'You'd be better off sniffing glue than going to them colleges. Do they teach you nowt? Think about it! There was a government minister there that weekend. Partridge, Lord Partridge now. And the dead woman's husband was one of their own. And there was a Yank, Rampling, he's something important over in the States, and getting more important, by the sound of it. And there was Noddy Stamper, top industrialist. Sir Noddy now, Maggie gave him a knighthood soon as she got in, so you can see what he was made of. Just listen to the tape.

It's all there. Well, soon after it happened this long thin fellow, all sweet and pink, like a stick of Edinburgh Rock, turned up. Name of Sempernel, he said. Osbert Sempernel. Pimpernel, we called him, he were so hard to pin down. Said he was from the Home Office but I reckon if I could have snapped him in half, I'd have found dirty tricks printed all the way through. I saw him again this morning when I were watching the press conference on the box. Hanging around outside with Adolf. It all made sense.' 'Not to me,' said Pascoe, sceptically but not overly so. Dalziel's delusions had an X-certificate habit of fleshing themselves out into reality. 'Are you saying that Hiller will heap all the blame on Wally Tallantire just because this chap Sempernel tells him to?' 'Certainly. He'd hang his own granny if the orders came from high enough, especially if it meant getting up another rung of the ladder.' 'Adolf Eichmann rather than Adolf Hitler, then?' 'Both,' said Dalziel. 'And the bugger's taken a fancy to you, so mebbe you should start asking questions about yourself. Any road, you're to act as liaison. Now, you'll get nowt out of Adolf, but yon primped-up fancy pants might start yapping after a couple of port-and-lemons.' 'Stubbs? He seems a decent sort of chap.'

'SS was full of decent sorts of chap,' said Dalziel. 'You just keep your ears flapping.' 'You mean spy?' 'If that's what you like to call it.' Pascoe wrinkled his face in distaste and said, 'At least I should be glad there's not a war on.