'… Don't ever do that to me again, Penn, or you're lost, forgotten. Just remember what you are, and you are ex, Penn. You are ex-Five, you are ex-A Branch. You may once have, stupidly, harboured the illusion that there is a way back let me tell you, Penn, that the way back is not via spitting in my face. You don't think on it, you don't consider it, you damn well jump to it, and I was doing you a favour… I can get a score of ex-Herefords who would give the right cheek of their arses for a job like this, and I gave your name… Got me?"

"Yes, Mr. Browne."

"You don't patronize by thinking and considering, you bloody well get on with it."

"Yes, Mr. Browne. Thank you, Mr. Browne."

He slapped down the telephone. Yes, rare for him to lose his temper, and he felt no better for it. His anger was because of his memory of Dorrie Mowat, and God alone knew what a pain the child had been…

He had left home early.

He had left home while Jane was still feeding Tom. He had called once from the front door, and she must have been distracted because she hadn't called back to him from upstairs. She was too damned often distracted.

He had driven down through the countryside to the Surrey/ Sussex border.

Penn was thirty-five minutes early for his appointment at the Manor House.

He parked up the Sierra in the space beside the shop. There were old half-casks outside the shop filled with bright pansies, and there was a notice congratulating the community on a runners-up prize in the Tidy Village competition. Bill Penn and Jane and baby Tom, in the maisonette, lived in Raynes Park, near the railway station, and there were no Tidy Village competitions where he lived. Time to kill, and he went walking. Away from the Manor House, away from the shop, past the village cricket pitch where the outfield grass was wet and the square was thick with worm casts, towards the church.