He slammed the door and strode away into the shadows, stripping off the gloves. He left the station by the exit on the other side and walked eight blocks to find a rubbish sack to stuff his bag and the gloves in, then more slowly back to the station and onto the concourse to find a bench not yet taken by a dosser where he could stretch himself out until the time of the first train of the morning.

When he had come on duty he had immediately been aware of an atmosphere of minor crisis ebbing in and out of the Section Head's office. Had to be a crisis for Wilkins to have stayed on as late as nine, and his P.A. had been there, and Carthew and Foster. Behind the closed door there had been the clatter of glasses. Then it was all over, Carthew and Foster slipping away like ghosts in the night, the P.A. sliding an empty scotch bottle into her waste bin and leaving as if she'd stood up a date in a restaurant for a couple of hours. Wilkins had just said, as he was shrugging into an overcoat, that he would be at home if a "Priority" came through. And that had been that. The crisis must have been contained, because no trace had spilled over into the Night Desk Officer's vigil.

Two faxes on the secure line from Belfast, neither of them remotely

"priority", a phone call from SO 13 at the Yard asking for a trace on a building worker from Limerick, the usual job of getting the Sit Rep ready for the Section Head's desk for when he came in at one minute to nine o'clock.

The first girl into the typing pool whispered something inaudible to the second girl, and she looked at him and giggled. The office area had begun to fill up. The kettle was on, the telephones had begun to ring.

It was a Friday morning.

The voices played around Bren. He filled his briefcase. Just the box for his sandwiches, his flask and the mug that he had washed up when he had shaved, and the envelope from Personnel with a flimsy on Security Service pensions. He heard all that was said, but he knew that he was an outsider.