'I can't help that,' Macklin was saying on the phone, 'the whole unit has to get airborne at the same time. Do without the navigator if you have to, and find a pilot who knows his maps.'

It never occurred to me that it was a bit odd giving me a briefing officer like Macklin to spell out this little job I was going to do for Egerton, strictly a gumshoe number. Maybe he was just filling in for someone, as I was.

Nora Millicent Tewson, nee Harmer, now legally designated widow, still in Hong Kong, now resident. Present address 'Listen,' I said, 'I can read the rest of this stuff on the plane.'

'What plane?'

'That's what I mean, there could be an early flight.'

His glass eye looked at me dully, slightly off-centre. I remembered it was the left one you had to look at.

'What's the rush?'

'I can't stand this interminable bloody rain.'

He gave a sudden lopsided laugh and the scar went pink, 'Can't ever wait, can you — '

'Listen, I've been out for two months — '

'Shagging yourself to a standstill — '

'Oh balls, listen, fill me in, will you, give me the main outline.'

He flipped a switch and said: 'How soon can you put a man in Hong Kong?'

They said they'd call him back.

He looked at me again. 'We just want to know a bit more about what happened to Tewson. On the face of it everything seems to be quite okay: he and his wife were on a package tour holiday, the third time they'd been to Hong Kong in three years, and he went in for sport fishing. It's shark water and that kind of accident sometimes happens if they don't lash themselves to the boat. All the same, we've had a request to check on it and make quite sure it was an accident.'

I didn't ask who'd requested it. After a few years at the Bureau you learned the language, and in Field Briefing their job is to tell you everything you ought to know and if they seem to be missing a few things out you don't ask questions because it'd be a waste Of time.