He paused at the door. The transcript was gripped between his thumb and a nicotined finger. He looked through the dusk of the open plan area and towards the light shaft that was the door into the inner office of Mr Furniss. He knocked.

"Come."

The messenger thought that Mr Furniss had a lovely voice, the sort of voice that would have sounded lovely on the wireless. He thought Mr Furniss with his lovely voice was also a lovely man. He thought Mr Matthew Furniss was the best of the Old Guard at Century, and a proper gentleman.

"You're so kind, Harry… Bless you, and you should have been home hours ago."

It was a sort of a ritual, because the messenger brought the transcript every weekday evening, and every weekday evening Mr Furniss seemed so pleasantly surprised and grateful, and he thought that evening that Mr Furniss looked rotten, like the world was on top of him. The messenger knew enough about the man, plenty, as much as anybody at Century, because the messenger's wife in the years gone by had baby-sat, minded the girls, for Mr and Mrs Furniss. The room stank of pipe tobacco and the ash bowl was brimming. That was not usual, nor was the bottle of Grants that was on the desk and had taken a beating.

"No problem, sir…" The messenger handed over the transcript.

Twenty-four hours earlier, to the minute, the messenger had delivered the previous monitored and translated news bulletin from the Home Service of Tehran radio. It was all very clear in the messenger's memory. Mr Matthew Furniss had given him his chirpy and conspiratorial smile and eased back in his chair to gut the resume, and the chair had snapped forward, and the paperwork had flaked down from his hands onto the desk top, and he'd looked as if he'd been hit. That had been last night…

The messenger watched. He peered through the smoke haze.

The evening's transcript was on the desk and Mr Matthew Furniss was scanning it, taking it line by line. He stopped, he looked as if he was unwilling to believe what he read.