The Church's identification of his client by their surveillance team had been a greater challenge. He couldn't buy the Church and couldn't threaten it, so the Eagle had had to burn late-night oil to work meticulously through the surveillance logs for the fissure in that part of the case. Having found the point of weakness, he had then diverted the attention of the enforcers, the Cards – Mister's hard men – to the leafy suburban detached home of the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer on the special-case desk… It was all worked out, it was the power of his client.

Mister never looked round. The prison officer passed the bag to the clerk. The Eagle led them back up the steps. At the first landing, instead of turning left and waiting at a barred grille gate for it to be unlocked and taking the route up to Number 7 Court, he turned right. At that gate, he showed his pass, as did his clerk, and the youngster pushed the discharge document under the face of the security man with the keys to Mister's freedom, a big, bluff, red-faced ex-Guardsman who wouldn't have brought coffee to a prisoner or carried his bag for him. The Eagle sensed that the security man wanted to sneer, spit, but didn't.

They emerged into the great lobby area of the building.

'Did you get the taxi, Josh?'

'Yes, Mr Arbuthnot – side door, like you said.'

No way that the Eagle would have Albert William Packer photographed close-up by a scrum of snappers, then have the pictures used every time a low-life hack wrote an organized-crime story on the capital. Anonymity was what the Eagle sought, for his client and for himself.

Two groups of men and women were watching them. They'd have to pass them on their way to the side exit.

'Just walk past, Mister, no eye-contact.'

The first group were the detectives from the National Crime Squad. As the Eagle knew, they'd have had a watching brief because the targeting of his client had been taken away from them and given to the Church.