'You could have phoned for someone.'

'I didn't want anyone out there.' It would have meant headlights arriving and everything, attracting attention. Things had been bad enough with the fire, though nobody had come running: last night was the Fifth of November, with bonfires all over the countryside. Trust McCane to get himself blown into Christendom on Guy Fawkes Night.

Tilney wrapped the things up in the newspaper again and jotted a note on a pad and said, 'Let's go along to my room, shall we? We need to debrief, then you'd better get some sleep.'

The clock on the wall said 6:21. There was still dark in the windows.

In the corridor I asked Tilney, 'Who was running him?

'Shatner. But there's no actual mission on the board.'

'Is he in yet?'

'Yes.' Tilney was giving me quick sidelong glances, still catching things in my tone. I couldn't do anything about that. They got him on the phone when your signal came in, and he -'

'I want to see him.'

Tilney broke his step and looked at me directly and said, 'You can, eventually, but first I'm going to debrief you on McCane's death.' He opened his door and waited for me to go through. Tilney has been known to put you in your place less gently than that, but he wanted to humour me, I think. He didn't know what was on my mind, why my control was so thin; I'd seen people killed before, and he knew that. 'Take a pew,' he said, and got behind his desk, pushing some stuff to one side. 'Spot of tea?'

'No.'

He got a tape-recorder from a drawer and set it going. 'So what happened?'

I still felt cold, though the radiators were on: you could hear the water gurgling in the pipes. 'He phoned me in my car. He said he was going to Reigate, and asked me if I wanted to follow him up.'