'Just a family row.'

The September rain was soft and fresh-smelling as I crossed the pavement and got into the car. Connie wasn't one of my girls, though I'd met her once or twice and I was on the list of names she had to call if any kind of trouble came up. Of course we can make what friends we like, unless there's an actual detective warning us off, and that only happens if by sheer chance we've taken a fancy to someone with a job in a foreign embassy or with their name on the books as a security risk. All the same, the Bureau tries to steer a few girls our way, clerks and secretaries working somewhere along Whitehall or across at the Foreign Office, civil servants with a known background. One of our people — I think it was Carslake — said it was the best-run call-girl system in the whole of London, and a director heard him and got him hauled up on high, because the Bureau is terribly sensitive about things like that.

I went along there now, turning through Hyde Park with the rain hitting the windscreen and slowing the wipers. Except for the fact that we worked for the same outfit, I had nothing to do with North and he had nothing to do with me, but some of his misery had rubbed off and I knew I wouldn't sleep if I went back to the flat, and anyway we all seem to gravitate to that dreary bloody building whenever there's trouble. Comfort in numbers, I suppose, when the nerves start playing up.

There wasn't anyone in Field Briefing or the canteen at this time of night. Signals was in full operation because of the Irish thing but I couldn't talk to anyone in there, they'd throw me out. I found Dewhurst wandering about morosely on the first floor.

'When did North get back?' I asked him.

'Who?'

'North.'

I took off my trenchcoat and shook some of the rain off it.

'Two days ago.' He looked at me in the bleak electric light, trying to see if I'd heard the news.