
    AFTER
    I les had spoken of a Home Office briefing he and Harpur would get before they started nosing into the conduct of those target police colleagues on their alien ground. It turned out to be grim and delicate: grim because the briefing presupposed harsh and intricate difficulties; and delicate because it suggested something totally evil and corrupt had most likely taken place, without actually saying what it was. Their job would be to find what it was and say what it was.
    They went up to London by train for this pre-operation meeting. Naturally, Iles despised the Home Office. This was more than routine, simple, cliché hate for overlords. Although he knew comparatively few of the huge staff, he had a general suspicion of everyone who worked there. He reasoned they would
not
have worked there if they had taste, integrity and decent parentage. He especially mistrusted those in the top posts. Iles thought they had probably lurked and simpered around this department for years, and with time had come to consider as normal and even wholesome what he saw as its dirty, grossly and brazenly non-Ilesean, unforgivable ways.
    Harpur himself didn’t mind the Home Office. He’d been on several previous visits, some with Iles, some alone. Harpur found the whole Whitehall thing quite a comfort: civil servants and politicians in their well-ordered offices talked and behaved as if genuinely convinced they could bring at least some of that order to the population outside, quite possibly to the population’s advantage now and then. This positive theme could be felt in the corridors and stairwells and was known among the super-clerks and Ministers as ‘proactive commitment’. Harpur’s spirits would almost always take a boost for a while from such