Thomas glowered back. He preferred the word British to describe the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, and the inspector’s inadvertent use of the word English he suspected might be a veiled suggestion that the Welsh, Scottish or Irish could well have produced such a man. But it wasn’t.

‘All right, pack up the files. Take them back to registry. I’ll reply that a thorough search has revealed no such character known to us. That’s all we can do.’

‘Who was the enquiry from, Super?’ asked one.

‘Never you mind, boy. Someone’s got problems by the look of it, but it isn’t us.’

The two younger men had gathered up all the material and headed for the door. Both had families to get home to, and one was expecting to become a first-time father almost any day. He was the first to the door. The other turned back with a thoughtful frown.

‘Super, there’s one thing occurred to me while I was checking. If there is such a man, and he’s got British nationality, it seems he probably wouldn’t operate here anyway. I mean, even a man like that has to have a base somewhere. A refuge, sort of, a place to come back to. Chances are such a man is a respectable citizen in his own country.’

‘What are you getting at, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde?’

‘Well, something like that. I mean, if there is a professional killer about of the type we’ve been trying to track, and he’s big enough for somebody to pull the kind of weight to get an investigation like this started, with a man of your rank leading it, well the man in question must be big. And if he’s that, in his field, he must have a few jobs behind him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be anything, would he?’

‘Go on,’ said Thomas, watching him carefully.

‘Well, I just thought that a man like that would probably operate only outside his own country. So he wouldn’t normally come to the attention of the internal security forces. Perhaps the Service might have got wind of him once …’

Thomas considered the idea, then slowly shook his head. ‘Forget it, get on home, boy. I’ll write the report. And just forget we ever made the enquiry.’

But when the inspector was gone the idea he had sown remained in Thomas’s mind. He could sit down and write the report now. Completely negative. Drawn a blank. There could be no comebacks on the basis of the search of records that had been made. But supposing there was something behind the enquiry from France? Supposing the French had not, as Thomas suspected they had, simply lost their heads over a rumour concerning t

heir precious President? If they really had as little to go on as they claimed, if there was no indication that the man was an Englishman, then they must be checking all over the world in a similar way. Chances were heavily odds-on there was no killer, and if there were, that he came from one of those nations with long histories of political assassinations. But what if the French suspicions were accurate? And if the man turned out to be English, even by birth alone?

Thomas was intensely proud of the record of Scotland Yard, and particularly of the Special Branch. They had never had trouble of this kind. They had never lost a visiting foreign dignitary, never even a smell of scandal. He personally had even had to look after that little Russian bastard, Ivan Serov, head of the KGB, when he came to prepare for Khrushchev’s visit, and there had been scores of Balts and Poles who wanted to get Serov. Not even a shooting, and the place crawling with Serov’s own security men, every one packing a gun and quite prepared to use it.

Superintendent Bryn Thomas had two years to go before retirement and the journey back to the little house he and Meg had bought looking out over the green turf to the Bristol Channel. Better be safe, check everything.

In his youth Thomas had been a very fine rugby player, and there were many who had played against Glamorgan who remembered clearly the inadvisability of making a blind-side break when Bryn Thomas was wing forward. He was too old for it now, of course, but he still took a keen interest in the London Welsh when he could get away from work and go down to the Old Deer Park at Richmond to see them play. He knew all the players well, spending time in the club house chatting with them after a match, and his reputation was enough to ensure that he was always welcome.

One of the players was known to the rest of the members simply to be on the staff of the Foreign Office. Thomas knew he was a bit more than that; the department, under the auspices of the Foreign Secretary but not attached to the Foreign Office, for which Barrie Lloyd worked was the Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes called the SIS, sometimes simply ‘The Service’ and more usually among the public by its incorrect name of MI-6.

Thomas lifted the telephone on his desk and asked for a number …

The two men met for a drink in a quiet pub down by the river between eight and nine. They talked rugby for a while, as Thomas bought the drinks. But Lloyd guessed the man from Special Branch had not asked to see him at a riverside pub to talk about a game for which the season would not start for another two months. When they had both got their drinks, and given each other a perfunctory ‘Cheers’, Thomas gestured with his head outside on to the terrace that led down to the wharf. It was quieter outside, for most of the young couples from Chelsea and Fulham were drinking up and heading off for dinner.

‘Got a bit of a problem, boyo,’ began Thomas. ‘Hoped you might be able to help.’

‘Well … if I can,’ said Lloyd.

Thomas explained about the request from Paris, and the blank drawn by Criminal Records and the Special Branch.

‘It occurred to me that if there ever was such a man, and a British one at that, he might be the kind who would never get his hands dirty inside this country, see. Might just stick to operations abroad. If he ever had left a trail, maybe he came to the attention of the Service?’

‘Service?’ asked Lloyd quietly.

‘Come on, Barrie. We have to know a lot of things, from time to time.’ Thomas’s voice was hardly above a murmur. From the back they looked like two men in dark suits staring out over the dusky river at the lights of the south bank, talking of the day’s dealings in the City. ‘We had to turn over a lot of files during the Blake investigations. A lot of Foreign Office people got a peek taken at what they were really up to. Yours was one, see. You were in his section at the time he came under suss. So I know what department you work with.’

‘I see,’ said Lloyd.

‘Now look, I may be Bryn Thomas down at the Park. But I’m also a superintendent of the SB, right? You can’t all be anonymous from everyone, now can you?’

Lloyd stared into his glass.

‘Is this an official enquiry for information?’

‘No, I can’t make it that yet. The French request was an unofficial request from Lebel to Mallinson. He could find nothing in Central Records, so he replied that he couldn’t help, but he also had a word with Dixon. Who asked me to have a quick check. All on the quiet, see? Sometimes things have to be done that way. Very delicate, all this. Mustn’t get out to the Press or anything. Chances are there’s nothing here in Britain at all that might help Lebel. I just thought I’d cover all the angles, and you were the last.’

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
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